Fool's Quest (The Fitz and The Fool Trilogy #2)

“Don’t shave,” he instructed me abruptly, as if I had been poised with razor in hand. “Ash. Can you cut the buttons from the trousers and leave no trace they were ever there?”

“I think so.” The boy sounded a bit sullen.

“Come, Ash,” the Fool cajoled him. “You grew up in a bawdyhouse, where daily, women presented themselves to be what men fancied. This is the same thing. We must give them what they want to see. Not a fashionable gentlemen dressed to impress, but a hero returned from the outskirts of society. He has been hidden amongst us since he returned from the Elderlings, living as a humble rural landholder. Slice the buttons off the trousers! We must make him look as if he has not mingled in court society for close to twoscore years. Yet we must also make it appear that he has tried to dress to the style. I know that Chade knows well how to play this sort of a game. We will need powder and paint, to emphasize the old break in his nose and the scar on his face. Some jewelry, but nothing too fine. Silver suits him better than gold.”

“My fox pin,” I said quietly.

“Perfect,” the Fool agreed. “Ash?”

“A hat. Almost no one goes bareheaded anymore. But simpler. Without feathers, perhaps.”

“Excellent. Go fetch. I think you’ve the head for this game. Indulge yourself.”

As easily as that, he had stroked the boy’s pride smooth. The lad flashed a smile at me as he rose and then vanished, headed toward the crawlway that would exit into Lady Thyme’s chamber.

“The fox pin,” the Fool demanded of me.

“And there is now a silver narwhal button that the queen gave me last night,” I remembered.

I took the button from my pocket and the fox pin from inside my shirt, where habit had placed it when I dressed. His crippled hands worked awkwardly at the collar of my shirt, folding the fabric and then securing it with the pin so that it suddenly looked and felt like a different garment to me. By the time he had finished and I had scrubbed the last of the ink spots from my face, Ash was back with a full armload of belts, vests, paint, powder, and a very sharp knife. The lad sheared the buttons from my trousers and then plucked the loose threads away. He was good with face paint; I almost asked if he had applied it for his mother, and then bit back the question. He traded my belt for a heavier one, and my belt-knife for a more substantial blade, one that verged on being a short sword. The hat that he produced for me had undoubtedly been made for a lady, sixty or seventy years ago. Ruthlessly, he stripped the feathers from it before handing it over to the Fool, who felt it carefully, and then commanded the boy to restore two small feathers and add a leather strap with a showy buckle to the crown. The silver button they threaded with heavy twine and fastened to my wrist. “We should order a fine silver chain for that,” the Fool suggested and the boy grinned, dug in a small box, and produced one.

“Excellent choice!” the Fool praised him as he fingered the fish-scale links, and in a trice they had redone the narwhal.

By the time they finished, they were both chortling and congratulating each other. Ash seemed to have lost all uneasiness around the Fool; indeed, they seemed to have established a swift camaraderie. “The final touch for the Witted Bastard,” the Fool exclaimed. “Motley. Will you ride on his shoulder and be his Wit-beast for the evening?”

“No,” I said, appalled, even as the bird cocked her head at me and responded, “Fitz—Chivalry!”

“She can’t, Fool. She’s not my companion. It will offend Web if I pretend she is. And I have no way to reassure her that she is safe in such a crowded and noisy space.”

“Ah, well.” The Fool understood immediately, even if he could not conceal his disappointment.

Ash had tilted his head and was looking at me speculatively. “What?” I asked, thinking that he’d found something awry in my garments.

He glanced away from the Fool but tipped a nod toward him. “He says he was there. With you, in the Mountains, when you woke the dragons and sent them to aid King Verity.”

I was startled both by the lad being brave enough to ask such a question and by the idea that the Fool would have spoken so freely to him of our time together. “It’s true,” I managed to say.

“But the minstrel didn’t mention him at all last night.”

The Fool gave an abrupt caw of laughter, and the crow immediately mimicked him.

“And that is true also,” I agreed.

“But Lady Starling said she sang true.”

“Everything she sang was true. I will leave it to you as to whether the truth can exist with details omitted, or if those lacks make a lie of it.”