Golden Fool (Tawny Man #2)

I tried to remember that moment, and could not. “Perhaps what you set in motion, my body and Skill continued. I don’t recall.”

He covered his mouth with a hand as he stood looking down on me. “Chade—” He hesitated, then forced himself to go on. His voice was nearly the Fool’s. “I think Lord Chade felt . . . I should not surmise what he felt. Only I think he believes you knew how to do this, and that you kept it a secret from him.”

“Eda and El in a tangle,” I groaned. Chade was right. I never had been good at discerning what people felt unless they told me directly. I had sensed there was some knot between us, but this was the last thing I’d expected. Even if I’d known my body had been cleared of scars, I would not have suspected that Chade would feel slighted over some imagined secret. That was what was behind his huffy retreat; his resolution was that he would continue to discover whatever I’d concealed from him. I gathered my legs under me and stood without assistance. Not that Lord Golden had offered me any. I proffered the mirror to him and turned back to my room.

“So. Changed your mind about shaving, Badgerlock?” Lord Golden asked me.

“For now, yes. I’m going up to Chade’s old chamber. If you could let him know that I’d like to see him there, I’d be appreciative.” I spoke to him as if he were the Fool. I didn’t expect a reply and I didn’t get one.

I simply had no strength. I stopped to rest so many times on the stairs that I thought my candle would burn out and leave me in darkness. When I did reach the chamber, I had lost all ambition. At the door, the ferret leapt out to challenge me. Gilly did a wild dance, inviting me to battle for the territory. “You can have it,” I told him. “You’d probably win anyway.” Ignoring his rushes at my feet, I went and sat down on the edge of the bed, then lay down and almost immediately fell asleep. I think I slept for a long time.

When I awoke, the ferret was sleeping under my chin. The moment I stirred, Gilly fled. It was plain someone had come and gone. It disturbed me that I could sleep through that; when I had been bonded to my wolf, his mind had always kept watch through my senses. He would have wakened me as soon as he perceived I was hearing an intruder. I had grown too dependent on those wild senses, I decided as I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. I had grown too dependent on everything and everyone.

There were dishes and a bottle of wine on the cleared end of the table. A pot of soup had been left warming at the edge of the hearth, and the wood had been replenished for the fire. I got up and went directly to the food. I ate and drank and waited. And while I waited, I perused the scrolls that had been left out for me. There was a report from someone about Icefyre and Outislander dragons. Another spy report on doings in Bingtown and their war with Chalced. An old scroll that showed a sketch of the muscles in a man’s back had been updated. The details and notes were in Chade’s hand. Well, at least my journey through death’s jaws had provided new knowledge. Beside that scroll were three more, bundled together. Tattered and faded they were, and all in the same hand. It was a set of Skill exercises, designed specifically for the Solo. I scowled at that, wondering what they meant. A few minutes of reading enlightened me. These were exercises for the Skill practitioner who had no coterie. It had never occurred to me before that there would be such, but when I thought about it, I saw it must be so. I had become one, hadn’t I? There had always been people who were socially inept, or simply preferred solitude. When coteries were formed, some would likely be excluded. These exercises were for ones such as those.

In reading it, I found it likely that they had most often been used as spies or healers. The exercises in the first scroll seemed to focus especially on subtle uses of the Skill to either listen in or implant suggestions in someone’s thoughts. The second scroll dealt with repairing another’s body. This fascinated me, not just because I had recently undergone it, but because it confirmed a thing I had suspected. What a man started with the Skill and his will, the body often took over. The body understood healing. Yet it also understood that sometimes hasty repairs were more important than perfect ones, that closing the wound might be more important than smooth skin afterward. So the scroll put it. The body understood conserving one’s strength and reserves against tomorrow’s needs. The scroll cautioned Skill-users to be wary of ignoring the body’s own tendencies, and to be circumspect with how ardently they pursued a repair. I wondered if Chade had read that part.

The third scroll dealt with maintaining one’s own body. On this last scroll, the clear notes in Chade’s hand contrasted strongly with the faded old ink. It chronicled his early failed efforts as well as his recent successes. This was what he had wanted me to see; these notes were why he had left it out. He wished me to know that ever since the Skill scrolls had come into his possession, he had been trying and failing to repair his own body. He had been successful only since he had witnessed the healing of mine, and discovered that he could tap Thick’s Skill talent to supplement his faltering and groping efforts.