“I didn’t really look at her that closely yesterday.”
Now that we were actually here, the Fool’s banter seemed dampened. Very gingerly, I set a hand to the dragon’s back. The individual scales were so cunningly worked, the curve of the beast’s body so natural that I almost expected it to heave with breath. It was cold, hard stone. I held my breath, daring myself, then quested toward the stone. It felt unlike any questing I had ever done before. There was no beating heart, no rush of breath, nor any other physical sign of life to guide me. There was only my Wit-sense of life, trapped and desperate. For a moment it eluded me; then I brushed against it, and it quested back to me. It sought the feel of wind on skin, the warm pumping of blood, oh, the scents of the summer day, the sensation of my clothing against my skin, any and all that was part of the experience of living it hungered for. I snatched my hand back, frightened by the intensity of its reaching. Almost I thought it might draw me in to join it there.
“Strange,” whispered the Fool, for linked to me as he was, he felt the ripples of my experience. His eyes met mine and held for some time. Then he reached a single bare silver fingertip toward the girl.
“We should not do this,” I said, but there was no force in my words. The slender figure astride the dragon was dressed in a sleeveless jerkin, leggings and sandals. The Fool touched his finger to her upper arm.
A Skill-scream of pain and outrage filled the quarry. The Fool was flung backward off the pedestal, to land hard on his back on the rock below. He sprawled there senseless. My knees buckled under me and I fell beside the dragon. From the torrent of Wit-anger I felt, I expected the creature to trample me underfoot like a maddened horse. Instinctively I curled up, my arms sheltering my head.
It was done in an instant, yet the echoes of that cry seemed to rebound endlessly from the slick black stone walls and blocks all around us. I was shakily clambering down to check on the Fool when Nighteyes came rushing up to us. What was that? Who threatens us? I knelt by the Fool. He had struck his head and blood was leaking onto the black stone, but I didn’t think that was why he was unconscious. “I knew we shouldn’t have done it. Why did I let you do it?” I asked myself as I gathered him up to take him back to camp.
“Because you’re a bigger fool than he is. And I am the biggest of all, to have left you alone and trusted you to act with sense. What did he do?” Kettle was still puffing from her hurry.
“He touched the girl on the dragon. With the Skill on his finger.”
I glanced up at the statue as I spoke. To my horror, there was a bright silver fingerprint on the girl’s upper arm, outlined in scarlet against her bronze-toned flesh. Kettle followed my gaze and I heard her gasp. She spun on me and lifted her gnarled hand as if to strike me. Then she clenched her hand into a contorted fist that trembled and forced it down by her side. “Is it not enough that she is trapped there in misery forever, alone and cut off from all she once loved? You two must come to give her pain on top of all that! How could you be so vicious?”
“We meant no harm. We did not know . . .”
“Ignorance is always the excuse used by the cruelly curious!” Kettle snarled.
My own temper suddenly rose to match hers. “Don’t rebuke me with my ignorance, woman, when all you have done is refuse to lift it for me. You hint and warn and give us ominous words, but you refuse to speak anything that might help us. And when we make mistakes, you rail at us, saying we should have known better. How? How can we know better when the one who does refuses to share her knowledge with us?”
In my arms, the Fool stirred faintly. The wolf had been prowling about my feet. Now he came back with a whine to sniff at the Fool’s dangling hand.
Careful! Don’t let his fingers touch you!
What bit him?
I don’t know. “I don’t know anything,” I said aloud, bitterly. “I’m blundering in the dark, hurting everyone I care about in the process.”
“I dare not interfere,” Kettle shouted at me. “What if some word of mine set you on the wrong course? What of all the prophecies then? You must find your own way, Catalyst.”
The Fool opened his eyes to look at me blankly. Then he closed them again and leaned his head on my shoulder. He was starting to get heavy and I needed to find out what was wrong with him. I shrugged him up more firmly in my arms. I saw Starling coming up behind Kettle, her arms laden with wet laundry. I turned and walked away from them both. As I headed back to camp with the Fool, I said over my shoulder, “Maybe that is why you are here. Maybe you were called here, with a part to play. Maybe it is lifting our ignorance so we can fulfill this bedamned prophecy of yours. And maybe keeping your silence is how you will thwart it. But,” and I halted to fling the words savagely over my shoulder, “I think you keep silent for reasons of your own. Because you are ashamed!”
I turned away from the stricken look on her face. I covered my shame to have spoken to her so with my anger. It gave me new strength of purpose. I was suddenly determined that I was going to start making everyone behave as they should. It was the sort of childish resolution that often got me into trouble, but once my heart had seized hold of it, my anger gripped it tight.
I carried the Fool into the big tent and laid him out on his bedding. I took a ragged sleeve off what remained of a shirt, damped it in cool water, and applied it firmly to the back of his head. When the bleeding slowed, I checked it. It was not a large cut, but it was on top of a respectable lump. I still felt that was not why he had fainted. “Fool?” I said to him quietly, then more insistently, “Fool?” I patted his face with water. He came awake with a simple opening of his eyes. “Fool?”
“I’ll be all right, Fitz,” he said wanly. “You were right. I should not have touched her. But I did. And I shall never be able to forget it.”
“What happened?” I demanded.
He shook his head. “I can’t talk about it just yet,” he said quietly.
I shot to my feet, head slapping against the tent roof and nearly bringing the whole structure down around me. “No one in this whole company can talk about anything!” I declared furiously. “Except me. And I intend to talk about everything.”
I left the Fool leaning up on one elbow and staring after me. I don’t know if his expression was amused or aghast. I didn’t care. I strode from the tent, scrabbled up the pile of tailings to the pedestal where Verity carved his dragon. The steady scrape, scrape, scrape of his sword point against the stone was like a rasp against my soul. Kettricken sat by him, hollow-eyed and silent. Neither paid me the slightest bit of attention.
I halted a moment and got my breathing under control. I swept my hair back from my face and tied my warrior’s tail afresh, brushed off my leggings and tugged the stained remnants of my shirt straight. I took three steps forward. My formal bow included Kettricken.
“My lord, King Verity. My lady, Queen Kettricken. I have come to conclude my reporting to the King. If you would allow it.”
I had honestly expected both of them to ignore me. But King Verity’s sword scraped twice more then ceased. He looked at me over his shoulder. “Continue, FitzChivalry. I shall not cease my work, but I shall listen.”
There was grave courtesy in his voice. It heartened me. Kettricken suddenly sat up straighter. She brushed the straggling hair back from her eyes, then nodded her permission at me. I drew a deep breath and began, reporting as I had been taught, everything that I had seen or done since my visit to the ruined city. Sometime during, that long telling, the scraping of the sword slowed, then ceased. Verity moved ponderously to take a seat beside Kettricken. Almost he started to take her hand in his, then stopped himself and folded his own hands before him. But Kettricken saw that small gesture, and moved a trifle closer to him. They sat side by side, my threadbare monarchs, throned on cold rock, a stone dragon at their backs, and listened to me.