I would have resisted him if I could, but when he set his hand on my shoulder, my defiance melted. I let him steer me out onto the deck. I heard the jesting shouts of the sailors when I reappeared, but Web chose to ignore them as he steered me to a rail. “Here,” he said, and from his hip took a leather flask and unstoppered it. The scent of brandy reached me. “A bit of this down you, and then take some deep breaths. You look like a man who has bled half to death.”
I did not think I needed the brandy until I took some and felt its heat run through me.
Fitz?
The Prince’s worried query reached me as a whisper. I realized abruptly how tightly I was still holding my walls. Gingerly I eased them down, and then reached back to Dutiful. “I’m fine. Web has Thick settled now.”
“That’s right. I do. But you scarcely need to tell me that.”
Give me a moment, my Prince, to gather myself. I had not even realized that I had spoken aloud the thought I’d previously Skilled to Dutiful. “I know. I’m a bit rattled, I suppose.”
“Yes, you are. What I don’t understand is why. But I have my suspicions. The simple man is very important to the Prince, isn’t he? And it has something to do with how he could stop a warrior in his prime from forcing him to do a thing he didn’t wish to do. What made you flinch before his touch? When I touched him, nothing happened to me.”
I handed him back his flask. “Not my secret,” I said bluntly.
“I see.” He took a mouthful of his brandy. He looked aloft pensively. Risk did a lazy loop around our ship, waiting for us. Canvas blossomed suddenly on the mast. A moment later, it bellied in the wind and I felt our ship dip and then gather speed. “Short journey, they tell me. Three days, four at most. If we’d taken the Maiden’s Chance, she would have had to sail around the whole cluster of islands, and then we would have had to put her at harbor on one of the other islands and still take another shallow-draft vessel to reach Wuislington.”
I nodded sagely to that, not knowing if it was true or not. Perhaps his bird had told him. More likely, it was sailor’s gossip, gained by his own ready ears.
As if it were a logical continuation, he asked, “If I were to guess this secret, would you tell me I’d got it right?” I gave a short sigh. Only now that the struggle was over did I realize how weary I was. And how strong Thick had been when driven by his fear and anger to apply all his strength to me. I hoped he had not burned reserves he could not afford. His sickness had already drained much of his vigor. He had thought himself in a life-or-death struggle with me; of that I had no doubt. Concern for him suddenly filled me. “Tom?” Web pressed me, and with a start I recalled his question.
“It’s not my secret,” I repeated doggedly. Hopelessness was welling up in me like blood from a puncture wound. I recognized it as Thick’s. That didn’t help. I’d have to quell it somehow, before it could affect the rest of the people on the ship. Can you handle him for us?
The assent I sent to the Prince was an acknowledgment of his request rather than a confirmation that I could accomplish it.
Web was offering me his flask again. I took it, swigged from it, and then said, “I have to go back to Thick. It’s not good for him to be left alone.”
“I think I see that,” he agreed as he took the flask back from me. “I wish I was sure whether you were protector or gaoler to him. Well, Tom Badgerlock, when you judge that it’s safe for me to be the one to stay with him, you let me know. You look as if you could use a bit of rest yourself.”
I nodded without replying and I left him there and went to the little chamber allotted to the Wit coterie. All the other folk had fled, probably made uncomfortable by the strength of the emotions emanating from Thick on a swelling Skill tide. He slept, but it was from exhaustion, not peace. I looked down on his face, seeing a simplicity there that was not childish or even simple. His cheeks were flushed and tiny beads of sweat stood on his forehead. His fever was back and his breathing was raspy. I sat on the floor by his pallet. I was ashamed of what we were doing to him. It wasn’t right and we knew it, Chade and Dutiful and I. Then I gave in to my weariness and lay down at his side.
I gave myself three breaths to center myself and gather my Skill. Then I closed my eyes and put my arm lightly across Thick in order to deepen our Skill-connection. I had expected him to have his walls up against me, but he was defenseless. I slipped into a dream in which a lost kitten paddled desperately in a boiling sea. I drew him from the water as Nettle had done and took him back to the wagon and the bed and the cushion. I promised him that he was safe and felt his anxiety ease a little. But even in his dreams, he recognized me. “But you made me!” the kitten suddenly cried out. “You made me come on a boat again!”
I had expected anger and defiance, or even an attack following those words. What I received was worse. He cried. The kitten wept inconsolably, in a small child’s voice. I felt the gulf of his disappointment that I could betray him so. He had trusted me. I picked him up and held him, but still he cried, and I could not comfort him, for I was at the base of his sorrow.
I was not expecting Nettle. It was not night, and I doubted that she was sleeping. I suppose I had always assumed that she could only Skill when she slept. A foolish notion, but there it was. As I sat rocking the tiny creature that was Thick, I felt her presence beside me. Give him to me, she said with a woman’s weariness at a man’s incompetence. Guilty at my relief, I let her take him from me. I faded into the background of his dream, and felt his tension ease as I retreated from him. It hurt that he found my presence upsetting, but I could not blame him.
After a time, I found myself sitting at the base of the melted tower. It seemed a very forsaken place. The dead brambles coated the steep hillsides all around it, and the only sound was the wind soughing through their branches. I waited.
Nettle came. Why this? she asked, sweeping an arm at the desolation that surrounded us. It seemed appropriate, I replied dispiritedly.
She gave a snort of contempt and then, with a wave, made the dead brambles into deep summer grasses. The tower became a circle of broken stone on the hillside, with flowering vines wandering over it. She seated herself on a sun-warmed stone, shook out her red skirts over her bare feet, and asked, Are you always this dramatic?
I suspect I am.
It must be exhausting to be around you. You’re the second most emotional man I know.
The first being?
My father. He came home yesterday.
I caught my breath, and tried to be casual as I asked, And?
And he had gone to Buckkeep Castle. That is as much as he told us. He looks as if he has aged a decade and yet sometimes I catch him gazing across the room and smiling. Despite his fogged eyes, he keeps staring at me, as if he has never seen me before. Mother says she feels as if he keeps saying farewell to her. He comes to her and puts his arms around her and holds her as if she might be snatched away at any moment. It is hard to describe how he behaves; as if some heavy task is finally finished, and yet he also acts like a man preparing for a journey.
What has he told you? I tried to keep her from sensing my dread.
Nothing. And no more than that to my mother, or so she says. He brought gifts for all of us when he came back. Jumping jacks for my smallest brothers, and cleverly carved puzzle boxes for the older boys. For my mother and me, little boxes with necklaces of wooden beads inside them, not roughly shaped but each carved like a jewel. And a horse, the loveliest little mare I’ve ever seen.