“We will kill them all?” he asked in a small and shaky voice.
I walked my hand across the table, tapping my nails so he heard it coming. I took his bony hand in mine. I claimed a silent moment to gather my courage and chill my anger to edged cold. Was this right? Was I exploiting his fears for my own ends? Making promises I could not fulfill? But what else could I do? It was for Bee. “Fool. Beloved. You have to help me now. We will kill them all, but only if you can help me. Why did they come to Withywoods? Why did they take Bee and Shun? What do they intend? Why were Chalcedeans there? And most of all, where would they take them? Where? The other questions matter, but even if all you can tell me is where, it will be enough for me to find them and kill them and take back my child.”
I saw him compose himself. I watched him think. I waited for him. He found the cup, lifted it, and took a cautious sip. “It’s my fault,” he said. I wanted to contradict him, to interrupt him and assure him it was not his fault. But his words had begun to flow and I did not want to divert them.
“Once they knew what you meant to me, they were bound to seek you out. To see if you held the secret that they had not been able to drag out of me. The Servants had your name; I’ve told you how that came about. They knew of FitzChivalry and they knew of Buckkeep. But of Tom Badgerlock and Withywoods they could not know. The messengers I sent to you—I did not tell them your name. I gave them pieces of information they could use as they traveled to find the next place and ask the next question that might bring them to you. Fitz, I did my best to protect you, even as I sent you my request and my warning. I can only suppose that they captured one of my messengers and tortured it out of him.” He took a noisy sip of his tea, sucking in air with the scalding brew.
“Or perhaps they just followed me. Perhaps they could see what I could not, that it was inevitable that I would make my way back to my Catalyst. Perhaps they even were counting on you to kill me. How sweet they must have found that!
“But now I fear a thing even darker. If they knew I had asked you to find the Unexpected Son and keep him safe, they might have suspected you had already done so. And perhaps they descended on Withywoods hoping to find him. You heard that they were asking for him.
“But here is the darkest thing of all. What if they know more than we can possibly know? What if they have generated new prophecies since you brought me back from the dead and rendered so much of the old future impossible? What if they knew that if you found me in the marketplace, you would kill me? Or what if they knew that if you nearly killed me, you would try to save me? That you would take me and leave your own home unguarded, so they might go in to rape and plunder and search for the Unexpected Son with nothing to fear?”
His words filled me with uneasiness even before he said, “What if we are still dancing to their tune? And we do not hear it, so we cannot change the step of how we prance and turn to their wills?”
I was silent, trying to conceive of such an enemy. An enemy who would know what I would do before I decided to do it.
“It is no use fearing that,” he said sadly into my silence. “If it is so, we are helpless against them. And the only logical response to that would be to stop struggling. And thus they would win. At least, if we fight, we can be a nuisance to them.”
My anger, briefly banked, flared again. “I intend to be more than a nuisance, Fool.”
He had not withdrawn his hand from my grip. Now he turned it and grasped my hand firmly. “I have no courage of my own left, Fitz. They beat and twisted and burned it out of me. So I shall have to borrow yours. Let me think, for just a moment longer, on all you have told me.”
He released my hand and took another slow sip of his tea. His eyes stared past me. I had forgotten the crow, so still and silent had she been. Abruptly, she opened her wings and leapt from her perch to land on the small table, nearly oversetting the teapot. “Food,” she demanded raucously. “Food, food, food!”