“Nothing. Literally nothing. No extra clothing left aboard, not a trinket or a shoestring. Only the crew and their bits of possessions. Nothing to indicate there had even been passengers.”
Despair gaped like a dry well in front of me. I could not indulge in that. I could not curse nor weep. Such things prevent a man from thinking, and I needed to think clearly. I reached the door of my room and opened it. Riddle followed me in.
“So. We return to Buckkeep Castle tomorrow,” he told me.
“So I planned.”
“We are ordered back, Fitz. That’s a bit different.”
“Oh.” It took a moment for me to consider all the ramifications of that. Prince FitzChivalry, so recently acknowledged and lauded, was being summoned back to Buckkeep like a recalcitrant page. This was not going to be pleasant for anyone. I grasped abruptly how much of my personal freedom had vanished when Chade had taken my arm and presented me to the court. What had seemed a family matter, my sidestepping my cousin’s request that I not go off on my own, now loomed as a prince directly disobeying his king’s directive. Dutiful had reminded me he was my king, and I’d admitted that to him. And then done as I thought best, as if I were merely Tom Badgerlock. No. Not even Tom Badgerlock should have defied his king that way. I chewed my lower lip.
Riddle sank down to sit on the edge of my bed. “I see that you understand.”
I walked to the window and stared out at the lights of Salter’s Deep. “I wish you hadn’t been dragged into it.”
“Oh, Fitz, I dragged myself into it. I could have just reported that I suspected you were going alone, and the Buckkeep Guard would have brought you back.”
I turned to stare at him. “Truly?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. They might have just told me to drag you back quietly. A task that neither of us would have relished.” He gave a small sigh. “No, I got myself into this.”
“Sorry to have put you in that position.” Loyalty to me or to Nettle, and he’d chosen me. That did not bode well for any of us.
And me? I’d chosen my duty as a father over my duty as a prince to a king. As I knew I would again. As I must.
Bee, where are you? My heart cried out for her, and shame wafted over me. Why couldn’t I find and save my child? We’d come so close. I’d seen where she had slept, just days ago.
Riddle’s voice jolted me. “Fitz. This is a terrible question but it must be asked. At what point do we accept that Bee and Shine are lost to us?”
I turned wild eyes upon him. “Don’t even say that!”
“I have to say it. Someone has to ask it. You know as well as I do that they may both be already dead, out in the forest. We have no trail left to follow. The Servants and the Chalcedeans are all dead or fled.” He came to join me at the window. “We’ve no clues left to follow. The best we can hope now is that they turn up on their own at a farmstead or inn.”
“And the worst that can happen is that things remain as they are now. With us having no idea whatever became of them.”
For a time, we both stood in silence. I tried to find a thread of hope. “We did not find Vindeliar or Dwalia,” I reminded him.
“They may be bodies in the forest. Or hiding from us as they did before. They have not left us a trail we can follow.”
He was right. Reality and the bleakness of elfbark welled up in me like blood in Ellik’s wound. “I’m so powerless.” The words burst from me. “Riddle, I had to come here and try to find her. Since Winterfest, she has been gone and I’ve been able to do nothing. Nothing! And now I’ve even less of a trail to follow.” Agony and anger were one force in me. I wanted to smash everything in the room but most of all, I wanted to destroy myself for how impotent I was. I had cut my hair to my scalp when Molly died, a symbolic destruction and punishment of myself because I had failed to save her. Now I wanted to slash my face, to batter my skull against the wall, to fling myself from the window. I hated myself for my total failure. I was a thing that was so useless as to be evil. I was an assassin and capable of torture, a man bereft of goodness. But even my wickedness was impotent. It had gained me nothing.
“I do not like the expression on your face,” Riddle said softly. “Fitz, you cannot hold yourself responsible. This was a thing that happened to you, not a thing you did.” His voice was sympathetic.
“It was a thing I did not do. A neglected duty,” I said quietly. I turned back to the window and looked down. A drop but not a big enough one. The impulse would not work.
Riddle knew me too well. “And then if we did find her, that would be the first piece of news she’d have about you.”
Slowly I turned away from the easy exit. “Tomorrow we leave for Buckkeep.”