“The Duke of Shippening.”
“Ah. Comparable to a half dozen at least.” Leonard turned and strode to the Old Bridge, but he didn’t step onto it. Instead he climbed down the bank to the rocks alongside the stream and began collecting pebbles. He juggled them a few moments, then tossed them back into the stream and searched for more.
Una took a seat on the bridge and dangled her feet over the edge, watching the jester. “Have you ever,” she began, then paused, considering her words. “Have you ever dreamed of one thing for so long, wanted nothing more than to have that dream fulfilled, only to find out that maybe it wasn’t what you actually wanted all along?”
He juggled four stones lightly. “I believe that’s called growing up.” He switched to one hand, the little rocks flashing wet in the sun.
Una watched without actually seeing and continued to think aloud. “But then you find yourself lost without your dream.” She toyed with her opal ring, twisting it around on her finger and watching the light reflecting in its depths. “Like half your heart is gone right along with it.”
Leonard tossed the four stones out into the stream in a quick series of splashes. “Dreams are tricky business, m’lady. It’s best to hold on to what you know, not what you want. Know your duty, know your path, and do everything you can to achieve what you have set out to do. Don’t let dreams get in your way. Dreams will never accomplish the work of firm resolve.”
Una looked at him, pushing wisps of loose hair out of her face. “What have you resolved, Leonard, that you won’t stop for dreams?”
He did not turn to her but stared out at the water. The gurgling current had swallowed his stones with scarcely a ripple. She watched him fix his mouth in a frown.
“I am resolved,” he said in a low voice, “to return home as soon as I may.”
“Home?” she said. “You mean Southlands?”
He nodded.
“Is it far away?”
“Very far, m’lady.”
Southlands can burn to dust for all I care.
Una knew very little of Southlands, far down at the southernmost tip of the Continent, a peninsula connected to Shippening only by a thin isthmus. But there were rumors about that land, particularly in the last five years. It was cut off from the rest of the Continent now, held captive by . . . The rumors were vague on that point. But the king and queen had not been seen in all that time; no one, in fact, had either come or gone through the mountain paths that encircled Southlands. And heavy smoke hung thick as death over all the land.
Una shuddered. Nurse would not permit her to listen to gossip, but she could not help but pick up little pieces of information. Southlands was so far from the concerns of her life that she had paid little heed to the rumors. But she remembered words overheard here and there.
Death. Demon.
Dragon.
Southlands can burn.
“Is it true, Leonard?” she asked, twisting the ring on her finger again.
“Is it true what they say about . . . about your homeland?”
“Maybe, maybe not.” He tossed a larger rock with a gloomp into the middle of the stream. “I don’t know what they say.”
A shiver passed through Una’s body despite the heat of the day. “Did you escape before the rest of Southlands was imprisoned?”
Leonard looked sidelong up at her. “Does it really matter how or when I escaped, if escaped we must call it? I am here, my people are there. My friends. My family. So I will return.”
“Can you do anything, though?” Una knew she should not pry when the jester so obviously did not want to talk about his life, but the questions came anyway. “Not in five years has anyone succeeded in crossing to Southlands alive. Don’t you think you should stay away for now? What could you do by returning anyway?”
“Princess Una,” he replied, “you are young and sweet. You can’t know about such things. I may be only a Fool, but even a Fool must see his duty, and when he sees it, he must follow through. What else can he do and still consider himself a man? Perhaps I cannot help my people.
Perhaps I will live long enough to see their destruction and then perish in the same fire. But nevertheless I will go.” He turned away from her and kicked another stone into the passing water. “As soon as I can put together funds enough for the journey.”
“Then I think you are a very brave Fool,” Una said quietly.
“If I were not a Fool, do you think I could be brave?”
They looked at each other, a silent gaze. And Una thought she’d never met a man of such firm resolution. Prince Gervais would not be so courageous.