We had both stopped to breathe. We were taking on a cask of water. It should have been a simple task, but Paragon was determined to make it almost impossible. He had listed away from the small boat that had come alongside with the cask, and then, amid our hoisting it up to the deck, he had listed in the other direction.
It was our second day of struggling against the ship. Paragon had blocked our efforts to offload his cargo. Today’s effort to bring on water and fresh food for the crew was twice the work it should have been. In the midst of those difficulties Althea and Brashen had received my news about Tintaglia with a marked lack of interest. As Brashen had said at the time, ‘Could a dragon’s arrival make our situation any worse?’
Althea had replied, ‘I will pass the news to Wintrow and he will let Etta know. They can prepare for her as best they can.’ She had added sourly, ‘A dragon visit probably presents all sorts of problems. At this moment, all I can say is, I’m glad they’re not mine.’
Brashen had nodded grimly. ‘We have enough of our own,’ he confirmed. And that had closed that conversation.
Paragon delayed our departure in ways I had never imagined. He rocked, he listed, he jammed his hatches shut. Althea and Brashen gritted their teeth and joined in to work the deck alongside their diminished crew. That first day Clef had mustered Per and Spark and then regarded Lant and me with his hands on his hips. ‘It may not be the work you were born to, but I need you. Beginning today, while we’re still in port, you will each join a watch.’ And we had.
Brashen’s and Althea’s efforts to hire more crew or persuade former crewmembers to return were dismal failures. I welcomed the heavy physical labour, for it sometimes distracted me from dwelling on the possibility of my daughter held captive by fanatical strangers. The idea roused me to heart-pounding fury; I vented it by defying the ship, dragging crates aboard his slanting deck and wrestling them into his hold. Every moment of delay was another moment of agonizing suspense. I no longer cared for whatever news Tintaglia might bring. I wanted only to be on our way again.
Both Amber and the Fool constantly agonized over what Bee might be enduring. Every word Amber spoke about it was a twisting knife in my gut. My anxiety was more than I could bear; his only made mine more searing. I entered her cabin that day to find the Fool hanging upside-down by his knees from the upper bunk. I halted at the sight.
‘I knew it was you,’ he observed. ‘Everyone else knocks first.’
‘What are you doing? Do you need help to get down?’
‘Hardly. I’m limbering up. They hammered and burned my mind to a mush; what they did to my body was just as shattering. I seek to regain what they sought to destroy.’
He curled up around his belly, seized the edge of the bunk in both hands and with a grunt unhooked his knees and shot his feet toward the floor. He landed, not lightly or gracefully, but still amazingly well for a man who had been half-crippled just months ago.
‘Would not practising your tumbler’s skills be better done on the open deck?’
‘If Amber were sighted, she’d be delighted to run the rigging and dangle aloft and regain all my lost tricks in the fresh air. But she isn’t, and so I can’t. In this cramped space, I do what I can.’ He bent over, seized his own ankles and let out a long slow breath. ‘Any news of when we can depart?’
‘None that you haven’t heard.’ I braced myself against his familiar complaint.
‘Every day that passes is another day that Bee is their captive.’
As if that were a new thought for me! ‘Paragon isn’t the only ship in the harbour. We could get a fine price for our Elderling goods here, and book passage directly to Clerres.’
He was shaking his head before I’d finished speaking. ‘In my visions of the future, Paragon is the only vessel that carries us to Clerres.’
‘Your visions,’ I said and closed my mouth. Through gritted teeth, I said, ‘Then we must wait.’
‘You doubt me,’ he said bitterly. ‘You refuse to accept that Bee is alive.’
‘Sometimes I believe you.’ I looked down at the deck. ‘Mostly I don’t.’ Hope was too painful.
‘I see,’ he said harshly. ‘So you are content to wait. Because if Bee is dead, she can’t become any deader by our delay. She can’t be enduring torture such as they visited upon me.’
I replied with equally harsh words. ‘I do not choose to wait. You choose to wait—for Paragon to decide to sail.’
He gripped two handfuls of his own hair, his face contorted. ‘Cannot you understand my torment? We must sail on Paragon. We must! Even though I know she is alive and in their power.’
‘How?’ I roared at him. ‘How would it be possible? When Nettle sent her coterie through the pillar after Bee they found no sign of her. Not a footprint in the snow, nothing! Fool, they never emerged from that pillar. They perished within it.’
His blinded eyes were wide with desperation, his face even paler than it usually was. ‘No! That cannot be. Fitz, you have been delayed in a pillar, lost for days, and still you—’
‘Yes. Eventually, I emerged dazed and half-dead. If I had not been able to summon help, I could have died there. Fool, if they had emerged from that pillar, there would have been signs of it. The dead embers of a fire, a scatter of their bones, something. There was nothing. She is gone. Even if they were delayed for days, we would have seen some sign of their passage when we arrived there. Did you see any such thing?’
He gave a wild laugh. ‘I saw nothing!’
I kept my temper. ‘Well, there was nothing except for bear-sign. So perhaps they did come through and perished there. They certainly did not journey on to Kelsingra, not by foot or by pillar. Fool, please. Let me accept that Bee is gone.’ My words were a plea. I longed to return to the numbness of utter loss and the pursuit of pure vengeance.
‘She is not!’
His stubborn denial enraged me, so I attacked. ‘It scarcely matters. Be she dead or alive, I shall doubtless be killed before I discover her, given how little you have told me of Clerres and its folk!’
His mouth dropped open in shock. Then guilt and outrage shrilled his voice. ‘I’ve done my best, Fitz! I’ve never planned an assassination before. My memories shy and leap away from me when you interrogate me. And the stupidity of the questions you ask! What does it matter if Coultrie gambles or if Symphe rises early or late?’
‘Without exact knowledge, my ability to kill them is diminished to the point of folly!’
‘Folly?’ He flung the word at me. ‘Well, what did you expect from a fool?’ He groped angrily for Amber’s costume and his voice dropped to a furious mutter. ‘I should never have come to you for help. What must be done, I should do myself!’ He pulled on her gown with reckless haste, tying laces and fastening buttons blindly and crookedly.