Kennitsson stared after him, his cheeks going scarlet. ‘I am a man!’ he bellowed after Sorcor.
Brashen spoke in an even voice. ‘Boy-O. Drop it.’ As soon as his son obeyed, he turned to the pirate prince. ‘Can you manage your own sea-bag, sailor? I can tell Prince FitzChivalry to give you a hand with it, if there’s need.’ His voice betrayed no emotion. He was a captain finding the limits of a new hire.
I had watched the scene unfold as if I watched a puppet-play, leaning on the ship’s railing a short distance away. At Trell’s suggestion, I straightened and stepped forward briskly to help with the sea-bag. I was a bit puzzled at his request. The canvas bag was not so large that it presented any sort of a challenge. But I had given my word that I’d help sail the ship and I intended to live up to that at least.
‘Out of my way! I can manage it!’ Kennitsson declared. Captain Trell gave a small jerk of his head and I moved away. Kennitsson had strength more than equal to moving his sea-bag, but he deployed it in the sullen over-reaction of a spoiled boy. I reminded myself that he was not my problem and took myself to Amber’s cabin.
There, I found the Fool, sitting cross-legged on the lower bunk, with one of Bee’s books open in his lap.
‘I wondered if you had changed your mind and gone to Divvytown with the others.’
‘Sightseeing?’ he asked and gestured at his ruined eyes.
I sat down beside him, bowing my head to avoid hitting it on the bunk above. ‘I hoped you were regaining a bit of your vision. You’re looking at a book.’
‘I’m touching a book, Fitz.’ He sighed and held it out to me. I felt a jolt of dismay. It was her journal, not her book of dreams. Open to a page I hadn’t shared with him. Did he know? I closed it gently, found the shirt I always used and rewrapped it carefully. I slid it back into my worn pack. I feared he might accidentally discover the Silver. But I said only, ‘We must be very careful with my pack. The firebrick from Reyn is in here. It must always be stored upright.’
As I placed it carefully under the bunk, I told him, ‘Kennitsson has come aboard. We’ll be leaving on the change of the tide.’
‘Have Lant, Per and Spark returned yet?’
‘They won’t be late. Lant had some bird messages to send. Per wanted help to get word to his mother. Spark wished to send a message to Chade.’
‘So today we finally resume our journey.’ The breath he expelled was uneven. ‘Yet there is still so far to go, and every moment that passes is a moment that she is too long in their possession. Any moment may be the moment she dies.’
Panic rose in me. I pushed it down and denied it. Hardened my heart and extinguished hope. I tried to share my defence. ‘Fool, despite what you believe, despite what you have dreamed … If I imagine this is a rescue, not an assassination, I will lose my focus. And it is all I have left.’
Alarm claimed his face. ‘But she is alive, Fitz. My dreams make me certain of it. I wish I could share them with you!’
‘So you’ve had more than one dream of Bee still alive?’ I asked reluctantly. Could I bear to hear any more of his wishful proof?
‘I have,’ he replied and then, tilting his head, ‘Though perhaps only I could interpret them that way. It is not so much the images as the feel of the dream that makes me certain they pertain to Bee.’ He paused and grew thoughtful. ‘Possibly I could share my dreams with you? If you touched me with no thought of healing but only of sharing, perhaps?’
‘No.’ I tried to soften my refusal. ‘When we link, Fool, what happens has nothing to do with my intent. Something that feels inevitable begins to happen. Like the current of a river sweeping us along.’
‘Like the Skill-river you speak of, like a current of magic?’
‘No. It’s different.’
‘Then what is it?’
I sighed. ‘How can I explain something that I don’t understand myself?’
‘Hmph. When I say something like that, you get angry at me.’
I brought us back to the subject. ‘You said you’ve had more dreams about Bee.’
‘I have.’
A short response and a secret unspoken. I pressed him. ‘What sort of dreams, Fool? Where do you dream her, what is she doing?’
‘You know my dreams are not like windows into her life. They are hints and portents. Such as the dream about the candles.’ He tilted his head. ‘You recall how Bee wrote of it. I’ll tell you something. That’s an old dream, dreamed often and by many. It could mean so many things. Yet I think it is fulfilled in us. Bee dreams it more clearly than I’ve ever heard it, speaking of us as the Wolf and the Jester.’
‘How could many people dream the same dream?’ I pushed aside his confusing words. Without intending it, my voice had dropped to the level of a wolf’s warning growl. His sightless eyes widened slightly.
‘We just do. It’s one measure the Servants use to consider the likelihood of something happening. It’s a common dream among those who carry White bloodlines. Each one is slightly different, but they are recognizable as the same dream. I dreamed it as a fork in a path. There are four candles spaced along the path in one direction. At the end of it, there is a little stone house with a low door and no windows. The place where the dead are put. The other path is lit by three candles. At the end of it, a fire burns and people are shouting.’ He took a small breath. ‘I stand staring at it. Then, out of the dark, a bee comes, and buzzes in circles around my head.’
‘And that makes you think that the dream is about my Bee?’
He nodded slowly. ‘But not just because of a bee in the dream. It was the feeling of the dream. But it wasn’t the only dream I had.’
‘What do the dreams mean?’ I asked the question despite suspecting that his recent dreams meant no more than the dreams I had. When I had brought him back from the dead, he had told me he was blind to the new future we had made. Did his mind now play tricks on him, sending him dreams of what he desperately hoped to be true?
‘I could say, “you don’t want to know” but I would be lying. The truth is, I don’t want to tell you. But I know I must!’ he added hastily before I could speak. He cleared his throat and looked down at his hands. He rubbed them together as if remembering pain. He had a few fingernails now on his bared hand and the others seemed to be growing. I looked away from the reminder of what he had endured. The body might heal, but the wounds that dedicated torture leave on the mind always seep toxic pus. I reached across and took his gloved hand in mine.
‘Tell me.’
‘She isn’t treated well.’
I had expected that. If she was still alive, her captors were unlikely to be gentle with her. But to hear that spoken aloud was like the fist to the belly that drives all breath away.
‘How?’ I managed. Dreams, I reminded myself. Probably not real.