‘The fight isn’t over until you win,’ I said. Burrich’s words. Spoken to me so long ago. I touched my leg. Warm and wet. I was hungry and thirsty and so tired. But I had them both beside me. Alive. Still bleeding, and my ears ringing. But alive.
Across the room, Lant was grinding at mortar with his knife. Per knelt on the floor beside him, likewise digging at a seam. Spark had crossed to a rack of tools meant for tearing flesh, not stone. Her upper lip curled back as she selected one of the black iron implements. I turned my gaze away from that and met the Fool’s eyes.
‘I should go help them,’ he said.
‘Not yet.’
He gave me a questioning look.
‘Let me have this moment. All of you here with me. Just for a short time.’ A smile suddenly came to me. ‘I have news for you,’ I told him. I found I still could grin. ‘Fool, I’m a grandfather! Nettle has a baby girl now. Hope! Isn’t that a wonderful name?’
‘You. A grandfather.’ He smiled with me. ‘Hope. A perfect name.’
For a time we sat together in silence. I was so weary, and danger still threatened, but that did not steal the sweetness of being here, alive, with them. I was so tired. And my leg hurt. Nonetheless, I had this moment. I slipped into the wolf’s enjoyment of the immediate.
Rest a moment. I will keep watch.
I didn’t realize I had dozed until I twitched awake. I was thirsty and ravenously hungry. Bee was holding my hand and was asleep against me. Skin to skin, I felt my daughter as a part of me. I smiled slowly as I became aware of her Skill-wall. Self-taught. She would be strong with it. I lifted my eyes to the Fool. He was haggard but smiling. ‘Still here,’ he said softly.
Through the dimness, I saw that Lant had taken off his shirt and was sweating in the chill. He, Per and Spark were employing our looted swords to dig out the mortar in a section of wall. They had made an opening big enough to admit a man’s arm. The stone they had pulled out was as long and wide as a man’s forearm but only a hand tall. The blocks in the wall were staggered. They’d have to remove three above to take out the two below. At least six to move before Per could squeeze through. I should go and help. I knew that. But my body had cheerily burned my reserves to try to heal my leg. I cautiously felt the bandaging. Sticky and crusty. No new blood. Still likely to split open again when next I stood.
Lant stood up. ‘Stand back,’ he said and when Per and Spark did he kicked at the block they’d been working on. ‘Not yet,’ Spark said wearily. Per went back to his scraping.
‘Can’t we put one of your firepots in there now?’
Spark gave him a look. ‘If you want to chance caving in the tunnel beyond, I suppose we could.’
Per made a small sound of amusement and went on scraping at mortar.
The Fool and I were silent. One of the prisoners came out of the cell. He stumbled slowly toward where Per, Spark and Lant scraped at the mortar. He spoke hoarsely, in a boy’s voice. ‘I will help, if you have a tool for me.’ Spark measured him with her eyes, then she gave him her belt-knife, and he began to dig feebly at a line of mortar.
‘I truly feared I had to choose between you,’ the Fool said quietly. When I said nothing, he added, ‘Her dream of the buck, the bee, and the scale.’
‘And yet I am here, and alive, and our enemies are walled away from us by smouldering rubble. Perhaps I am still the Catalyst, and can change even her predictions of what must be. I am not dead yet and I don’t intend to die. I am taking Bee home, to Buckkeep. She will be raised as a princess, and you will be at her side to teach and advise her. Her sister will adore her and she will have a little niece to play with.’
Two of the freed Whites rose and went to the rack of torture tools. They made choices and then joined Lant, Spark and Per, chipping away at the mortar. The irony twisted my gut.
‘And we will live happily ever after?’ the Fool asked.
I watched the bits of mortar fall. ‘That is my intention.’
‘And mine. My hope. But a thin one.’
‘Don’t doubt us, or we are lost.’
‘Fitz, my love, that is the problem. I do not doubt Bee’s dreams at all.’
I opened my mouth and then found wisdom. I closed it. But as a dreadful thought came to me, I asked him, ‘The container of Silver you took from the stateroom. Did the Servants get it?’
‘I stole it to keep a promise,’ he admitted. ‘What did you think? That I’d taken it to use on myself?’
‘I feared that.’
‘No. I didn’t even bring it with me. I told Boy-O—’
Beside me, Bee stirred. She lifted her head and took her hand out of mine. The Skill-link held, stretched thin as a thread but still there. I wondered if she felt it. She drew in a deep breath and sighed it out. She looked from me to the Fool. He smiled at her as I’d never seen him smile at anyone. His scars stretched with it, but his half-blind eyes shone with tenderness. She stared back at him and leaned tighter into me. As she looked at him, she whispered, ‘I had a dream.’
He lifted a gloved hand and stroked her hair. ‘Would you like to tell it to me?’ he offered.
She looked at me. I nodded. ‘I sit near a fire beside Da and a wolf. He is very old. He tells me stories and I write them down. But I am very sad as I do this. Everyone is mourning.’ She finished with, ‘I believe this dream is very likely.’ She turned worried eyes to me.
I smiled at her. ‘That dream sounds lovely to me. I would change only your sadness.’
She frowned at how little I understood. ‘Da. I don’t make the dreams. I can’t change them. They just come to me.’
I laughed. ‘I know. The same thing happens to the Fool. Sometimes he is very sure a dream will come true.’ I shrugged one shoulder and grinned at her. ‘And then I make it not true.’
‘You can do that?’ She was astonished.
‘He is my Catalyst. He changes things. Sometimes in ways I never imagined,’ the Fool admitted ruefully. ‘And often enough I have been grateful for him to do that. Bee, there is so much I must teach you. About Catalysts and dreams and—’
‘Prilkop told me that Dwalia was my Catalyst. She came and made changes in my life. She changed me. Thus she enabled the changes I made. And I killed her. I killed my Catalyst.’ She looked up at me. Her eyes were as blue as forget-me-nots, her pale curls matted to her head. ‘Did you know that I killed people? And I burned all the dreams so the Servants cannot use them for evil any more. Papa, I am the Destroyer.’ Her words left me speechless. In a very small voice, she asked, ‘Can you change that for me?’
‘You are Bee and you are my little girl,’ I told her fiercely. ‘That doesn’t change. Not ever.’
Bee turned her head sharply to something and I followed her gaze. Another prisoner was making her slow way toward us, her pale face pinched with pain as she limped on a welted foot. ‘In my dream, I saw you, little girl,’ she said. She smiled at us with chapped lips. ‘You were made of flame. You danced in the flames and brought war to where war had never been. With a sword of flame, you sliced the past from the present, and the present from the future.’