I stayed with my work, past the moment when I felt the blood begin to once more flow within his veins, beyond the slow perception that I could once more draw breath into his lungs. Some of his body had been repaired in the act of restoring it. Two of his ribs had been broken. Those bone ends had found their mates and began knitting themselves together. Gossamer stitches of flesh closed the worst rents in his skin. But there was little I could do about the places where flesh or bone or nail was simply missing. Delicately, I set in motion his own healing. I dared not urge it much past its own careful reconstruction. He had already burned the reserves of his body. I closed the raw flesh of his back against the agonizing kiss of the air. I coaxed his split tongue into a whole again. Two of his teeth were missing, and there was nothing I could do about that. When I knew I had done all I could for his body, I drew a deeper breath into his lungs. I opened his eyes.
Night was fading into dawn. The weaker stars had already given way to the creeping light of day. A bird sang a dawn call. Another one challenged it. An insect hummed past my ear. I became aware of my body more slowly. Blood moved through me and I tasted air sliding from my lungs. It was good. There was pain, a great deal of pain. But pain is the body’s messenger, the warning that something is wrong and must be repaired. Pain says that you are still alive. I heeded that message and revelled in it. For a long time, it seemed enough.
I blinked my eyes and shifted my gaze. Someone cradled me in his arms. His arm beneath my raw back was a scarlet welt of agony, but I lacked the strength to move away from it. I looked up into my own face. It was different from seeing myself in a mirror. I was older than I thought. He had taken off the crown, but there was a standing welt on my brow where it had scored my flesh with its grip. My eyes were closed and tears from beneath the closed lids slid down my cheeks. I wondered why I wept. How could anyone weep on such a dawn? With great effort, I lifted one hand slowly and touched my own face. My eyes snapped open and I stared at them in wonder. I had not known they were so dark nor that they could be so wide. I looked down at myself incredulously. ‘Fitz?’ The inflection was the Fool’s but the hoarse voice was mine.
I smiled. ‘Beloved.’
His arms closed around me almost convulsively. I arched away from that pain but he seemed unaware of it. Sobs shook him. ‘I don’t understand!’ he wailed to the sky. ‘I don’t understand.’ He looked around, my face wild with his uncertainty and fear. ‘I have never seen this moment. I am out of my time, beyond where I ended. What has happened? What has become of us?’
I tried to move, but I had so little strength. For a time, I had to ignore his weeping while I assessed myself. There was a lot of damage, but the body was striving to repair. I felt terribly, terribly frail. I drew a breath, and told him quietly, ‘The skin on my back is new and tender yet.’
He gulped for air. Breath ragged, he protested, ‘But I died. I was in that body, and they sliced the skin free from my back. I died.’ His voice cracked on the words. ‘I remember it. I died.’
‘It was your turn to die,’ I agreed. ‘And my turn to bring you back.’
‘But how? Where are we? No, I know where, but when? How can we be here, alive? How can we be like this?’
‘Be calm.’ I had the Fool’s voice. I tried for his lilt of amusement, and almost found it. ‘All will be well.’
I found my wrist with his hand. The fingertips knew where to fall. For a moment, our gazes held as we mingled in unity. One person. We had always been one person. Nighteyes had voiced it long ago. It was good to be whole again. I used our strength to pull myself up, to press his brow to mine. I did not close his eyes. Our gazes locked. I felt my frightened breath against his mouth. ‘Take your body back from me,’ I bid him quietly. And so we passed, one into the other, but for a space we had been one. The boundaries between us had melted in the mingling. No limits, I recalled him saying, and suddenly understood. No boundaries between us. Slowly I drew back from him. I straightened my back and looked down at the Fool in my arms. For an instant, he gazed clear-eyed at me with only wonder in his face. Then the pain of his wracked body demanded his attention. I saw him clench his eyes to it and wince away from my touch. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said softly. I eased him down onto the cloak. The evergreen boughs that had been his funeral pyre were his mattress now. ‘You did not have the reserves for me to perform a complete healing. Perhaps, in a day or two …’
But he already slept. I lifted a corner of the cloak and draped it over his eyes to shield them from the rising sun. I sniffed the air and it came to me that it would be a good time to hunt.
I took the whole morning for the hunt, and came back with a brace of rabbits and some greens. The Fool still lay as I had left him. I cleaned the rabbits and hung the meat to bleed. I set up his tent in the shade. I found the Elderling robe he had once given to me and laid it out inside the tent. I checked on the Fool. He slept on. I studied him critically. Biting insects had found him. They, and the growing strength of the sun on his skin convinced me that I should move him.
‘Beloved,’ I said quietly. He made no response. I spoke to him anyway, knowing that sometimes we are aware of the things we hear when we are sleeping. ‘I’m going to move you. It may hurt.’
He made no response. I worked my arms under the cloak and lifted him as gently as I could. Still, he cried out wordlessly, squirming in my arms as he tried to escape the pain. His eyes opened as I carried him across the ancient plaza to the tent in the shade of the trees. He looked at me and through me, not knowing me, not truly awake. ‘Please,’ he begged me brokenly. ‘Please stop. Don’t hurt me any more. Please.’
‘You’re safe now,’ I comforted him. ‘It’s over. It’s all done.’
‘Please!’ he cried out again, loudly.
I had to drop to one knee to get him inside the tent. He shrieked as the fabric brushed over his raw back in passing. I set him down as gently as I could. ‘You’ll be out of the sun and away from the insects here,’ I told him. I don’t think he heard me.
‘Please. No more. Whatever you want, anything. Just stop. Stop.’
‘It has stopped,’ I told him. ‘You’re safe now.’
‘Please.’ His eyes fluttered closed again. He was still. He had never truly wakened.
I went out of the tent. I had to be away from him. I was sick at heart for him, and wretched with my own sudden memories. I had known torture. Regal’s methods had been crude but effective. But I had had a small shield that the Fool had lacked. I had known that as long as I held out against him, as long as I could refuse to give him proof that I was Witted, he could not simply kill me. So, I had held firm against the beatings and deprivations; I had not given Regal what he wanted. Giving him that would have allowed him to kill me, without compunction, with the sanction of the Dukes of the Six Duchies. And in the end, when I knew that I could not hold out any longer, I had snatched my death from him, taking poison rather than allowing him to break me.