Something turned over in my heart.
I moistened my lips, but could find no words, nor breath to utter them if I had. My heart told me one thing, my eyes another. Slowly the smile faded from his face and his eyes. A still mask replaced it. When he spoke, his voice was low, his words emotionless. ‘Have you no greeting for me, Fitz?’
I opened my mouth, then helplessly spread wide my arms. At the gesture that said all I had no words for, an answering look lit his face. He glowed as if a light had been kindled in him. He did not dismount but flung himself from his horse towards me, a launch aided by Nighteyes’ sudden charge from the wood towards him. The horse snorted in alarm and crow-hopped. The Fool came free of his saddle with rather more energy than he had intended, but, agile as ever, he landed on the balls of his feet. The horse shied away, but none of us paid her any attention. In one step, I caught him up. I enfolded him in my arms as the wolf gambolled about us like a puppy.
‘Oh, Fool,’ I choked. ‘It cannot be you, yet it is. And I do not care how.’
He flung his arms around my neck. He hugged me fiercely, Burrich’s earring pressing cold against my neck. For a long instant, he clung to me like a woman, until the wolf insistently thrust himself between us. Then the Fool went down on one knee in the dust, careless of his fine clothes as he clasped the wolf about his neck. ‘Nighteyes!’ he whispered in savage satisfaction. ‘I had not thought to see you again. Well met, old friend.’ He buried his face in the wolf’s ruff, wiping away tears. I did not think less of him for them. My own ran unchecked down my face.
He flowed to his feet, every nuance of his grace as familiar to me as the drawing of breath. He cupped the back of my head and in his old way, pressed his brow to mine. His breath smelled of honey and apricot brandy. Had he fortified himself against this meeting? After a moment he drew back from me but kept a grip on my shoulders. He stared at me, his eyes touching the white streak in my hair and running familiarly over the scars on my face. I stared just as avidly, not just at how he had changed, his colouring gone from white to tawny, but at how he had not changed. He looked as callow a youth as when I had last seen him near fifteen years ago. No lines marred his face.
He cleared his throat. ‘Well. Will you ask me in?’ he demanded.
‘Of course. As soon as we’ve seen to your horse,’ I replied huskily.
The wide grin that lit his face erased all years and distance between us. ‘You’ve not changed a bit, Fitz. Horses first, as it ever was with you.’
‘Not changed?’ I shook my head at him. ‘You are the one who looks not a day older. But all else …’ I shook my head helplessly as I sidled towards his horse. She high-stepped away, maintaining the distance. ‘You’ve gone gold, Fool. And you dress as richly as Regal once did. When first I saw you, I did not know you.’
He gave a sigh of relief that was half a laugh. ‘Then it was not as I feared, that you were wary of welcoming me?’
Such a question did not even deserve an answer. I ignored it, advancing again on the horse. She turned her head, putting the reins just out of my reach. She kept the wolf in view. I could feel the Fool watching us with amusement. ‘Nighteyes, you are not helping and you know it!’ I exclaimed in annoyance. The wolf dropped his head and gave me a knowing glance, but he stopped his stalking.
I could put her in the barn myself if you but gave me the chance.
The Fool cocked his head slightly, regarding us both quizzically. I felt something from him; the thinnest knife-edge of shared awareness. I almost forgot the horse. Without volition, I touched the mark he had left upon me so long ago; the silver fingerprints on my wrist, long faded to a pale grey. He smiled again, and lifted one gloved hand, the finger extended towards me, as if he would renew that touch. ‘All down the years,’ he said, his voice going golden as his skin. ‘You have been with me, as close as the tips of my fingers, even when we were years and seas apart. Your being was like the hum of a plucked string at the edge of my hearing, or a scent carried on a breeze. Did not you feel it so?’
I took a breath, fearing my words would hurt him. ‘No,’ I said quietly. ‘I wish it had been so. Too often I felt myself completely alone save for Nighteyes. Too often I’ve sat at the cliff’s edge, reaching out to touch anyone, anywhere, yet never sensing that anyone reached back to me.’
He shook his head at that. ‘Had I possessed the Skill in truth, you would have known I was there. At your very fingertips, but mute.’
I felt an odd easing in my heart at his words, for no reason I could name. Then he made an odd sound, between a cluck and a chirrup, and the horse immediately came to him to nuzzle his outstretched hand. He passed her reins to me, knowing I was itching to handle her. ‘Take her. Ride her to the end of your lane and back. I’ll wager you’ve never ridden her like in your life.’
The moment her reins were in my hands, the mare came to me. She put her nose against my chest, and took my scent in and out of her flaring nostrils. Then she lifted her muzzle to my jaw and gave me a slight push, as if urging me to give in to the Fool’s temptation. ‘Do you know how long it has been since I was astride any kind of a horse?’ I asked them both.
‘Too long. Take her,’ he urged me. It was a boy’s thing to do, this immediate offering to share a prized possession, and my heart answered it, knowing that no matter how long or how far apart we had been, nothing important had changed between us.
I did not wait to be invited again. I set my foot to the stirrup and mounted her, and despite all the years, I could feel every difference there was between this mare and my old horse, Sooty. She was smaller, finer-boned, and narrower between my thighs. I felt clumsy and heavy-handed as I urged her forwards, then spun her about with a touch of the rein. I shifted my weight and took in the rein and she backed without hesitation. A foolish grin came over my face. ‘She could equal Buckkeep’s best when Burrich had the stables prime,’ I admitted to him. I set my hand to her withers, and felt the dancing flame of her eager little mind. There was no apprehension in her, only curiosity. The wolf sat on the porch watching me gravely.
‘Take her down the lane,’ the Fool urged me, his grin mirroring mine. ‘And give her a free head. Let her show you what she can do.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Malta. I named her myself. I bought her in Shoaks, on my way here.’