‘I see. May I?’
I nodded. He seated himself at my desk, and unrolled the scroll on the stone game. ‘Ah, yes, I remember this.’
‘Chade wants it when I am finished with it. I’ve sent him things, from time to time, via Starling. But up until a month or so ago, I hadn’t seen him since we parted in the Mountains.’
‘Ah. But you had seen Starling.’ His back was to me. I wondered what expression he wore. The Fool and the minstrel had never got along well together. For a time, they had made an uneasy truce, but I had always been a bone of contention between them. The Fool had never approved of my friendship with Starling, had never believed she had my best interests at heart. That didn’t make it any easier to let him know he had always been right.
‘For a time, I saw Starling. On and off for, what, seven or eight years. She was the one who brought Hap to me about seven years ago. He’s just turned fifteen. He’s not home right now; he’s hired out in the hopes of gaining more coin for an apprenticeship fee. He wants to be a cabinetmaker. He does good work, for a lad; both the desk and the scroll rack are his work. Yet I don’t know if he has the patience for detail that a good joiner must have. Still, it’s what his heart is set on, and he wants to apprentice to a cabinetmaker in Buckkeep Town. Gindast is the joiner’s name, and he’s a master. Even I have heard of him. If I had realized Hap would set his heart so high, I’d have saved more over the years. But –’
‘Starling?’ His query reined me back from my musings on the boy.
It was hard to admit it. ‘She’s married now. I don’t know how long. The boy found it out when he went to Springfest at Buckkeep with her. He came home and told me.’ I shrugged one shoulder. ‘I had to end it between us. She knew I would when I found out. It still made her angry. She couldn’t understand why it couldn’t continue, as long as her husband never found out.’
‘That’s Starling.’ His voice was oddly non-judgemental, as if he commiserated with me over a garden blight. He turned in the chair to look at me over his shoulder. ‘And you’re all right?’
I cleared my throat. ‘I’ve kept busy. And not thought about it much.’
‘Because she felt no shame at all, you think it must all belong to you. People like her are so adept at passing on blame. This is a lovely red ink on this. Where did you get it?’
‘I made it.’
‘Did you?’ Curious as a child, he unstopped one of the ink bottles on my desk and stuck in his little finger. It came out tipped in scarlet. He regarded it for a moment. ‘I kept Burrich’s earring,’ he suddenly admitted. ‘I never took it to Molly.’
‘I see that. I’m just as glad you didn’t. It’s better that neither of them know I survived.’
‘Ah. Another question answered.’ He drew a snowy kerchief from inside his pocket and ruined it by wiping the red ink from his finger. ‘So. Are you going to tell me all the events in order, or must I pry bits out of you one at a time?’
I sighed. I dreaded recalling those times. Chade had been willing to accept an account of the events that related to the Farseer reign. The Fool would want more than that. Even as I cringed from it, I could not evade the notion that somehow I owed him that telling. ‘I’ll try. But I’m tired, and we’ve had too much brandy, and it’s far too much to tell in one evening.’
He tipped back in my chair. ‘Were you expecting me to leave tomorrow?’
‘I thought you might.’ I watched his face as I added, ‘I didn’t hope it.’
He accepted me at my word. ‘That’s good, then, for you would have hoped in vain. To bed with you, Fitz. I’ll take the boy’s cot. Tomorrow is soon enough to begin to fill in nearly fifteen years of absence.’
The Fool’s apricot brandy was more potent than the Sandsedge, or perhaps I was simply wearier than usual. I staggered to my room, dragged off my shirt and dropped into my bed. I lay there, the room rocking gently around me, and listened to his light footfalls as he moved about in the main room, extinguishing candles and pulling in the latch string. Perhaps only I could have seen the slight unsteadiness in his movements. Then he sat down in my chair and stretched his legs towards the fire. At his feet, the wolf groaned and shifted in his sleep. I touched minds gently with Nighteyes; he was deeply asleep and welling contentment.
I closed my eyes, but the room spun sickeningly. I opened them a crack and stared at the Fool. He sat very still as he stared into the fire, but the dancing light of the flames lent their motion to his features. The angles of his face were hidden and then revealed as the shadows shifted. The gold of his skin and eyes seemed a trick of the firelight, but I knew they were not.
It was hard to realize he was no longer the impish jester who had both served and protected King Shrewd for all those years. His body had not changed, save in colouring. His graceful, long-fingered hands dangled off the arms of the chair. His hair, once as pale and airy as dandelion fluff, was now bound back from his face and confined to a golden queue. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the chair. Firelight bronzed his aristocratic profile. His present grand clothes might recall his old winter motley of black and white, but I wagered he would never again wear bells and ribbons and carry a rat-headed sceptre. His lively wit and sharp tongue no longer influenced the course of political events. His life was his own now. I tried to imagine him as a wealthy man, able to travel and live as he pleased. A sudden thought jolted me from my complacency.
‘Fool?’ I called aloud in the darkened rooms.
‘What?’ He did not open his eyes but his ready reply showed he had not yet slipped towards sleep.
‘You are not the Fool any more. What do they call you these days?’
A slow smile curved his lips in profile. ‘What do who call me when?’
He spoke in the baiting tone of the jester he had been. If I tried to sort out that question, he would tumble me in verbal acrobatics until I gave up hoping for an answer. I refused to be drawn into his game. I rephrased my question. ‘I should not call you Fool any more. What do you want me to call you?’
‘Ah, what do I want you to call me now? I see. An entirely different question.’ Mockery made music in his voice.
I drew a breath and made my question as plain as possible. ‘What is your name, your real name?’
‘Ah.’ His manner was suddenly grave. He took a slow breath. ‘My name. As in what my mother called me at my birth?’
‘Yes.’ And then I held my breath. He spoke seldom of his childhood. I suddenly realized the immensity of what I had asked him. It was the old naming magic: if I know how you are truly named, I have power over you. If I tell you my name, I grant you that power. Like all direct questions I had ever asked the Fool, I both dreaded and longed for the answer.