The Tawny Man Series Books 2 and 3: The Golden Fool, Fool’s Fate. Robin Hobb

      ‘It is well that slut is out of my reach. But aren’t you a bit late to counsel me to restraint? My little warrior, you have inherited your uncle’s temper. Your act was not wise, but I cannot find it in me to rebuke you for it. That empty-souled whore. She truly believes that is the only way a man can be bound to a woman.’

      Unbelievably, the Narcheska gave a small laugh. ‘It is the only one she believes in, Uncle. I did not say it was the only one I knew. Pride may bind a man, even where there is no love. That is the thought I cling to now.’ Then her brow clenched in pain. ‘Fetch more snow, please,’ she gasped, and he nodded sharply and went out.

      I watched him go. Then she sat up slowly. She scraped the melting snow into a narrower pallet. The tattoos on her back stood out as glowingly as ever. Around them, her bared flesh was bright red from cold. Gingerly she lay back down on her snow couch. She took a breath and lifted the backs of her hands to her brows. I recalled that one scroll had said that was how Outislanders prayed. But the only words she said were, ‘My Mother. My Sister. For you. My Mother. My Sister. For you.’ It soon became a toneless chant in time with her breathing.

      I sat back on my stool. I was trembling, as much with awe at her courage as pity for what she suffered. I wondered what I had just witnessed and what was the significance of it. My candle had burned down to half its length. I took it up and slowly climbed the rest of the stairs to Chade’s tower room. I was exhausted and downhearted and sought familiar comfort somewhere. But when I reached there, the room was empty and the fire gone out. A sticky wine glass stood empty on the table by the chairs. I cleaned the ashes from the hearth, muttering to myself at Thick’s neglect of his duties, and built a fresh fire.

      Then I took paper and ink and wrote down what I had witnessed. I coupled it to the previous interplay I had witnessed between Elliania, Peottre and the serving-woman Henja. Plainly the last one was a woman to be watched. I sanded the fresh ink, tapped it off and left the paper on Chade’s chair. I hoped he would come up to the rooms tonight. I reflected again, bitterly, on the stupidity that he refused to let me have a way of contacting him directly. I knew what I had witnessed was important; I hoped he would know why.

      Then I reluctantly went back down the stairs to my own chamber. There I stood for a time, in silence, listening. I heard nothing. If Jek and Lord Golden were still there, they were either sitting silently or they were in his bedchamber. After what she had implied about me, that did not seem likely. After a time, I eased the door open a crack. The room was darkened, the fire banked on the hearth. Good. I had no wish to confront either of them just now. I had, I decided, words to say to both of them, but I was not yet calm enough to say them.

      Instead I took my cloak from its hook and left Lord Golden’s chamber. I would go out, I decided. I needed to be away from the castle for a time, away from all the interconnecting webs of intrigue and deceit. I felt I was drowning in lies.

      I made my way down the stairs and towards the servants’ entrance. But as I walked down the main hall, I felt a sudden shiver in the Wit. I lifted my eyes. Coming towards me from the opposite end of the hall was the veiled Bingtown youth. His veil was over his face, but through the lace that obscured his features I caught the faint blue glow of his eyes. It tightened the flesh on the nape of my neck. I wanted to turn aside, or even turn around and walk away, anything to avoid him. But such an action would have looked very strange. I steeled myself and resolutely walked towards him. I averted my eyes, but then when I dared to glance up at him, I felt his gaze on me. He slowed as we approached one another. When he was very close, I bobbed my head, a servant’s gesture of acknowledgement. But before I could pass him, he stopped and stood still. ‘Hello,’ he greeted me.

      I stiffened and became a correct Buckkeep servant. I bowed from the waist. ‘Good evening, sir. May I be of service?’

      ‘I … Yes … Perhaps you could.’ He lifted his veil and pushed back his hood as he spoke, baring his scaled face. I could not help but gawk at him. Up close, his visage was even more remarkable than what I had glimpsed earlier. I had over-estimated his age. He was years younger than Hap or Dutiful, though I could not guess his exact age. His height made his boyish face incongruous. The silvery gleam in the scaling on his cheekbones and brow reminded me of the Narcheska’s glimmering tattoos. Abruptly, I recognized that this scaling was what the Jamaillian make-up Lord Golden sometimes wore mimicked. It was an odd little insight, one I stored away with all the other significant things that the Fool had never bothered to explain to me. Doubtless, when it suited his purpose, he would reveal it to me. Doubtless. Bitterness welled in me like blood from a fresh wound. But the Bingtowner was beckoning me closer, even as he backed away from me. I followed him unwillingly. He glanced into a small sitting room and then gestured me into it. He was making me nervous. I repeated my question like a good servant. ‘How may I be of service?’

      ‘I … that is … I feel as if I should know you.’ He peered at me closely. When I only stared at him as if puzzled, he tried again. ‘Do you understand what I speak about?’ He seemed to be trying to help me begin a conversation.

      ‘I beg your pardon, sir? You are in need of help?’ It was all I could think of to say.

      He glanced over his shoulder and then spoke to me more urgently. ‘I serve the dragon Tintaglia. I am here with the ambassadors from Bingtown and the representatives from the Rain Wild. They are my people, and my kin. But I serve the dragon Tintaglia, and her concerns are my first ones.’ He spoke the words as if they should convey some deep message to me.

      I hoped that what I felt did not show on my face. It was confusion, not at his strange words, but at the odd feeling that rang through me at that name. Tintaglia. I had heard the name before, but when he spoke it, it was the sharp tip of a dream breaking through into the waking world. I felt again the sweep of wind under my wings, tasted dawn’s soft fogs in my mouth. Then that blink of memory was gone, and left behind only the uncomfortable feeling of having been someone other than myself for a sliced instant of my life. I said the only words I could think of. ‘Sir? And how can I assist you?’

      He stared at me intently, and I’m afraid I returned that scrutiny. The dangles along his jawline were serrated tissue. The fleshy fringe was too regular to be a scar or unnatural growth. It looked as if it belonged there as rightfully as his nose or lips. He sighed, and as he did so, I clearly saw him close his nostrils for a moment. He evidently decided to begin anew, for he smiled at me and asked gently, ‘Have you ever dreamed of dragons? Of flying like a dragon or of … being a dragon?’

      That was too close a hit. I nodded eagerly, a servant flattered at conversing with his betters. ‘Oh, haven’t we all, sir? We Six Duchies folk, I mean. I’m old enough to have seen the dragons that came to defend the Six Duchies, sir. I suppose it’s natural that I’ve dreamed of them, sometimes. Magnificent they were, sir. Terrifying and dangerous, too, but that’s not what stays with a man who has seen them. It’s their greatness that stays in my mind, sir.’

      He smiled at me. ‘Exactly. Magnificence. Greatness. Perhaps that is what I sensed in you.’ He peered at me, and I felt the bluish gleam in his eyes was more probing than the eyes themselves. I tried to retreat from that scrutiny.

      I glanced aside from him. ‘I’m not alone in that, sir. There are many in the Six Duchies who saw our dragons on the wing. And some that saw far more than I did, for I lived far from Buckkeep then, out on my father’s farm. We grew oats, there. Grew oats and raised pigs. Others could tell you far better tales than I could. Yet even a single glimpse of the dragons were enough to set a man’s soul on fire. Sir.’

      He made a small dismissive gesture with his hand. ‘I don’t doubt that they were. But I speak of another thing, now. I speak of real dragons. Dragons that breathe, that eat and grow and breed just as any other creature does. Have you ever dreamed of a dragon like that? One named Tintaglia?’

      I shook my head at him. ‘I don’t dream much, sir.’ I left a little pause there and let it grow just long enough to be slightly uncomfortable. Then I bobbed a bow to him again and asked, ‘And how can I be of service to you, sir?’

      He stared past me for so long that I thought he had forgotten me entirely. I thought of simply