Fool’s Fate. Робин Хобб

I, sir. Nor do I like to be kept so isolated from animals. That is my magic calling me, I suppose.’

      I wished he had let it rest. ‘Perhaps it is. And perhaps you should think well before you answer it.’ This time I intended that he hear the rebuke in my voice.

      He flinched, then looked indignant. ‘The Queen said that my magic was not to make a difference to anyone. That no one can treat me poorly because of it.’

      ‘That’s true. But neither will people treat you well because of it. I counsel you to keep your magic a private matter, Swift. Do not parade it before people until you know them. If you wish to know how to best handle your Wit, I suggest you spend time with Web the Witted, when he tells his tales before the hearth in the evenings.’

      He was scowling before I was finished. I dismissed him curtly and he went. I thought I had read him well enough. His possession of the Wit had been the battle line drawn between him and his father. He had successfully defied Burrich and fled to Buckkeep, determined to live openly as a Witted one in Queen Kettricken’s tolerant court. But if the boy thought that being Witted was all he needed to earn his place, well, I’d soon clear that cobweb from his mind. I’d not try to deprive him of his magic. But his flaunting of it, as one might shake a rag at a terrier to see what reaction he would win, distressed me. Sooner or later, he’d encounter a young noble happy to challenge him over the despised beast-magic. The tolerance was a mandated thing, grudgingly given by many who still adhered to the old distaste for our gift. Swift’s attitude made me doubly determined that he should not discover I was Witted. Bad enough that he cockily flaunted his own magic; I wouldn’t have him betraying mine.

      I gazed out once more over the wide spectacle of sea and sky. It was an exhilarating view, at once breathtaking and yet reassuringly familiar. And then I forced myself to stare down, over the low wall that stood between me and a plummet to my sure death below. Once, battered both physically and mentally by Galen the Skillmaster, I had tried to make that plunge from this very parapet. It had been Burrich’s hand that had drawn me back. He had carried me down to his own rooms, treated my injuries, and then avenged them upon the Skillmaster. I still owed him for that. Perhaps teaching his son and keeping him safe at court would be the only repayment I could ever offer him. I fixed that thought in my heart to prop up my sagging enthusiasm for the task and left the tower top. I had another meeting to hasten to, and the sun told me that I was already nearly late for it.

      Chade had let it be known that he was now instructing the young prince in his heritage Skill-magic. I was both grateful and chagrined at this turn of events. The announcement meant that Prince Dutiful and Chade no longer had to meet secretly for that purpose. That the Prince took his half-wit servant with him to those lessons was regarded as a sort of eccentricity. No one in the court would have guessed that Thick was the Prince’s fellow student, and far stronger in the Farseer’s ancestral magic than any currently living Farseer. The chagrin came from the fact that I, the true Skill-instructor, was the only one who still had to conceal his comings and goings from those meetings. Tom Badgerlock was who I was now, and that humble guardsman had no business knowing anything of the Farseer’s magic.

      So it was that I descended the steps from the Queen’s Garden, and then hastened through the keep. From the servants’ areas there were six possible entry points to the hidden spy labyrinth that meandered through the entrails of Buckkeep Castle. I took care that every day I used a different entry from the day before. Today I selected the one near the cook’s larder. I waited until there was no one in the corridor before I entered the storeroom. I pushed my way through three racks of dangling sausages before dragging the panel open and stepping through into now familiar darkness.

      I didn’t waste time waiting for my eyes to adjust. This part of the maze had no illumination of any kind. The first few times I’d explored it, I carried a candle. Today I judged that I knew it well enough to traverse it in the dark. I counted my steps, then groped my way into a narrow staircase. At the top of it, I made a sharp right and saw thin fingers of spring sunlight filtering into the dusty corridor. Stooped, I hastened along it and soon reached a more familiar part of the warren. In a short time, I emerged from the side of the hearth in the Seawatch Tower. I pushed the panel back into place, then froze as I heard someone lifting the door-latch. I barely had time to seek flimsy shelter in the long curtains that draped the tower windows before someone entered.

      I held my breath, but it was only Chade, Dutiful and Thick arriving for their lessons. I waited until the door was firmly closed behind them before stepping out into the room. I startled Thick, but Chade only observed, ‘You’ve cobwebs down your left cheek. Did you know?’

      I wiped away the clinging stuff. ‘I’m surprised that it’s only on my left cheek. Spring seems to have wakened a legion of spiders.’

      Chade nodded gravely to my observation. ‘I used to carry a feather duster with me, waving it before me as I went. It helped. Somewhat. Of course, in those days, it little mattered what I looked like when I arrived at my destination. I just didn’t care for the sensation of little legs down the back of my neck.’

      Prince Dutiful smirked at the idea of the immaculately attired and coiffed Queen’s councillor scuttling through the corridors. There had been a time when Lord Chade was a hidden resident of Buckkeep Castle, the royal assassin only, a man who concealed his pocked face and carried out the King’s justice in the shadows. No longer. Now he strode majestically through the hallways, openly lauded as both diplomat and trusted advisor to the Queen. His elegant garb in shades of blue and green reflected that status, as did the gems that graced his throat and earlobes. His snowy hair and piercing green eyes seemed like carefully chosen accoutrements to his wardrobe. The scars that had so distressed him had faded with his years. I neither envied nor begrudged him his finery. Let the old man make up now for the deprivations of his youth. It harmed no one, and those who were dazzled by it often overlooked the rapier mind that was his real weapon.

      In contrast, the Prince was garbed nearly as simply as I was. I attributed it to Queen Kettricken’s austere Mountain Kingdom traditions and her innate thrift. At fifteen, Dutiful was shooting up. What sense was there in creating fine garments for everyday wear when he either outgrew them or tore out the shoulders while practising on the weapons court? I studied the young man who stood grinning before me. His dark eyes and curling black hair mirrored his father’s, but both his height and his developing jawline reminded me more of my father Chivalry’s portrait.

      The squat man accompanying him was a complete contrast. I estimated Thick to be in his late twenties. He had the small tight ears and protruding tongue of a simpleton. The Prince had garbed him in a blue tunic and leggings which matched his own, right down to the buck crest on the breast, but the tunic strained across the little man’s pot belly and the hose sagged comically at his knees and ankles. He cut an odd figure, both amusing and slightly repulsive, to those who could not sense, as I did, the Skill-magic that burned in him like a smith’s forge-fire. He was learning to control the Skill-music that served him in place of an ordinary man’s thoughts. It was less pervasive and hence less annoying than it had once been, yet the strength of his magic meant that he shared it with all of us, constantly. I could block it, but that meant also blocking my sensitivity to most of the Skill, including Chade’s and Dutiful’s weaker sendings. I could not block him and still teach them, so for now I endured Thick’s music.

      Today it was made from the snickings of scissors and the clack of a loom, with the high-pitched giggle of a woman winding through it. ‘So. Had another fitting this morning, did you?’ I asked the Prince.

      He was not dazzled. He knew how I had deduced it. He nodded with weary tolerance. ‘Both Thick and I. It was a long morning.’

      Thick nodded emphatically. ‘Stand on the stool. Don’t scratch. Don’t move. While they poke Thick with pins.’ He added the last severely, with a rebuking look at the Prince.

      Dutiful sighed. ‘That was an accident, Thick. She told you to stand still.’

      ‘She’s mean,’ Thick ventured in an undertone, and I suspected he was close to the truth. Many of his nobles found it difficult to accept the Prince’s friendship with Thick. For some reason, it affronted some servants even more. Some of them found small