I had known that the Wit could be used to repel someone. Who has not leaped back from the clashing teeth of a dog or narrowly avoided the swipe of a cat's claws? It is not just the threat that forces one to give ground, but the force of the creature's anger that pushes its challenger back. I think that for a Witted one, to learn to repel is as instinctive as knowing how to flee danger. I had never stopped to think that there might be another complementary force, one that calmed and beckoned.
I did not have a word for what Web exuded toward Thick. I was not his target, yet I was still peripherally aware of it. It settled my hackles and calmed my thundering heart. Almost without my volition, my shoulders lowered and my jaw unclenched. I saw a wondering look come over Thick's face. His mouth sagged open and his tongue, which was never completely inside it, protruded even more as his little eyes drooped almost closed. Web spoke softly. “Easy, my friend. Relax. Come now, come with me. ”
There is a look a kitten gets when its mother lifts it by the nape of its neck. That look was on Thick's face as Web's big hand settled on his arm. “Don't look,” Web suggested to him. “Eyes on me, now,” and Thick obeyed him, looking up at Web's face as the Witmaster led him aboard the ship as easily as a lad leads a bull by the ring in its nose. I was left trembling, the sweat drying down my spine. The blood rushed to my face at the taunting of the men that accompanied my boarding of the ship. Most of them spoke Six Duchies in a rudimentary way. That they used it now was deliberate, to be sure I understood their scorn. I could not pretend to ignore them, for I could not control the blood that reddened my face with shame. I had no place I could vent my anger as I stalked after Web. I heard the planks taken up behind me as soon as I was on board. I didn't look back, but trailed after Web and Thick toward a tentlike structure on the deck of the ship.
The accommodations were far cruder than those on the Maiden's Chance had been. On the foredeck, there was a permanent cabin with wooden walls, such as I was accustomed to seeing on a ship. I was to learn it was divided into two chambers. The larger of these had been given over to the Prince and Chade, and the Wit coterie crowded into the smaller one. This temporary cabin on the aft deck was for the guardsmen. The walls were made of heavy leather stretched on poles with the entire structure lashed down to pegs set in the deck. These shelters were a concession to our Six Duchies sensibilities; the Outislanders themselves preferred an open deck as best for hauling freight or fighting. A look at the faces of my fellow guardsmen persuaded me of how little welcome Thick would be amongst them. After my shameful performance on the dock, I was little higher in their regard. Web was trying to get Thick to sit down on one of the sea chests that had been brought from the Maiden's Chance.
“No,” I told him quietly. “The Prince prefers that Thick be housed close at hand to him. We should take him to the other cabin. ”
“It's even more crowded than this one,” Web explained, but I only shook my head.
“The other cabin,” I insisted, and he relented. Thick went with him, still with that glazed look of trust on his face. I followed, feeling as exhausted as if I'd spent a morning in sword training. It was only later that I realized it was Web's own pallet he settled Thick onto. Civil sat in the corner on a smaller pallet, his snarling cat on his lap. The minstrel Cockle was disconsolately inspecting three broken strings on a small harp. Swift was looking everywhere but at me. I could feel his dismay that this half-man had been brought right into his living space. The silence in the tiny room was thicker than butter.
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Once Thick had settled on the pallet, Web smoothed a callused hand over his sweaty brow. Thick stared up at us in puzzlement for a moment and then closed his eyes, weary as a child. His breathing was hoarse as sleep claimed him. After the buffeting he'd dealt me, I longed to join him there, but Web was taking my arm.
“Come,” he said. “We have to talk, you and I. ”
I would have resisted him if I could, but when he set his hand on my shoulder, my defiance melted. I let him steer me out onto the deck. I heard the jesting shouts of the sailors when I reappeared, but Web chose to ignore them as he steered me to a rail. “Here,” he said, and from his hip took a leather flask and unstoppered it. The scent of brandy reached me. “A bit of this down you, and then take some deep breaths. You look like a man who has bled half to death. ”
I did not think I needed the brandy until I took some and felt its heat run through me.
Fitz?
The Prince's worried query reached me as a whisper. I realized abruptly how tightly I was still holding my walls. Gingerly I eased them down, and then reached back to Dutiful. “I'm fine. Web has Thick settled now. ”
“That's right. I do. But you scarcely need to tell me that. ”
Give me a moment, my Prince, to gather myself. I had not even realized that I had spoken aloud the thought I'd previously Skilled to Dutiful. “I know. I'm a bit rattled, I suppose. ”
“Yes, you are. What I don't understand is why. But I have my suspicions. The simple man is very important to the Prince, isn't he? And it has something to do with how he could stop a warrior in his prime from forcing him to do a thing he didn't wish to do. What made you flinch before his touch? When I touched him, nothing happened to me. ”
I handed him back his flask. “Not my secret,” I said bluntly.
“I see. ” He took a mouthful of his brandy. He looked aloft pensively. Risk did a lazy loop around our ship, waiting for us. Canvas blossomed suddenly on the mast. A moment later, it bellied in the wind and I felt our ship dip and then gather speed. “Short journey, they tell me. Three days, four at most. If we'd taken the Maiden's Chance, she would have had to sail around the whole cluster of islands, and then we would have had to put her at harbor on one of the other islands and still take another shallow-draft vessel to reach Wuislington. ”
I nodded sagely to that, not knowing if it was true or not. Perhaps his bird had told him. More likely, it was sailor's gossip, gained by his own ready ears.
As if it were a logical continuation, he asked, “If I were to guess this secret, would you tell me I'd got it right?”
I gave a short sigh. Only now that the struggle was over did I realize how weary I was. And how strong Thick had been when driven by his fear and anger to apply all his strength to me. I hoped he had not burned reserves he could not afford. His sickness had already drained much of his vigor. He had thought himself in a life-or-death struggle with me; of that I had no doubt. Concern for him suddenly filled me.
“Tom?” Web pressed me, and with a start I recalled his question.
“It's not my secret,” I repeated doggedly. Hopelessness was welling up in me like blood from a puncture wound. I recognized it as Thick's. That didn't help. I'd have to quell it somehow, before it could affect the rest of the people on the ship.
Can you handle him for us?
The assent I sent to the Prince was an acknowledgment of his request rather than a confirmation that I could accomplish it.
Web was offering me his flask again. I took it, swigged from it, and then said, “I have to go back to Thick. It's not good for him to be left alone. ”
“I think I see that,” he agreed as he took the flask back from me. “I wish I was sure whether you were protector or gaoler to him. Well, Tom Badgerlock, when you judge that it's safe for me to be the one to stay with him, you let me know. You look as if you could use a bit of rest yourself. ”
I nodded without replying and I left him there and went to the little chamber allotted to the Wit coterie. All the other folk had fled, probably made uncomfortable by the strength of the emotions emanating from Thick on a swelling Skill tide. He slept, but it was from exhaustion, not peace. I looked down on his face, seeing a simplicity there that was not childish or even simple. His cheeks were flushed and tiny beads of sweat stood on his forehead. His fever was back and his breathing was raspy. I sat on the floor by his pallet. I was ashamed of w
hat we were doing to him. It wasn't right and we knew it, Chade and Dutiful and I. Then I gave in to my weariness and lay down at his side.
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I gave myself three breaths to center myself and gather my Skill. Then I closed my eyes and put my arm lightly across Thick in order to deepen our Skill-connection. I had expected him to have his walls up against me, but he was defenseless. I slipped into a dream in which a lost kitten paddled desperately in a boiling sea. I drew him from the water as Nettle had done and took him back to the wagon and the bed and the cushion. I promised him that he was safe and felt his anxiety ease a little. But even in his dreams, he recognized me. “But you made me!” the kitten suddenly cried out. “You made me come on a boat again!”
I had expected anger and defiance, or even an attack following those words. What I received was worse. He cried. The kitten wept inconsolably, in a small child's voice. I felt the gulf of his disappointment that I could betray him so. He had trusted me. I picked him up and held him, but still he cried, and I could not comfort him, for I was at the base of his sorrow.
I was not expecting Nettle. It was not night, and I doubted that she was sleeping. I suppose I had always assumed that she could only Skill when she slept. A foolish notion, but there it was. As I sat rocking the tiny creature that was Thick, I felt her presence beside me. Give him to me, she said with a woman's weariness at a man's incompetence. Guilty at my relief, I let her take him from me. I faded into the background of his dream, and felt his tension ease as I retreated from him. It hurt that he found my presence upsetting, but I could not blame him.
After a time, I found myself sitting at the base of the melted tower. It seemed a very forsaken place. The dead brambles coated the steep hillsides all around it, and the only sound was the wind soughing through their branches. I waited.
Nettle came. Why this? she asked, sweeping an arm at the desolation that surrounded us.
It seemed appropriate, I replied dispiritedly.
She gave a snort of contempt and then, with a wave, made the dead brambles into deep summer grasses. The tower became a circle of broken stone on the hillside, with flowering vines wandering over it. She seated herself on a sun-warmed stone, shook out her red skirts over her bare feet, and asked, Are you always this dramatic?
I suspect I am.
It must be exhausting to be around you. You're the second most emotional man I know.
The first being?
My father. He came home yesterday.
I caught my breath, and tried to be casual as I asked, And?
And he had gone to Buckkeep Castle. That is as much as he told us. He looks as if he has aged a decade and yet sometimes I catch him gazing across the room and smiling. Despite his fogged eyes, he keeps staring at me, as if he has never seen me before. Mother says she feels as if he keeps saying farewell to her. He comes to her and puts his arms around her and holds her as if she might be snatched away at any moment. It is hard to describe how he behaves; as if some heavy task is finally finished, and yet he also acts like a man preparing for a journey.
What has he told you? I tried to keep her from sensing my dread.
Nothing. And no more than that to my mother, or so she says. He brought gifts for all of us when he came back. Jumping jacks for my smallest brothers, and cleverly carved puzzle boxes for the older boys. For my mother and me, little boxes with necklaces of wooden beads inside them, not roughly shaped but each carved like a jewel. And a horse, the loveliest little mare I've ever seen.
I waited, knowing what I would hear next and yet praying it would not be said.
And he himself now wears an earring, a sphere carved from wood. I've never seen him wear an earring before. I didn't even know his ear was pierced for one.
I wondered if they had talked, Lord Golden and Burrich. Perhaps the Fool had merely left those gifts with Queen Kettricken to be passed on to Burrich. I wondered so many things and could ask none of them. What are you doing right now? I asked her instead.
Dipping tapers. The most boring and stupid task that exists. For a moment, she was silent. Then, I've a message for you.
My heart stopped at those words. Oh?
If I dream of the wolf again, my father says, I'm to tell him, You should have come home a long time ago.
Tell him . . . A thousand messages flitted through my mind. What could I say to a man I hadn't seen in sixteen years? Tell him that he needn't fear I'll take anything away from him? Tell him that I love still as I have always loved? No. Not that. Tell him I forgive him. No, for he never knowingly wronged me. Those words could only increase whatever burden he put upon himself. There were a thousand things I longed to say and none I dared send through Nettle.
Tell him? Nettle prompted me, avidly curious.
Tell him I was speechless. And grateful to him. As I have been for many years.
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It seemed inadequate, and yet I forced myself to say no more. I would not be impetuous. I would think long and hard before I gave any real message to Nettle to relay to Burrich. I did not know how much she knew or guessed. I did not even know how much Burrich knew of all that had befallen me since last we parted. Better to regret unsaid words than repent of words I could never call back.
Who are you?
I owed her at least that much. A name to call me by. There was only one that seemed right to give her. Changer. My name is Changer.
She nodded, both disappointed and pleased. In another place and time, my Wit warned me that others were near me. I pulled away from the dream and she reluctantly let me go. I eased back into my own flesh. For a time longer, I kept my eyes closed while opening all my other senses. I was in the cabin, Thick breathing heavily beside me. I smelled the oil the minstrel used on the wood of his harp and then heard Swift whisper, “Why is he sleeping now?”
“I'm not,” I said quietly. I eased my arm away from Thick lest I awake him and then sat up slowly. “I was just getting Thick settled. He is still very sick. I wish we didn't have to bring him on this voyage. ”
Swift was still looking at me oddly. Cockle the minstrel was moving very softly, wiping the frame of his repaired harp with oil. I stood, head bent beneath the low ceiling, and looked at Burrich's son. Much as he wished to avoid me, I had a duty. “Are you busy with anything right now?” I asked Swift.
He looked at Cockle as if expecting the minstrel to speak for him. When he remained silent, Swift replied quietly, “Cockle was going to play some Six Duchies songs for the Outislanders. I was going to listen to them. ”
I took a breath. I needed to pull this boy closer to me if I was going to keep my word to Nettle. Yet I'd already alienated him by trying to send him home. Too firm a rein on him now would not gain his trust. So I said, “Much can be learned from a minstrel's songs. Listen, also, to what the Outislanders say and sing, and do your best to gain a few words of their language. Later, we will speak of what you learned. ”
“Thank you,” he said stiffly. It was as hard for him to express gratitude as it was for him to acknowledge I had authority over him. I would not push for that, yet. So I nodded to him and let him leave. Cockle swept me a minstrel's gracious bow at the door and for an instant our eyes met. The friendliness there surprised me, until he bade me farewell with, “It's rare to find a man-at-arms who values learning, and rarer still to find one who recognizes that minstrels can be a source of it. I thank you, sir. ”
“It is I who thank you. My prince has asked me to educate the lad. Perhaps you can show him that gaining knowledge need not be painful. ” In the blink of an eye, I made a second decision. “I'll join you, if I would not be intruding. ”
He flourished me another bow. “I'd be honored. ”
Swift had gone ahead of us, and he did not look pleased when he saw me accompanying the musician.
The Outislander sailors were like any sailors I've ever known anywhere. Any sort of
entertainment was preferable to the daily tedium of the ship. Those not currently on duty soon gathered to hear Cockle sing. It was a fine setting for the minstrel, standing on the bare deck with the wind in his hair and the sun at his back. The men who gathered to hear him brought their own handiwork with them, much as women would have brought their embroidery or knitting. One worked a tatter of old rope into a knotted mat; another carved lazily at a bit of hardwood. The intentness with which they listened confirmed what I had suspected. By choice or by chance, most of Peottre's crew had a working knowledge of Duchy tongue. Even those of the crew working the sails nearby had one ear for the music.
Cockle gave them several traditional Six Duchies ballads that memorialized the Farseer monarchs. Wise enough a man was he to avoid any of the songs that had to do with our long feud with the Out Islands. I wouldn't have to sit through the Antler Island Tower song today. Swift appeared to pay good attention to the songs. His attention was most deeply snared when Cockle told an Old Blood fable in song. I watched the Outislander sailors as Cockle sang it and wondered if I'd see the same disgust and resentment that many Six Duchies people showed when such songs were sung. I didn't. Instead, the sailors seemed to accept it as a strange song of foreign magic.
When he had finished, one of the Outislander sailors stood with a broad grin that wrinkled the boar tattoo on his cheek. He'd set aside his whittling and now he brushed the fine curls of clinging wood from his chest and trousers. “You think that magic is strong?” he challenged us. “I know a stronger, and best you know it, too, for face it you might. ”
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With one bare foot, he nudged the shipmate who sat on the deck beside him. Plainly embarrassed at the circle of listeners, this man nonetheless tugged free a little carved whistle that hung inside his shirt on a string around his neck and played a simple, wailing tune on it, while his fellow, with more drama than voice, hoarsely sang us a tale of the Black Man of Aslevjal. He sang in Outislander, and in the special accents that their bards used, making the song even harder for me to follow. The Black Man stalked the island, and woe to any who came there with unworthy intents. He was the dragon's guardian, or perhaps he was the dragon in human form. Black as the dragon was black, “something” as the dragon was “something,” strong as the wind and as unslayable, and unforgiving as ice was he. He would gnaw the bones of the cowardly, and slice the flesh of the rash, he would—