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Privately, I agreed with him. Aloud I said, “It seems wild and barren to me, but no worse than many a place I've been. None of us really wanted to come here. But we'll make the best of it and do what we must.”

He coughed, and then said, “This is the worst place I've ever been. And you brought me here.” He coughed again, and I could feel how weary he was of coughing.Advertisement

“Are you warm enough?” I asked guiltily. “Do you want one of my blankets?”

“I'm cold. I'm cold inside and outside, just like this place. The cold is eating me. The cold will eat us all to bones.”

“I'm going to warm up the tea. Do you want some?”

“Maybe. If there was honey?”

“No.” Then, I gave way to temptation. “There might be. Here's my blanket. I'll put the tea on to get warm again while I see if anyone has any honey.”

“I suppose,” he said dubiously.

I tucked the blanket around him. It was the closest we had been to one another in days. “I don't like it when you're angry at me, Thick. I didn't want to come here, or to bring you here. It was just a thing we had to do. To help our prince.”

He made no reply and I sensed no lessening in his coldness toward me, but at least he didn't strike out at me. I knew who might have honey. I left the tent and headed up the hill to where the larger tents for the Narcheska and the Prince had been pitched. Between them, and slightly above them, the Fool's multicolored dwelling billowed softly in the wind. Amid the deepening darkness, it seemed to gleam from within.

I hesitated outside it. The flap was tied securely shut. Once before, when I was a boy, I had entered the Fool's private chambers, uninvited. I had lived to regret that intrusion, not only because it posed more mysteries than it solved, but also because it had made a small crack in the trust we had shared. Without ever uttering them, the Fool had taught me well the rules that governed retaining his friendship. He answered only the questions he wished to answer about himself, and any prying by me was regarded as an infringement of his privacy. This included efforts by me to find out anything about him other than what he had chosen to tell me himself. And so, I paused there, in the wind sweeping past me from the island's ice pack, and wondered if I wanted to take this chance. Were there not already too many cracks in our much-tested friendship?

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Then I stooped and untied the door flap and slipped inside.

The tent was made from a fabric I didn't know, some sort of silk perhaps, but so tightly woven that no breath of air stirred inside it. The glow had come from a tiny brazier, set in a small pit dug in the floor of the chamber. The silk walls caught the heat it generated and held it well, while the light seemed multiplied by the sheen of the fabric. Even so, it was not bright inside the tent: rather it was lit warmly and intimately. A thin rug covered the rest of the floor, and a simple sleeping pallet of wool blankets was in one corner. To my wolf's nose, it smelled of the Fool's perfumes. In another corner was a small kit of clothing and a few significant items. I saw that he had brought the featherless Rooster Crown. Somehow it did not surprise me. The feathers from Others Island, the ones I had thought would fit in the crown, were in my sea chest. Some things are too significant to leave unattended.

He had a meager supply of foodstuffs and a single cooking pot; obviously he had relied on our arrival for his long-term survival. I saw no sort of weapon amongst his things; the only knives were ones suitable for cooking. I wondered what ship he had found that had dropped him off here, and why he had not supplied himself better. Among his victuals I found a small pot of honey. I took it.

There was no scrap of paper to leave him a note. All I had wanted to say to him was that I had not wanted him to come here to die, and that was why I had done what I could to thwart him. In the end, I moved the Rooster Crown into the middle of his bed. I turned the simple wooden circlet in my hands, the dim light catching for an instant in one rooster's sparkling gem eye. The Fool would know that I had set it there, and why. I did not want him to think, even for a moment, that I had tried to conceal this visit. As I left, I retied the tent flap with my knots.

Thick had almost dozed off, but when I poured tea and added sweetening to it, he sat up to take the mug from me. I had been generous with the honey. He drank off half of it, and sighed heavily. “That's better.”

“Do you want more?” It would leave little for me, but I wouldn't lose any opportunity to regain his favor.

“A little bit. Please.”

I sensed a lowering of the wall. “Give me your mug, then.” As I poured and sweetened the brew, I said, “You know, Thick, I've missed us being friends. I'm really tired of your being angry with me.” pqdm.com