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“Then whose? Peottre's?”

Chade slowly shook his head. “No. His interests run with hers, and she is loyal to him. I think that if she asked this to please him, she would take more pleasure in it. No. So. Fitz asks our basic question. Whose will?”Advertisement

I gave my best guess. “Henja's. She has power over them somehow. We have seen that. And she is connected to the Piebalds, who have no love for us.”

“The Piebalds.” Chade pondered this. “Do you discount the Fool's Pale Woman, then?” He asked the question keenly.

“I do not know. What have we seen or heard of her? Nothing save what the Fool has told us. The Outislanders speak of her as an old evil, a malevolence from the past to be avoided, but not with the dread of something that lurks now. Our Six Duchies dragons killed her and Kebal Rawbread, or so I have often heard. Yet the Outislanders still connect them with this island. They say they mined the black stone here to ballast their White Ships. And there is no denying that the aborted stone dragon back at our landing spot stinks of Red Ship Forging.” A sudden yawn ambushed me.

“Oh, go to bed,” Chade rebuked me. “At least you can rest. Tonight the Prince and I shall reach far and see if we cannot persuade Nettle to aid us. I will admit that I long to know what is passing in the Six Duchies these days. If the Piebalds have stirred to action there, it might tell us that they play a double game.”

“Perhaps,” Dutiful agreed with a yawn, and I suddenly pitied him. I was going to honest sleep. He had a night's work ahead of him. Yet, as I bade them good night and left their tent, I sensed that he regarded Nettle as a challenge he anticipated as well as dreaded. I set aside worrying about that as I left the tent. It was pointless. I was out of that game for now. Perhaps for always. I felt the earth lurch under me as I considered that thought, and then forced myself to go on. Would it be so terrible to go through the rest of my life unSkilled? Could not I think of it as being free of the Skill?

I made a brief stop at the guardsmen's tent. Longwick kept a weary watch at the opening. He nodded at me silently as I slipped inside amongst the heavily sleeping men-at-arms and then out again. He did not ask what I was about. Chade's man. Chade's men, I corrected myself, looking around at the sleeping forms. Every guardsman on this island with us had been handpicked by him, for both discretion and loyalty. How ruthlessly would they obey his commands?

I was still pondering that question when I paused outside the Fool's tent. I listened for a moment to the sweep of the wind that stirred flurries of ice crystals in a storm at ankle height. Every now and then a gust would propel a stinging onslaught into my face. But wind and rustling ice was all I heard. Within the Fool's tent, all was silent, but the bright figures on the outside of the thin, tight fabric glowed with the life of the tiny fire within. “May I come in?” I asked quietly.

“A moment,” he replied as softly. I heard the rustle of fabric, almost indistinguishable from the wind, and after a brief wait, he untied the door flap and admitted me. Clinging frost came with me. It could not be helped, yet the Fool still winced as I brushed it from my clothes. I took the bundled Elderling robe from inside my coat. “Here. I brought it back.”

He was reclining on his pallet, the covers already drawn up around him. The tiny kettle crouched hopefully over the candle fire. He lifted his brows and smiled. “But I thought you looked so fetching in it. Are you sure you won't keep it?”

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I sighed. His fey levity was too much at odds with all else I felt that evening. “Chade and Dutiful are going to try to reach Nettle tonight. With the Skill. They fear that the dragon is stealing Thick's mind, and hope that Nettle can distract Thick from Icefyre.”

“And you choose not to help them?”

“I cannot. I cannot find a single shred of the Skill inside me. I only know that Thick is troubled because of the way he hums. Always before, he Skilled out his music. Why does he hum and mutter now? It's a change, and I don't like changes, especially changes I don't understand.”

“Life is change,” the Fool observed placidly. “And death is an even greater change. I think we must resign ourselves to change, Fitz.”

“I'm tired of resigning myself to things. My entire life has been one long resignation.” I dropped the robe on his pallet and then sat down heavily on the end of it, forcing him to draw his feet up out of the way. I pulled my mittens off and held my hands out to his feeble fire, trying to warm myself.

“Ah, Catalyst, can it be that you do not see all the changes you have made? Some by your resignation and acceptance of circumstance, some by your wild struggles. You can say that you hate change, but you are change.” pqdm.com