The Complete Tawny Man Trilogy: Fool’s Errand, The Golden Fool, Fool’s Fate

‘I said–’ He paused abruptly and his eyes grew round. He leaned towards the basin, but after a moment he only burped gassily and lay back. He groaned, then continued: ‘I said I understood their understanding, and hoped that perhaps we could come to an understanding of our own. I clasped his hand in mine. I said I saw no difficulty. That Sydel was a lovely girl, as lovely a girl as he was a boy, and that I hoped we might all become close and loving friends.’

‘And then you kissed him?’ I was incredulous.

Lord Golden screwed his eyes shut. ‘He seemed a bit naïve. I wanted to be sure he took the fullness of my meaning.’

‘Eda and El in a tangle,’ I swore. I stood up and he groaned as the bed moved beneath him. I walked to the window and stared out. ‘How could you?’ I demanded of him.

He took a breath and strained mockery crept into his voice. ‘Oh, please, beloved. You needn’t be jealous. It was the most brief and chaste kiss you can imagine.’

‘Oh, Fool,’ I rebuked him. How could he make a jest of something like this?

‘It wasn’t even on the mouth. Just a warm press of my lips to the palm of his hand, a single flick of my tongue.’ He smiled feebly. ‘He snatched it away as if I had branded him.’ Suddenly he hiccuped loudly and then made a sour face. ‘You’re dismissed. To your room, Badgerlock. I’ve no more need of you tonight.’

‘Are you certain?’

He nodded, a short vehement nod. ‘Go away,’ he said plainly. ‘If I’m going to puke, I don’t want you watching me.’

I understood his need to preserve that much dignity. He had little enough left. I retreated to my room and shut the door. I busied myself with packing my things. A short time later, when I heard the sounds of his misery, I did not go to him. Some things a man should do alone.

I did not sleep well. I longed to touch minds with my wolf, but dared not allow myself that comfort. Necessary they might be, yet I still felt dirtied by the Fool’s political manipulations. I longed to live the direct and clean life of a wolf. Towards dawn, I came out of a doze to the sound of the Fool moving about in his chamber. I found him sitting at the small table looking haggard. Somehow the fresh clothing he had donned only made him look the more rumpled. Even his hair looked sweaty and dishevelled. He had a little box in front of him and a mirror. As I watched, puzzled, he dipped his finger in something and wiped it under his eye. The shadow there deepened to a pouch. Then he sighed. ‘I hate what I did last night.’

I did not need him to explain. I tried to ease his conscience. ‘Perhaps it was a kindness. Perhaps it is better they discovered, before they wed, that Sydel’s heart is not as constant as Civil believed.’

He shook his head, refusing the comfort. ‘If I had not led, she would not have followed in that dance. Her first sallies were but a girl’s coquetry. I think it as instinctive for a girl to flirt as it is for boys to show off their muscles and daring. Girls of her age are like little kittens pouncing at grass to practise their hunting skills. They do not yet know the meaning of the motions they make.’ He sighed, and went back to his little box of coloured powders.

Silently I watched as he not only made himself look more ill, but added a decade to his years by delineating the lines in his face.

‘Do you think that’s necessary?’ I asked him as he snapped the little box shut and handed it to me. I tucked it back into his case, which was, I noted, already neatly packed for our journey.

‘I do. I wish to be sure that the glamour I put over Sydel is completely broken before I depart. Let her see me as substantially older than she is, and dissolute. She will wonder what she was thinking, and flee back to Civil. I hope he will have her. It would be better than her pining after me.’ He gave a melodramatic sigh, but I knew his ridicule was for himself. This morning, Lord Golden’s façade was fractured and the Fool shone forth from the cracks.

‘A glamour?’ I asked sceptically.

‘Of course. No one is invulnerable to me if I choose to enchant them. No one but you, that is.’ He rolled his eyes at me dolorously. ‘But there is no time for me to mourn that. Now you must go forth and make it known that I wish a private moment with Lady Bresinga. Then go and tap at Laurel’s door and let her know that we ride soon.’

By the time I returned from the second half of my errand, Lord Golden had departed the room to his meeting with Lady Bresinga. It was a very brief meeting, and when he returned, he indicated that I should take our bags down immediately. He did not stop to eat anything, but I had already purloined all the fruit that had been in our room. We would survive, and he was probably wiser to avoid food for a time yet.

Our horses were brought round. Lady Bresinga descended to wish us a chill farewell. Not even the servants deigned to notice our departure. Lord Golden offered yet another apology, attributing much of his behaviour to the fine quality of her wines. If this flattery was meant to appease her, it failed. We rode slowly from her courtyard, Lord Golden setting a very easy pace for us. At the foot of the hill, we turned towards the ferry. Only when the line of trees along the road hid us from the manor’s view did he halt and ask me, ‘Which way?’

Laurel had been riding in a mortified silence. She had said nothing, but I gathered that in humiliating himself, Lord Golden had daubed her with the same brush. Now she looked shocked as I said, ‘This way,’ and turned Myblack off the road and into the sun dappled forest.

‘Don’t wait for us,’ he told me brusquely. ‘Go as swiftly as you can to close the gap. We’ll catch up as we may, though my poor head may hold us back a bit. The worry now is that we may lose his trail. I am certain Laurel can follow yours. Go now.’

I wanted no more than that. I saw the purpose of his order at once. It would allow me to be alone when I overtook Nighteyes and to confer with him privately. I nodded once and set my heels to Myblack. She sprang forwards willingly, and I let my heart lead us. I did not bother looping back to where I had last seen the wolf, but reined her north and east to where I knew he was today. I let a tiny thread of my awareness tug at him to let him know I was coming and felt the twitch of his response. I urged Myblack to greater speed.

Nighteyes had covered a surprising amount of ground. I did not let myself worry about whether or not Laurel could track me easily. My drive now was to rejoin my wolf, see that he was well, and then to push on in pursuit of the Prince. My uneasiness for him had been steadily swelling.

The day was hot, summer’s last sprawl across the land, and the sun beat down on us even through the thin shade of the trees. The dry air seemed laden with dust that sucked the moisture from my mouth and clung to my eyelashes. I did not bother trying to find trails but pushed Myblack through the forested hills and down into the dales between them. Lusher vegetation showed where creeks sometimes ran, but their waters seeped under the surface now. Twice we crossed streams, and each time I stopped to let Myblack water and to drink deeply myself. Then we pushed on.

By early afternoon, I had an indefinable conviction that Nighteyes was near. Before I saw him or scented him, I began to get the strange feeling that I had seen this terrain before, that something about those trees ahead was oddly familiar. I pulled in the horse and slowly scanned the hills around me, only to have him step out from a patch of alder brush scarce a stone’s throw away. Myblack flinched and then focused her full attention on him. I set a hand to her neck. Calm. No need to fear. Calm.

Too tired and not hungry enough to chase you, Nighteyes added helpfully.

‘I brought you meat.’

I know. I smell it.

I had scarcely unwrapped it before it was gone. I wanted to look at his injuries, but knew better than to bother him with that while he was eating. And as soon as he had finished eating, he gave himself a shake. Let’s go.

Let me look at …

No. Maybe tonight. But while they have light, they travel, and so must we. They already have a good start on us, and the dry soil holds their scents poorly. Let’s go.

He was right about tracking them. The dry ground resisted both print and scent. Before the afternoon was over, we had twice been stymied, and had only rediscovered their trail by casting for it in a wide circle. The shadows were growing long when Lord Golden and Laurel caught up with us. ‘I see your dog has found us again,’ she observed wryly, and I could think of nothing to say in reply.

‘Lord Golden tells me that you track the Prince, that a serving girl told you the Prince had fled north?’ There was question in her voice, and her mouth was flat with disapproval. I did not know if she hoped to catch Lord Golden in a lie, or if I was supposed to have seduced someone for the information.

‘She didn’t know he was the Prince. She simply called him a lad with a hunting cat.’ I tried to think of something that would divert her from more questions. ‘The trail is poor. Any help you could give me would be welcome.’

My ruse worked. She proved an able tracker. As the light went out of the day, she picked up small signs that I might have missed, and thus we kept following them long past the hour when I would have said the light was too poor. We came to a creek where they had stopped to water. The spoor of two men, two horses and the cat were all plain in the damp soil at the water’s edge. There we decided to make camp for the night. ‘It’s better to stop tracking while we know we are on the right trail than to wait until we are not certain, and have confused things with our own tracks. Early tomorrow we will start again,’ Laurel announced.

We made a bare camp, little more than a tiny fire and our blankets beside it. Food was in short supply, but at least we had plenty of water. The fruit I had taken from our room was warm and bruised but welcome. Laurel carried, from habit, some twists of dried meat and travel bread. There was precious little of it, and she unwittingly bought much good favour from me when she announced, ‘We don’t need the meat as much as the dog does. We have both fruit and bread.’ Another woman, I thought, might have ignored the wolf’s hunger and hoarded the meat for the next day. Nighteyes, for his part, deigned to take it from her hand. And afterwards, when I insisted on looking at his scratches, he did not snarl when she joined me, though she was wise enough not to attempt to touch him. As I had suspected, he had licked most of the unguent away. The scratches were scabbed closed and the flesh beside them did not look too angry. I decided against putting more ointment on them. As I put the unused pot away, Laurel nodded her head in quiet agreement. ‘Better dry and closed than greased too well and the scab softened too much.’

Lord Golden had already stretched out on his blanket. I surmised that neither his head nor his belly were yet calm. He had spoken little throughout our camp-making and sparse meal. In the gathering dark, I could not tell if his eyes were closed or if he stared up at the sky.

‘Well, I suppose he has the right of it,’ I said, gesturing at him. ‘Early to bed, and an early start tomorrow. Perhaps, with luck, we’ll overtake them.’

I think Laurel assumed Lord Golden was already asleep. She lowered her voice. ‘It will take some hard riding, as well as a measure of luck. They ride assuredly, knowing where they are bound, while we must go carefully lest we lose them.’ Laurel cocked her head and studied me across the small fire. ‘How did you know when to leave the road to find their trail?’

I took a breath and chose a lie at random. ‘Luck,’ I replied quietly. ‘I had a feeling they would be going in this direction, and when I struck their trail, we followed it.’

‘And your dog had the same feeling, which is why he had gone ahead of you?’

I just looked at her. The words rose to my tongue without my volition. ‘Maybe I’m Witted.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she replied sarcastically. ‘And that is why the Queen trusts you to go after her son. Because you are one of those she most fears. You are not Witted, Tom Badgerlock. I’ve known Witted folk before; I’ve endured their disdain and snubs for folks who do not share their magic. Where I grew up, there were plenty of them, and in that place and time, they did little to conceal it. You are no more Witted than I am, though you are one of the best trackers I’ve ever ridden with.’

I did not thank her for the compliment. ‘Tell me about the Witted folk you grew up with,’ I suggested. I smoothed a wrinkle out of my blanket and lay back on top of it. I closed my eyes almost all the way, as if I were only mildly interested in her words. The moon, a paring less than full, looked down at us through the trees. At the edge of the fire’s light, Nighteyes was diligently licking himself. Laurel fussed for a moment with her own blanket, tossing small stones out from under it. Then she smoothed it to the earth and lay back on it. She was silent for a moment or two and I did not think she was going to answer me.

Then, ‘Oh, they were not so bad. Not like the tales folk tell. They did not turn into bears or deer or seals at the light of the full moon, nor did they eat raw meat and steal children. Still, they were bad enough.’

‘How?’

‘Oh,’ she hesitated. ‘It just was not fair,’ she said at last, with a sigh. ‘Imagine never being sure that you were alone, for some little bird or lurking fox might carry the eyes and ears of your neighbour. They took full advantage of their Wit, for their animal partners forever told them where the hunting was best or the berries first ripened.’

‘Were they that open that they were Witted? Never have I heard of such a village.’

‘It was not that they were open about what they were, so much as that I was excluded for what I was not. Children are not subtle.’