Fool's Fate

Thick swayed on the edge of his bunk. His blue tunic and trousers hung on his wasted frame. Until I saw him dressed, I had not realized how much flesh he had lost. Riddle knelt by the bunk, good-naturedly trying to chivy him into his shoes. Thick was moaning feebly and making vaguely helpful motions. His face was crumpled with misery. If I had doubted it at all before, I was now certain that Riddle was one of Chade's men. No ordinary guardsman would have undertaken that task.

“I'll finish that,” I told him, and could not keep the brusqueness from my voice. I could not have said why I felt protective of the small man looking at me blearily from his little round eyes, but I did.

“Thick,” I told him as I finished getting his shoes on. “We're going ashore. Once we're on solid ground again, you're going to feel much better. You'll see.”

“No I won't,” he promised me. He coughed again and the rattle in it frightened me. Nonetheless, I found a cloak for him and heaved him to his feet. He staggered along beside me as we left the cabin. Out on the deck in the fresh wind for the first time in days, he shivered and clutched his cloak tightly around him. The sun shone brightly, but the day was not as warm as a summer day in Buck. Snow still owned the peaks of the higher hills, and the wind carried its chill to us.

The Outislanders provided our transportation to shore. Getting Thick from the deck into the dancing boat below required both Riddle and myself. I silently cursed at those guards who laughed at our predicament. At their oars, the Outislanders discussed us freely in their own tongue, unaware that I understood the disdain they expressed for a prince who chose an idiot as his companion. Once settled on the seat beside Thick, I had to put my arm around him to settle him against the terrors of a small, open boat. He wept, the round tears rolling down his cheeks as our little dory rose and fell with every passing wave. I blinked at the bright sunlight glancing off the moving water and stared stolidly at the wharves and houses of Zylig as the straining sailors rowed us to our destination.

It was not an inspiring view. Peottre Blackwater's disdain for the city was not misplaced. Zylig offered all the worst aspects of a lively port. Wharves and docks jutted haphazardly into the bay. Vessels of every description crowded them. Most were fat-hulled greasy whale-hunters, with a permanent reek of oil and butchery clinging to them. A few were merchanters from the Six Duchies. I saw one that looked Chalcedean and one that could have been Jamaillian. Moving amongst them were the small fishing boats that daily fed the bustling town, and even smaller craft that were hawking smoked fish, dried seaweed, and other provisions to the outward-bound vessels. Masts forested the skyline and the docked ships grew taller as we approached them.

Beyond them, I caught glimpses of warehouses, sailors' inns, and supply stores. Stone structures predominated over wood. Narrow streets, some little more than trails, meandered amongst the crowded little buildings. At one end of the bay where the water ran shallower and rocky, unfit for anchorage, little stone houses clustered by the water. Rowboats were pulled out above the tideline, and spread fish hung like laundry drying from poles. Smoking fires in trenches beneath the fish added flavor as they preserved the catch. I glimpsed a pack of children racing along the beach, shrieking raucously in some wild game.

The section of the town we were approaching seemed recently built. In contrast to the rest of the settlement, the streets were wide and straight. Timber supplemented the native stone, and most of the structures were taller. Some had windows of swirled glass in the upper stories. I recalled hearing that the Six Duchies dragons had visited this port city, bringing death and destruction to our enemies. The structures in this area were all of an age, the streets straight and well cobbled. It was strange to see this orderly section amongst the haphazard port town and I wondered what it had looked like before Verity-as-Dragon had paid a call here. Stranger still to think that the destruction of war could result in such rebuilt tidiness.

Above the harbor, the land rose in rocky hillsides. Dark evergreens hunched in sheltered areas. Cart tracks wound among the hillsides where sheep and goats grazed. Smoke wandered up through the tree cover from scarcely visible huts. Mountains and taller hills, crowned still with snow, loomed beyond them.

We had arrived on a low tide, and the docks towered above us, supported on thick timbers crusted with barnacles and black mussels. The rungs of the ladder up to the dock were still wet from the retreating tide, and festoons of seaweed hung from them. The Prince and several boatloads of nobles had already disembarked. More Buckkeep noblemen were unloading as we approached. Grudgingly they gave way to us, to allow the Prince's Guard to clamber up the ladders onto the docks and form up to escort Dutiful to his welcome.