Golden Fool

“What are you doing?” he asked softly.

I groaned, then spoke briskly. “Headache. Nettle was rattling my shutters all last night. It’s getting harder and harder to keep her out.” I lifted my cup and swirled the water. Inky black tendrils were rising from the steeping elfbark. The brew darkened and I sipped at it. Bitter. But the throbbing in my head quieted almost immediately.

“Should you be doing that?” the Fool asked me evenly.

“If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t be doing it,” I pointed out pleasantly.

“But Chade—”

“Chade has not the Skill, and does not know the pains of it, nor understand the remedies for those pains.” I spoke more sharply than I intended, from a well of unexpected annoyance. I realized then that I was still angry with Chade for withholding from me the full content of the note. As he always had, he was still trying to control my life. It is strange to find that an emotion you thought you had set aside is still simmering under the surface. I took a second mouthful of the bitter brew. As elfbark always did, it would plunge my spirits into a low even as it fired me with restlessness. It was a bad combination, but better than trying to wade through the day with a Skill headache hammering through my skull.

The Fool sat deathly still for several long moments. Then, with his eyes on the teapot as he lifted it and delicately filled his cup, he asked, “Will not the elfbark interfere with your teaching Prince Dutiful to Skill?”

“The Prince himself has already interfered with that, by not coming to his lessons for the last several days. Elfbark or no, I cannot teach a student who does not come to me.” Again, I felt a small twinge of surprise to find how much I was upset by that. Somehow, the act of sitting down at table with my old friend, knowing I intended to confront him, was making all these odd and painful truths bubble out of me. As if somehow they were all his fault for holding himself so aloof from me for the past week, while allowing his friend to believe falsehoods about us.

The Fool leaned back in his chair, the cup of tea cradled between his long and graceful hands. He looked past me. “Well. It seems as if that is a matter to take up with the Prince.”

“It is. But there is also a matter that I must take up with you.” I heard how my voice dropped accusingly as I said those words, but could not control it.

A long silence held between us. For a moment the Fool folded his lips, as if holding in words. Then he took a sip of his tea. He lifted his eyes to meet mine, and I was surprised by the weariness on his face. “Is there?” he asked unwillingly.

Reluctance tugged at me but I forced the word out. “Yes. There is. I want to know what you have said to that Jek woman to make her think that I, that we, that—” I hated that I could not form the words. It was as if I feared to express the thought, that by speaking it aloud it would gain some sort of reality.

An odd expression fleeted over the Fool’s face. He shook his head. “I’ve said nothing to her, Fitz. ‘That Jek woman,’ as you name her, is capable of concocting her own theories on just about anything. She is one of those people you never need lie to; simply withhold information, and she makes up her own stories. Some, wildly inaccurate, as you have seen. Rather like Starling, in some ways.”

I didn’t need to hear that name right then. She was another one who had believed that my bond with the Fool went beyond friendship. I recognized now that he had led her to believe that by the same technique he had used with Jek. No denials of it, leading remarks and witticisms, all encouraging her to form a mistaken opinion. At one time it had seemed a trifle uncomfortable but humorous all the same, to watch her laboring under her delusion. Now it seemed humiliating and deceitful that he had led her to believe that.

He set his teacup down on the table. “I thought I was feeling stronger, but I am not,” he said in Golden’s aristocratic tones. “I think I shall retire to my room. No visitors, Tom Badgerlock.” He started to rise.

“Sit down,” I said. “We need to talk.”

He stood. “I think not.”

“I insist.”

“I refuse.” He looked past me, into a distance I could not see. He lifted his chin.

I stood. “I need to know, Fool. You look at me sometimes, you say things, apparently in jest, but . . . You let both Starling and Jek believe that we could be lovers.” The word came out harshly, like an epithet. “Perhaps you deem it of little importance that Jek believes you are a woman and in love with me. I cannot be so blithe about such assumptions. I’ve already had to deal with rumors of your taste in bed partners. Even Prince Dutiful has asked me. I know that Civil Bresinga suspects it. And I hate it. I hate that people in the keep look at us, and wonder what you do to your servant at night.”