Golden Fool

I settled myself, robe, needle, and thread, in the other chair. I glanced at Thick. He looked almost asleep. I threaded the needle and began a new hem for the robe as I asked him, very quietly, “So. They call me a ‘stinking dog,’ do they?”

“Erhm.” The music changed slightly. Sharper notes. The ringing of a smith’s hammer on hot iron. The slamming of a door. Somewhere a goat bleated and another answered it. I let his music into my mind, and let it carry my thoughts with it as I watched my needle mindlessly dive and then surface from the fabric of the robe.

“Thick. Do you remember the first time you met them? The ones who call me ‘stinking dog’?” Please show me. I let the Skill request float with my quiet words and the rhythmic motion of my needle. I listened to the quiet rip of the thread as it moved through the fabric, and the soft crackling of the fire, making those small sounds one with my request.

For a time Thick was silent save for the Skill music that flowed from him. Then, I heard the sounds of my needle and the fire creep into his music.

“He said, ‘Put down that bucket and come with me.’ ”

“Who said?” I asked too avidly.

Thick’s music stopped. He spoke aloud. “I’m not to talk about him. Or he’ll kill me. Kill me dead with a big knife. Cut open my belly and my guts fall in the dust.” In his mind he stood and watched his own entrails unwind into the grit of a Buckkeep Town street. “Like pig guts.”

“I won’t let that happen to you,” I promised.

He shook his head stubbornly. He began to take short breaths through his nose. “He said, ‘No one could stop me. I’d kill you.’ If I tell about him, he’ll kill me. If I don’t watch the gold man and the old man and you, he’ll kill me. If I don’t peek at the door and listen and tell him, he’ll kill me. All my guts in the dust.”

And in our joining, I knew that Thick believed this down to his bones. I’d have to leave it alone for now. “Very well,” I said mildly. I leaned back in my chair and once more focused my mind on my work. “Don’t think about him,” I suggested. “Only the others. The ones you went to meet.”

He nodded his heavy head ponderously as he stared into the flames. After a time, his music seeped back. I set my breathing to its rhythm, and then my work as well. Gradually, I eased my mind closer and then let it brush Thick’s.

I scarcely dared to breathe. I pushed my needle in and out of the fabric, and drew the long thread rippling after it. Thick was breathing slowly through his nose as he stared into the fire. I asked no questions but let his Skill flow through me. He hadn’t liked that first meeting, not at all, not the long trot from the castle down to the town, nor the way his companion kept a grip on his sleeve all that long and weary way. He was taller than Thick, the one who clutched him as they walked, and it made Thick walk crooked and too fast. His legs ached and his mouth was dry with the long walk that he hadn’t wanted to come on. In his memory, the man who gripped his sleeve shook him until Thick answered each question that the people in the room asked him.

Thick’s memories were not vague. If anything, they were too detailed. He recalled as much of the blister on his heel as he did of the man’s words. The sounds of a goat bleating somewhere and the creaking of wagons lumbering down the street were weighted as heavily as the voice of his interrogator. Thick was repeatedly shaken to rattle loose an answer, and he well recalled both his fear and his confusion at why he was treated so.

Thick’s answers to his questions were vague as much from Thick’s lack of knowledge as from his odd sense of priorities. He told them about his work in the kitchen. They asked him what nobles he served. Thick wasn’t sure of their names. They were impatient and muttering at first, and one cursed the man who had brought him for wasting their time. Then Thick complained of his extra work, up all the stairs, for the tall old man with the spotted face. “Chade, Lord Chade, the Queen’s Councilor” someone hissed. And they all drew closer to him.

Thus they had learned that Chade wanted the firewood stacked with little logs to one side and bigger pieces on the other side, and that Thick had to wipe up any water he spilled on the stairs. Never touch Chade’s scrolls. Don’t spill the ashes on the floor. Don’t open the little door if anyone else can see you. Only the last fact seemed to interest them, but when their other questions yielded them little, Thick recognized the displeasure in their voices. He had cringed from it, but the man who had brought him insisted that this was only the first time, that the dummy could be taught what to watch for. Then someone had given him other targets to watch: “A fancy Jamaillian noble, with yellow hair and tanned skin. He rides a white horse. And he keeps a stinking dog of a servant, with a crooked nose and a scar down his face.”