Fool's Fate (34 page)

    I felt foolish as I told him, This is the first time I have realized that if she becomes his bride and moves to his house, some will say she has forfeited her place here. Lestra spoke of her becoming a “lesser woman in his mothershouse.” What did it mean?

    Chade's reply came reluctantly. I think the idiom is the same used for a woman captured in a raid, but taken as a wife rather than a slave. Her children have no clan. It is like being a bastard, somewhat.

    Then why would she agree to this? Why would Peottre allow it? And if she is not the Narcheska when she comes to Buckkeep and remains there, do we gain any advantage by this wedding? Chade, this does not make sense to me.

    There is still too much that is not clear here, Fitz. I sense an unseen current in all this. Stay alert.

    And so I did, through the long evening and longer night. The sun lingered as it does in that northern clime, so that night was just a long twilight. When the time came for the bridal couple to retire, it was Dutiful who announced that he would remain below in the common room “lest any say that I have taken what I have not earned.” It added another awkward moment to the day, and I saw a puff-lipped Lestra gloating about it with her cohorts. The couple parted at the foot of the staircase, Elliania ascending and Dutiful going off to take a seat beside Chade. This night, he would sleep within the mothershouse, as befitted a man properly wedded to a woman of the clan, but down here on the bed boards, not above with Elliania. His guards were dismissed for the night, to return to the warriors' housing or warmer welcomes, so long as their partners bedded them outside the mothershouse walls. I longed to move closer to Chade and Dutiful and have some quiet talk with them, but I knew it would look odd. Instead, I decided that it was time for me to return to my own lodgings.

    I had not gone far when I heard footsteps crunching on the pathway behind me. Glancing back, I saw Web. Beside him slogged a weary Swift. The tops of his cheeks were very pink and I suspected the boy had overindulged in wine. Web nodded to me, and I slackened my pace to allow them to catch up with me. “Quite an occasion,” I remarked idly to Web when he walked beside me.

    “Yes. I think the Outislanders now regard our prince as wed to their narcheska. I thought this was only to confirm the betrothal before her mother's hearth.” There was a note of question in his statement.

    “I don't think they make any distinction between couples marrying and couples announcing that they will marry. Here, where property and children belong to the women, marriage is seen in a different light.”

    He nodded slowly. “No woman ever has to wonder if a babe is truly hers,” he observed.

    “Does it make that great a difference that the children belong more to the woman than they do the husband?” Swift asked curiously. His words were not slurred, but when he spoke, I could smell the wine on his breath.

    “I think it depends on the man,” Web answered gravely. After that, we walked for a time in silence. Whether I would or no, my thoughts wandered to Nettle and Molly and Burrich and me. To whom did she belong now?

    As we drew near the cottage, the town around us was silent. Any folk who were not at the wedding festivities in the mothershouse were long abed. I opened the door quietly. Thick needed all the rest he could get; I did not wish to wake him. The slice of light that we admitted to the cottage showed me Riddle lying on the floor beside Thick's bed. One eye was open and his hand was on his bared blade arranged beside him. When he saw who it was, he closed his eyes and lapsed back into sleep.

    I remained standing motionless by the door. There was another intruder in the cottage, one whose presence Riddle had not noticed. Large and round as a fat cat, yet masked like a ferret, he crouched on the table, his bushy striped tail sticking straight up behind him. He looked at us with round eyes over the hunk of our cheese that he clutched in his front paws. The marks of his sharp teeth were clearly visible in it.

    “What is it?” I breathed to Web.

    “I think they call it a robber-rat, though rat it is clearly not. I've never seen the like of it before,” he replied as softly.

    The robber-rat stared past us both, his entire attention fixed on Swift. Like a whisper against my senses, I became aware of the Wit flowing between the two. There was a smile on Swift's face. He stepped forward, pushing between Web and me to do so. I lifted a hand to reach after him, but before I could do so, Web's hand fell on the boy's shoulder. He jerked Swift back, startling the robber-rat with the abruptness of his move. Aloud, he told the creature, “Take the cheese and go.” Then, in the harshest voice I'd ever heard him use, he demanded of Swift, “What did you think you were doing? Have you not heard one word of anything I've tried to teach you?”

    Robber-rat and cheese were gone in a flicker of motion, vanishing through the open window with a flick of striped tail.

    Swift gave a cry of disappointment and tried to wrench himself free of Web's grip. The stout man's hand held him firm. The boy was angry, mostly I think in response to Web's visible anger with him. “All I did was greet him! I liked the feel of him. I could sense that we would go well together. And I wanted--”

    “You wanted him like a child wants a bright toy on a tinker's tray!” Web spoke severely and there was no mistaking the condemnation in his voice as he released Swift's shoulder. “Because he was sleek and swift and clever. And he is as young and foolish as you are. And as curious. You felt him reach back to you not because he was seeking a partner but because you intrigued him. That is not a basis for a Wit-bond. And you are not old enough or mature enough to be seeking a partner. If you attempt that again, I will punish you, just as I would punish any child who deliberately put himself or a playmate into danger.”

    Riddle had sat up and was regarding the discussion with open-mouthed astonishment. It was no secret to anyone that both Web and Swift were part of Dutiful's Witted coterie. I shuddered to think how close I had come to betraying myself as Old Blood. Even Thick had opened one sleepy eye to scowl at the argument.

    Swift flung himself disconsolately into a chair. “Danger,” he muttered. “What danger? Is it dangerous that I might have someone that cared about me, at last?”

    “Danger that you would bond with a creature you know nothing about? Has he a mate and kits at home? Would you take him from them, or remain here on this island when we sailed? What does he eat and how often? Would you stay here with him for his life span, or take him away from all others of his kind when we left here, condemning him to remain forever mateless? You took no thought for him, Swift, nor for anything beyond the connection of the moment. You're like a drunk, bedding a young girl tonight with no thoughts for the morrow. It is not a behavior I can excuse. No true Old Blood would.”

    Swift glared at him. Riddle spoke thoughtlessly into the tense silence. “I did not know the Witted had any rules about bonding with animals. I thought they could bond with any creature, for an hour or a year.”

    “A false perception,” Web said heavily, “that many folk not of Old Blood have about us. It is bound to happen, when one people must keep their ways secret and unseen. But it leads to the idea that we use animals and then discard them. It makes it easier for folk to think we would bid a bear savage a man's family, or send a wolf to kill a flock of sheep. The Wit-bond is not a man taking mastery over an animal. It is a joining founded on mutual respect, for life. Do you understand that, Swift?”

    “I meant no harm,” he replied stiffly. There was no repentance or apology in his voice.

    “Neither does the child who plays with fire and burns a cottage down. Meaning no harm is not enough, Swift. If you would be Old Blood, then you must respect our rules and ways all the time, not just when it suits you.”

    “And if I don't?” Swift asked sullenly.

    “Then call yourself a Piebald, for that is what you will be.” Web drew in a heavy breath and then sighed it out. “Or an outcast,” he said softly. I felt that he tried not to look at me as he spoke those last words. “Why any man would wish to remain apart from his own, I do not know.”

WUISLINGTON

    The attachment that the women have to their clan lands is remarkable. They often refer to tales that the earth itself is made from Eda's flesh and bones while the sea belongs to El. All land belongs to the women of the clan; the men born into a clan may tend the land and help with the harvest, but the women determine the distribution of the harvest and also decree what crops will be planted and where and in what proportions. It is not merely a matter of ownership, but a matter of Eda's worship.

    Men may be buried anywhere, and most often are given to the sea. But all women must be buried within their own clan fields. The graves are honored for seven years, during which time the burial field is left fallow. After that, they are plowed again, and the first harvest from such a field is served in a special feast.

    While the Outislander men are wanderers and may remain away from their home ports for years, the women tend to stay close to the lands of their birth. In marriage, they expect their husbands to reside with them. If an Outislander woman dies away from her clan lands, extraordinary efforts will be made to return her body to her clan fields. To do otherwise is both great shame and serious sacrilege for the woman's clan. The clans will willingly go to war to repatriate a woman's body to her home.

    --“AN ACCOUNT OF TRAVEL IN A BARBAROUS LAND,”

    BY SCRIBE FEDWREN

    We were guests at Wuislington at the Narcheska's mothershouse for twelve days. It was a strange hospitality they offered us. Chade and Prince Dutiful were allotted sleeping space on the benches in the lower level of the house. The Witted coterie was housed alongside the guardsmen outside the walls. Thick and I continued in our cottage, with Swift and Riddle as frequent visitors. Every day, Chade sent two of the guards into the village to purchase victuals. They brought a share to us in the cottage, some to the guards, and the rest back to the mothershouse. Although Blackwater had promised to feed us, Chade had chosen this tactic shrewdly. To be seen as dependent on the Narwhal mothershouse largesse would be seen as a weakness and a foolish lack of planning.

    There were good aspects to our extended stay. Thick began to recover his health. He still coughed and was short of breath if he went for a walk, but he slept more naturally, took an interest in his surroundings, ate and drank, and generally recovered some of his spirits. He still held it against me that I had forced him to travel there in a ship and that he would eventually have to leave in the same way. Every effort at casual conversation that I made always seemed to lead us back to that bone of contention. Sometimes it seemed easier not to speak to him at all, but then I sensed his anger for me as a simmering displeasure. I hated that things had become uncomfortable between us when I had worked so hard to gain his trust. When I said as much to Chade during one of our brief meetings, he dismissed it as necessary. “It would be far worse if he blamed it on Dutiful, you see. In this, you will have to be the whipping boy, Fitz.” I knew it was so, and yet his words were no comfort.

    Riddle spent several hours daily with Thick, usually when Chade wanted me to keep an unobtrusive eye on Dutiful. Web and Swift often came to the cottage. Swift seemed chastened by Web's rebuke and appeared generally more respectful to both Web and myself. I kept the lad busy with daily lessons and demanded that he practice his bow as well as his swordsmanship. Thick would come to sit outside the cottage and watch our mock battles in the sheep enclosure. He always cheered for Swift, bellowing his pleasure every time the boy landed a blow with the bound swords we used. I confess that bruised my feelings as much as Swift's thwacks bruised my flesh. It was my own skills more than his that I wished to keep sharp, but teaching the boy not only gave me an excuse to practice, it also allowed me to demonstrate my proficiency to the Outislanders. They did not gather to watch, but from time to time I would glimpse a lad or two perched on a nearby wall, eyeing us. I resolved that if I must be spied upon, I would see that the reports of me were that I was not easy prey. I did not think that their scrutiny was casual curiosity.

    I felt constantly watched in that place. Wherever I went, always it seemed there was someone nearby, idly lingering. I could not have pointed to a single boy or old woman who spied on me, and yet there were always eyes on my back. I felt too a sense of danger to Thick. It was in the glances he received whenever we went out, and in the reaction of the folk we encountered. They drew back from him as if he carried contagion, and stared after us as if he were a two-headed calf. Even Thick seemed aware of it. I realized that, without consciously thinking of it, he seemed to use the Skill to be less noticed. It was not like his blast of “You don't see me!” that had once nearly laid me low, but more a constant announcement of his unimportance. I stored the knowledge away as something worth discussing with Chade.

    I had little true time with my old mentor, and the Skill-messages I relayed to him were brief. We all felt it was more important that he use his Skill-strength in being available to Dutiful. Chade had also decided that as Peottre Blackwater had already discerned that I was a bodyguard for the Prince, there was no harm in my more openly pursuing that role. “As long as he does not realize you are any more than that,” Chade cautioned me.

    I tried to be an unobtrusive observer and guard to the Prince. Although Dutiful never complained I think he was uncomfortable with my constant lurking presence. The rest of the settlement regarded Dutiful and Elliania as a married couple now. There was no effort to chaperone them in any way. Only Peottre's presence, as subtle as a standing stone, reminded us that some in the Narcheska's family would see that their relationship remained chaste until Dutiful had fulfilled his end of the bargain. I think Peottre and I watched one another as much as we watched Dutiful and the Narcheska. In a strange way, we became partners.