“Because you Skillburned it into him,” the Fool said quietly.

“Perhaps,” I admitted unwillingly. Certainly the next day had been one long torment of headache and Skillhunger. The thought made me uneasy. I had been telling myself that I could not Skill that way. Certain other dreams stirred uneasily in my memory. I pushed them down again. No, I promised myself. They were not the same.

“It was the deck of a ship,” he said quietly. “And it's quite likely you saved my life.” He took a breath. “I thought something like that might have happened. It never made sense to me that he didn't get rid of me when he could have. Sometimes, when I was most alone, I mocked myself that I could cling to such a hope. That I could believe I was so important to anyone that he would travel in his dreams to protect me.”

“You should have known better than that,” I said quietly.

“Should I?” The question was almost a challenge. He gave me the most direct look I had ever received from him. I did not understand the hurt I saw in his eyes, nor the hope. He needed something from me, but I wasn't sure what it was. I tried to find something to say, but before I could, the moment seemed to pass. He looked away from me, releasing me from his plea. When his eyes came back to mine, he changed both his expression and the subject.

“So. What happened to you after I flew away?”

The question took me aback. “I thought . . . but you said you had not seen Chade for years. How did you know how to find me, then?”

By way of answer, he closed his eyes, and then brought his left and right forefingers together to meet before him. He opened his eyes and smiled at me. I knew it was as much answer as I would get.

“I scarcely know where to begin.”

“I do. With more brandy.”

He flowed effortlessly to his feet. I let him take my empty cup. I set a hand on Nighteyes' head and felt him hovering between sleep and wakefulness. If his hips still troubled him, he was concealing it well. He was getting better and better at holding himself apart from me. I wondered why he concealed his pain.

Do you wish to share your aching back with me? Leave me alone and stop borrowing trouble. Not every problem in the world belongs to you. He lifted his head from my knee and with a deep sigh stretched out more fully before the hearth. Like a curtain falling between us, he masked himself once more.

I rose slowly, one hand pressed against my back to still my own ache. The wolf was right. Sometimes there waslittle point to sharing pain. The Fool refilled both our cups with his apricot brandy. I sat down at the table and he set mine before me. His own he kept in his hand as he wandered about the room. He paused before Verity's unfin' ished map of the Six Duchies on my wall, glanced into the nook that was Hap's sleeping alcove, and then leaned in the door of my bedchamber. When Hap had come to live with me, I had added an additional chamber that I referred to as my study. It had its own small hearth, as well as my desk and a scroll rack. The Fool paused at the door to it, then stepped boldly inside. I watched him. It was like watching a cat explore a strange house. He touched nothing, yet appeared to see everything. “A lot of scrolls,” he observed from the other room.

I raised my voice to reach him. “I've been trying to write a history of the Six Duchies. It was something that Patience and Fedwren proposed years ago, back when I was a boy. It helps to occupy my time of an evening.” “I see. May I?”

I nodded. He seated himself at my desk, and unrolled the scroll on the stone game. “Ah, yes, I remember this.”

“Chade wants it when I am finished with it. I've sent him things, from time to time, via Starling. But up until a month or so ago, I hadn't seen him since we parted in the Mountains.”

“Ah. But you had seen Starling.” His back was to me. I wondered what expression he wore. The Fool and the minstrel had never gotten along well together. For a time, they had made an uneasy truce, but I had always been a bone of contention between them. The Fool had never approved of my friendship with Starling, had never believed she had my best interests at heart. That didn't make it any easier to let him know he had always been right.

“For a time, I saw Starling. On and off for, what, seven or eight years. She was the one who brought Hap to me about seven years ago. He's just turned fifteen. He's not home right now; he's hired out in the hopes of gaining more coin for an apprenticeship fee. He wants to be a cabinetmaker. He does good work, for a lad; both the desk and the scroll rack are his work. Yet I don't know if he has the patience for detail that a good joiner must have. Still, it's what his heart is set on, and he wants to apprentice to a cabinetmaker in Buckkeep Town. Gindast is the joiner's name, and he's a master. Even I have heard of him. If I had realized Hap would set his heart so high, I'd have saved more over the years. But ”