“Starling?” His query reined me back from my musings on the boy.

It was hard to admit it. “She's married now. I don't know how long. The boy found it out when he went to Springfest at Buckkeep with her. He came home and told me.” I shrugged one shoulder. “I had to end it between us. She knew I would when I found out. It still made her angry. She couldn't understand why it couldn't continue, as long as her husband never found out.”

“That's Starling.” His voice was oddly nonjudgmental, as if he commiserated with me over a garden blight. He turned in the chair to look at me over his shoulder. “And you're all right?”

I cleared my throat. “I've kept busy. And not thought about it much.”

“Because she felt no shame at all, you think it must all belong to you. People like her are so adept at passing on blame. This is a lovely red ink on this. Where did you get it?”

“I made it.”

“Did you?” Curious as a child, he unstopped one of the ink bottles on my desk and stuck in his little finger. It came out tipped in scarlet. He regarded it for a moment. “I kept Burrich's earring,” he suddenly admitted. “I never took it to Molly.”

“I see that. I'm just as glad you didn't. It's better that neither of them know I survived.”

“Ah. Another question answered.” He drew a snowy kerchief from inside his pocket and ruined it by wiping the red ink from his finger. “So. Are you going to tell me all the events in order, or must I pry bits out of you one at a time?”

I sighed. I dreaded recalling those times. Chade had been willing to accept an account of the events that related to the Farseer reign. The Fool would want more than that. Even as I cringed from it, I could not evade the notion that somehow I owed him that telling. “I'll try. But I'm tired, and we've had too much brandy, and it's far too much to tell in one evening.”

He tipped back in my chair. “Were you expecting me to leave tomorrow?”

“I thought you might.” I watched his face as I added, “I didn't hope it.”

He accepted me at my word. “That's good, then, for you would have hoped in vain. To bed with you, Fitz. I'll take the boy's cot. Tomorrow is soon enough to begin to fill in nearly fifteen years of absence.”

The Fool's apricot brandy was more potent than the Sandsedge, or perhaps I was simply wearier than usual. I staggered to my room, dragged off my shirt, and dropped into my bed. I lay there, the room rocking gently around me, and listened to his light footfalls as he moved about in the main room, extinguishing candles and pulling in the latchstring. Perhaps only I could have seen the slight unsteadiness in his movements. Then he sat down in my chair and stretched his legs toward the fire. At his feet, the wolf groaned and shifted in his sleep. I touched minds gently with Nighteyes; he was deeply asleep and welling contentment.

I closed my eyes, but the room spun sickeningly. I opened them a crack and stared at the Fool. He sat very still as he stared into the fire, but the dancing light of the flames lent their motion to his features. The angles of his face were hidden and then revealed as the shadows shifted. The gold of his skin and eyes seemed a trick of the firelight, but I knew they were not.

It was hard to realize he was no longer the impish jester who had both served and protected King Shrewd for all those years. His body had not changed, save in coloring. His graceful, longfingered hands dangled off the arms of the chair. His hair, once as pale and airy as dandelion fluff, was now bound back from his face and confined to a golden queue. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the chair. Firelight bronzed his aristocratic profile. His present grand clothes might recall his old winter motley of black and white, but I wagered he would never again wear bells and ribbons and carry a ratheaded scepter. His lively wit and sharp tongue no longer influenced the course of political events. His life was his own now. I tried to imagine him as a wealthy man, able to travel and live as he pleased. A sudden thought jolted me from my complacency.

“Fool?” I called aloud in the darkened room.

“What?” He did not open his eyes but his ready reply showed he had not yet slipped toward sleep.

“You are not the Fool anymore. What do they call you these days?”

A slow smile curved his lips in profile. “What does whocall me when?”

He spoke in the baiting tone of the jester he had been. If I tried to sort out that question, he would tumble me in verbal acrobatics until I gave up hoping for an answer. I refused to be drawn into his game. I rephrased my question. “I should not call you Fool anymore. What do you want me to call you?”