“Then we should send for her now.”

“Traveling conditions are so harsh …”

“There is that. But in a comfortable carriage, accompanied by my personal guard, she might do well. Even through the storms. I am sure they will manage to find respectable inns every night.”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought.”

The look she gave me implied her plan was immutable. “I have,” she said, and with that settled, she changed the topic. “How fares Lord Golden?”

I started to shake my head and then shrugged instead. She had made her plans for Bee, but I would let her distract me while I planned my own campaign. “Better than he was, in some ways. Warm, clean, fed, and some of his lesser injuries have begun to heal. But he is still closer to death’s door than to the gates of health.”

For a moment, her years showed on her face. “I could scarcely believe it was him. If you had not been there to vouch for it, I would never have suspected it. Fitz, what happened to him? Who did this?”

I wondered if the Fool would want his tale shared. “I am still drawing the full tale out of him.”

“When last I saw him, years ago, he said he would return to the place where he was taught.”

“And he did.”

“And they turned on him.”

Kettricken could still take me by surprise with her leaps of intuition. “So I believe. Lady Kettricken, I am sure you recall how private a man the Fool was.”

“And is. I know what you will next suggest, that I visit him myself. And I shall. In truth, I have already called on him twice, and each time found him sleeping. But visits would be much easier for me if you and Lord Chade had not squirreled him away into your old den. I’m a bit old to be stooping and scuttling through narrow hideaways. Surely he would be better off in a chamber that offered him light and air.”

“He is fearful of pursuit, even within the stout walls of Buckkeep. I think he will sleep best where he is right now. And as for light, well, it means little to him now.”

She shuddered as if my words were arrows that had struck her. She turned her face away, as if to hide from me the tears that filled her eyes. “That grieves me beyond words,” she choked out.

“And me.”

“Is there any hope that with the Skill …?”

The very question I still pondered. “I do not know. He is very weak. I do not wish to restore his sight if it takes the last of his strength and he dies of it. We will have to be very cautious. We have made some small progress already, and as he eats and rests and gains strength, we will do more.”

She nodded violently to that. “Please. But, oh, Fitz, why? Why would anyone treat him so?”

“They thought he knew something, and was keeping it from them.”

“What?”

I hesitated.

She turned back to face me. Weeping seldom makes a lady lovelier. Her nose had reddened and the rims of her eyes had gone pink. She no longer tried to disguise the tears running down her face. Her voice was harsh. “I deserve to know, Fitz. Do not play Chade with me. What secret could possibly be worth resisting what they did to him?”

I looked at my feet, ashamed. She did deserve to know. “He knew no secret. He had no knowledge to give them. They demanded to know where his son was. To me he has said that he has no knowledge of any such son.”

“A son.” A strange look came over her face, as if she could not decide whether to laugh or weep. “So. Are you finally giving a definite answer to the question Starling put to him so many years ago? He is, then, a man?”

I took breath, paused, and then replied, “Kettricken, he is what he is. A very private person.”

She cocked her head at me. “Well, if the Fool had given birth to a son, I think he would remember that. So that leaves him only the male role.”

I started to say that not every child was fathered in the same way. The thought of how King Verity had borrowed my body to lie with her, leaving me for a night in his old man’s skin, swept through my mind like a storm. I folded my lips on my words and looked aside from her.

“I will visit him,” she said quietly.

I nodded, relieved. There was a tap at her door. “I should go now, so you may meet your next supplicant.”

“No, you should stay. The next visitor concerns you.”

I was not entirely surprised when a page ushered Web into the room. He halted inside the door while two serving girls entered with trays of refreshments. They arranged everything on a low table while we all looked at one another. Web scowled briefly at my disguise, and I saw him reorder his impression of the man he had glimpsed last night. It was not the first time he had witnessed me assume a different character. As he evaluated me in my new guise, I studied him as well.