And the Fool was there. The last time, he had been deeply unconscious, unaware of how I moved through him with his blood. Now I felt his hands come to rest on mine. That would help. I knew how his face had looked but he would recall how his face had felt. I started with my fingertips under his eyes. I called to mind the drawings in Chade’s old scrolls from the Flayer, and the human skull that probably still reposed in the cabinet in the corner. I whispered as our hands moved together. “When adjacent bone breaks, sometimes it fuses incorrectly. Here. Feel that? We need to undo that.”

And so we worked, not quickly. We moved bone, bit by tiny bit. Where his face had broken, it had healed with ridges and seams. Some reminded me of the cracks one makes when one taps a hard-boiled egg before shelling it. It was not something to be hurried, the painstaking exploration of the bones of his face. As we worked, touch and Skill combined, and we followed one fine crack down from the lower rim of his left eye to his upper jaw. The tops of his cheekbones were a maze of tiny cracks. At the outer corner of his right eye, a hard blow had crushed bone, leaving an indentation that pressed on the tissue beneath it. We worked for some time, moving tiny bits of bone to both ease pressure and fill the hollow.

To describe it makes it seem a simple thing. It wasn’t. The tiny movements of minuscule motes of bone were still a breaking away and a re-forming. I clenched my jaws against the Fool’s pain until my own head pounded with it. We did no more than the lower expanses below both his eyes. My strength was flagging and my determination failing me when the Fool lifted his hands from the backs of mine.

“Stop. Stop, Fitz. I am so tired now. It hurts. And the pain wakes all the memories.”

“Very well,” I agreed hoarsely, but it took some time for me to separate my awareness from his body. I felt as if I returned to my own flesh from a long and vivid nightmare. The last step of that withdrawal was my lifting of my hands from his face. When I opened my eyes to regard him, the room swam before me. I felt a moment of terror. I’d gone too far and damaged my sight! But it was only weariness. As I stared, the dim room yielded to my vision. I shuddered with relief. The candles had burned down to half their length. I did not know how much time had passed, but my shirt was sweated to my back and my mouth as dry as if I had run to Buckkeep Town and back. As soon as I released the Fool from my touch, he dropped his face into his hands and cradled it, his elbows on the table.

“Fool. Sit up. Open your eyes. Tell me if we accomplished anything.”

He obeyed me but he shook his head as he did so. “I did not close my eyes. I kept them open. Hoping. But nothing changed.”

“I’m sorry.” And I was. I was sorry he was blind and fiercely glad I had not lost my own sight trying to heal his. I had to ask myself how hard I had truly tried. Had I been holding back? I didn’t want to think I had, but I could not find an honest answer. I thought of telling the Fool my fear. What would he ask of me? That I help him regain sight in one eye by giving up one of mine? Would he demand that much of me? Would I agree or deny him? I measured myself and found I was less courageous than I’d believed. And more selfish. I leaned back in my own chair and closed my eyes for a time.

I jolted awake when the Fool touched my arm.

“So you were asleep. You suddenly became very quiet. Fitz. Will you be all right?” There was apology in his voice.

“I will. I’m just very tired. Last night’s … revelation exhausted me. And I didn’t sleep well.” I reached up to rub my eyes, and flinched at my own touch. My face was swollen and warm to the touch, as if I’d been in a fight.

Oh.

I gingerly prodded the tops of my cheekbones and the outer sockets of my eyes. Even if I had not given him his vision back, I would pay a toll for what I had done.

Why?

None of the other Skill-healings I’d assisted with had affected me this way. Thick had done a prodigious amount of healing on Aslevjal Island and shown no ill effects at all. The only difference that came to my mind was my connection to the Fool. It was far more than a Skill-connection: When I had called him back from the other side of death, we had had a moment of profound joining. Perhaps we had never truly parted.

I blinked and measured my vision again. I noticed no difference, no hazing. I was almost certain that while we had repaired bone, we hadn’t done anything that would benefit his eyesight. I wondered if I would have the courage to attempt any further healing. I thought of all I had glimpsed that was broken inside him, all the lingering infections and badly healed damage. How much of that must I take on if I continued my attempts to heal him? Could anyone fault me for refusing to make such a sacrifice? I cleared my throat.