“Will you come in and close the door, or did you merely wish to stand there and gawp?” he demanded peevishly. “It is late at night, Tom Badgerlock. Scarcely the hour for casual visitors.”

I shut the door behind me. “I know. I apologize for that, but when I’ve come round at more reasonable times, you haven’t been here.”

“Did you forget something when you left my service and moved out of your chambers? That hideous tapestry, perhaps?”

“No.” I sighed and decided that I would not let him force me back into that role. “I missed you. And I’ve regretted, over and over, that stupid argument I began with you when Jek was here. It is as you warned me. I’ve been doomed to remember it every day, and every day wished I could unsay those words.” I walked over to his hearth and dropped into one of the chairs by the dwindling fire. There was a decanter of brandy on a small table beside it and a glass with a drop or two left in the bottom.

“I’ve no idea what you are talking about. And I was just about to seek my bed. So. Your business here, Badgerlock?”

“Be angry with me if you wish. I suppose I deserve it. Be whatever you have to be with me. But stop this charade and be yourself. That’s all I ask.”

He stood silent for a moment, looking at me with haughty disapproval. And then he came to take the other chair. He poured himself more brandy without offering me any. I could smell that it was the apricot one that we had shared in my cabin less than a year ago. He sipped it and then observed, “Be myself. And who would that be?” He set down the glass, leaned back in his chair, and crossed his arms on his chest.

“I don’t know. I wish you were the Fool,” I said quietly. “But I think we have come too far to go back to that pretense. Yet, if we could, I would. Willingly.” I looked away from him. I kicked at the end of a hearth log, pushing it farther into the fire and waking new flames in a gust of sparks. “When I think of you now, I do not even know how to name you to myself. You are not Lord Golden to me. You never truly were. Yet you are not the Fool anymore, either.” I steeled myself as the words came to me, unplanned but obvious. How could the truth be so difficult to say?

For a teetering instant, I feared he would misunderstand my words. Then I knew that he would know exactly what I meant by them. For years, he had shown that he understood my feelings, in the silences he kept. Before we parted company, I had to repair, somehow, the rift between us. The words were the only tool I had. They echoed of the old magic, of the power one gained when one knew someone’s true name. I was determined. And yet, the utterance still came awkward to my tongue.

“You said once that I might call you ‘Beloved,’ if I no longer wished to call you ‘Fool.’ ” I took a breath. “Beloved, I have missed your company.”

He lifted a hand and covered his mouth. Then he disguised the gesture by rubbing his chin as if he thought something through carefully. I do not know what expression he hid behind his palm. When he dropped his hand from his face, he was smiling wryly. “Don’t you think that might cause some talk about the keep?”

I let his comment pass for I had no answer to it. He had spoken to me in the Fool’s mocking voice. Even as it soothed my heart, I had to wonder if it was a sham for my benefit. Did he show me what I wished to see, or what he was?

“Well.” He sighed. “I suppose that if you were going to have an appropriate name for me, it would still be Fool. So let us leave it at that, Fitzy. To you, I am the Fool.” He looked into the fire and laughed softly. “It balances, I suppose. Whatever is to come for us, I will always have these words to recall now.” He looked at me and nodded gravely, as if thanking me for returning something precious to him.

There were so many things I wanted to discuss with him. I wanted to review the Prince’s mission and talk about Web and ask him why he now gambled so much and what his wild extravagances meant. But I suddenly wanted to add no more words to what we had said tonight. As he had said, it balanced now. It was a hovering scale between us; I would chance no word that might tip it awry again. I nodded to him and rose slowly. When I reached the door, I said quietly, “Then, good night, Fool.” I opened the door and went out into the corridor.

“Good night, beloved,” he said from his fireside chair. I shut the door softly behind myself.

Epilogue

The hand that once wielded both sword and axe now aches after an evening of the quill. When I wipe the tip of one clean, I often wonder how many buckets of ink I have used in a lifetime. How many words have I set down on paper or vellum, thinking to trap the truth thereby? And of those words, how many have I myself consigned to the flames as worthless and wrong? I do as I have done so many times. I write, I sand the wet ink, I consider my own words. Then I burn them. Perhaps when I do so, the truth goes up the chimney as smoke. Is it destroyed, or set free in the world? I do not know.