“Batter away,” he suggested quietly. “New bruises will not show much atop the old ones. I can creep about unseen for a few more days.”

I snatched my hand back from him. Strange, how the act I had been about to commit now seemed so monstrous when I discovered someone else had already done it. As soon as I released him, he turned away from me, as if his discolored and swollen face shamed him. Perhaps the pallor of his skin and his delicate bone structure made it all the more horrifying to me. It was as if someone had done this to a child. I knelt by the fire and began to build it up.

“Didn’t get a good enough look?” the Fool asked acidly. “I’ll warn you, it gets no better by giving more light to it.”

“Sit on my clothes chest and take your shirt off,” I told him brusquely. He didn’t move. I ignored that. I had a small kettle for tea water. This I set to heat. I lit a branch of candles and set them atop the table, and then took out my small store of herbs. I did not keep that many in my room; I wished now I had Burrich’s full store to draw on, but I was sure that if I left to go to the stables, the Fool would be gone when I returned. Still, those I kept in my room were mostly for bruises and cuts and the types of injuries my other profession exposed me to most often. They would do.

When the water was warm, I poured some into my washbasin and added a generous handful of herbs, crushing them as I did so. I found an outgrown shirt in my clothing chest and tore it into rags. “Come into the light.” This I phrased as a request. After a moment he did so, but moving hesitantly and shyly. I looked at him briefly, then took him by the shoulders and sat him down atop my clothing chest. “What happened to you?” I asked, awed by the damage to his face. His lips were cut and swollen, and one eye swollen near closed.

“I’ve been going about Buckkeep, asking bad-tempered individuals if they’ve fathered bastards lately.” His one good eye met my glare straight on. Red webbed the white of it. I found I could neither be angry with him, nor laugh.

“You should know enough medicine to take better care of something like this. Sit still now.” I made the rag into a compress, held it gently but firmly to his face. After a moment he relaxed. I sponged away some dried blood. There wasn’t much; he had obviously cleaned himself up after this beating, but some of the cuts had continued to ooze blood. I ran my fingers lightly down the lines of his jaw, and around his eye sockets. At least no bone seemed damaged. “Who did this to you?” I asked him.

“I walked into a series of doors. Or the same one several times. It depends on which door you ask.” He spoke glibly for someone with mashed lips.

“That was a serious question,” I told him.

“As was mine.”

I glared at him again and he dropped his eyes. For a moment neither of us spoke as I searched out a pot of salve Burrich had given me for cuts and scrapes. “I’d really like to know the answer,” I reminded him as I took the lid off the pot. The familiar biting scent rose to my nostrils, and I suddenly missed Burrich with an amazing intensity.

“As would I.” He flinched slightly under my touch as I applied the salve. I knew it stung. I also knew it worked.

“Why do you ask such a question of me?” I finally demanded.

He considered a moment. “Because it is easier to ask of you than to ask Kettricken if she carries Verity’s child. As far as I can determine, Regal has shared his favors only with himself of late, so that dismisses him. You or Verity, then, must be the father.”

I looked at him blankly. He shook his head sadly for me. “Cannot you feel it?” he asked in a near whisper. He stared off in the distance dramatically. “Forces shift. Shadows flutter. Suddenly there is a rippling in the possibilities. A reordering of the futures, as destinies multiply. All paths diverge, and diverge again.” He looked back to me. I smiled at him, thinking he jested, but his mouth was sober. “There is an heir to the Farseer line,” he said quietly. “I am certain of it.”

Have you ever missed a step in the dark? There is that sudden feeling of teetering on the edge, and no knowledge of how far you may fall. I said, far too firmly, “I have fathered no child.”

The Fool regarded me with a skeptical eye. “Ah,” he said with false heartiness. “Of course not. Then it must be Kettricken who is carrying.”

“It must,” I agreed, but my heart sank. If Kettricken were pregnant, she would have no reason to conceal it. Whereas Molly would. And I had not been to see Molly in several nights. Perhaps she had news for me. I felt suddenly dizzied, but I forced myself to take a long calming breath. “Take your shirt off,” I told the Fool. “Let’s see your chest.”