“I’ve seen it, thank you, and I assure you it’s fine. When they popped the bag over my head, I presume it was to provide a target. They were most conscientious about striking nowhere else.”

The brutality of what they had done to him sickened me into silence. “Who?” I finally managed to ask.

“With a bag over my head? Come now. Can you see through a bag?”

“No. But you must have suspicions.”

He canted his head at me in disbelief. “If you do not know what those suspicions are already, then you are the one with your head in a bag. Let me cut a bit of a hole for you. ‘We know you are false to the King, that you spy for Verity the pretender. Send him no more messages, for if you do, we shall know of it.’” He turned to stare into the fire, swung his heels briefly, thunk, thunk, thunk, against my clothing chest.

“Verity the pretender?” I asked in outrage.

“Not my words. Theirs,” he pointed out.

I forced my anger down, tried to think. “Why would they suspect you spy for Verity? Have you sent him messages?”

“I have a King,” he said softly. “Although he does not always remember he is my king. You must look out for your king. As I am sure you do.”

“What will you do?”

“What I have always done. What else can I do? I cannot stop doing what they command me to stop, for I have never begun it.”

A creeping certainty shivered up my spine. “And if they act again?”

He gave a lifeless laugh. “There is no point to my worrying about it, for I cannot prevent it. That is not to say I look forward to it. This,” he said, with a half gesture toward his face. “This will heal. What they did to my room will not. I shall be weeks picking up that mess.”

The words trivialized it. A terrible hollow feeling welled up in me. I had been in the Fool’s tower chamber once. It had been a long climb up a disused staircase, past the dust and litter of years, to a chamber that looked out over the parapets and contained a garden of wonder. I thought of the bright fish swimming in the fat pots, the moss gardens in their containers, the tiny ceramic child, so meticulously cared for, in its cradle. I closed my eyes as he added to the flames, “They were most thorough. Silly me. To think there was such a thing as a safe place in the world.”

I could not look at him. Save for his tongue, he was a defenseless person whose only drive was to serve his king. And save the world. Yet someone had smashed his world. Worse, I suspected the beating he had taken was in revenge for something I had done.

“I could help you set it to rights,” I offered quietly.

He shook his head tightly, quickly twice. “I think not,” he said. Then he added in a more normal voice, “No offense intended.”

“None taken.”

I bundled the cleansing herbs with the pot of salve and the leftover rags from my shirt. He hopped off my clothes chest. When I offered them to him, he took them gravely. He walked to the door, stiffly despite his claims that they had only damaged his face. At the door he turned. “When you know for certain, you will tell me?” He paused significantly. His voice dropped. “After all, if this is what they do to a King’s fool, what might they do to a woman carrying a King-in-Waiting’s heir?”

“They wouldn’t dare,” I said fiercely.

He snorted disdain. “Wouldn’t they? I no longer know what they would or would not dare, FitzChivalry. Neither do you. I’d find a sounder way to latch my door, if I were you. Unless you wish to find your head in a bag as well.” He gave a smile that wasn’t even a shadow of his usual mocking grin, and slipped out again. I walked to the door after he had left it, and dropped the bar into place. I leaned my back against it and sighed.

“It’s all very well for the rest of them, Verity,” I said aloud to the silent room. “But for myself, I think you should turn yourself about right now and ride home. There’s more afoot than Red-Ships, and somehow I misdoubt that Elderlings would be much help against the other threats we face.”

I waited, hoping to feel some sort of acknowledgment or agreement from him. There was nothing. My frustrations whirled in me. I was seldom certain of when Verity was aware with me, and never sure if he sensed the thoughts I wished to send him. I wondered again at why he did not direct Serene as to the actions he wished taken. He had Skilled to her all summer about Red-Ships; why was he so silent now? Had he Skilled to her already, and she concealed it? Or revealed it, perhaps, to Regal only. I considered it. Perhaps the bruises on the Fool’s face reflected Regal’s frustration at finding Verity aware of what was going on in his absence. Why he had chosen the Fool as the culprit was anyone’s guess. Perhaps he had simply chosen him as a vent for his rage. The Fool had never avoided offending Regal. Or anyone else.