Fool's Quest (The Fitz and The Fool Trilogy #2)

Fool's Quest (The Fitz and The Fool Trilogy #2) Page 118

“Why?” Chade demanded.

“Because I need to talk to the Fool. I need to tell him what has happened here, describe the people involved, and see if he has any insights into what they might want and where they might take our daughters. I doubt you will wring much more from my folk.” I did not admit that I dreaded hearing what my kitchen servants would recall, especially little Elm. Several of the stablefolk had been reduced to incoherency when given the tea and allowed to recall what they had experienced. Families had been decimated by the silent slaughter in the stables. With each retainer re-woken to that horror, the susurrus of forget, forget, forget lessened. Even those who had not yet been dosed appeared uneasy now, and as each person who entered my study emerged weeping or silent or drained, the atmosphere of dread in the manor increased. When I left my study, I noticed servants staring at the damaged doors or slashed tapestries as they came to terms with what they had experienced, forgotten, and now recalled.

Chade cleared his throat, drawing my wandering attention back. “We will both return to Buckkeep. I suggest that after the evening meal we summon all the remaining servants and offer them the tea together. We can ask then for specific information about the appearance of the invaders and the fate of Shine and Bee. I doubt that we shall discover much that is new, but we would be foolish to ignore the chance that any one of them might hold one more hint of what we are up against.”

I resented that he was right. I longed to do something more than sit and listen to my people recount how they had been brutalized. I excused myself from the remainder of his tea parties, knowing that if he discovered anything of great significance, he would summon me. I checked on Thick to be sure he was occupied and comfortable, and found him with FitzVigilant. No. Lant, I reminded myself. A bastard, but never Vigilant’s. The two were well known to each other from their time together at Buckkeep and I was pleased that Lant seemed genuinely fond of Thick. A somewhat subdued Lant was allowing Thick to draw on the wax tablets we had acquired for his students, and he was fascinated that he could scribe onto the surface and then watch it smoothed away.

I left them and moved slowly through Withywoods. Nowhere could I hide from the disaster that had befallen me. The faces of the servants I encountered were pale and troubled. The raiders had wantonly destroyed items too large to carry off with them. Blinded by forgetfulness, my people had not cleaned or repaired any of the damage. An arc of blood droplets on one wall spoke of someone’s death; I did not even know whose.

My people and my home, I would have said at one time. I’d been proud of how I’d taken care of the folk here, paid them well, and treated them well. Now that illusion was as broken as a smashed egg. I’d failed to protect them. The pretty rainbow of rooms that we had restored for Bee and Shun seemed a useless vanity. The heart of my home had been stolen; I could not even bring myself to visit the mounded snow on Molly’s grave. As a holder and as a father, I had failed miserably. I’d grown slovenly and careless, let my guard down so far that it had protected nothing at all. I could not distinguish the shame I felt from the fear that coiled and writhed in my guts. Was Bee alive and abused and terrified? Or dead and discarded in the snow at the edge of some seldom-used road? If they believed her the son and discovered she was a girl, how would they react? None of my answers to that question pleased me. Would they torment her before they killed her? Did they torture her even now, as they had tortured the Fool? I could not stand to consider those questions and I could not afford to focus on them.

I put people to work. It was the only exercise I knew that might occupy their minds as they absorbed what had been done to them. I visited the temporary quarters for what horses remained to us and found my stableworkers already mustering there. I spoke briefly of our losses, and listened longer to what they had to tell me. None of them faulted me, and somehow that woke the coals of my shame and guilt to a hotter fire. I told Cinch to step up to being stablemaster for Withywoods. He’d served under Tallerman, and I valued Perseverance’s tight nod to my decision. I gave him the authority to send for carpenters and lumber, and to order the cleanup of the burnt building.

“We’ll set a fire and burn what remains, then,” he informed me. “There are bodies of men in there, alongside the remains of creatures they cared for. We’ll let them go to smoke and ash together, and this time as they burn, we’ll remember well who they were.”

I thanked him. My hair had not grown much in the months since I’d sheared it for Molly’s death; I could not even band it into a warrior’s tail. But with my knife I cut as long a lock as I could from my scalp and gave it to Cinch, asking that he be sure it was burned when they torched the stable again. He took my emblem of mourning from me gravely and promised me it would burn alongside his own.