‘Fitz.’
‘Fitz!’
‘FITZ!’
Someone seized me and jerked me back. I lost my balance and fell. Someone tried to catch me, failed and I struck the floor hard. It knocked the wind out of me. I gasped and wheezed and then opened my eyes. It took a moment for me to make sense of what I saw. The dying firelight illuminated Chade standing over me. His face was seized with horror as he stared down at me. I struggled to speak and could not. I was so weary, so very tired. Sweat was drying on my body, and my clothing clung to me where it was soaked. I lifted my head and became aware that the Fool was slumped forward on the table. The red light of the fire showed me pus oozing from a dozen injuries on his back. I rolled my head and my gaze met Chade’s horrified stare.
‘Fitz, what were you doing?’ he demanded, as if he had caught me in some foul and disgusting act.
I tried to draw breath to respond. He looked away from me and I became aware that someone else had entered the room. Nettle. I knew her as she brushed against my Skill-sense. ‘What happened here?’ she demanded, and then as she stepped close enough to see the Fool’s bared back, she gasped in dismay. ‘Did Fitz do this?’ she demanded of Chade.
‘I don’t know. Build up the fire and bring more candles!’ he ordered in a trembling voice as he sank into the chair I had left empty. He set his shaking hands on his knees and leaned down toward me. ‘Boy! What were you doing?’
I’d remembered how to pull air into my lungs. ‘Trying to stop …’ I pulled in another breath, ‘the poisons.’ It was so hard to roll over. I ached in every fibre of my body. When I set my hands to the floor to try to lever myself up, they were wet. Slippery. I lifted them and brought them up to my eyes. They were dripping with watery blood and fluid. Chade shoved a table napkin into my hands.
Nettle had thrown wood on the fire and it was catching. Now she kindled fresh candles and replaced the ones that had burned to stubs. ‘It stinks,’ she said, looking at the Fool. ‘They’re all open and running.’
‘Heat clean water,’ Chade told her.
‘Shouldn’t we summon the healers?’
‘Too much to explain, and if he dies it were better that it did not have to be explained at all. Fitz. Get up. Talk to us.’
Nettle was like her mother, stronger than one expected a small woman to be. I had managed to sit up and she seized me under my arms and helped me to my feet. I caught my weight on the chair and nearly overset it. ‘I feel terrible,’ I said. ‘So weak. So tired.’
‘So now perhaps you know how Riddle felt after you burned his strength so carelessly,’ she responded tartly.
Chade took command of the conversation. ‘Fitz. Why did you cut the Fool like this? Did you quarrel?’
‘He didn’t cut the Fool.’ Nettle had found the water I’d left warming by the fire. She wet the same cloth I’d used earlier, wrung it out, and wiped it gingerly down the Fool’s back. Her nose wrinkled and her mouth was pinched tight in disgust at the foul liquids she smeared away. She repeated the action and said, ‘He was trying to heal him. All of this has been pushed from the inside out.’ She spared me a disdainful glance. ‘Sit on the hearth before you fall over. Did you give a thought to simply putting a pulling poultice on this instead of recklessly attempting a Skill-healing on your own?’
I took her suggestion and attempted to collapse back to the hearth in a controlled fashion. As neither of them was looking at me, it was a wasted effort. ‘I didn’t,’ I said, beginning an attempt to explain that I had not, at first, intended to heal him. Then I stopped. I wouldn’t waste my time.
Chade had suddenly sat forward with an enlightened expression on his face. ‘Ah! Now I understand. The Fool must have been strapped to a chair with spikes protruding from the back, and the strap slowly tightened to force him gradually onto the spikes. If he struggled, the wounds became larger. As the strap was tightened, the spikes went deeper. These old injuries appear to me as if he held out for quite a long time. But I would suspect there was something on the spikes, excrement or some other foul matter, intended to deliberately trigger a long-term infection.’
‘Chade. Please,’ I said weakly. The image he painted made me queasy. I hoped the Fool had remained unconscious. I did not really want to know how the Servants had caused his wounds. Nor did I want him to remember.
‘And the interesting part of that,’ Chade went on heedless of my plea, ‘is that the torturer was employing a philosophy of torment that I’ve never encountered before. I was taught that for torture to be effective at all, the victim must be allowed an element of hope; hope that the pain would stop, hope that the body could still heal, and so on. If you take that away, what has the subject to gain by surrendering his information? In this case, if he was aware that his wounds were deliberately being poisoned, once the spikes had pierced his flesh, then—’
‘Lord Chade! Please!’ Nettle looked revolted.
The old man stopped. ‘Your pardon, Skillmistress. Sometimes I forget …’ He let his words trail away. Nettle and I both knew what he meant. The type of dissertation he had been delivering was fit only for his apprentice or fellow assassin, not for anyone with normal sensibilities.
Nettle straightened and dropped the wet cloth in the bowl of water. ‘I’ve cleaned his wounds as well as water can. I can send down to the infirmary for a dressing.’
‘No need to involve them. We have herbs and unguents here.’
‘I’m sure you do,’ she responded. She looked down on me. ‘You look terrible. I suggest we ask a page to fetch you breakfast in your room below. He’ll be told that you over-indulged last night.’
‘I’ve just the lad for the job,’ Chade declared abruptly. ‘His name is Ash.’
He flicked a glance at me and I did not betray to Nettle that I’d already met the lad. ‘I’m sure he’ll do fine,’ I agreed quietly, even as I wondered what plan Chade was unfolding.
‘Well, then I’ll leave you two. Lord Feldspar, I’ve been informed by Lady Kettricken that you begged for a brief audience with her tomorrow afternoon. Don’t be late. You should join those waiting outside her private audience chamber.’
I gave her a puzzled glance. ‘I’ll explain,’ Chade assured me. More of his plans unfurling. I held in a sigh and smiled weakly at Nettle as she left. When Chade rose to seek out his healing herbs and unguents, I unfolded myself gingerly. My back was stiff and sore and the elegant shirt was pasted to me with sweat. I used what water was left in the pot to cleanse my hands. Then I tottered over to claim a seat at the table.
‘I’m surprised Nettle knew the way here.’
‘Dutiful’s choice. Not mine,’ Chade replied brusquely. He spoke from across the room. ‘He’s never liked my secrets. Never fully understood how necessary they are.’
He came back from a cupboard with a blue pot with a wooden stopper in it, and several rags. When he opened it, the pungency of the unguent stung my nose and somewhat cleared my head. I rose and before he could touch the Fool, I took the rags and medicine from him. ‘I’ll do it,’ I told him.
‘As you wish.’
It troubled me that the Fool was still unaware of us. I set my hand to his shoulder and quested slightly toward him.
‘Ah-ah!’ Chade warned me. ‘None of that. Let him rest.’
‘You’ve grown very sensitive