‘What’s happened?’ I asked him as I went to him.

He stared at me, and then said over-loudly, ‘I can’t hear you.’

‘What’s happened to you?’ I asked again, more loudly.

I don’t think he heard those words either, but he explained, ‘It blew up. I was working on that same mix, the one I showed you at your cottage. This time it worked too well. It blew up!’ He lifted his hands to his face, patting at his cheeks and brow. His face was tragic. I immediately knew what troubled him. I went and got him a looking-glass. He stared into it while I fetched a fresh basin of water and a cloth. I wet it for him, and he held it against his face for a moment. When he took it away, some of the flush had gone from his skin, but most of his eyebrows had, also.

‘It looks as if a great flash of fire hit you. Part of you hair is singed, too.’

‘What?’

I motioned to him to lower his voice.

‘I can’t hear you,’ he repeated plaintively. ‘My ears are ringing as if my stepfather had boxed them for me. Gods, I hated that man!’

That he spoke of him at all was a measure of his distress. Chade had never told me much about his childhood. He lifted his hands and fingered his ears as if to be sure they were still there, and then plugged and unplugged them with his fingers. ‘I can’t hear,’ he repeated yet again. ‘But my face isn’t too bad, is it? I’m not going to be scarred, am I?’

I shook my head at him. ‘Your eyebrows will grow back. This—’ I touched his cheek lightly, ’seems no worse than a sunburn or wind-scald. It will go away. And I think your deafness will pass, also.’ I had no basis for saying the last, save that I hoped it so devoutly.

‘I can’t hear you,’ he agonized.

I patted his shoulder comfortingly and put my cup of tea in front of him. I touched my mouth to draw his attention to my lips and then said carefully, ‘Is your apprentice all right?’ Well I knew he would not be conducting such experiments alone at such an hour.

He watched my mouth move, and after a moment he seemed to comprehend my words because he said, ‘Don’t worry about that. I took care of her.’ Then, at my shocked look at his use of the feminine pronoun, he exclaimed angrily, ‘Mind your own business, Fitz!’

His irritation was directed more at himself than at me, and if I had not been so worried about him, I would have laughed. Her. So I’d been replaced with a girl. I reined my mind away from considering who she was, or why Chade had chosen her, to giving Chade what comfort I could. After a time, I ascertained that Chade could hear me, but not well. I tried to convey to him that I hoped his hearing would recover. He nodded and waved a hand dismissively, but I could see the haunting worry in his eyes. If his deafness remained, it would severely compromise his ability to counsel the Queen.

Nevertheless, he bravely tried to ignore his injury, asking me loudly if I’d seen the scrolls on the table, and then asking me what on earth I’d done to my face. To keep him from shouting more questions, I wrote down brief answers to his questions. I dismissed my injuries as the result of getting accidentally involved in a random tavern brawl. He was too preoccupied with his own problems to question that. Next he wrote on the scrap of paper we were using, ‘Did you speak with Burrich?’

‘I judged it best not to,’ I inked in reply. He pursed his lips, sighed, and said nothing, but I could tell that there was much he wished to say. He’d save it for later when conversation might be easier. Then we went over the spy-scrolls, pointing out interesting bits to one another even as we agreed that there was nothing there that was immediately useful. Chade wrote that he was hoping to hear soon from a spy that he’d sent out to Aslevjal Isle, to see if there was any scrap of truth to the legend.

I wanted to discuss my progress with Thick and Dutiful, but deferred that not only on account of his dampened hearing but because I was still trying to sort out how well I was doing. I’d already decided that I’d take my efforts with Thick further tomorrow.

It was then that I realized tomorrow was nearly upon us. Chade seemed to realize the same thing. He told me that he would seek his own bed, and plead a stomach affliction when the servant came to wake him.

I had no such luxury of bed rest. Instead, I retreated to my room to put on fresh clothing before I made the trek to Verity’s tower to await my students. I am sure I dreaded the day’s lesson more than either of them, for my head still pounded. I clenched my brow against it as I built a fire in the tower hearth and kindled some candles on the table. Sometimes I could not recall the last time I had been completely free of Skill-pain. I considered going back to my room for elfbark. When I rejected the notion, it was not because I feared it would damage my ability to Skill. It was that I connected the drug too strongly with my stupid quarrel with the Fool. No. No more of that.

I heard Dutiful’s footfall on the stair outside the door, and there was no time to ponder such things any more. He shut the door firmly behind him and came to the table. I sighed silently. His posture plainly said that he had not completely forgiven me. The first words out of his mouth were, ‘I don’t want to learn the Skill with a half-wit as my partner. There must be someone else.’ Then he stared at me. ‘What happened to you?’

‘I got in a fight.’ I made the reply short, to let him know that was as much as I would say. ‘And as far as Thick working with you on the Skill, I know of no other suitable candidates. He’s our only choice.’

‘Oh, he can’t be. Have you made an organized search for ones?’

‘No.’

Then, before I could say anything further, he picked up the little figurine from the table. The chain dangled from it. ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘It’s yours. You found it on that beach where we encountered an Other. Don’t you remember it?’

‘No.’ He stared at it with dread. Then, unwillingly, ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’ He swayed in his chair, looking at it. ‘It’s Elliania, isn’t it? What does it mean, Tom? That I found it there, before I’d ever even met her?’

‘What?’ I held out my hand for it, but he didn’t seem to notice. Instead he just sat, staring at it. I got up and walked around the table. When I looked at the small face and the coils of black hair, and bared breasts and the black, black eyes, I suddenly saw he was right. It was Elliania. Not as she was now, but as she would be, when she was a woman grown. The blue ornament carved in the woman’s hair was identical to the one that the Narcheska had worn. I drew a deep breath. ‘I don’t know what it means.’

The Prince spoke as a man does when he dreams. He looked down into the doll’s face. ‘That place where we were, that beach… it was like a vortex. Like a whirlpool that draws magic to itself. All sorts of magic.’ He closed his eyes for an instant. He still clutched the carved figurine in his hand. ‘I nearly died there, didn’t I? The Skill sucked me in and pulled me to pieces. But you came after me and… someone helped you. Someone—’ He groped helplessly for a word. ‘Someone great. Someone bigger than the sky.’

It was not how I would have expressed it, but I knew what he meant. I suddenly recognized how reluctant I had been to discuss the events on the beach or even think about them. There was a nimbus around the hours we had spent there, a light that obscured rather than illuminated. It filled me with dread. It was why I hadn’t shown the feathers to the Fool or discussed them with anyone. They were a vulnerability. They were a door to the unknown. When I picked them up, I had set something larger in motion, something that was beyond anyone’s controlling. Even now, my mind cringed away, as if by refusing to remember, I could undo those events.

‘What was that? Who was it, that we encountered there?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said shortly.