As I watched him, I saw him come to a decision. And my heart sank as he rose hastily, for in his rush to leave I saw his desire to end the conversation. ‘You are not well yet, Fitz,’ he said as he stood. ‘It will be days until you are strong enough to continue teaching Dutiful and Thick what you know of the Skill. And those days represent time I am not willing to waste. Therefore, while you are recuperating, I will continue my own explorations of the Skill. I will be circumspect, I promise you. I will risk no one except myself. But having begun this, having felt the first touch of what it can mean to me, I will not draw back. I will not.’

He started towards the door. I drew a ragged breath. I was very nearly at the end of my strength. ‘Don’t you understand, Chade? What you feel is the pull all students of the Skill are warned against! You venture into the Skill-current at your peril. If we lose you, the strength of the whole coterie is diminished. If you take Thick with you, the coterie is destroyed entirely.’

His hand was on the latch. He did not turn to look back at me. ‘You need your rest, Fitz, not to work yourself up like this. When you are feeling better, then we will discuss this again. You know I am a cautious man. Trust me in this.’ And then he was gone, closing the door behind him. He moved swiftly, like a child hurrying out of the room to escape a scolding. Or a man fleeing a truth he did not want to hear.

I sagged back into the chair. My throat and mouth were dry, my head pounding. I lifted my hands to shut out the light from my eyes. Into that small darkness, I asked, ‘Have you ever suddenly realized that there was someone you loved, but presently did not like very much?’

‘Strange you should ask me that,’ the Fool observed dryly from close behind me. Then I heard him walk away.

I must have fallen asleep there. When I awoke, it was afternoon, and I ached from my cramped position in the chair. There was a tray of food on a table beside the chair. Even covered, it had gone cold. Fat was congealed in little floating lumps on top of the broth. There was meat, but it had gone cold. After two bites, the chewing of it wearied me. I forced myself to finish it, but felt that it sat like a lump in my stomach. They had given me watered wine, and bread in milk again as well. I didn’t want it, yet could not have said what I did want. I forced myself to eat it.

The terrible weakness that was on me made me feel childishly weepy. I tottered back to my room. I wanted to wash my face to see if I could rouse myself from my lethargy. There was water in, the pitcher, and a cloth to dry on, but my looking-glass was gone, probably tidied away when Kettricken changed my room. I washed, but felt no livelier for it. I went back to bed,

Two more days passed in the same haze of weakness and lassitude. I ate and I slept, but my strength seemed terribly slow to return. Chade did not visit me. I was not surprised at that, but Dutiful did not come either. Had Chade ordered him to stay away from me? Lord Golden had little to say to me, and turned my visitors away with the warning that I was still not well enough to see them. Twice I heard Hap’s anxious tones, and once I heard Starling. I had no energy to move, but the inactivity made me ache. I lay alone in my bed, or sat on the chair near the fireside. I was both worried and bored. I thought about the Skill-scrolls up in Chade’s old chamber, but the challenge of all the stairs daunted me. Nor could I bring myself to ask that favor of the Fool. It was not just that he never ventured forth from Lord Golden’s facade. It was that we were both mired into coolly and correctly ignoring one another. It could only make our quarrel worse, and yet I could not bend enough to try any other way. It seemed to me I had already made enough efforts to mend things and been rebuffed by him. I wanted him to show some sign of wishing to make things right between us. But he did not. So two slow days of misery trickled past.

The next day I arose determined to put myself to rights. Perhaps if I stood and moved about as if I were healthy, I would begin to feel so. I began by washing myself, and then decided I would shave. The accumulation of whiskers was approaching a fair beard. I walked slowly to the door of my chamber and looked round. Lord Golden sat at the table, inspecting a dozen silk kerchiefs in different shades of yellow and orange and trying them against one another. I cleared my throat. He did not move. Very well, then.

‘Lord Golden, pardon me if I disturb you. I seem to have misplaced my shaving mirror. Could I perhaps borrow one?’

He did not look round. ‘Do you think that’s wise?’

‘Borrowing a mirror? Shaving without one strikes me as less wise.’

‘I meant, do you think it’s wise to shave?’

‘I think I’m past due for it.’

‘Very well, then. It’s your choice.’ His tone was neutral and chill, as if I did a risky thing and he wanted no part in it. He went to his room, and returned shortly with his own elaborate silver-framed hand-mirror.

I held it up, dreading what it would show me of my wasted face. The shock of my appearance numbed me; I dropped the mirror. Only good fortune decreed that it did not break when it fell to the rug. I have fainted from pain before, but never, I think, from pure surprise. As it was, I did not lose consciousness completely, but crumpled to sit in a heap on the floor.

Tom?’ Lord Golden asked in annoyance and surprise.

I had no attention for him. I slid the mirror across the rug to me and stared down into it. Then I touched my face. The scar I had borne for so long was gone. My nose was not precisely straight, but the long-ago break was far less evident. I thrust my hands inside my robe and felt my back. The sword-wound was gone, yes, but gone also was the ancient, pulling scar the festered arrowhead had left in my back. I inspected the place where my neck met my shoulder. Years ago, a Forged one had bitten a chunk from me there, leaving a puckered scar. The flesh was smooth.

I looked up to find Lord Golden regarding me with consternation.

‘Why?’ I asked him wildly. ‘Why, in Eda’s name, did you do this to me? All will mark this change in me. How will I explain it?’

He came a step closer. There was confusion in his eyes. Lord Golden spoke reluctantly. ‘But Tom Badgerlock, we did nothing to you.’ I do not know what my face looked like at his words but he recoiled from me. In a neutral voice, he continued, ‘Truly, we did not do this to you. We worked to close the wound in your back and to clean your blood of poisons. When I saw your other scar start to pucker and then to expulse bits of flesh, I cried out to them we had to stop. But even after we dropped hands and stepped back from you…’

I tried to remember that moment, and could not. ‘Perhaps what you set in motion, my body and Skill continued. I don’t recall.’

He covered his mouth with a hand as he stood looking down on me. ‘Chade—’ He hesitated, then forced himself to go on. His voice was nearly the Fool’s. ‘I think Lord Chade felt… I should not surmise what he felt. Only I think he believes you knew how to do this, and that you kept it a secret from him.’

‘Eda and El in a tangle,’ I groaned. Chade was right. I never had been good at discerning what people felt unless they told me directly. I had sensed there was some knot between us, but this was the last thing I’d expected. Even if I’d known my body had been cleared of scars, I would not have suspected that Chade would feel slighted over some imagined secret. That was what was behind his huffy retreat; his resolution was that he would continue to discover whatever I’d concealed from him. I gathered my legs under me and stood without assistance. Not that Lord Golden had offered me any. I proffered the mirror to him and turned back to my room.

‘So. Changed your mind about shaving, Badgerlock?’ Lord Golden asked me.