'And the Prince would be dead. Or worse.' Without realizing it, I had edged closer to the combatants. I wondered if anyone else heard the Fool's low comment.

With a moan of defeat, Civil dropped his face into the snow. He lay still. The Fool did not make him speak his surrender. Instead, he released his hold from the boy and got up. I winced for the pain he must feel.

The Fool spoke between gasps for breath. 'It wasn't me. I didn't kill your mother. Or shame her. That was the Piebalds. Blame them. Not me. And don't set blame on a young girl who did nothing more terrible than flirt with a stranger. Forgive her . . . and yourself. You were trapped and used. Both of you.'

And the Fool's perceptive words lanced into Civil's soul, and his pain poured forth into the night. Wit and Skill, I felt it, like some hot, foul poison rushing out of him. When the Fool turned away, the young man didn't spring after him, but curled on his side in the snow, gagging with sorrow. His cat gave a low rumble of distress, and, released by Web, rushed to his side. The Fool stood well clear of them both. Panting, he dragged his sleeve across his face, and then shook his head at how he had marked the snowy white of it with the deep scarlet of his blood. He took several steps away from them, and then bent over, hands on his knees, taking deep panting breaths of the cold air.

The Prince finally spoke. 'Let this be an end to this matter now, right here. We are a small party and can ill afford divisions. Civil, you made your challenge and this will have to be your satisfaction. Lord Golden, you are here on my tolerance. You have openly avowed that you oppose my mission. I accept that, just as I accept the conscience that puts the Hetgurd watchers among us. But if you carry any ill will against Civil because of this, my tolerance will end. We will put you out of our company to make your own way.'

I felt those last words as a threat. I went to the Fool's side and

waited while he caught his breath. Web had gone to Civil and crouched in the snow beside him. He lay there, hugging his cat as if he were a child's comforting doll. Web's voice was a low rumble as he spoke to him. I could not catch the words. Swift stood, caught in between, staring from one combatant to the other. I took the Fool's arm and started moving him toward his tent. Now that it was over, he seemed half-stunned. 'Follow your prince, son,' I told Swift as I passed him. 'It's over for now. We'll talk later.'

He nodded, staring as we passed. The Fool stumbled a little and I firmed my grip on him. Behind us, I heard Longwick berating the guards for being distracted from their duty. Slowly, the camp dispersed back to their beds.

I put the Fool inside his tent, and then went back out, his kerchief in my hand, to gather up a pack of snow for him. When 1 returned, he had added a bit of oil to the tiny firepot, and the renewed flames danced higher, sending rippling shadows of colour across the silken walls. He set a tiny kettle upon it as I watched, and then sat back on his pallet, pinching his nostrils shut with one bloody hand. His nose had almost stopped bleeding but his face was starting to darken where Civil's fists had landed. He leaned back gingerly as if the entire left side of his body were sore.

'Try this,' I told him. I sat down beside him and gently pressed the cold compress against the side of his face. He turned away from it.

'Please don't! It's icy and I'm already too cold,' he complained. Wearily he added, 'I'm too cold all the time in this place.'

'Nevertheless,' I told him relentlessly. 'Just until your nose stops bleeding. And it will keep your face from swelling too much. You'll probably have a black eye anyway.'

'Please, Fitz,' he protested feebly and reached up, bare-handed, to seize my wrist in the same moment that my fingertips brushed his cheek.

The impact of that mutual touch blinded me for an instant, just as if I had stepped out of a dim stable into full direct sunlight. I twitched away from him, the snow bundle falling to the tent floor, and blinked, but the image of what I had seen was imprinted on the inside of my eyelids. I cannot say how I knew what it was I

had glimpsed. Perhaps something in that closed circle of touching told me. I drew a shaky breath and reached recklessly toward his face with outstretched fingers.

'I can heal you,' I told him, amazed and breathless with the discovery. The knowledge of my new-found power rushed through my blood, hot as whiskey. 'I see what is wrong, the bits that are broken and how the blood pools under your skin where it should not. Fool, I can use the Skill and heal you.'

Again he seized my wrist, but this time it was to hold my hand wide of his face. Again, I felt jolted by that sense of connection as his Skill-imbued fingertips made contact with my skin. He shifted his grip quickly to the cuff of my sleeve. 'No,' he said quietly, but a smile played over his swollen face. 'Did you learn nothing from the "healing" that we put you through? I have no reserves to burn for the sake of a swift healing. I'll let my own body mend itself, in its own way and time.' He let go of my wrist. 'But thank you,' he added quietly, 'for offering.'

A shudder ran over me, as when a horse shakes flies from his coat. I blinked at him, feeling as if I had just awakened. The temptation was slower to fade. There was, I thought wryly, much of Chadc in me. Knowing that I could do a thing made me itch to do it. Looking at his bruised face was like looking at a picture hung crooked on a wall. The impulse to right it was instinctive. 1 sighed. Resolutely, I crossed my arms on my chest and leaned back from him.

'You see it, don't you?' he asked me.

1 nodded, and then he shocked me, for his mind was on something completely different. 'Word must be sent to the Queen, somehow. Sydei, I think, is innocent. She deserves rescue, and after the misery I have helped cause her, I hope she receives it. I dare not guess which of her parents is the Piebald who worked with Laudwine. Perhaps both did. Sydel is shamed for accidentally falling in with our plans. And Civil is no longer seen as an appropriate match for her, for he has sided with the Farseers.'

Of course. The connections were all there, plain to see when the Fool pointed them out. 1 reconsidered her parents' apparent reaction to 'Lord Golden's' interest in their daughter. Her mother

had seemed avid to take advantage of it; her father more cautious. Had they seen him as someone who could give the Piebalds access to Buckkeep society/ As a benefactor whose wealth might forward their cause?

'Why didn't Civil just tell Dutiful, months ago?' 1 felt outraged. The Prince had forgiven Civil, had welcomed him back as a comrade and friend, and he had held back from us this key piece of information.

The Fool shook his head. 'I don't think Dutiful realizes the full implications, even now. Perhaps some part of him suspects, but he doesn't dare let himself see it. He is true Old Blood, not Piebald. What they did is so monstrous by his standards that he cannot imagine Sydel being connected to such a plot.' He leaned over and picked up tbe snow-bag from the floor, regarded it dolefully, and then put it gingerly to the swollen side of his face. Tm so tired of being cold,' he remarked. One-handed, he opened a small wooden box at the end of his pallet, and took out a cup and a bowl that nested together. From beneath them, he took a small cloth bag and shook herbs from it into the cup and bowl He went on, 'It's the only way I can make the pieces fit. Sydel is disgraced in her father's eyes; the engagement is broken. Civil assumes her father caught her in my bed. It is the only explanation he can imagine, and so he blames me for ruining all that was between them. But that isn't it at all. One or both of her parents are Piebalds. They used their close ties with the Bresinga household to intercept messages meant for Civil and return their own. They saw to it that the Prince was hosted invisibly within that household. The gift of the cat for Dutiful was probably delivered through them. The plan for Civil was that he'd wed their daughter, bringing his family's wealth and position to the Piebald cause. Then she failed them, by flirting with me. And we were the mechanism for the whole downfall of that first Piebald plan. That is how she is disgraced.' He gave a sigh, leaned back on his bedding and moved the kerchief to a different spot on his face. 'It's small comfort to have worked it out now.'