“Yes, please. If you've the time. I don't wish to intrude. I know we've all much to do in these last few days.” Then his words stopped abruptly and he stared at me, the smile fading from his face. “Listen to how awkward we've become. So polite and so careful not to give offense.” He drew a long breath, then spoke with uncharacteristic bluntness. “After I sent a message and heard nothing back, the silence began to trouble me. I know we've had our differences lately. I thought we had mended them, but I began to have doubts. This morning, I decided I'd confront them. So here I am. Did you want to see me, Fitz? Why didn't you answer my message?”

His sudden change in tone further unbalanced me. “I didn't receive your message. Perhaps Chade misunderstood or forgot; he has had many concerns lately.”

“And the other night, when you came to my window?” He walked over to the hearth, dippered fresh water into the kettle from the bucket and put it back over the flame. As he knelt to poke up the fire and add a bit of wood, I felt grateful I didn't have to meet his eyes.

“I was just strolling about Buckkeep Town, chewing over my own problems. I hadn't really planned to try to see you. My feet just carried me that way.”

It sounded awkward and stupid, but he nodded quietly. The awareness of our mutual discomfort was a wall between us. I had done my best to patch our quarrel, but the memory of that rift was still fresh with both of us. Would he think I avoided his eyes to hide some hidden anger from him? Or would he guess at the guilt I tried to conceal?

“Your own problems?” he asked quietly as he rose, dusting his hands together, and I was glad to seize on the topic. Telling him of my woes with Hap seemed by far the safest thing we could discuss.

And so I confided my worries about my son to him, and in that telling, regained our familiarity. I found tea herbs for the bubbling water, and toasted some bread that was left over from my last night's repast. He listened well, as he bundled my charts and notes to one end of the table. By the time my words had run out, he was pouring steaming tea from a pot into two cups that I had set out. The ritual of putting out food reminded me of how easily we had always worked together. Yet somehow that hollowed me even more when I thought of how I deceived him. I wished to keep him away from Aslevjal because he believed he would die there; Chade aided me because he did not want the Fool interfering in the Prince's quest. Yet the result was the same. When the day came for us to sail, the Fool would suddenly discover that he was not to be one of the party. And it was my doing.

Thus my thoughts wrapped me, and silence fell as we took our places. He lifted his cup, sipped from it, and then said, “It isn't your fault, Fitz. He has made a decision and no words or acts of yours will change it now.” For one brief instant, he seemed to be replying to my thoughts, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck because he knew me so well. Then he added, “Sometimes all a father can do is stand by and witness the disaster, and then pick up the pieces.”

I found my tongue and replied, “My worry, Fool, is that I won't be here to witness it, or to pick up the pieces. What if he gets into real trouble, and there's no one to step in on his behalf?”

He held his teacup in both hands and looked at me over it. “Is there no one staying behind that you can ask to watch over him?”

I suppressed an impulsive urge to say, “How about you?” I shook my head. “No one that I know well enough. Kettricken will be here, of course, but it would hardly be appropriate to ask the Queen to play such a role to a guardsman's son. Even if Jinna and I were still on good terms, I no longer trust her judgment.” In dismay, I added, “Sometimes it's a bit daunting to realize how few people I really trust. Or even know well, as Tom Badgerlock, I mean.” I fell silent for a moment, considering that. Tom Badgerlock was a façade, a mask I wore daily, and yet I'd never been truly comfortable being him. I felt awkward deceiving good people such as Wim or Laurel. It made a barrier to any real friendship. “How do you do it?” I asked the Fool suddenly. “You shift who you are from year to year and place to place. Don't you ever feel regret that no one truly knows you as the person you were born?”

He shook his head slowly. “I am not the person I was born. Neither are you. I know no one who is. Truly, Fitz, all we ever know are facets of one another. Perhaps we feel as if we know one another well when we know several facets of that person. Father, son, brother, friend, lover, husband . . . a man can be all of those things, yet no one person knows him in all those roles. I watch you being Hap's father, and yet I do not know you as I knew my father, any more than I knew my father as his brother did. So. When I show myself in a different light, I do not make a pretense. Rather I bare a different aspect to the world than they have seen before. Truly, there is a place in my heart where I am forever the Fool and your playfellow. And within me there is a genuine Lord Golden, fond of good drink and well-prepared food and elegant clothing and witty speech. And so, when I show myself as him, I am deceiving no one, but only sharing a different part of myself.”