“. . . can’t move him again, even if you could get a litter up those stairs. You’ll have to do it here.”

“I don’t know how. I don’t know how. I don’t know how!” This from Dutiful. “Eda and El, Chade, I’m not being stubborn. Don’t you think I’d save him if I could? But I don’t know how; I’m not even sure what you’re asking me to do.”

Stinks worse than dogshit now. Thick was bored and wished he were anywhere else.

Chade, patiently explaining it yet again. “It doesn’t matter that you don’t know how. He’s going to die if we don’t do anything. If you try and it kills him, well, at least it will be quicker than what he’s enduring now. Now, I want you to look at these drawings carefully. They are my own work, from years ago. This shows you what those organs should look like, intact . . .”

I fell away from them. Blessed blackness for a time. Just as I found the snow-rounded hills, they tugged me back. Their hands were on me. My clothing was cut away. Someone retched, and Chade, tight-breathed, told them to get out of the room until called for. Then, harsh rags, water both cold and hot on my wound, and close at hand a woman said sadly, “It’s hopelessly foul. Can’t we just let him go peacefully?”

“No!” I thought the voice was King Shrewd’s. Then I knew it could not be. It must be Chade, sounding so like his brother. “Get the Prince back in here. It’s time.”

Then I felt the Prince’s icy hands on my hot flesh, set to either side of the wound. “Just Skill into his body,” Chade told him. “Skill into him, look at what is wrong, and fix it.”

“I don’t know how,” Dutiful repeated, but I felt him try. His mind battered against mine like a moth against a lamp’s chimney. He was trying to reach my thoughts, not my body. I pushed feebly at him. That was a mistake.

For a moment, our minds touched and linked. No, I told him. No. Leave me alone.

His hands went away. “He doesn’t want us to do this,” Dutiful reported uncertainly.

“I don’t care!” Chade’s voice was furious. “He isn’t allowed to die. I won’t permit it.” Suddenly, the words were louder, shouted right by my ear. “Fitz, do you hear me? Do you hear me, boy? I’m not going to let you die, so you might as well cooperate. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and fight to live.”

“Fitz?” There was wonder and horror in Dutiful’s voice.

A crack of silence opened. Then, harshly, Chade explained. “He was born a bastard, just as I was. It’s long been a joke between us, that the word only stings when it comes from someone who doesn’t wear it also.”

Feeble, Chade. Feeble, I wanted to tell him, and Dutiful knows you too well to be taken in by it.

Someone stroked the hair back from my brow and took my hand. I thought it was the Fool. I tried to tighten my hand on his slender one, to somehow let him know that I would beg his pardon if I could. I suddenly thought of all the persons to whom I hadn’t bid farewell. Hap. Kettricken. Burrich and Molly. I’d always meant to make everything right with everyone before I died. “Patience, Mother,” I said, but no one heard me. Perhaps I didn’t even speak the words aloud.

“Show me the picture,” Lord Golden said. He let go of my hand and I swung abruptly into the blackness. I fell until I died. From the pillowed brow of a snowy hill, I glimpsed the summerland. A flash of gray moved in the tall grasses. Nighteyes! I called to him. He turned and looked back at me. He showed his teeth in a snarl, warning me back. I tried to move forward but again I was drawn back up to the surface. I thrashed helplessly, a fish on a line, but my body moved not at all.

“. . . done it before. At least, something like it. I was there when he used the Skill to heal his wolf. And years ago, I studied how a man’s body is put together. And I don’t have the Skill, myself, but I know Fi . . . Tom. If you can use the Skill through me, I’m willing to allow that.” The Fool was insistent.

“I have to use the privy.”

“Go, then, Thick, but come right back. Understand me? Come right back here when you’re done.” I could hear annoyance in Chade’s voice. And uncertainty. “Well, what can it hurt? Go ahead. Try.”

Then I felt the Fool’s touch on my back. If Dutiful’s hands had been cold to my fevered skin, then the Fool’s fingers were as icicles. Their jabbing ice probed me. All eternity paused in anticipation of that dreaded, desired touch.

Long ago, the Fool had accompanied me into the Mountains on the quest to find Verity. In helping me tend our exhausted king, he had carelessly let his fingers come into contact with Verity’s Skill-silvered hands. That physical manifestation of the Skill magic had gleamed like quicksilver. The contact with the pure magic had jolted the Fool and forever marked him. The silvering magic had faded with time, yet enough of it remained on his fingertips that I had seen the Fool use it in his woodcarving. It allowed him to know, intimately, whatever those fingers touched, be it wood or plant or beast. Or me. Long ago, he had left his fingerprints on my wrist. Lord Golden’s gloves always kept his Skill-fingers covered, protected from casual contact. Yet now the hands that touched the skin of my back were bared.