“What will you do?”
“What I have always done. What else can I do? I cannot stop doing what they command me to stop, for I have never begun it.”
A creeping certainty shivered up my spine. “And if they act again?”
He gave a lifeless laugh. “There is no point to my worrying about it, for I cannot prevent it. That is not to say I look forward to it. This,” he said, with a half gesture toward his face. “This will heal. What they did to my room will not. I shall be weeks picking up that mess.”
The words trivialized it. A terrible hollow feeling welled up in me. I had been in the Fool’s tower chamber once. It had been a long climb up a disused staircase, past the dust and litter of years, to a chamber that looked out over the parapets and contained a garden of wonder. I thought of the bright fish swimming in the fat pots, the moss gardens in their containers, the tiny ceramic child, so meticulously cared for, in its cradle. I closed my eyes as he added to the flames, “They were most thorough. Silly me. To think there was such a thing as a safe place in the world.”
I could not look at him. Save for his tongue, he was a defenseless person whose only drive was to serve his king. And save the world. Yet someone had smashed his world. Worse, I suspected the beating he had taken was in revenge for something I had done.
“I could help you set it to rights,” I offered quietly.
He shook his head tightly, quickly twice. “I think not,” he said. Then he added in a more normal voice, “No offense intended.”