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I went back to the Fool’s tent that night, let the others talk if it so entertained them. The brandy was open between us, and we sat round the fire in his strange Elderling tent that kept the wind at bay. We spoke of many things, trivial things and somehow talk had turned to Dutiful and the Narcheska. I welcomed this, since of late it seemed safer to speak of others instead of ourselves. I hadn’t seen much of them from the back of our troupe, but I got occasional reports from Chade, and when we made camp everyone was near enough that I caught glimpses of each of them. Rather, each of them catching glimpses of each other.
“Ah.” The Fool had raised a brow, and I saw a smile sneak onto his face. He had put it all together upon seeing them, of course. He was always so good at that, reading everyone’s feelings in an instant and putting them so perfectly into words.
So we spoke of two young people, no longer children, and yet not wholly adults, learning to love each other in the middle of all this madness. I told the Fool of what he’d missed - of Elliania kissing the prince in the middle of all those people - which had made him grimace for Dutiful’s sake and of later, when the two of them were alone and I’d witnessed something perhaps I shouldn’t have.
“And they think me the pervert.” It was the Fool speaking. The one that embarrassed me so when we were young, the one that said a crude jibe and left me with reddened cheeks as he cartwheeled away. “I am glad for them.” He smiled, genuinely, as he set his cup down again. “It’ll all be so much sweeter if they actually enjoy each other’s company. I’m certain he’s still thinking of that kiss.”
“You kissed me. Once.”
I don’t know what compelled me to say it, and yet his reaction told me that the thought had been spoken aloud.
He paused completely, like one of his puppets cut at the string, and then I saw him swallow.
“Ah. Yes.” I thought for a moment that would be all he’d say. “I was much younger then.”
We’d never spoken of it, since he reentered my life. At the time, there had been too many things to think about. There had been dragons swirling around us and a war to win, and Regal to thwart, yet I remembered it well. He had leaned in to me and brushed his lips on mine and I suppose that had been a kiss. And then it was gone, as quick as it had happened, and he and Girl-On-A-Dragon had flown away into the sky.
Had it been his first? I wondered. It had not been mine, but I’d hardly given that thought before now. Even when Starling pestered me with questions about if he’d ever courted anyone, I’d accepted that I simply did not know. That had been so long ago. He had not been saving himself for me, he said, giving word to the thought I hadn’t even known I harbored.
Who else had he kissed? If there were indeed others. Someone I’d never met? Faraway, off in Bingtown? Had it been one or many? I felt a twist in my stomach - I’d only thought of mere kissing before this moment. I did not want to think of some stranger a continent away sharing the Fool’s bed. I could feel the lash of his words from that night, like a viper. Had there been any truth in them? I was frustrated that I couldn't even make a guess. When had he last - I stopped myself. I had not seen him for some fifteen years, and so much of that time was still a mystery to me.
I knew better than to ask. We had finally mended this rift between us, or started to. I didn’t know if it would ever truly be as it was, no, I did know - and it wouldn’t. But this evening we were sharing something pleasant, something I didn’t want to sour so soon. Still, I could not help my curiosity.
“Why did you? Then?”
The Fool’s gaze flicked up from the fire, then down again as he let out a laugh.
“Did Chade teach you that?" At my look, he went on, "To ask questions you already know the answers to.”
I paused. “You felt then as you do now…” I was saying too much, I knew. We’d worked so hard to not go here, to not reopen this wound. He had been right that day, that conversation could not be undone, and we were both doomed to remember it. This had nothing to do with that, and yet it did. Everything did. Every moment together, every memory. It was not that it rendered each of them wrong or unrecognizable, but that each seemed a little more full. I would never understand them entirely, as I never had, but I saw with new eyes. Like with everything the Fool revealed, it only prompted more questions.
Why had he done it? I hadn’t given myself time to think of it but I supposed if I had, I’d assume it was some strange custom beyond my knowledge, as with Dutiful and the Narcheska. A misunderstanding between different cultures. I’d imagine it to be a parting ritual, from the land far, far south he said he hailed from. The Fool’s kiss had been a farewell but now it seemed an insufficient description. We had said goodbye before that. Perhaps soon we’d say it again, and when that time came, would he do the same? I knew he believed he would die on this quest, as much as I pushed back on the matter. Did he plan to say goodbye, this time the last?
“Yes, Fitz. I’ve told you. That has never changed.” He sighed. “That was a long time ago.” His voice went quieter, “I will not make the same mistake again, to be sure. You can forget it ever happened.” I realized, too late, that I was being cruel. Dredging up thoughts he’d spent so much time with, things he’d known for years that I was only grasping now.
A mistake, he’d called it. Was that what it was? I did not think that I wished it had never happened, even with what I knew.
“I do not wish to forget it,” I heard myself say, and it was not a lie.
He let out a quiet breath then and his amber eyes did not move from the fire.
“It wasn’t-” I was stumbling on my words, but I’d hardly had enough brandy to be as clumsy as this. “You did not make a mistake.”
“Maybe not then, but I’ve made plenty others.” He said it with the Fool’s tone but none of his humor. “No, I would not be so foolish again. You know, some people find such things rather distasteful.” He looked around the tent, as if the others were listening in from outside, Lord Golden, leaning over to whisper to a court lady.
Distasteful. He had not used that word with me since our quarrel and I knew that he was not only speaking of Civil Bresinga.
“Fool, I-” I had offended him in the last few moments, and I was too stupid to remedy it.
“Fool, that I am. Is there something you want from me, FitzChivalry?”
FitzChivalry. Merely my name and it felt like a pinprick. It still stirred me when he used it, sometimes I thought he only chose to when he was angry with me.
I tried not to lose footing, to gather my thoughts. I had not found it distasteful then, I could recognize that. I had not found it anything beyond surprising. And looking at him, lit by the fire, its glow making the gold of his eyes shine like gemstones - I thought that I would not find it distasteful now.
“No, no. I just- I wanted to- I do not want you to think that I found it…” Still, I could not put a name to it, but I struggled on, “distasteful. Not then, nor when I remember it now.”
I did not know what else to say, so it was my turn to look at the fire, searching for anything else to do. It was burning low now, making it hard to see anything in the darkness. I chanced a look back up and could scarcely find the Fool, only the trim of gold at the end of his hair, the delicate outline of his sharp cheekbones, his straight nose, his nearly frowning lips.
They were nearer to me than they’d been just a moment ago. Had I missed something? We’d been close by the fire for warmth, now we were even closer.
I couldn’t see anything anymore, and he was so quiet, like he had been when he snuck in my room without a sound. He did not say anything, nor did I, and then there was a touch like ice upon my mouth. It was not unpleasant, rather it was like the relief of snow on an aching wound, or the first rush of cold when one opens the door on a winter day, and I felt my cheeks heat. It floated there like a snowflake, something momentary and delicate and completely unique. And then it was gone, as soon as it had happened.
I was left sitting there, the cold replaced by a new, growing heat that started dim and brightened, imagined flames licked under my skin. It was not painful, but bewildering. I blinked my eyes open - when had I closed them? Somehow the Fool was already across the tent at his pallet, burrowing under his blankets.
“I think I’d like to sleep. Much to do tomorrow,” he said, and I knew better than to keep talking any longer. This was the Fool of our boyhood days. The one who mystified me with his riddles and ended conversations whenever he decided. I suppose it was just as well, I could not conjure words if I tried.
“Goodnight, Fitz.” He closed his eyes, no longer reflecting the light of the fire. It had nearly gone out, I noticed, and yet I felt much warmer than I had a moment earlier, I was nearly burning.
He did not urge me to sleep myself nor did he ask me to leave. Whether or not he was truly sleeping, he was done speaking for the night. I sighed to myself, and moved to my own bedding.
“Goodnight, Fool,” I managed, twisting rather uncomfortably in my blankets. I was not sure if I still needed them against the cold.