I tried to find an argument to make her wrong, but I could not. Her rebuke was too stabbing an attack. I had not shared with her that Chade had been on a Skill-rampage and that Nettle and her coteries seemed barely able to contain one old man, and I decided I would not. I straightened from leaning on the railing. ‘I’m going to get some sleep,’ I told her. Later, perhaps, when he was the Fool, I’d share my Skill-fears and my agony of worry for Bee. Later, I might tell him how I had pushed her away, out of Chade’s path but also away from me. I had come to Amber full of exhilaration from my contact with Bee and devastation that I could not sustain it or find her, but now I had no one to share that storm of emotions. I could not speak to Lant without tormenting him about the state of his father. I did not wish Spark to worry for Chade. Right now, I did not wish to supply Amber with any new quarrels to shoot at me.
‘Walk away,’ Amber said in a small, deadly voice. ‘Walk away, Fitz. From things you don’t want to hear. Things you don’t want to feel. Things you don’t want to know.’
I had halted at her first words, but as she continued, I did as she suggested. I walked away. She lifted her voice to call after me, her words freighted with anger. ‘Would that I could walk away from what I know! Would that I could choose to disbelieve my dreams!’
I kept walking.
A ship never truly sleeps. Always, there are sailors on watch and all must be ready to leap to the deck at a moment’s notice. But I was deeply asleep when someone shook my shoulder, and I came up ready to fight. By the hooded light of a dimmed lantern, I saw Spark regarding me with a mixture of alarm and amusement. ‘What?’ I demanded, but she shook her head and motioned that I should follow her. I rolled quietly from my hammock and threaded my way through sleeping sailors.
We emerged onto the deck. The wind was slight, the waves calm. Overhead, the stars were close and bright, the moon a paring. I hadn’t bothered with a shirt or shoes but the air was so balmy I didn’t miss them.
‘Is something wrong?’ I asked Spark.
‘Yes.’
I waited.
‘I know you thought less of me for bringing the book to Amber. For spying on you to see where you kept it. And you had the right to be distrustful of me. When last I tried to speak of this to you, you made it clear you did not wish to know any secrets. Well, now I come to betray trust to you again, and I expect your opinion of me will be even lower. But I cannot keep this secret any longer.’
My heart sank into the pit of my stomach. My thoughts immediately leapt to her and Lant, and I dreaded what she might tell me.
‘It’s Amber,’ she said in a whisper.
I drew breath to tell her that I did not wish to know any of Amber’s secrets. Amber’s anger at me was a wall I did not want to breach. I felt both sullen and sulky about it. If Amber had a secret she did not wish to share with me, but told Spark, well, then they were both welcome to keep it to themselves.
But Spark didn’t care if I wanted to know or not. She spoke quickly. ‘She dreams your death. When we were on the river, it was only once, at most twice. But now it is almost every night. She talks and cries out warnings to you in her sleep, and wakes up shaking and weeping. She does not speak of it to me, but I know, for she talks in her sleep. “The son will die? How can the son die? It must not be, there must be another path, another way.” But if there is, I do not think she can find it. It’s destroying her. I do not know why she does not tell you of her nightmares.’
‘Did you leave her just now? Does she know you’ve come to me?’
Spark shook her head to both questions. ‘Tonight, she seems to sleep well. Even when she awakens weeping, I feign sleep. The one time I tried to help her, she told me not to touch her and to leave her alone.’ She looked at the deck. ‘I don’t want her to know that I told you this.’
‘She won’t,’ I promised. I wondered if or how I would let the Fool know that I knew. He had told me that the more often something was dreamed, the likelier it was. During our years together, he had often helped me dodge deaths. I recalled how he had summoned Burrich to the top of the tower on the evening Galen had beaten me. Together they had drawn me back from the edge where I had crawled, inspired by Galen to hurl myself down. He’d warned me of a poisoning in the Mountain Kingdom. Carried me on his back to safety when I’d been felled by an arrow. He’d often told me that in his dreams my survival was so unlikely as to be nearly impossible, but that he had to keep me alive, at any cost, so that I could help him change the world.
And we’d accomplished that. He’d dreamed his own certain death, and together we had defied that.
I believed his dreams. I had to, except when they were too terrifying to believe. And then I always pretended I could defy them.
