“But I … No, then. No.” He suddenly lifted one scarred hand to cover his mouth. Both his fingers and his voice shook as he spoke. “I cannot. I just can’t let them … Not until you are recovered. Fitz. You know me. But those others … They could lend you their strength but you must be the one to touch me. Until then … No. I will have to wait.” He snapped his mouth shut suddenly and abruptly crossed his arms on his chest. I could almost see hope depart from his body as his shoulders rounded in. He closed his blind eyes and I looked away from him, trying to give him space to compose himself. So quickly he had lost his dragon-blood courage. I almost wished he were quarreling with me still. To see him suddenly shaking in fear again was like a bellows blowing on the coals of my anger. I would kill them. All of them.
Motley muttered to him. I stood and walked away from the table. I did not speak again until he could hear that I was not sitting and staring at him.
“Ash. You have a deft hand with those scissors. Do you think you could take the stitches out of my brow? They are too tight.”
“They look like a puckered seam in a badly made dress,” Ash told me. “Come. Sit down here near the fire where the light is better.”
Ash and I talked while he worked, mostly his small warnings that he would now tug out a stitch or requests that I blot away the blood welling where the threads had been. We both pretended not to notice when the Fool gently set his crow down on the table and carefully groped his way to his bed. By the time Ash was finished with me, he was either truly asleep or feigning it well.
The slow days ground by. Whenever I found myself pacing, I took myself down to the practice yards. I had one chance encounter with Blade’s grandson. He barely concealed his satisfaction at the drubbing he gave me. The second time I accepted his invitation to try our skills with staves against each other, he very nearly laid me out. Afterward, Foxglove drew me aside and asked me sarcastically if I enjoyed the beatings I was taking. I told her that of course I didn’t, I was simply trying to regain some of my old physical skills. But as I limped away to the steams, I knew I had lied. My guilt demanded pain, and pain was one of the few things that could drive Bee’s predicament from my thoughts. I knew it for an unhealthy tendency, but excused myself on the grounds that when finally I had a chance to use a blade against her kidnappers, I might have regained some of my ability.