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English
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Part 1 of Baby Fitzloved
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Published:
2025-08-27
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3,447
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1/1
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pranks and lovesick woes

Summary:

When Fitz intrudes into the Fool's chamber, he finds the Fool there. Somehow this changes everything.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

I knelt beside the basket—the cradle. But no, the baby was a doll, crafted as delicately in clay as the Fool's pale features were in flesh. The child's head rested on a satin pillow as though it slept in truth. Someone had embroidered the miniature coverlet all over in pansies, each bloom gleaming with silken thread. I thought it had probably been the Fool himself. 

"Well, have you seen enough?" 

My heart sank, and I jumped back, nearly overturning the bowl with the fish in it. 

"Fool, I was seeking you..." I began lamely. 

He had been concealed behind the fall of the bed's curtains, I saw now. He was invisible as ever to my Wit sense. How long had he stood there? 

"You've found me," he said shortly. He grinned and goggled at me, and performed an absurd curtsey as deep as a lady owed King Shrewd, but the motions entirely lacked his usual mocking delight. I saw he was not wearing his motley, but a light-blue tunic that went down to his thighs, with leggings beneath. The loose collar and cuffs of the tunic were stitched with small birds I had never seen before, in fantastic colors. The singing birds were surrounded by tiny stars. 

I was staring: I could not help it. He looked so different out of his motley. He might be any boy. No, he could never be any boy, whacking away in the yard under Hod’s tutelage. He looked a young man though, slender and graceful when his strangeness was not either highlighted or disguised as, well, strange. 

He was furious with me. 

"I didn't mean to pry in your things," I said quickly. I looked away. I could feel myself reddening with the embarrassment of being caught. 

He didn't dignify this with a response. 

"And do they amuse you?" he said. His bowlike mouth twisted. "My best jest yet, I think!" 

"No," I said. I needed to say the right thing, to express the astonishment I felt, the ache that had stabbed through my chest when I saw the doll. It was not pity, I knew that much. It dwelt somewhere between envy and understanding. I fumbled for words and did not quite find the ones I wanted. “I wish there were a place as much me as this place is you.”

His frost-colored eyes widened. He looked at me and for a moment I had the sense he looked through me, as though he were Skilling. But I felt no Skill, only a tremble about my heart. 

He made a sound that was not quite an "oh." He turned aside and after a moment, he spoke in a different tone. "Leon the greyhound seemed glad to go out this morning."

I didn't ask him how he knew this. He carried on in that vein a little while. I scarcely heard him.

“Fool,” I said hesitantly. For the first time, it struck me as odd that I had no other name by which to call him. “Don’t be angry with me.”

He eyed me like a wary cat. “I’m not,” he said. “Let us carry on, then, into the future.” He smiled as though at a private joke.

“Do you work upon the loom?”

It was a womanish activity, but I would not say that. The Fool’s habits had always been strange.

He nodded stiffly.

“Did you make the bedspread?”

Another nod.

“The work is very fine.”

“Would you know if it were not?”

“No.”

He grinned for a moment and I was glad. If making fun of me was what it took to make my Fool act more like himself, I would happily let him. He looked as though he wanted to speak further, but he did not. I realized he was uncertain, which rattled me. He was waiting for my cue to continue.

“I like the colors,” I said quietly, awkwardly. “They remind me of high summer.”

“I love summer,” he answered in the same quiet voice. “Where I was born, it is summer every day.”

I could not imagine such a place. I squinted at him, trying to determine if he was teasing me. He was looking at the bed beside him, not at me. Then his gaze returned with an intensity I had not known him to possess. It was fond, and warm. “I love Buckkeep,” he said quite clearly and vividly. He smiled. “Though I could stand the winters to be warmer.” He capered and tumbled onto the center of the bedspread, which sank and sprang beneath him. “If only there were a warmhearted stableboy to keep me company!” He stuck out his tongue at me.

My face burned. It was not exactly the first time he had mocked me thus. Somehow the barb struck differently when he was sprawled thus before me. I could think of nothing whatsoever to say. I was sure no matter what I did, speaking or going or continuing to stand stock still like an idiot, the Fool would laugh at me, and suddenly this was a fate cruel beyond bearing.

The Fool sat up, his disheveled hair floating about his face like strands of cloud. He did not laugh.

“Fitzy-fitz,” he said softly, wonderingly.

“Too much draft from your windows,” I said to the air. “You should get heavier curtains. Or a dog. Dogs are warm.”

It was possibly the best Burrich impression of my young life, and not even purposely done.

“I’m sorry for prying,” I muttered, and fled.

 

I saw the Fool differently after that day. I tried to conceal it from him, for I knew he would take it amiss—connect it to the flowers, the doll. He had never wanted me to see his chamber, I understood. My looking at it had been looking at him, in a way. I had frightened him by doing so. I did not like that, and I did not want to frighten him again.

But now when he cartwheeled and juggled before King Shrewd, when he viciously derided the court lords in his motley, I thought of his loom and his blue tunic. It had looked soft. I imagined it was soft, and light, like a petal. His hands which were so quick catching whirling goblets would be just as quick with the shuttle, or the needle stitching those pansies and birds. Before Patience’s tutelage, I had not even known what a pansy was called. They were too benignly edible for Chade’s lessons. I stabbed a bit of roast boar with my belt knife and felt crude and ugly and fit only for dealing death. 

“What’s gotten into you, boy?”

This was Verity, after dinner.

“Look lively. You’re young, you’re hale. It ill befits Shrewd’s court to be dour tonight.”

That was rich coming from him, but I held my tongue and simply shrugged. I mumbled something about Leon the greyhound.

He nodded as if to himself and watched me quietly. I felt rather like an oyster must below a soaring gull. He seemed to have something on the tip of his tongue, but he bit it back. He clapped me on the shoulder. “Take care, Fitz. Remember whose name you carry. And don’t spend your Harvest eve miserable.”

I did, though. My prince’s wedding had been delayed until early spring, when he might attend the ceremony in person. He had brightened somewhat on the prospect of marriage since Shrewd had secured this adjustment, but for me it meant looking forward to a long winter with too many hours to spend alone with my thoughts, and not even Burrich’s tasks in the stables to occupy them.

“Pastry?”

“Fool! You startled me.”

“And you, me,” he pointed out reasonably. I sheathed the belt knife I had shoved under his chin, embarrassed.

“I’ll take the pastry.”

“Oh, please do. Better that than meet your blade! I shall have to raise the alarm and alert my king to the presence of Red Ship raiders in his very own halls!”

“That’s not funny, Fool.”

“Very well, just ordinary brigands, then.” He batted his lashes at me. They reminded me of a string of diamonds I had once disarranged in Queen Desire’s jewelry-box for Chade. “Should I fear for my innocence?”

“That’s not funny, either.” Heat crept over my cheeks.

He giggled.

“You look so affronted,” he informed me warmly. His eyes sparkled. “My dear Fitz, they will never make a brigand of you.” He sounded proud, as though he had something to do with this. For my part, I lacked his confidence about my good nature. He winked at me. “Ladies will offer themselves to you of their own accord, with enthusiasm.”

“Fool!”

“You’ve choked that pastry quite to death. Give it back now. Ugh, it’s squashed, and your hand is all sticky.”

He was so mournful that I found a smile. He ate the offending lump of apple and dough, and I licked the sweet filling from my fingers. I thought nothing of it, but he watched me oddly, a strange look in his eyes.

“You won’t fool me, you know,” I said.

“Won’t I?”

“You’ve told me often enough what a sad sight I make.” I felt boorish for embarking upon this line of conversation, but it was too late to stop. “I don’t expect to see ladies lining up outside my door.” I thought bitterly of Molly, hand in hand with that stranger.

“Don’t you?”

I shrugged. “Look around.” We stood in the dusty stairwell outside my bare bedchamber.

“It’s dark and your jerkin is hideous. In the light they shall be as flies upon honey.” He put a hand to his heart. “I will have to do as your lady in the meantime.”

“You don’t usually speak me fair.”

“I am usually a fool,” he agreed, “but even fools get Harvest eve off. After the banquet there are so many others who vie for the position.”

I wondered who he was, when he was not the Fool. I wondered if he really did think me handsome. Then I dismissed the idea.

“Goodnight, Fool.”

“Goodnight, my beauty.”

I slipped inside and closed the door. My heart beat quickly.

Chade had explained the word “catamite” to me during one of our nightly sessions, when he was rather in his cups. I had a vague idea of what they did with other men and a clearer idea that it was low and shameful. Folk said the same of the Wit, yet I had never been able to quiet that sense in me. I hoped very deeply that this was different. Was I a catamite, as Galen had named me? No. I couldn’t be. Was the Fool? My stomach flipped uncomfortably. Surely some would say so, were he not in motley. But it would be just as cruel, just as untrue, as the times that Regal named him a freak or the keep’s children named him a monster.

And those things Chade had mentioned—well, they could not possibly feel good. The Fool was too clean and fussy for such activities.

I slept uneasily. I woke far less convinced than I had been that the Fool was unsuited to unnatural contortions of the body and base fleshly desires.

Not that it mattered. I had no plans of indulging, myself.

It would be best to give the Fool a wide berth. Avoid embarrassing myself further. Verity’s advice rang in my ears.

 

I found myself ascending the stairs to the tower room with two old saddle blankets stacked in my arms. I knocked once, and told myself I would leave right away if no answer came. But the door opened and there stood the Fool, wearing a saffron-yellow robe I had never seen before and the black-and-white jester’s cap he donned in winter.

“Fitzy-fitz, I wondered when you would call on me again.” So he simpered. “Have you brought… perhaps a bed for an invisible dog?”

I squared my shoulders and clutched my excuse to my chest.

“I came to see if you were cold.”

He looked at me long enough that I shifted on my feet. “I am being serious,” I said. Not making fun, I meant.

He nodded with no mocking rejoinder. “You may as well come in,” he said softly. “Having climbed up all those stairs.”

I knew the invitation for a great gift, and valued it as such. He snuck glances at me as I entered, still holding the stacked blankets. In the Fool’s oasis, the bundle I held seemed scratchy and worn. I had cleaned them thoroughly, but I suddenly recalled how Burrich had wanted to turn the things over for rags.

The doll lay not in its cradle, but sat propped on a sill near one of the drafty windows, bundled about in a bit of cloth. The image startled me, then reminded me incongruously of Verity. Without thinking, I asked, “Your doll…”

He stiffened.

“Is it a girl, or a boy?”

His shoulders relaxed. He smiled a winsome smile, like the silver flash of a minnow. “Both and neither,” he teased. “Would you make her decide?”

He went to the doll and adjusted her cloth covering against the cold. From his use of the word I took it that the ceramic babe was a girl despite the Fool’s riddles. 

I wanted to ask him more, but dared not risk my invitation so soon.

“If I were cold, what would you do to mend it?” the Fool said quietly. He tilted his head at my pile of saddle blankets. His eyes were big and guileless, yet nonetheless, I thought they held the glint of a challenge.

“I don’t know,” I muttered. I thought burningly of his jest last time I had stood before him in this chamber.

The Fool nodded slowly. His long-lashed eyes brushed downwards. I thought that in some animal way he was telling me not to fear him.

“I am cold,” he said, “and lonely.” His voice sounded too plain to be his voice at all.

I gulped for air. “Fool—”

He kissed the corner of my mouth where my lips joined. In a moment my arms were lighter, and he had darted back.

“Goodnight,” he said, holding the woolen blankets, “and good luck knowing!”

I swore and reached back for him. My hands were shaking as they clasped his shoulders, his hair, knocking his cap free. His breath caught, and the scratchy wool abruptly pressed between our chests. My kiss was not on the corner of his mouth.

Had I misread him? I was sure I had, and terrified. I had lost Molly already, and lost Burrich by my nature. Could I stand to lose my only friend in the world? I do not think I would ever have dared it, were we not in his garden of wonder and oddity, were he himself not so bold and strange.

He broke my fall. His arms were strong and slender, and his mouth was cool as wellwater. The saddle blankets fell to our feet. When we parted his white face was pink. I stroked it with a coarse finger. His mouth made an O.

“I wasn’t lying,” I said. The panicked words stumbled out like drunks. “I don’t know what to do. Do—do you want me to stay?”

“Do I,” the Fool breathed.

He took my hand, swinging it as though we were children.

“I have wanted you to kiss me since before we met,” he sing-songed. “I thought—never. I never dreamed it. But then—I hoped—for you change everything, so—why not this?”

I stared at him in a daze, barely hearing. His delight was infectious. When had someone ever taken such complete delight in me, unrestrained by rank or strategy or some past pain? I could not bear to let his smile die. I drew his delicate hand up and kissed the knuckles. I felt awkward—it was a gesture for a court lady. But the smile he turned on me was radiant. I could not find the words to properly convey to him that he, not I, was the one who made all things seem possible. That he was the one who was brave.

“I’ll stay,” I said, heart in my throat.

We did not join that night. No, I sat upon his woven bedspread, having tugged off my boots at his insistence, and watched my strange Fool move about the chamber in his yellow robe as though it were a kingdom and he its king, or perhaps its queen. He brought me a blue clay cup poured from the kettle in his low-burning hearth, beside which he had stacked my saddle blankets. I drank it trustingly: it was floral and herbal. Behind a screen painted with climbing trumpet-flowers, he changed costume as if by magic, emerging clad in a long nightshirt he wore like a gown. I blushed at the sight of his pale calves darting below its embroidered hem. He wound a woven wrap about his shoulders and picked the doll up from the window, and I blushed again at the picture he made holding her. He settled her in her cradle and placed different cloths overtop: a miniature quilt of blue satin and a white rabbit-fur. As he went about the room lighting tiny lamps in niches I had not noticed, I learned the doll’s name was Fish, and that she grew cold easily, like he did.

“Why do you light them when it’s so bright already?” Burrich would have called it wasteful.

He held a finger to his lips, as he might in court about to reveal a particularly impressive bit of trickery. At last he went to the large oil lamp upon his table and blew it out.

I understood in a moment. The little flames were like stars, refracting and spinning off hanging bits of crystal, taking on their shapes and hues. So entranced was I by this magic that I barely noticed he had slipped off his wrap and tucked himself under the covers beside me. He unfurled them invitingly, and feeling my pulse flutter, I slid under the weight of the blankets, next to his cool body.

“I feel like I am in a wonder-tale,” I told him. The scattered lamplight glimmered on his moonlike face.

He wriggled closer to me. “Do you like them? When the crystal hangs just so, they form constellations on the ceiling.”

I squinted at the winking lights. I could only imagine the hours the Fool had spent arranging the dangling strings and mirrored lamps to his satisfaction. “I can’t see them,” I admitted.

“Ah, that would be because they are southern stars. You may count yourself the only man in the Six Duchies to have seen them. See, there is the Serpent, at our heads. Do you see how he swims about the Maiden? Follow my hand.”

He drew in close. His feet were stunningly cold against my ankle, and I yelped. He laughed, a clear bright sound, and entwined our feet again. I made to push him away, and for a few breathless moments we tussled like puppies. It was not much of a competition. I soon held him fast against the pallet, and felt both of us quite warmed.

He looked at me like—years later, I still struggle to describe the way he sometimes looks at me.

“Kiss me again, Fitzy,” he whispered.

I did, and it was sweet, and tasted like his tea. We kissed until my blood grew hot, and then I found myself on my back, and he atop me, where he promptly curled against my chest like a cat upon a square of sunlight. He was surprisingly light, and his head rested on my shoulder, and I felt as tender towards him as I ever had towards anything in the entire world.

I wanted to kiss him again, but settled for winding my arms about him, and the covers over his slim shoulders. My heart beat quickly. It was not only that I desired him, but that something deadened in me since Galen—perhaps before then, since Nosy, or the day I arrived at Moonseye—had suddenly returned to me alive and flourishing. I could almost feel the thrum of the connections that wound the world together, the great Skill-current beckoning beyond my scarred walls.

“You are warm,” he said muzzily.

“Are you content?”

He gave a little sigh that made my stomach flip distractedly. “Fitz, I would stay like this forever.”

“And I,” I whispered.

He slept like that, in my arms. I searched overhead for the Maiden and the Serpent, and thought I made them out.

Notes:

Thinking about baby Fitz and baby Fool makes me want to scream

Title from Kestrel's quote in Assassin's Quest: “It simply cannot be right. The Prophet and the Catalyst, and you are scarcely more than boys. Green to manhood, untrained in Skill, full of pranks and lovesick woes. These are the ones sent to save the world?”

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