Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

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Following the text of a binding resolution from the Traders’ Council of Bingtown, “The Changer” begins with Fitz musing over the possible effects the Fool will experience from drinking dragon’s blood and conferring with the Fool about current conditions. The Fool reports feeling more energized, and Fitz prepares a medicine as he settles in to get more information from his friend. Conversation is uncomfortable, ranging to many questions that find few answers, although the Fool is able to lay out some of the social structure in which Dwalia and her company are enmeshed.

Fitz lays out much of Bee’s early history, and the Fool’s belated acceptance of the idea of Bee as the Unexpected Son allows him to understand much of what has happened at last. Fitz, however, does not take the news as calmly. After laughing uproariously, the Fool attempts again to explain matters before turning to the destination towards which Bee is headed–Clerres–and how to intercept her captors. Fitz takes his leave and ruminates on the Fool’s explanations and some implications of the same, and his thoughts turn to Patience in the court where he now resides.

The present chapter brings to mind once again something I found…vexatious…in my first readings of the present novel and its immediate predecessor. On the rereading, or on this rereading, I find myself less vexed and more open to the ideas of 1) magic mucking about with things and 2) longer exposure and engagement prompting different circumstances. After all, I am older, now, than I was then, by more than a decade, and the differences between what I was and what I am are in many cases only those of greater familiarity. I am a better father now than I was then, for instance, but largely because I’ve had more time to learn how to parent. (It’s mostly because I have an excellent daughter who has, so far, made the work of parenting relatively easy. Credit where it is due.)

I am struck once again by the mismatch between the Fool’s understanding of Bee as the Unexpected Son and the Fool’s own gender fluidity (let alone Fitz’s visceral reaction to the Fool’s assertions of their mingling). I know that it is a humanizing thing to give characters blindnesses, and I know that Hobb is much concerned with imparting verisimilitude into her work; both such lend themselves to the Fool having trouble accepting the idea (and Fitz, to be certain). Still, for that to be the sticking point…it is a splinter between my fingers, and I don’t have the tweezers to address it well.

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