Fortune's Fool Read Online Free

on them and the Kingdom, and act accordingly.
    Right now, that Adviser was Sasha’s Uncle Zhenechka; always scholarly by nature, he found following the twists and turns that The Tradition made fascinating to puzzle out. Zhenechka’s successor would be Sasha’s brother Yasha, dedicated with all his earnest heart to keeping the people of Led Belarus safe from all the possible evils that might befall them.
    And here was how very, very clever Rurik and the current Advisers were with regards to the Royal Family.
    The Tradition in Led Belarus had a great deal to say about how the young Princes would turn out, based on how many of them there were. The Traditional role for the eldest and heir was that of the Arrogant Bully, who nevertheless could be redeemed by insulting some magician or spirit and performing its tasks until he learned humility. Prince Adrik had walked through that particular lesson before he was thirteen.
    The Tradition for the second born was as his brother the King’s right-hand man, the leader of his troops. It had been no problem for Prince Anatolii to fit into that role.
    The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth born were the luckiest in a way. They were able to choose their lot in life. Yasha had happily apprenticed himself to Zhenechka as Adviser-in-waiting, and the rest had found themselves niches here and there as Zhenechka advised them.
    But Sasha, the seventh born…
    He had come late in his mother’s life, and been entirely unexpected. And The Tradition had a lot to say about the seventh born. Though not usually magical by nature, although there were exceptions, nevertheless, Traditional Magic was destined to circle strongly about him. And his role would be—the Wise or Fortunate Fool.
    Now, the Wise Fool was a feature in so many tales and legends that Sasha had long since lost count of them. That made it a pattern that The Tradition was going to be working very hard to force him into. But the Wise Fool was not really a fool as such….
    No, he was a dreamer, a planner. Not a warrior. Very often a poet. And there was one thing that he did for his country that could not be Traditionally duplicated in any other fashion.
    He brought them all Luck.
    Traditionally, there was no particular way in which the Wise Fool needed to bring the Luck, as long as he did something that could be linked into the magic of The Tradition itself.
    Now as it happened, there could not possibly have been a better match, temperamentally, for the role of the Wise Fool than Sasha.
    He was musical, and music was a potent link for The Tradition. He was not much like his older brothers, being smaller and lighter than they. Not that he was bad at combat, but not the sort that they were good at. If it ever came to a war, and he had to fight, he would be darting in and out with light armor and long knives while they laid waste to their foes with ax, mace, and heavy broadsword. Prince Adrik called him “Ferret”—mockingly in public, jestingly in private.
    He was a thinker, a scholar, and studied The Tradition and anything else he could get his hands on alongside his brother Prince Yasha. In private, Yasha called him “Little Owl.” In public, Yasha berated him and called him “Little Fool.”
    For that, too, was an aspect of the Wise Fool. So far as the rest of the world was concerned, Sasha’s family despised him. That was how The Tradition wanted it.
    But from the very beginning, the tiny boy with the too-wise eyes had gotten it all very carefully explained to him. We must shout at you before other people, but it is all a game. We love you. You are our treasure, our blood, our Fortune . And he had been precocious enough to at least understand the difference between what was said and done in public, and what was said and done in private. Before too very long, he was clearly enjoying the “game” aspect, the way his entire family fooled the rest of the Court and indeed the whole kingdom. His greatest joy had been when he had acted