A Comedy of Terrors — Graeme Smith

Segorian Anderson's an Idiot. But that's fine with him. It's a well paying job with no heavy lifting.

Nobody ever remembers Segorian. It isn't magic - he just has the sort of face his own mother could forget, and she's been trying to for years. But being forgettable is a job requirement for an Idiot.
No, he's not the Court Jester. He doesn't wear motley (whatever motley may be). That's a different union. He's the Idiot. In a Queen's castle, wine spilt down the wrong dress can lead to war, so someone unimportant has to be blamed for it. That's the Idiot's job. He's the Idiot that did it, for any value of ‘it'. Of course, as soon as he's exiled-for-life out of the castle gate, he uses his back-door key and sneaks back in. But that's not all. Someday, something really bad will happen. Really, really bad. Badder than a bad thing on a very bad day with extra badness. When the world's about to end (or the washing up won't get done â€" whichever comes first), who you gonna call? No, not them. They haven't been invented yet. You call the Idiot, someone nobody will miss if things don't work out. And now Peladon has a case of dragon.

But the dragon may be the easy part. Segorian has woman trouble, and he's the only person in the castle who doesn't know it. Because to Segorian, women are an open book. The problem is, he never learned to read.