Vashet slapped my chest with the back of her hand to get my attention. “I said you should be flattered,” she repeated.
“I am,” I said.
She took hold of my shoulder, turning me to face her. “You’ve gone all pensive on me.”
“What will be done with Tempi if all of this ends badly?” I asked bluntly.
Her cheerful expression faded. “His reds will be taken away, and his sword, and his name, and he will be cut away from the Latantha.” She drew a slow breath. “It is unlikely any other school would take him after such a thing, so this would effectively exile him from all Ademre.”
“But exile won’t work for me,” I said. “Forcing me back into the world would only make the problem worse, wouldn’t it?”
Vashet didn’t say anything.
“When all of this started,” I said. “You encouraged me to leave. If I had run, would I have been allowed to go?”
There was a long silence that told me the truth of it. But she said it aloud, too. “No.”
I appreciated not being lied to about it. “And what is my punishment to be?” I asked. “Imprisonment?” I shook my head. “No. It’s not practical to keep me locked up here for years.” I looked up at her. “So what?”
“Punishment is not our concern,” she said. “You are a barbarian, after all. You did not know you were doing anything wrong. The main concern is to prevent you from teaching others what you have stolen, to keep you from using it to your own profit.”
She hadn’t answered my question. I gave her a long look.
“Some say killing you would be the best way,” she said frankly. “But most believe killing is not in keeping with the Lethani. Shehyn is among these. As am I.”
I relaxed slightly, that was something at least. “And I don’t suppose a promise on my part would reassure anyone?”
She gave me a sympathetic smile. “It speaks well of you that you came back with Tempi. And you stayed when I tried to drive you away. But the promise of a barbarian amounts for little in this.”
“What then?” I asked, suspecting the answer and knowing I wasn’t going to like it.
She took a deep breath. “You could be prevented from teaching by removing your tongue or putting out your eyes,” she said frankly. “To keep you from using the Ketan you might be hobbled. Your ankle tendon cut, or the knee of your favored leg lamed.” She shrugged. “But one can still be a good fighter even with a damaged leg. So it would be more effective to remove the two smallest fingers from your right hand. This would be . . .”
Vashet kept speaking in her matter-of-fact tone. I think she intended it to be reassuring, calming. But it had the opposite effect. All I could think of was her cutting off my fingers as calmly as you would pare away a piece of apple. Everything grew bright around the edges of my vision, and the vivid mental picture made my stomach roll over. I thought for a moment I might be sick.
The light-headedness and nausea passed. As I came to my senses, I realized Vashet had finished talking and was staring at me.
Before I could say anything, she waved a hand dismissively. “I see I will get no more use of you today. Take the rest of the evening for yourself. Get your thoughts in order or practice the Ketan. Go watch the sword tree. Tomorrow we will continue.”
I walked aimlessly for a while, trying not to think about my fingers being cut away. Then, coming over a hill, I stumbled almost literally onto a naked Adem couple tucked away in a grove of trees.
They didn’t scramble for their clothes when I burst out of the trees, and rather than try to apologize with my poor language and fuddled wits, I simply turned and left, face burning with embarrassment.
I tried to practice the Ketan but couldn’t keep my mind on it. I went to watch the sword tree, and for a while the sight of it moving gracefully in the wind calmed me. Then my mind drifted and I was confronted with the image of Vashet paring off my fingers again.
I heard the three high bells and went to dinner. I was standing in line, half stupid with the mental effort of not thinking of someone maiming my hands, when I noticed the Adem standing nearby were staring at me.A young girl of about ten wore an expression of open amazement on her face, and a man in his mercenary reds looked at me as if he had just seen me wipe my ass with a piece of bread and eat it.
Only then did I realize I was humming. Not loud, exactly, but loud enough for those nearby to hear. I couldn’t have been doing it for long, as I was only six lines into “Leave the Town, Tinker.”
I stopped, then lowered my eyes, took my food, and spent ten minutes trying to eat. I managed a few bites, but that was all. Eventually I gave up and headed to my room.
I lay in bed, running through the options in my mind. How far could I run? Could I lose myself in the surrounding countryside? Could I steal a horse? Had I even seen a horse since I’d been in Haert?
I brought out my lute and practiced my chording a bit, all five of my clever fingers flicking up and down the long neck of the lute. But my right hand ached to strum and pick notes from the strings. It was as frustrating as trying to kiss someone using only one lip, and I soon gave up.
At last I brought out my shaed and wrapped it around myself. It was warm and comforting. I drew the hood over my head as far as it would go and thought of the dark piece of Fae where Felurian had gathered its shadows.
I thought of the University, of Wil and Sim. Of Auri and Devi and Fela. I had never been popular at the University, and my circle of friends had never seemed particularly large. But the truth was I’d simply forgotten what it was like to be truly alone.
I thought of my family then. I thought of the Chandrian, of Cinder. His fluid grace. His sword held easy in his hand like a piece of winter ice. I thought of killing him.
I thought of Denna and what the Cthaeh had told me. I thought of her patron and the things I had said during our fight. I thought about the time she had slipped on the road and I had caught her, how the gentle curve above her hip had felt against my hand. I thought about the shape of her mouth, the sound of her voice, the smell of her hair.
And, eventually, I stepped softly through the doors of sleep.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN
Storm and Stone
I WOKE THE NEXT MORNING knowing the truth. My only way out of this situation was through the school. I needed to prove myself. That meant I needed everything Vashet could teach me as quickly as possible.
So the next morning I rose in the pale blue light of dawn. And when Vashet emerged from her small stone house I was waiting for her. I was not particularly bright-eyed or bushy-tailed, as my sleep had been filled with troubling dreams, but I was ready to learn.
I realize now that I may have given an inaccurate impression of Haert.
It was no thriving metropolis, obviously. And it couldn’t be considered a city by any stretch of the imagination. In some ways it was barely a town.
I do not say this disparagingly. I spent the majority of my young life traveling with my troupe, moving from small town to small town. Half the world is made of tiny communities that have grown up around nothing more than a crossroads market, or a good clay pit, or a bend of river strong enough to turn a mill wheel.
Sometimes these towns are prosperous. Some have rich soil and generous weather. Some thrive on the trade moving through them. The wealth of these places is obvious. The houses are large and well-mended. People are friendly and generous. The children are fat and happy. There are luxuries for sale: pepper and cinnamon and chocolate. There is coffee and good wine and music at the local inn.
Then there are the other sort of towns. Towns where the soil is thin and tired. Towns where the mill burned down, or the clay was mined out years ago. In these places the houses are small and badly patched. The people are lean and suspicious, and wealth is measured in small, practical ways. Cords of firewood. A second pig. Five jars of blackberry preserve.
At first glance, Haert seemed to be this sort of town. It was little more than tiny homes, b
roken stone, and the occasional penned goat.
In most parts of the Commonwealth, or anywhere in the Four Corners for that matter, a family living in a small cottage with only a few sticks of furniture would be viewed as unfortunate. One step away from paupers.
But while most of the Adem homes I had seen were relatively small, they weren’t the same sort you would find in a desperate Aturan town, made of sod and logs chinked with mud.
The Adem homes were all snug stone, fit together as cunningly as anything I had ever seen. There were no cracks letting in the endless wind. No leaking roofs. No cracking leather hinges on the doors. The windows weren’t oiled sheepskin or empty holes with wooden shutters. They were fitted glass, tight as any you’d find in a banker’s manor.
I never saw a fireplace in all my time in Haert. Don’t get me wrong, fireplaces are better than freezing to death by a long step. But most of the rough ones folk can build for themselves out of loose fieldstone or cinder-brick are drafty, dirty, and inefficient. They fill your house with soot and your lungs with smoke.
Instead of fireplaces, each Adem home had its own iron stove. The sort of stove that weighs hundreds of pounds. The sort of stove made of thick drop-iron so you can stoke it until it glows with heat. The sort of stove that lasts a century and costs more than a farmer earns from an entire year of hard harvesting. Some of these stoves were small, good for heating and cooking. But I saw more than a few that were larger and could be used for baking too. One of these treasures was tucked away in a low stone house of only three rooms.
The rugs on the Adem floors were mostly simple, but they were of thick, soft wool, deeply dyed. The floors beneath those rugs were smooth-sanded wood, not dirt. There were no guttering tallow tapers or reedlights. There were beeswax candles or lamps that burned a clean white oil. And once, through a distant window, I recognized the unwavering red light of a sympathy lamp.
It was this last that made me realize the truth. This was not a scattered handful of desperate folk, scratching out a lean existence on the bare mountainside. They were not living hand-to-mouth, eating cabbage soup and living in fear of winter. This community was comfortably, quietly prosperous.
More than that. Despite the lack of glittering banquet halls and fancy gowns, despite the absence of servants and statuary, each of these homes was like a tiny manor house. They were each of them wealthy in a quiet, practical way.
“What did you think?” Vashet said, laughing at me. “That a handful of us win our reds and run off to lives of mad luxury while our families drink their own bathwater and die of scurvy?”
“I hadn’t though of it at all, really,” I said, looking around. Vashet was beginning to show me how to use a sword. We had been at it for two hours, and she had done little more than explain the different ways of holding it. As if it were a baby and not a piece of steel.
Now that I knew what to look for, I could see dozens of the Adem houses worked cunningly into the landscape. Heavy wooden doors were dug into bluffs. Others looked like little more than tumbles of stone. Some had grass growing on their roofs and could only be recognized by the stovepipes peeping out. A fat nanny goat grazed atop one of these, her udder swinging as she stretched out her neck to crop a mouthful of grass.
“Look at the land around you,” she said, spinning in a slow circle to take in the landscape. “The ground is too thin for the plow, too jagged for horses. The summer too wet for wheat, too harsh for fruit. Some mountains hold iron, or coal, or gold. But not these mountains. In winter the snow will pile higher than your head. In spring the storms will push you from your feet.”
She looked back at me. “This is our land because no one else wants it.” She shrugged. “Or rather, it became ours for that reason.”
Vashet adjusted her sword on her shoulder, then eyed me speculatively. “Sit and listen,” she said formally. “And I will tell a story of a time long gone.”
I sat on the grass, and Vashet took her place on a nearby stone. “Long ago,” she said, “the Adem were upheaved from our rightful place. Something we cannot remember drove us out. Someone stole our land, or ruined it, or made us flee in fear. We were forced to wander endlessly. Our whole nation mendicant, like beggars. We would find a place, and settle, and rest our flocks. Then those who lived nearby would drive us off.
“The Adem were fierce back then. If we had not been fierce, there would be none of us left today. But we were few, so we were always driven forth. Finally we found this thin and windy place, unwanted by the world. We dug our roots deep into the stone and made it ours.”
Vashet’s eyes wandered the landscape. “But this land had little to give us, a place for our flocks to graze, stone, and endless wind. We could not find a way to sell the wind, so we sold our fierceness to the world. So we lived, and slowly we sharpened ourselves into the thing we are today. No longer only fierce, but dangerous and proud. Unceasing as the wind and strong as stone.”
I waited a moment to make sure she was finished. “My people are wanderers too,” I said. “It is our way. Nowhere and everywhere is where we live.”
She shrugged, smiling. “It is a story, mind you. And an old one. Take from it what you will.”
“I am fond of stories,” I said.
“A story is like a nut,” Vashet said. “A fool will swallow it whole and choke. A fool will throw it away, thinking it of little worth.” She smiled. “But a wise woman finds a way to crack the shell and eat the meat inside.”
I got to my feet and walked to where she was sitting. I kissed her hands and her forehead and her mouth. “Vashet,” I said. “I am glad Shehyn gave me to you.”
“You are a foolish boy.” She looked down, but I could see a faint blush rising on her face as she spoke. “Come. We should go. You do not want to miss the chance to see Shehyn fight.”
Vashet led me to an unmarked piece of meadow where the thick grass had been grazed close to the ground. A few other Adem already stood nearby, waiting. Some folk had brought small stools or rolled pieces of log to use as benches. Vashet simply sat on the ground. I joined her.
A crowd slowly gathered. Only thirty people or so, but it was the most Adem I’d ever seen together other than in the dining hall. They gathered in twos and threes, moving from one conversation to another. Rarely did a group of five coalesce for any length of time.
Though there were a dozen conversations all within a stone’s throw of me, I couldn’t hear more than a murmur. The speakers stood close enough to touch, and the wind in the grass made more noise than their voices.
But I could tell the tone of each conversation from where I sat. Two months ago this gathering would have seemed eerily subdued. A gathering of fidgety, emotionless, near-mutes. But now I could plainly see one pair of Adem were teacher and student by how far apart they stood, by the deference in the younger woman’s hands. The cluster of three red-shirted men were friends, easy and joking as they jostled at each other. That man and woman were fighting. She was angry. He was trying to explain.
I suddenly wondered how I ever could have thought of these people as restless or fidgety. Every motion was to a purpose. Every shifting of the feet implied a change in attitude. Every gesture spoke volumes.
Vashet and I sat close to each other and kept our voices low, continuing our discussion in Aturan. She explained how each school had standing accounts with the Cealdish moneylenders. That meant far-flung mercenaries could deposit the school’s share of their earnings anywhere people used Cealdish currency, which meant anywhere in the entire civilized world. That money was then tallied to the appropriate account so the school could make use of it.
“How much does a mercenary send back to the school?” I asked, curious.
“Eighty percent,” she said.
“Eight percent?” I asked, holding up all my fingers but two, sure I had misheard.
“Eighty,” Vashet said firmly. “That is the proper amount, though many pride themselves on giving more. The same would be true for you,” she said dism
issively, “if you stood a fiddler’s chance in hell of ever wearing the red.”
Seeing my astonishment, she explained. “It is not so much, when you think of it. For years, the school feeds and clothes you. It gives you a place to sleep. It gives you your sword, your training. After this investment, the mercenary supports the school. The school supports the village. The village produces children who hope to someday take the red.” She made a circle with her finger. “Thus all Ademre thrives.”
Vashet gave me a grave look. “Knowing this, perhaps you can begin to understand what you have stolen,” she said. “Not just a secret but the major export of the Adem. You have stolen the key to this entire town’s survival.”
It was a sobering thought. Suddenly Carceret’s anger made much better sense.
I caught a glimpse of Shehyn’s white shirt and roughly knitted yellow cap through the crowd. The scattered conversations grew still, and everyone began to gather into a large, loose circle.
It wasn’t just Shehyn fighting today, apparently. The first to fight were two boys a few years younger than myself, neither of them wearing red. They circled each other warily, then fell on each other in a flurry of blows.
It was too fast for my eye to follow, and I saw a dozen half-formed pieces of the Ketan scattered and discarded. It finally ended when one boy caught the other’s wrist and shoulder in Sleeping Bear. It was only when I saw the boy twist his opponent’s arm and force him to the ground that I recognized it as the grip Tempi had used in the bar fight in Crosson.
The boys separated, and two red-shirted mercenaries came out to talk to them, presumably their teachers.
Vashet leaned her head close to mine. “What do you think?”
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