Authors: Patrick Rothfuss

Tags: #Mercenary troops, #Magicians, #Magic, #Attempted assassination, #Fairies, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #Heroes, #Epic

The Wise Man's Fear (155 page)

I cannot describe how she looked. And even if I could, it would not impress upon you the truth of things, as her face was still almost entirely impassive. Instead let me say this. I have never seen anyone so furious in my entire life. Not Ambrose. Not Hemme. Not Denna when I criticized her song or the Maer when I defied him. Those angers were pale candles compared to the forge fire burning in Carceret’s eyes.

But even in the full flower of her fury, Carceret was perfectly in control. She didn’t lash out wildly or snarl at me. She kept her words inside her, burning them like fuel.

I couldn’t win this fight. But my hands moved automatically, trained by hundreds of hours of practice to take advantage of her nearness. I stepped forward and tried to grab hold of her for Thunder Upward. Her hands snapped out, brushing the attack away. Then she lashed out with Bargeman at the Dock.

I don’t think she expected it to connect. A more competent opponent would have avoided or blocked it. But I had let myself get slightly wrongfooted, so I was off balance, so I was slow, so her foot caught me in the stomach and
pushed
.

Bargeman at the Dock isn’t a quick kick meant to break bones. It is a kick that shoves the opponent off balance. As I was already off balance, it pushed me right off my feet. I landed jarringly on my back, then rolled to a stop in a messy tangle of limbs.

Now some might say that I had taken a bad fall and was obviously too stupefied to find my feet and continue the fight. Others might say that while it was messy, the fall wasn’t quite as hard as all that, and I had certainly found my feet after worse.

Personally, I think the line between being stupefied and being wise is sometimes very thin. How thin, I suppose, I will leave to you to decide.

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SEVEN

Anger

“W
HAT WERE YOU THINKING?” Tempi demanded.
Disappointment. Fierce chastisement
. “What fool sets his sword aside?”

“She threw her sword away first!” I protested.

“Only to lure you in,” Tempi said. “Only as a trap.”

I was buckling Caesura’s scabbard so the hilt hung over my shoulder. There hadn’t been any particular ceremony after I had lost. Magwyn simply returned my sword and smiled at me, patting my hand in a comforting way.

I watched the crowd slowly dispersing below, and gestured
polite disbelief
to Tempi. “Should I have kept my sword when she was unarmed?”

“Yes!”
Absolute agreement
. “She is five times the fighter you are. You might have had a chance if you had kept your sword!”

“Tempi is right,” I heard Shehyn’s voice behind me. “Knowing your enemy is in keeping with the Lethani. Once a fight is inevitable, a clever fighter takes any advantage.” I turned and saw her coming down the path. Penthe walked beside her.

I gestured
polite certainty
. “If I had kept my sword and won, people would have thought Carceret was a fool and resented me for gaining a rank I did not deserve. And if I had kept my sword and lost, it would have been humiliating. Neither reflects well on me.” I looked back and forth between Shehyn and Tempi. “Am I wrong in this?”

“You are not wrong in this.” Shehyn said. “But neither is Tempi wrong.”

“Victory is always to be sought,” Tempi said.
Firm
.

Shehyn turned to face him. “Success is key,” she said. “Victory is not always needed to succeed.”

Tempi gestured
respectful disagreement
and opened his mouth to respond, but Penthe spoke first, cutting him off. “Kvothe, are you hurt from your fall?”

“Not badly,” I said, moving my back gingerly. “A few bruises, perhaps.”

“Do you have anything to put on them?”

I shook my head.

Penthe stepped forward and took hold of my arm. “I have things at my house. We will leave these two to discuss the Lethani. Someone should tend to your hurts.” She held my arm with her left hand, making her statement curiously empty of any emotional content.

“Of course,” Shehyn said after a moment, and Tempi gestured a hasty
agreement
. But Penthe was already leading me firmly down the hill.

We walked for a quarter mile or so, Penthe holding my arm lightly.

Eventually she spoke in her lightly accented Aturan. “Are you bruised badly enough to need a salve?” she asked.

“Not really,” I admitted.

“I thought not,” she said. “But after I have lost a fight, I rarely wish to have people tell me how I lost it.” She flashed me a small, secret smile.

I smiled back.

We continued to walk, and Penthe kept hold of my arm, subtly guiding us through a grove of trees, then up a steep path carved through a small bluff. Eventually we came to a secluded dell that had a carpet of wild papavlerflower blossoming among the grass. Their loose, blood-red petals were almost exactly the same color as Penthe’s mercenary reds.

“Vashet told me barbarians have strange rituals with your sex,” Penthe said. “She told me if I wanted to bed you, I should bring you to some flowers.” She gestured around. “These are the best I could find in this season.” She looked up at me expectantly.

“Ah,” I said. “I expect Vashet was having a bit of a joke with you. Or perhaps a joke with me.” Penthe frowned and I hurried to continue. “But it is true that among the barbarians there are many rituals that lead up to sex. It is somewhat more complicated there.”

Penthe gestured
sullen irritation
. “I should not be surprised,” she said. “Everyone tells stories about the barbarians. Some of it is training, so I can move well among you.”
Wry however
. “Since I have not been out among them yet, they also tell stories to tease me.”

“What sort of stories?” I asked, thinking of what I had heard about the Adem and the Lethani before I had met Tempi.

She shrugged,
slight embarrassment
. “It is foolishness. They say all the barbarian men are huge.” She gestured far above her head, showing a height of more than seven feet. “Naden told me he went to a town where the barbarians ate a soup made of dirt. They say the barbarians never bathe. They say barbarians drink their own urine, believing it will help them live longer.” She shook her head, laughing and gesturing
horrified amusement
.

“Are you saying,” I asked slowly, “that you don’t drink yours?”

Penthe froze midlaugh and looked at me, her face and hands showing a confused, apologetic mix of embarrassment, disgust, and disbelief. It was such a bizarre tangle of emotions I couldn’t help but laugh, and I saw her relax when she realized the joke.

“I understand,” I said. “We tell similar stories about the Adem.”

Her eyes lit up. “You must tell me as I told you. It is fair.”

Given Tempi’s reaction when I’d told him of the word-fire and Lethani, I decided to share something else. “They say those who take the red never have sex. They say you take that energy and put it into your Ketan, and that is why you are such good fighters.”

Penthe laughed hard at that. “I would have never made the third stone if that were the case,” she said.
Wry amusement
. “If keeping from sex gave me my fighting, there would be days I could not make even a fist.”

I felt my pulse quicken a bit at that.

“Still,” she said. “I can see where that story comes from. They must think we have no sex because no Adem would bed a barbarian.”

“Ah,” I said, somewhat disappointed. “Why have you brought me to the flowers then?”

“You are now of Ademre,” she said easily. “I expect many will approach you now. You have a sweet face, and it is hard not to be curious about your anger.”

Penthe paused and glanced significantly downward. “That is unless you are diseased?”

I blushed at this. “What? No! Of course not!”

“Are you certain?”

“I have studied at the Medica,” I said somewhat stiffly. “The greatest school of medicine in all the world. I know all about the diseases a person might catch, how to spot them and how to treat them.”

Penthe gave me a skeptical look. “I do not question you in particular. But it is well known that barbarians are quite frequently diseased in their sex.”

I shook my head. “This is just another foolish story. I assure you the barbarians are no more diseased than the Adem. In fact, I expect we may be less.”

She shook her head, her eyes serious. “No. You are wrong in this. Of a hundred barbarians, how many would you say were so afflicted?”

It was an easy statistic I knew from the Medica. “Out of every hundred? Perhaps five. More among those who work in brothels or frequent such places, of course.”

Penthe’s face showed obvious disgust and she shivered. “Of one hundred Adem, none are so afflicted,” she said firmly.
Absolute
.

“Oh come now.” I held up my hand, making a circle with my fingers. “None?”

“None,” she said with grim certainty. “The only place we could catch such a thing is from a barbarian, and those who travel are warned.”

“What if you caught a disease from another Adem who had not been careful while traveling?” I asked.

Penthe’s tiny heart-shaped face went grim, her nostrils flaring. “From one of my own?”
Vast anger
. “If one of Ademre were to give me a disease, I would be furious. I would shout from the top of a cliff what they had done. I would make their life as painful as a broken bone.”

She gestured
disgust
, brushing at the front of her shirt in the first piece of Adem hand-talk I had ever learned from Tempi. “Then I would make the long trek over the mountains into the Tahl to be cured of it. Even if the trip should take two years and bring no money to the school. And none would think the less of me for that.”

I nodded to myself. It made sense. Given their attitudes about sex, if it were any other way, disease would run rampant through the population.

I saw Penthe looking at me expectantly. “Thank you for the flowers,” I said.

She nodded and stepped closer, looking up at me. Her eyes were excited as she smiled her shy smile. Then her face grew serious. “Is it enough to satisfy your barbarian rituals, or is there more that must be done?”

I reached down and ran my hand along the smooth skin of her neck, sliding my fingertips under the long braid so they brushed the back of her neck. She closed her eyes and tipped her face up toward mine.

“They are lovely, and more than enough,” I said, and bent to kiss her.

“I was right,” Penthe said with a contented sigh as we lay naked among the flowers. “You have a fine anger.” I lay on my back, her small body curled under my arm, her heart-shaped face resting gently on my chest.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked. “I think anger might be the wrong word.”

“I mean
Vaevin
,” she said, using the Ademic term. “Is that the same?”

“I don’t know that word,” I admitted.

“I think anger is the right word,” she said. “I have spoken with Vashet in your language, and she did not correct me.”

“What do you mean by anger, then?” I asked. “I certainly don’t feel angry.”

Penthe lifted her head from my chest and gave me a lazy, satisfied smile. “Of course not,” she said. “I have taken your anger. How could you feel such a way?”

“Are . . . are you angry then?” I asked, sure I was missing the point entirely.

Penthe laughed and shook her head. She had undone her long braid and her honey-colored hair hung down the side of her face. It made her look like an entirely different person. That and the lack of the mercenary reds, I supposed. “It is not that kind of anger. I am glad to have it.”

“I still do not understand,” I said. “This could be something barbarians do not know. Explain it to me as if I were a child.”

She looked at me for a moment, her eyes serious, then she rolled over onto her stomach so she could face me more easily. “This anger is not a feeling. It is . . .” She hesitated, frowning prettily. “It is a desire. It is a making. It is a wanting of life.”

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