Authors: Patrick Rothfuss

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

The Wise Man's Fear (88 page)

Days passed, and Denna and I explored the streets of Severen. We lounged in cafés, attended plays, went riding. We climbed the face of the Sheer using the low road just to say we’d done it. We visited the dock markets, a traveling menagerie, and several curiosity cabinets.

Some days we did nothing but sit and talk, and on those days, nothing filled our conversations as much as music.

We spent countless hours discussing the craft of it. How songs fit together. How chorus and verse play against each other, about tone and mode and meter.

These were things I’d learned at an early age and thought about often. And though Denna was new to this study, in some ways that worked to her advantage. I’d learned about music since before I could talk. I knew ten thousand rules of melody and verse better than I knew the backs of my own hands.

Denna didn’t. In some ways this hampered her, but in other ways it made her music strange and marvelous. . . .

I’m doing a poor job of explaining this. Think of music as being a great snarl of a city like Tarbean. In the years I spent living there, I came to know its streets. Not just the main streets. Not just the alleys. I knew shortcuts and rooftops and parts of the sewers. Because of this, I could move through the city like a rabbit in a bramble. I was quick and cunning and clever.

Denna, on the other hand, had never been trained. She knew nothing of shortcuts. You’d think she’d be forced to wander the city, lost and helpless, trapped in a twisting maze of mortared stone.

But instead, she simply walked through the walls. She didn’t know any better. Nobody had ever told her she couldn’t. Because of this, she moved through the city like some faerie creature. She walked roads no one else could see, and it made her music wild and strange and free.

In the end it took twenty-three letters, six songs, and, though it shames me to say it, one poem.

There was more to it than that, of course. Letters alone cannot win a woman’s heart. Alveron did a fair piece of his own courting. And after he revealed himself as Meluan’s anonymous suitor, he did the lion’s share of the work, slowly wooing Meluan to his side with the gentle reverence he felt for her.

But my letters caught her attention. My songs brought her close enough for Alveron to work his slow, garrulous charm.

Even so, I can take only a small piece of credit for the letters and songs. And as for the poem, there is only one thing in the world that could move me to such madness.

CHAPTER SEVENTY

Clinging

I
MET DENNA OUTSIDE HER inn on Chalker’s Lane, a little place called the Four Tapers. As I turned the corner and saw her standing in the light cast by a lantern hanging above the front door, I felt an upwelling of joy at the simple pleasure of being able to find her when I went looking.

“I got your note,” I said. “Imagine my delight.”

Denna smiled and made a one-handed curtsey. She was wearing a skirt, not a complicated dress of the sort a noblewoman would wear, but a simple sweep of fabric you could wear while bucking hay or going to a barn dance. “I wasn’t sure you would be able to make it,” she said. “It being past the hour most civilized folk have taken to their beds.”

“I’ll admit I was surprised,” I said. “If I was the sort of man to pry, I would wonder what kept you occupied until this most unseemly hour.”

“Business,” she said with a dramatic sigh. “A meeting with my patron.”

“He’s in town again?” I asked.

She nodded.

“And he wanted to meet you at midnight?” I asked. “That’s . . . odd.”

Denna stepped out from under the inn’s sign and we began to walk down the street together. “The hand that holds the purse . . .” she said, giving a helpless shrug. “Odd times and inconvenient places are the rule with Master Ash. Some part of me suspects he might simply be some lonely noble, bored with ordinary patronage. I wonder if it adds some spice for him, pretending he’s meshed in some dark intrigue instead of just commissioning some songs from me.”

“So what do you have planned for tonight?” I asked.

“Only to pass time in your lovely company,” Denna said, reaching out and linking her arm with mine.

“In that case,” I said, “I have something to show you. It’s a surprise. You’ll have to trust me.”

“I’ve heard each of those a dozen times.” Denna’s dark eyes glittered wickedly. “But never all together, and never from you.” She smiled. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and save my world-weary gibes for later. Take me where you will.”

So we made our way to Severen-High by way of the horse lifts, where we both gawked at the lights of the nighttime city below like the lowborn cretins we were. I took her on a long stroll through cobblestone streets, past shops and small gardens. Then we left the buildings behind, climbed over a low wooden fence, and moved toward the dark shape of an empty barn.

At this, Denna was no longer able to keep quiet. “Well, you’ve done it,” she said. “You’ve surprised me.”

I grinned at her and continued to lead the way into the dark of the barn. It was full of the smell of hay and absent animals. I led her to a ladder that disappeared into the dark above our heads.

“A hayloft?” she demanded, her voice incredulous. She stopped walking and gave me an odd, curious look. “You obviously have me mistaken for a fourteen-year-old farm girl named . . .” Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. “Something rustic.”

“Gretta,” I suggested.

“Yes,” she said. “You obviously have me mistaken for a low-bodiced farm girl named Gretta.”

“Rest assured,” I said. “If I were going to try to seduce you, this isn’t the way I would go about it.”

“Is that so?” she said, running her hand through her hair. Her fingers began to idly twine her hair into a braid, then she stopped and brushed it out. “In that case, what are we doing here?”

“You mentioned how much you enjoyed gardens,” I said. “And Alveron’s gardens are particularly fine. I thought you might enjoy a turn about the place.”

“In the middle of the night,” Denna said.

“A charming moonlit stroll,” I corrected.

“There’s no moon tonight,” she pointed out. “Or if there is, it’s barely a slender sliver.”

“Be that as it may,” I said, refusing to be daunted. “How much moonlight does one actually need to enjoy the smell of gently blooming jasmine?”

“In the hayloft,” Denna said, her voice thick with disbelief.

“The hayloft is the easiest way onto the roof,” I said. “Thence into the Maer’s estates. Thence to the garden.”

“If you’re in the Maer’s employ,” she said, “why not simply ask him to let you in?”

“Ah,” I said dramatically, holding up a finger. “Therein lies the adventure. There are a hundred men who could simply
take
you strolling in the Maer’s the gardens. But there is only one who can sneak you in.” I smiled at her. “What I’m offering you, Denna, is a singular opportunity.”

She grinned at me. “You know my secret heart so well.”

I extended my hand as if I were about to assist her into a carriage. “M’lady.”

Denna took my hand, then stopped as soon as she put her foot onto the first rung of the ladder. “Hold on, you aren’t being genteel. You’re trying to get a look up my dress.”

I gave her my best offended look, pressing my hand to my chest. “Lady, as a gentleman I assure you—”

She swatted at me. “You’ve already told me you’re not a gentleman,” she said. “You’re a thief, and you’re trying to steal a look.” She stepped back and made a parody of my courtly gesture of a moment before. “M’lord . . .”

We made our way through the hayloft, onto the roof, and into the garden. The sharp sliver of moon above us was thin as a whisper, so pale that it did nothing to dim the light of the stars.

The gardens were surprisingly quiet for such a warm and lovely night. Ordinarily even at this late hour couples would be strolling the paths, or murmuring to each other on the bower benches. I wondered if some ball or courtly function had pulled them all away.

The Maer’s gardens were vast, with curving paths and cunningly placed hedges making them seem larger still. Denna and I walked side by side, listening to the sigh of the wind through the leaves. It was like we were the only people in the world.

“I don’t know if you remember,” I said softly, not wanting to intrude upon the silence. “A conversation we had some time ago. We talked of flowers.”

“I remember,” she said just as softly.

“You said you thought all men had got their lessons in courting from the same worn book.”

Denna laughed quietly, more a motion than a sound. She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh. I’d forgotten. I did say that, didn’t I? ”

I nodded. “You said they all brought you roses.”

“They still do,” she said. “I wish they would find a new book.”

“You made me pick a flower that would suit you better,” I said.

She smiled up at me shyly. “I remember, I was testing you.” Then she frowned. “But you got the better of me by picking one I’d never heard of, let alone seen.”

We turned a corner and the path led toward the dark green tunnel of an arching bower. “I don’t know if you’ve seen them yet,” I said. “But here is your selas flower.”

There were only stars lighting our way. The moon so slender it was almost no moon at all. Under the trellis it was dark as Denna’s hair.

Our eyes were wide and stretching to the dark, and where the starlight slanted through the leaves, they showed hundreds of selas blossoms yawning open in the night. If the scent of selas were not so delicate, it would have been overpowering.

“Oh,” Denna sighed, looking around with wide eyes. Under the bower, her skin was brighter than the moon. She reached out her hands to both sides. “They’re so soft!”

We walked in silence. All around us selas vines wove themselves around the trellis, clinging to the wood and wire, hiding their faces from the nighttime sky. When eventually we came out the other side, it seemed as bright as daylight.

The silence stretched until I started to grow uncomfortable. “So now you know your flower,” I said. “It seemed a shame you’d never seen one. They’re rather difficult to cultivate, from what I’ve heard.”

“Perhaps they do suit me then,” Denna said softly, looking down. “I don’t take root easily.”

We continued walking until the path turned and hid the bower behind us.

“You treat me better than I deserve,” Denna said at last.

I laughed at the ridiculousness of that. Only respect for the silence of the garden kept it from rolling out of me in a great booming laugh. Instead I stifled it as much as possible, though the effort threw me off my stride and made me stumble.

Denna watched me from a step away, a smile spreading across her mouth.

Eventually I caught my breath. “You who sang with me the night I won my pipes. You who have given me the finest gift I ever did receive.” A thought occurred to me. “Did you know,” I said, “that your lute case saved my life?”

The smile spread and grew, wide as a flower. “Did it now?”

“It did,” I said. “I cannot ever hope to treat you as well as you deserve. Given what I owe you, this is but the smallest payment.”

“Well, I think it is a lovely start.” She looked up at the sky and drew a long, deep breath. “I’ve always liked moonless nights best. It’s easier to say things in the dark. It’s easier to be yourself.”

She began walking again and I fell into step beside her. We passed a fountain, a pool, a wall of pale jasmine open to the night. We crossed a small stone bridge that led us back among the shelter of the hedges.

“You could put your arm around me, you know,” she said matter-of-factly. “We are walking in the gardens, alone. In the moonlight, such as it is.” Denna looked sideways at me, the side of her mouth quirking upward. “Such things are permitted, you realize.”

Her sudden change in manner caught me off my guard. Since we had met in Severen I had courted her with wild, hopeless pageantry, and she had matched me without missing a beat. Each flattery, each witticism, each piece of playful banter she returned to me, not in an echo but a harmony. Our back-and-forth had been like a duet.

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