The Wise Man's Fear Part 11

I finished off the plateful of eggs and drank the milk as quickly as I could without being rude. "I'll need to cash out my bar credit today," I said. "Tuition's going to be hard this term."

Anker nodded and checked a small ledger he kept underneath the bar, tallying all the Greysdale mead I'd pretended to drink over the last two months. Then he pulled out his purse and counted out ten copper jots onto the table. A full talent: twice what I'd expected. I looked up at him, puzzled.

"One of Kilvin's boys would have charged me at least half a talent to come round and fix this thing," Anker explained, kicking at the iceless.

"I can't be sure... ."

He waved me into silence. "If it isn't fixed, I'll take it out of your wages over the next month," he said. "Or I'll use it as leverage to get you to start playing Reaving night too." He grinned. "I consider it an investment."

I gathered the money into my purse: Four talents Four talents.

I was heading toward the Fishery to see if my lamps had finally sold when I caught a glimpse of a familiar face crossing the courtyard wearing dark master's robes.

"Master Elodin!" I called as I saw him approaching a side door to the Masters' Hall. It was one of the few buildings I hadn't spent much time in, as it contained little more than living quarters for the masters, the resident gillers, and guest rooms for visiting arcanists.

He turned at the sound of his name. Then, seeing me jogging toward him, he rolled his eyes and turned back to the door.

"Master Elodin," I said, breathing a little hard. "Might I ask you a quick question?"

"Statistically speaking, it's pretty likely," he said, unlocking the door with a bright bra.s.s key.

"May I ask you a question, then?"

"I doubt any power known to man could stop you." He swung open the door and headed inside.

I hadn't been invited, but I slipped inside after him. Elodin was difficult to track down, and I worried if I didn't take this chance, I might not see him again for another span of days.

I followed him through a narrow stone hallway. "I'd heard a rumor you were gathering a group of students to study naming," I said cautiously.

"That's not a question," Elodin said as he headed up a long, narrow flight of stairs.

I fought back the urge to snap at him and took a deep breath instead. "Is it true you're teaching such a cla.s.s?"

"Yes."

"Were you planning on including me?"

Elodin stopped and turned to face me on the stairway. He looked out of place in his dark master's robe. His hair was tousled and his face was too young, almost boyish.

He stared at me for a long minute. He looked me up and down as if I were a horse he were thinking of betting on, or a side of beef he was considering selling by the pound.

But that was nothing compared to when he met my eyes. For a heartbeat it was simply unsettling. Then it almost felt like the light on the stairway grew dim. Or that I was suddenly being thrust deep underwater and the pressure was keeping me from drawing a full breath.

"d.a.m.n you, half-wit." I heard a familiar voice that seemed to be coming from a long way off. "If you're going catatonic again, have the decency to do it in Haven and save us the trouble of carting your foam-flecked carca.s.s back there. Barring that, get to one side."

Elodin looked away from me and suddenly everything was bright and clear again. I fought to keep from gasping in a lungful of air.

Master Hemme stomped down the stairs, shouldering Elodin roughly to one side. When he saw me he snorted. "Of course. The quarter-wit is here too. Might I recommend a book for your perusal? It is a lovely piece of reading t.i.tled, Hallways, Their Form and Function: A Primer for the Mentally Deficient Hallways, Their Form and Function: A Primer for the Mentally Deficient."

He glowered at me, and when I didn't immediately jump aside he gave me an unpleasant smile. "Ah, but you're still banned from the Archives, aren't you? Should I arrange to present the salient information in a form more suited to your kind? Perhaps a mummer's play or some manner of puppet show?"

I stepped to one side and Hemme stormed by, muttering to himself. Elodin stared daggers into the other master's broad back. Only after Hemme turned the corner did Elodin's attention settle back on me.

He sighed. "Perhaps it would be better if you pursued your other studies, Re'lar Kvothe. Dal has a fondness for you, as does Kilvin. You seem to be progressing well with them."

"But sir," I said, trying to keep the dismay out of my voice. "You're the one who sponsored my promotion to Re'lar."

He turned and began climbing the stairs again. "Then you should value my sage advice, shouldn't you?"

"But, if you're teaching other students, why not me?"

"Because you are too eager to be properly patient," he said flippantly. "You're too proud to listen properly. And you're too clever by half. That's the worst of it."

"Some masters prefer clever students," I muttered as we emerged into a wide hallway.

"Yes," Elodin said. "Dal and Kilvin and Arwyl like clever students. Go study with one of them. Both our lives will be considerably easier because of it."

"But ..."

Elodin came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the hallway. "Fine," he said. "Prove you're worth teaching. Shake my a.s.sumptions down to their foundation stones." He patted at his robes dramatically, as if looking for something lost in a pocket. "Much to my dismay, I find myself without a way to get past this door." He rapped it with a knuckle. "What do you do in this situation, Re'lar Kvothe?"

I smiled despite my general irritation. He couldn't have picked a challenge more perfectly suited to my talents. I pulled a long, slender piece of spring steel out of a pocket in my cloak, then knelt in front of the door and eyed the keyhole. The lock was substantial, made to last. But while large, heavy locks look impressive, they're actually easier to circ.u.mvent if they're well-maintained.

This one was. It took me the s.p.a.ce of three slow breaths to trip it with a satisfying k-tick k-tick. I stood up, brushed off my knees, and swung the door inward with a flourish.

For his part, Elodin did seem somewhat impressed. His eyebrows went up as the door swung open. "Clever," he said as he walked inside.

I followed on his heels. I'd never really wondered what Elodin's rooms were like. But if I'd guessed, it wouldn't have been anything resembling this.

They were huge and lavish, with high ceilings and thick rugs. Old wood paneled the walls, and tall windows let in the early morning light. There were oil paintings and ma.s.sive pieces of ancient wooden furniture. It was bizarrely ordinary.

Elodin moved quickly through the entryway, through a tasteful sitting room, then into the bedroom. Call it a bedchamber, rather. It was huge, with a four-post bed big as a boat. Elodin threw open a wardrobe and started removing several long, dark robes similar to the one he was wearing.

"Here." Elodin shoved robes into my arms until I couldn't hold any more. Some were everyday cotton, but others were fine linen or rich, soft velvet. He lay another half-dozen robes over his own arm and carried them back into the sitting room.

We pa.s.sed old bookshelves lined with hundreds of books and a huge polished desk. One wall was taken up with a large stone fireplace big enough to roast a pig, though there was currently only a small fire smoldering there, keeping away the early autumn chill.

Elodin lifted a crystal decanter off a table and went to stand in front of the fireplace. He dumped the robes he was carrying into my arms so I could barely see over the top of them. Delicately lifting the top off the decanter, he sipped at the contents and raised an eyebrow appreciatively, holding it up to the light.

I decided to try again. "Master Elodin, why don't you want to teach me naming?"

"That's the wrong question," he said, and upended the decanter onto smoldering coals in the fireplace. As the flames licked up hungrily, he took his armload of robes back and fed a velvet one slowly into the fire. It caught quickly, and when it was blazing away, he fed the others onto the fire in quick succession. The result was a great smoldering pile of cloth that sent thick smoke billowing up the chimney. "Try again."

I couldn't help but ask the obvious. "Why are you burning your clothes?"

"Nope. Not even close to the right question," he said as he took more robes out of my arms and piled them into the fireplace. Then Elodin grabbed the handle for the flue and pulled it closed with a metallic clank. Great clouds of smoke began to pour into the room. Elodin coughed a bit, then stepped back and looked around in a vaguely satisfied way.

I suddenly realized what was going on. "Oh G.o.d," I said. "Whose rooms are these?"

Elodin gave a satisfied nod. "Very good. I would also have accepted, Why don't you have a key for this room? Why don't you have a key for this room? or or What are we doing in here? What are we doing in here?" He looked down at me, his eyes serious. "Doors are locked for a reason. People who don't have keys are supposed to stay out for a reason."

He nudged the heap of smouldering cloth with one foot, as if rea.s.suring himself it would stay in the fireplace. "You know you're clever. That's your weakness. You a.s.sume you know what you're getting into, but you don't."

Elodin turned to look at me, his dark eyes serious. "You think you can trust me to teach you," he said. "You think I will keep you safe. But that is the worst sort of foolishness."

"Whose rooms are these?" I repeated numbly.

He showed me all his teeth in a sudden grin. "Master Hemme's."

"Why are you burning all of Hemme's clothes?" I asked, trying to ignore the fact that the room was rapidly filling with bitter smoke.

Elodin looked at me as if I were an idiot. "Because I hate him." He picked up the crystal decanter from the mantle and threw it violently against the back of the fireplace where it shattered. The fire began to burn more vigorously from whatever had been left inside. "The man is an absolute t.i.t. n.o.body talks to me like that."

Smoke continued to boil into the room. If it weren't for the high ceilings we'd already be choking on it. Even so, it was becoming hard to breathe as we made our way to the door. Elodin opened it, and smoke rolled out into the hallway.

We stood outside the door, staring at each other while the smoke billowed past. I decided to take a different tack on the problem. "I understand your hesitation, Master Elodin," I said. "Sometimes I don't think things all the way through."

"Obviously."

"And I'll admit there have been times when my actions have been ..." I paused, trying to think of something more humble than ill-considered ill-considered.

"Stupid beyond all mortal ken?" Elodin said helpfully.

My temper flared, burning away my brief attempt at humility. "Well thank G.o.d I'm the only one here that's ever made a bad decision in my life!" I said, barely keeping my voice this side of a shout. I looked him hard in the eye. "I've heard stories about you too, you know. They say you toffed things up pretty well yourself back when you were a student here."

Elodin's amused expression faded a bit, leaving him looking like he'd swallowed something and it had gotten stuck halfway down.

I continued. "If you think I'm reckless, do something about it. Show me the straighter path! Mold my supple young mind-" I sucked in a lungful of smoke and began to cough, forcing me to cut my tirade short. "Do something, d.a.m.n you!" I choked out. "Teach me!"

I hadn't really been shouting, but I ended up breathless all the same. My temper faded as quickly as it had flared up, and I worried I'd gone too far.

But Elodin just looked at me. "What makes you think I'm not teaching you?" he asked, puzzled. "Aside from the fact that you refuse to learn."

Then he turned and walked down the hallway. "I'd get out of here if I were you," he said over his shoulder. "People are going to want to know who's responsible for this, and everyone knows you and Hemme don't get on very well."

I felt myself break into a panicked sweat. "What?"

"I'd wash up before admissions too," he said. "It won't look good if you show up reeking of smoke. I live here," Elodin said, pulling a key from his pocket and unlocking a door at the far end of the hallway. "What's your excuse?"

CHAPTER NINE.

A Civil Tongue MY HAIR WAS STILL wet when I made my way through a short hallway, then up the stairs onto the stage of an empty theater. As always, the room was dark except for the huge crescent-shaped table. I moved to the edge of the light and waited politely.

The Chancellor motioned me forward and I walked to the center of the table, reaching up to hand him my tile. Then I stepped back to stand in the circle of slightly brighter light between the two outthrust horns of the table.

The nine masters looked down at me. I'd like to say they looked dramatic, like ravens on a fence or something like that. But while they were all wearing their formal robes, they were too mismatched to look like a collection of anything.

What's more, I could see the marks of weariness on them. Only then did it occur to me that as much as the students hated admissions, it was probably no walk in the garden for the masters either.

"Kvothe, Arliden's son," the Chancellor said formally. "Re'lar." He made a gesture to the far right-hand horn of the table. "Master Physicker?"

Arwyl peered down at me, his face grandfatherly behind his round spectacles. "What are the medicinal properties of mhenka?" he asked.

"Powerful anesthetic," I said. "Powerful catatoniate. Potential purgative." I hesitated. "It has a whole sackful of complicating secondaries too. Should I list them all?"

Arwyl shook his head. "A patient comes into the Medica complaining of pains in their joints and difficulty breathing. Their mouth is dry, and they claim to have a sweet taste in their mouth. They complain of chills, but they are actually sweaty and feverish. What is your diagnosis?"

I drew a breath, then hesitated. "I don't make diagnoses in the Medica, Master Arwyl. I'd fetch one of your El'the to do it."

He smiled at me, eyes crinkling around the edges. "Correct," he said. "But for the sake of argument, what do you think might be wrong?"

"Is the patient a student?"

Arwyl raised an eyebrow. "What does that have to do with the price of b.u.t.ter?"

"If they work in the Fishery, it might be smelter's flu," I said. Arwyl c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at me and I added, "There's all sorts of heavy metal poisoning you can get in the Fishery. It's rare around here because the students are well-trained, but anyone working with hot bronze can inhale enough fumes to kill themselves if they aren't properly careful." I saw Kilvin nodding along, and was glad I didn't have to admit the only reason I knew this was that I'd given myself a mild case of it a month ago.

Arwyl gave a thoughtful humph, humph, then gestured to the other side of the table. "Master Arithmetician?" then gestured to the other side of the table. "Master Arithmetician?"

Brandeur sat on the left-hand point of the table. "a.s.suming the changer takes four percent, how many pennies can you break from a talent?" He asked the question without looking up from the papers in front of him.

"What type of penny, Master Brandeur?"

He looked up, frowning. "We are still in the Commonwealth, if I remember correctly."

I juggled numbers in my head, working from the figures in the books he'd set aside in the Archives. They weren't the true exchange rates you would get from a moneylender, they were the official exchange rates governments and financiers used so they had common ground for lying to each other. "In iron pennies. Three hundred and fifty," I said, then added. "One. And a half."

Brandeur looked down at the papers before I'd even finished speaking. "Your compa.s.s reads gold at two hundred twenty points, platinum at one hundred twelve points, and cobalt at thirty-two points. Where are you?"

I was boggled by the question. Orienting by trifoil required detailed maps and painstaking triangulation. It was usually only practiced by sea captains and cartographers, and they used detailed charts to make their calculations. I'd only ever laid eyes on a trifoil compa.s.s twice in my life.

Either this was a question listed in one of the books Brandeur had set aside for study or it was deliberately designed to spike my wheel. Given that Brandeur and Hemme were friends, I guessed it was the latter.

I closed my eyes, brought up a map of the civilized world in my head, and took my best guess. "Tarbean?" I said. "Maybe somewhere in Yll?" I opened my eyes. "Honestly, I have no idea."

Brandeur made a mark on a piece of paper. "Master Namer," he said without looking up.

Elodin gave me a wicked, knowing grin, and I was suddenly struck with the fear that he might reveal my part of what we had done in Hemme's rooms earlier that morning.

Instead he held up three fingers dramatically. "You have three spades in your hand," he said. "And there have been five spades played." He steepled his fingers and looked at me seriously. "How many spades is that?"