The Wise Man's Fear

still be on your feet in an hour, I’d take you off them.” She reached out and twined her fingers lightly through the hair on the back of my head. “The two of us would be enough to start a fire.”

I froze like a startled deer. I cannot say why, except perhaps that I was tired from several days on the road. Perhaps it was that I’d never been approached in such a forthright manner before. Perhaps—

Perhaps I was young and woefully inexperienced. Let us leave it at that.

I scrambled desperately for something to say, but by the time I found my tongue she’d taken a half step away and given me a shrewd look. I felt my face grow hot, embarrassing me further. Without thinking, I looked down at the table and the dinner she’d brought. Potato soup, I thought numbly.

She gave a small, quiet laugh and touched my shoulder kindly. “I’m sorry lad. You looked like you were a little more—” She broke off, as if reconsidering her words, then started again. “I liked the fresh look of you, but I didn’t think you were that young.”

Though she spoke gently, I could hear the smile in her voice. It made my face burn even hotter, all the way to my ears. Finally, seeming to realize that anything she said would just embarrass me further, she took her hand off my shoulder. “I’ll be back to see if you need anything later.”

I nodded dumbly and watched her go. Her retreat was pleasing, but I was distracted by the sounds of scattered laughter. I looked around to see amusement on the faces of the men sitting at the long tables around me. One group raised their mugs in a silent, mocking salute. Another fellow leaned over to pat my back consolingly, saying, “Don’t take it personal, boy, she’s turned all of us away.”

Feeling as if everyone in the room was watching me, I kept my eyes low and began to eat my dinner. As I tore off pieces of bread and dipped them in my soup, I composed a mental catalog of the extent of my idiocy. Surreptitiously, I watched the red-haired serving girl entertain and rebuff the ploys of a dozen men as she carried drinks from table to table.

I had regained a bit of my composure by the time Marten slid into a chair next to me. “You did a good job with Dedan out there,” he said without preamble.

My spirits lifted a bit. “Did I?”

Marten nodded slightly as his sharp eyes wandered over the crowd that filled the room. “Most folk try to bully him, make him feel stupid. He’d have paid you back ten times the trouble if you’d done it that way.”

“He was being stupid,” I pointed out. “And when you come right down to it, I did bully him.”

It was his turn to shrug. “But you did it smart, so he’ll still listen to you.” He took a drink and paused, changing the subject. “Hespe offered to share a room with him tonight,” he said casually.

“Really?” I said, more than slightly surprised. “She’s getting bolder.”

He gave a slow nod.

“And?” I prompted.

“And nothing. Dedan said he’d be damned before he spent money on a room he should have for free.” He slid his eyes to me and raised an eyebrow.

“You’re not serious,” I said flatly. “He has to know. He’s just playing the simpleton because he doesn’t like her.”

“I don’t think so,” Marten said, turning toward me and lowering his voice a bit. “Three span ago we finished a caravan job from Ralien. It was a long haul, and Dedan and me had a pocket full of coin and nothing in particular to do with it, so by the end of the night we’re sitting in this grubby little dockside tavern, too drunk to stand up and leave. And he starts talking about her.”

Marten shook his head slowly. “He went on for an hour, and you wouldn’t have recognized the woman he was describing as our hard-eyed Hespe. He practically sang about her.” He sighed. “He thinks she’s too good for him. And he’s convinced if he so much as looked at her sideways he’d end up with his arm broken in three places.”

“Why didn’t you tell him?”

“Tell him what? That was before she started going all cow-eyed over him. I thought his worries were fairly sensible at the time. What do you think Hespe would do to you if you were to give her a friendly pat on any of her friendlier parts?”

I looked over to where Hespe stood at the bar. One foot tapped roughly in time to the rhythm of the fiddle. Other than that, the set of her shoulders, her eyes, the line of her jaw were all hard, almost belligerent. There was a small but noticeable gap between her and the men standing on either side of her at the bar.

“I probably wouldn’t risk my arm either,” I admitted. “But he has to know by now. He isn’t blind.”

“He’s no worse off than the rest of us.”

I started to protest, then glanced at the red-haired serving girl. “We could tell him,” I said. “You could. He trusts you.”

Marten sucked at his teeth with his tongue. “Nah,” he said, setting his drink down firmly. “It would just make things muddier. Either he’ll see it or he won’t. In his own time, in his own way.” He shrugged. “Or not, and the sun will still rise in the morning.”

Neither of us spoke for a long while. Marten watched the buzzing room over the top of his mug, his eyes growing distant. I let the noise of the place fade to a low comforting purr as I leaned against the wall, drowsing.

And as my thoughts untended tend to do, they wandered to Denna. I thought about the smell of her, the arch of her neck near her ear, the way her hands moved when she talked. I wondered where she was tonight, if she was well. I wondered just a bit if her thoughts ever wandered into warm musings of me. . . .

“. . . hunting bandits shouldn’t be hard. Besides, it’ll be nice to get the jump on them for a change, lawless damn ravel bastards.”

The words drew me out of my warm drowse like a fish yanked from a pool. The fiddler had stopped playing to have a drink, and in the relative quiet of the room Dedan’s voice was loud as a donkey’s bray. I opened my eyes and saw Marten was looking around in mild alarm too, no doubt roused by the same words that had caught my ear.

It only took me a second to spot Dedan. He was sitting two tables away, having a drunken conversation with a grey-haired farmer.

Marten was already getting to his feet. Not wanting to draw attention to the situation, I hissed, “Get him,” and forced myself back into my seat.

I gritted my teeth as Marten threaded quickly through the tables, tapped Dedan on the shoulder, and jerked a thumb toward the table where I sat. Dedan grumbled something I’m glad I didn’t hear and grudgingly pushed himself to his feet.

I forced my eyes to wander around the room rather than follow Dedan. Tempi was easy to spot in his mercenary reds. He was facing the hearth, watching the fiddler tune his instrument. There were several empty glasses on the table in front of him, and he had loosened the leather straps of his shirt. He eyed the fiddler with a strange intensity.

As I watched, a serving girl brought him another drink. He looked her over, his pale eyes moving pointedly up and down her body. She said something, and he kissed the back of her hand as smoothly as a courtier. She blushed and pushed at his shoulder playfully. One of his hands moved smoothly to the curve of her waist and rested there. She didn’t seem to mind.

Dedan stepped close to my table, eclipsing my view of Tempi just as the fiddler lifted his bow and began to saw out a jig. A dozen people came to their feet, eager to dance.

“What?” Dedan demanded as he came to stand in front of my table. “Have ye called me over here to tell me it’s gettin’ late? That I’ve got a busy day tomorrow and I should tuck my little self into bed?” He leaned forward onto the table, putting his eyes more on level with mine. I caught a sour smell on his breath: dreg. A cheap, repulsive liquor you can start fires with.

I laughed dismissively. “Hell, I’m not your mum.” Actually I had been about to say that very thing and scrambled mentally for something else to distract him with. My eye lighted on the redhead that had served me my dinner earlier that evening, and I leaned forward in my seat. “I was wondering if you could tell me something,” I said in my best conspiratorial tone.