“If it weren’t for his Adem reds, he wouldn’t look like anything special,” Marten said. “Even the sword doesn’t look like much.”
“Doesn’t look like twenty times as much as me, that’s for sure,” Dedan’s voice was low, but not so low that everyone couldn’t hear.
I was worried about Tempi’s outfit too. I’d tried to draw the Adem into a conversation several times with the hope of discussing the problem with him, but it was like trying to have a chat with a cat.
But the fact that he hadn’t known the word “miles” made me realize something I should have thought of long before. Aturan wasn’t his native language. Having recently struggled to make myself fluent in Siaru at the University, I could understand the impulse to keep quiet rather than speak and make a fool of myself.
“He could try to play along, same as us,” Hespe said dubiously.
“It’s hard to lie convincingly when you’re not good with the language,” I said.
Tempi’s pale eyes darted to each of us as we spoke, but he didn’t offer any comment.
“Folk underestimate a person who can’t speak well,” Hespe said. “Maybe he could sort of just . . . play dumb? Act confused like he was lost?”
“Wouldn’t have to play dumb,” Dedan continued under his breath. “Could just
Tempi looked at Dedan, still expressionless, but with more intensity than before. He drew a slow, deliberate breath before speaking. “Quiet is not stupid,” he said, his voice flat. “You? Always talk.
I shouldn’t have laughed, but it caught me completely off guard. Partly because I thought of Tempi as so quiet and passive, and partly because he was absolutely right. If Dedan were a dog, he would be a dog that barked endlessly at nothing. Barking just to hear himself bark.
Still, I shouldn’t have laughed. But I did. Hespe laughed too and tried to hide it, which was worse.
Dedan’s face went dark with anger and he got to his feet. “You come here and say that.”
Still expressionless, Tempi stood and walked around the fire until he stood next to Dedan. Well . . . if I say he stood
I could lie and say this happened too quickly for me to intervene, but that wouldn’t be true. The simple truth was that I couldn’t think of an easy way to break up the situation. But the more complicated truth was that I was pretty fed up with Dedan myself by this point.
What’s more, this was the most I’d ever heard Tempi speak. For the first time since I’d met him, he was behaving like a person, not just some mute, ambulatory doll.
And I was curious to see him fight. I’d heard a lot about the legendary Adem prowess, and I was hoping to see it thump some of the sullen mutter out of Dedan’s thick head.
Tempi walked up to Dedan, standing close enough to put his arms around him. Dedan stood a full head taller, broader across the shoulders, and thicker in the chest. Tempi looked up at him without a trace of anything you might expect to see on his face. No bravado. No mocking smile. Nothing.
“Just dog,” Tempi said softly, with no particular inflection. “Big noise dog.” He lifted up his hand and made a mouth of it again.
Dedan lifted a hand and shoved hard against Tempi’s chest. I’d seen this sort of thing countless times in the taverns near the University. It was the sort of shove that sends a man staggering backward, off balance and prone to stagger and trip.
Except Tempi didn’t stagger. He just . . . stepped away. Then he reached out casually and cuffed Dedan along one side of his head, the way a parent might swat an unruly child in the market. It wasn’t even hard enough to move Dedan’s head, but we could all hear a soft
Dedan stood still for a moment, as if he couldn’t quite understand what had happened. Then he frowned and brought both hands up to give Tempi a more violent shove. Tempi stepped away from this too, then swatted Dedan on the other side of his head.
Dedan scowled, grunted, and brought his hands up, making fists. He was a big man, and his mercenary leathers creaked and strained at the shoulders as he lifted his arms. He waited a moment, obviously hoping Tempi would make the first move, then he stomped forward, drew his arm back, and threw a punch, hard and heavy as a farmhand swinging an axe.
Tempi saw it coming and stepped away a third time. But halfway through his clumsy swing, everything about Dedan changed. He raised himself up on the balls of his feet and his ponderous haymaker punch evaporated. Suddenly, he no longer looked like a lumbering bull, and instead, he darted forward and snapped out three quick punches, fast as a bird’s wing flapping.
Tempi sidestepped one, slapped the other aside, but the third caught him high on the shoulder, spinning him partway around and knocking him backward. He took two quick steps out of Dedan’s reach, regained his balance, and shook himself slightly. Then he laughed, high and delighted.
The sound softened the expression on Dedan’s face, and he grinned in return, though he didn’t lower his hands or move off the balls of his feet. Despite this, Tempi stepped up, avoided another jab, and struck Dedan in the face with the flat of his hand. Not across the cheek, as if they were squabbling lovers onstage. Tempi’s hand came down from above and struck Dedan across the front of his face, from his forehead down to his chin.
“Arrhhgh!” Dedan shouted. “Black damn!” He staggered away, clutching at his nose. “What’s wrong with you? Did you just slap me?” He peered out at Tempi from behind his hand. “You fight like a woman.”
For a moment, Tempi looked as if he might object. Then he gave the first smile I had ever seen from him and gave a small nod and shrug instead. “Yes. I fight like a woman.”
Dedan hesitated, then laughed and clapped Tempi roughly on the shoulder. I half expected Tempi to dart away from his touch, but instead the Adem returned the gesture, even to the point of gripping Dedan’s shoulder and jostling him around playfully.
The display struck me as odd coming from someone who had been so reserved over the last several days, but I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Anything other than fidgety silence from the Adem was a blessing.
Even better, I now had a measure of Tempi’s fighting ability. Whether or not Dedan wanted to admit it, Tempi obviously had the better of him. I guessed the Adem reputation was more than just empty air.
Marten watched Tempi return to his seat. “Those clothes are still a problem,” the woodsman said, as if nothing much had happened. He eyed Tempi’s blood-red shirt and pants. “Might as well run around waving a flag as wear that in the trees.”
“I’ll talk with him about it,” I told the others. If Tempi was self-conscious about his Aturan, I guessed our conversation would go more smoothly without an audience. “And I’ll work out what he’ll do if he runs into them. You three can go settle in and get dinner started.”
The three of them scattered off, looking to claim the prime places for their bedrolls. Tempi watched them go, then turned back to look at me. He glanced down at the ground and took a small, shuffling step away.
“Tempi?”
He cocked his head and looked at me.
“We need to talk about your clothing.”
It happened again as soon as I started to talk. His attention slowly slid away from me, his eyes drifting down and to the side. As if he couldn’t be bothered to actually listen. As if he were a sulky child.
I don’t need to tell you how infuriating it is to try and have a discussion with a person who won’t look you in the eye. Still, I didn’t have the luxury of taking offense or putting off this talk. I’d already delayed this conversation too long.
“Tempi.” I fought the urge to snap my fingers in order to draw his attention back to me. “Your clothes are red,” I said, trying to keep it as simple as possible. “Easy to see. Dangerous.”
He gave no response for a long moment. Then his pale eyes darted up to mine and he nodded, a simple bob of the head.
I began to have a horrible suspicion that he might not actually understand what it was we were doing out
