The Wise Man's Fear

ruined desk there were some papers I would have given a good deal to read, but they had spent too long in the wet, and the ink had run. There was also a heavy hardwood box slightly smaller than a loaf of bread. Alveron’s family crest was enameled on the cover, and it was locked tight.

Both Hespe and Marten admitted they had a little skill at opening locks, and, since I was curious about what was inside, I let them have a go so long as they didn’t damage the lock. Each of them took a long turn at it, but neither met with any success.

After about twenty minutes of careful fiddling, Marten threw up his hands. “I can’t find the trick for it,” he said as he stretched, pressing his hands against the small of his back.

“I might as well have a try myself,” I said. I’d hoped one of them would trick it open. Picking locks is not the sort of skill an arcanist should pride himself on. It didn’t fit with the reputation I was hoping to build for myself.

“Will you now?” Hespe said, raising an eyebrow at me. “You really are a young Taborlin.”

I thought back to the story Marten had told days before. “Of course,” I laughed, then shouted, “Edro!” in my best Taborlin the Great voice and struck the top of the box with my hand.

The lid sprung open.

I was surprised as everyone else, but I hid it better. What had obviously happened is that one of them had actually tripped the lock, but the lid had been stuck. Probably the wood had swollen as it lay for days in the damp. When I’d struck it, it had simply come loose.

But they didn’t know that. From the looks on their faces you would think I had just transmuted gold in front of them. Even Tempi raised an eyebrow.

“Nice trick, Taborlin,” Hespe said, as if she weren’t sure if I were playing a joke on them.

I decided to hold my tongue and slid my set of makeshift lockpicks back into the pocket of my cloak. If I was going to be an arcanist, I might as well be a famous arcanist.

Doing my best to radiate an air of solemn power, I lifted the lid and looked inside. The first thing I saw was a thick, folded piece of paper. I pulled it out.

“What’s that?” Dedan asked.

I held it for all of them to see. It was a careful map of the surrounding area, featuring not only an accurate depiction of the curving highway, but the locations of nearby farms and streams. Crosson, Fenhill, and the Pennysworth Inn were marked and labeled on the western road.

“What’s that?” Dedan asked, gesturing with a thick finger to an unlabeled X deep in the forest on the south side of the road.

“I think it’s this camp,” Marten said, pointing. “Right next to that stream.”

I nodded. “If this is right, we’re closer to Crosson than I thought. We could just head southeast from here, and save ourselves more than a day’s walking.” I looked at Marten. “Does that seem right to you?”

“Here. Let me see.” I handed him the map and he looked it over. “It looks like it,” he agreed. “I didn’t think we had come that far south. We’d save at least two dozen miles going that way.”

“That’s no small blessing,” Hespe said, rubbing at her bandaged leg. “That is, unless one of you gentlemen would like to carry me.”

I turned my attention back to the lockbox. It was full of tightly wrapped cloth packages. Lifting one out, I saw the glint of gold.

There was a murmur from everyone present. I checked the rest of the small, heavy bundles and was greeted with more coins, all gold. At a rough count, there were over two hundred royals. While I’d never actually held one, I knew a single gold royal was worth eighty bits, almost as much as the Maer had given me to finance this entire trip. No wonder the Maer had been eager to stop the waylaying of his tax collectors.

I juggled numbers in my head, converting the contents of the box to a more familiar currency and came up with more than five hundred silver talents. Enough money to buy a good-sized roadside inn, or an entire farmstead with all the livestock and equipage included. With that much money you could buy yourself a minor title, a court appointment, or an officer’s position in the military.

I saw everyone else making their own calculations. “How about we share a little bit of that around?” Dedan said without much hope.

I hesitated, then reached into the box. “Does a royal each seem fair to everyone?”

Everyone was silent as I unwrapped one of the bundles. Dedan looked at me incredulously. “Are you serious?”

I handed him a heavy coin. “The way I see it, less scrupulous people might forget to tell Alveron about this. Or they’d never go back to Alveron at all. I think a royal each is a good reward for us being such honest folk.” I tossed Marten and Hespe a bright gold coin each.

“Besides,” I added, tossing a royal to Tempi. “I was hired to find a group of bandits, not destroy a minor military encampment.” I held up my royal. “This is our bonus for services beyond the call of duty.” I slid it into my pocket and patted it. “Alveron need never know about it.”

Dedan laughed and clapped me on the back. “You’re not so much different from the rest of us after all,” he said.

I returned his smile and pressed the lid of the box closed, hearing the lock click tightly into place.

I didn’t mention the two other reasons for what I did. First, I was effectively buying their loyalty. They couldn’t help but realize how easy it would be to simply grab the box and disappear. The thought had crossed my mind, too. Five hundred talents would pay my way through the University for the next ten years with plenty to spare.

Now, however, they were considerably richer, and they got to feel honest about it. A heavy piece of gold would keep their minds off the money I was carrying. Though I still planned on sleeping with the locked box under my pillow at night.

Second, I could use the money. Both the royal I had tucked openly into my pocket, and the other three I’d palmed when handing out coins to the others. As I said, Alveron would never know the difference, and four royals would cover a full term’s tuition at the University.

After I secured the Maer’s lockbox in the bottom of my travelsack, each of us decided what we would scavenge from the bandits’ equipment.

The tents we left for the same reason we hadn’t brought our own in the first place. They were too bulky to carry. We took as much of their food as we could stow, knowing the more we carried, the less we would have to buy.

I decided to take one of the bandits’ swords. I wouldn’t have wasted the money to buy one, since I didn’t know how to use it, but if they were free for the taking. . . .

As I was looking over the assorted weapons, Tempi came over and gave a few words of advice. After we had narrowed my options to two swords, Tempi finally spoke his mind. “You cannot use a sword.” Questioning. Embarrassment.

I got the impression that to him, the thought of someone not being able to use a sword was more than slightly shameful. Like not knowing how to eat using a knife and fork. “No,” I said slowly. “But I was hoping you could show me.”

Tempi stood very still and quiet. I might have taken it for a refusal if I had not come to know him so well. This type of stillness meant he was thinking.

Pauses are a key part of Ademic conversation, so I waited patiently. The two of us stood quietly for a minute, then two. Then five. Then ten. I fought to stay still and quiet. Perhaps this was a polite refusal.

I thought myself terribly savvy, you see. I had known Tempi for nearly a month, learned a thousand words and fifty pieces of the Adem hand-speech. I knew the Adem were not bashful about nudity, or touching, and I was beginning to grasp the mystery that was the Lethani.

Oh yes, I thought I was terribly clever. Had I truly known anything about the Adem, I never would have dared to ask Tempi such a question.

“Will you teach me that?” He pointed across the camp to where my lute case lay, leaning against a tree.

I was caught off guard by the question. I had never tried to teach anyone how to play the lute before. Perhaps Tempi knew this and was implying something similar about himself. I knew he was prone to subtly layered