stone wall of her house, as if she were merely enjoying the afternoon sun. I drew a deep breath and let it out, feeling myself relax.
But as I came closer, I saw her face. She was not smiling. Neither did she wear the impassive Adem mask. She watched me approach, her expression hangman grim.
I spoke as soon as I came close enough. “Vashet,” I said earnestly. “I’m—”
Still sitting, Vashet held up her hand, and I stopped speaking as quickly as if she had struck me across the mouth. “Apology now is of little consequence,” she said, her voice flat and chill as slate. “Anything you say at this point cannot be trusted. You know I am well and truly angry, so you are in the grip of fear.
“This means I cannot trust any word you say, as it comes from fear. You are clever, and charming, and a liar. I know you can bend the world with your words. So I will not listen.”
She shifted her position on the bench, then continued. “Early on I noticed a gentleness in you. It is a rare thing in one so young, and it was a large piece of what convinced me you were worth teaching. But as the days pass, I glimpse something else. Some other face that is far from gentle. I have dismissed these as flickers of false light, thinking them the brags of a young man or the odd jokes of a barbarian.
“But today as you spoke, it came to me that the gentleness was the mask. And this other half-seen face, this dark and ruthless thing, that is the true face hiding underneath.”
Vashet gave me a long look. “There is something troubling inside you. Shehyn has seen it in your conversations. It is not a lack of the Lethani. But this makes my unease more, not less. That means there is something in you deeper than the Lethani. Something the Lethani cannot mend.”
She met my eye. “If this is the case, then I have been wrong to teach you. If you have been clever enough to show me a false face for so long, then you are a danger to more than just the school. If this is the case, then Carceret is right, and you should be killed swiftly for the safety of everyone involved.”
Vashet came to her feet, moving as if she were very tired. “This I have thought today. And I will continue to think for long hours tonight. Tomorrow I will have decided. Take this time to order your thoughts and make whatever preparations seem best to you.”
Then, without meeting my eye, she turned and went into her house, closing the door silently behind her.
For a while, I wandered aimlessly. I went to watch the sword tree, hoping I might find Celean there, but she was nowhere to be seen. Watching the tree itself did nothing to soothe me. Not today.
So I went to the baths, where I soaked myself joylessly. Afterward, in one of the mirrors scattered through the smaller rooms, I caught the first glimpse of my face since Vashet had struck me. Half my face was red and swollen, with bruises beginning to mottle blue and yellow around my temple and the line of my jaw. I also had the raw beginnings of a profoundly blackened eye.
As I stared at myself in the mirror I felt a low anger flicker to life deep in my belly. I was, I decided, tired of waiting helplessly while others decided whether I could come or go. I had played their game, learned their language, been unfailingly polite, and in return I had been treated like a dog. I had been beaten, sneered at, and threatened with death and worse. I was finished with it.
So I made my way slowly around Haert. I visited the twin sisters, the talkative smithy, and the tailor where I had bought my clothes. I chatted amiably, passing the time, asking questions, and pretending I didn’t look as if someone had beaten me unconscious a handful of hours ago.
My preparations took a long time. I missed dinner, and the sky was growing dark by the time I came back to the school. I went straight to my room and closed the door behind me.
Then I emptied the contents of my pockets onto my bed, some purchased, some stolen. Two fine, soft beeswax candles. A long shard of brittle steel from a poorly forged sword. A spool of blood-red thread. A small stoppered bottle of water from the baths.
I closed my fist tightly around the last. Most people don’t understand how much heat water holds inside it. That is why it takes so long to boil. Despite the fact that the scalding-hot pool I had pulled this from was more than half a mile away, what I held in my hand was of better use to a sympathist than a glowing coal. This water had fire in it.
I thought of Penthe with a twinge of regret. Then I picked up a candle and began to turn it in my hands, warming it with my skin, softening the wax and beginning to shape a doll of it.
I sat in my room, thinking dark thoughts as the last of the light faded from the sky. I looked over the tools I had gathered and knew deep in my gut that sometimes a situation grows so tangled that words are useless. What other option did I have, now that words had failed me?
What do any of us have when words fail us?
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-ONE
When Words Fail
It was well into the dark hours of night when I approached Vashet’s house, but there was candlelight flickering in her window. I didn’t doubt she would have me killed or crippled for the good of all Ademre, but Vashet was nothing if not careful. She would give it a long night’s thought beforehand.
Empty-handed, I knocked softly on her door. After a moment, she opened it. She still wore her mercenary reds, but she had removed most of the silk ties that held it tight to her body. Her eyes were tired.
Her mouth thinned when she saw me standing there, and I knew if I spoke she would refuse to listen. So I gestured
It was a clear night, and we had a piece of moon to light our way. I led us up into the hills, away from the school, away from the scattered houses and shops of Haert.
We walked more than a mile before we came to the place I had chosen. A small grove of trees where a tall jumble of stone would keep any noise from carrying back toward the sleeping town.
The moonlight slanted in through the trees, revealing dark shapes in a tiny clear space tucked among the stones. There were two small wooden benches here. I took gentle hold of Vashet’s arm and guided her to sit.
Moving slowly, I reached into the deep leeward shadow of a nearby tree and brought out my shaed. I draped it carefully over a low-hanging branch so it hung like a dark curtain between us.
Then I sat on the other bench, bent, and worked the clasps on my lute case. As each of them snapped open, the lute within made a familiar harmonic thrum, as if eager to be free.
I brought it out and gently began to play.
I had tucked a piece of cloth inside the bowl of the lute to soften the sound, not wanting it to carry over the rocky hills. And I had woven some of the red thread between the strings. Partly to keep them from ringing too brightly, and partly out of a desperate hope that it might bring me luck.
I began with “In the Village Smithy.” I did not sing, worried Vashet would be offended if I went that far. But even without the words, it is a song that sounds like weeping. It is music that speaks of empty rooms and a chill bed and the loss of love.
Without pausing, I moved on to “Violet Bide,” then “Home Westward Wind.” The last had been a favorite of my mother’s, and as I played it I thought of her and began to cry.
Then I played the song that hides in the center of me. That wordless music that moves through the secret places in my heart. I played it carefully, strumming it slow and low into the dark stillness of the night. I would like to say it is a happy song, that it is sweet and bright, but it is not.
And, eventually, I stopped. The tips of my fingers burned and ached. It had been a month since I had played for any length of time, and they had lost their calluses.
Looking up, I saw Vashet had pulled my shaed aside and was watching me. The moon hung behind her, and I could not see the expression on her face.
“This is why I do not have knives instead of hands, Vashet,” I said quietly. “This is what I am.”
