I froze with my teeth halfway into my apple. I pulled back, leaving white impressions in the red skin. “I beg your pardon?”
She shrugged. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. But don’t fabricate some story out of a misguided desire to pacify or impress me.”
I drew a deep breath, hesitated, and let it out slowly. “I don’t want to lie to you about why I’m here,” I said. “But I worry what you might think if I tell you the truth.”
Denna’s eyes were dark, thoughtful, and gave nothing away. “Fair enough,” she said at last with an almost imperceptible nod. “I believe that.”
She took a bite of her apple and gave me a long look as she chewed, never looking away from my eyes. Her lips were wet and redder than the apple. “I heard some rumors.” I said at last. “And I want to know what happened here. That’s all really. I just ...”
“Listen Kvothe, I’m sorry.” Denna sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “I shouldn’t have pushed you. It’s none of my business, really. I know what it’s like to have secrets.”
I almost told her everything then. The whole story about my parents, the Chandrian, the man with black eyes and a nightmare smile. But I worried it might seem like the desperate elaboration of a child caught in a lie. So instead I took the coward’s way out and stayed silent.
“You’ll never find your true love that way,” Denna said.
I snapped out of my reverie, confused. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You eat the core of your apple,” she said, amused. “You eat it all around, then from the bottom to the top. I’ve never seen anyone do that before.”
“Old habit,” I said dismissively, not wanting to tell her the truth. That there had been a time in my life when the core was all of the apple I was likely to find, and I’d been glad of it. “What did you mean before?”
“Didn’t you ever play that game?” she held up her own apple core and grabbed the stem with two fingers. “You think of a letter and twist. If the stem stays on you think of another letter and twist again. When the stem breaks off...” hers did, “... you know the first letter of the name of the person you’re going to fall in love with.”
I looked down at the tiny piece of apple I had left. Not enough to grip and twist. I bit off the last of the apple and tossed the stem. “Looks like I’m destined to be loveless.”
“There you go with seven words again,” she said with a smile. “You do realize you always do that?”
It took me a minute to realize what she was referring to, but before I could respond Denna had moved on. “I heard the seeds are supposed to be bad for you,” she said. “They have arsenic in them.”
“That’s just a wives’ tale,” I said. It was one of the ten thousand questions I’d asked Ben when he’d traveled with the troupe. “It’s not arsenic. It’s cyanide, and there’s not enough to hurt you unless you eat bucketsful.”
“Oh.” Denna gave the remains of her apple a speculative look, then began to eat it from the bottom up.
“You were telling me about what happened to Master Ash before I rudely interrupted,” I prompted gently as I could.
Denna shrugged. “There isn’t much left to tell. I saw the fire, came closer, heard more shouting and commotion....”
“And the fire?”
She hesitated. “Blue.”
I felt a sort of dark anticipation rise up in me. Excitement at finally being close to answers about the Chandrian, fear at the thought of being close to them. “What did the ones look like who attacked you? How did you get away?”
She gave a bitter laugh. “Nobody attacked me. I saw shapes outlined against the fire and ran like billy-hell.” She lifted her bandaged arm and touched the side of her head. “I must have gone headfirst into a tree and knocked myself out. I woke up in town this morning.
“That’s the other reason I needed to come back,” she said. “I don’t know if Master Ash might still be out here. I didn’t hear anyone in town talking about finding an extra body, but I couldn’t ask without making everyone suspicious....”
“And he wouldn’t like that,” I said.
Denna nodded. “I don’t doubt he’ll turn this into another test to see how well I can keep my mouth shut.” She gave me a significant look. “Speaking of which ...”
“I’ll make a point of being terribly surprised if we find anyone,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
She smiled nervously. “Thanks. I just hope he’s alive. I’ve invested two whole span trying to win him over.” She took a final drink out of my water bottle and handed it back to me. “Let’s go have a look around, shall we?”
Denna came unsteadily to her feet, and I tucked my water bottle back into my travelsack, watching her out of the corner of my eye. I had worked in the Medica for the better part of a year. Denna had been struck on her left temple hard enough to blacken her eye and bruise her well past her ear into her hairline. Her right arm was bandaged, and from the way she carried herself, I guessed she had some serious bruises along her left side, if not a few broken ribs.
If she had run into a tree, it must have been an oddly shaped tree.
But still, I didn’t make a point of it. Didn’t press her.
How could I? I too knew what it was like to have secrets.
The farm was nowhere near as gruesome as it could have been. The barn was nothing but a jumble of ash and planking. To one side a water trough stood next to a charred windmill. The wind tried to spin the wheel, but it only had three fins left, and it simply swayed back and forth, back and forth.
There were no bodies. Only the deep ruts wagon wheels had cut into the turf when they had come to haul them away.
“How many people were at the wedding?” I asked.
“Twenty-six, counting the bride and groom.” Denna kicked idly at a charred timber half buried in ashes near the remains of the barn. “Good thing it usually rains in the evenings here, or this whole side of the mountain would be on fire by now....”
“Any simmering feuds lurking around here?” I asked. “Rival families? Another suitor looking for revenge?”
“Of course,” Denna said easily. “Little town like this, that’s what keeps things on an even keel. These folk will carry a grudge for fifty years about what their Tom said about our Kari.” She shook her head. “But nothing of the killing sort. These were normal folks.”
Normal but wealthy, I thought to myself as I walked toward the farmhouse. This was the sort of house only a wealthy family could afford to build. The foundation and the lower walls were solid grey stone. The upper story was plaster and timber with stone reinforcing the corners.
Still, the walls sagged inward on the verge of collapse. The windows and door gaped with dark soot licking out around the edges. I peered through the doorway and saw the grey stone of the walls charred black. There was broken crockery scattered among the remains of furniture and charred floorboards.
“If your things were in there,” I said to Denna. “I think they’re as good as gone. I could go in for a look....”
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “This whole thing is about to come down.” She knocked a knuckle against the doorframe. It echoed hollowly.
Curious at the odd sound of it, I went over to look. I picked at the doorpost with a fingernail and a long splinter the size of my palm peeled away with little resistance. “This is more like driftwood than timber,” I said. “After spending all this money, why skimp on the doorframe?”
Denna shrugged. “Maybe the heat of the fire did it?”
I nodded absently and continued to wander around, looking things over. I bent to pick up a piece of charred shingle and muttered a binding under my breath. A brief chill spread up my arms and flame flickered to life along the rough edge of the wood.
“That’s something you don’t see every day,” Denna said. Her voice was calm, but it was a forced calm, as if she was trying hard to sound nonchalant.
It took me a moment to figure out what she was talking about. Simple sympathy like this was so
