The Wise Man's Fear

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN Pennysworth

Twilight was settling in as we rounded a curve in the road. I heard clapping and stomping mingled with music, shouting, and roars of laughter. After ten hours of walking, the sound lifted my spirits to an almost cheerful level.

Located at the last major crossroad south of the Eld, the Pennysworth Inn was enormous. Built of rough-hewn timber, it had two full stories and a scattering of gables that hinted at a smaller, third floor above that. Through the windows I caught glimpses of men and women dancing while an unseen fiddler sawed out a mad and breathless tune.

Dedan took a deep breath. “Can you smell that? I tell you, there’s a woman in this place could cook a stone and make me beg for more. Sweet Peg. By these hands, I hope she’s still around.” He made a curving gesture, showing the double meaning of his words as he nudged Marten with an elbow.

Hespe’s eyes narrowed as she stared at the back of Dedan’s head.

Oblivious, Dedan continued, “Tonight I’ll sleep with a bellyful of lamb and brandy. Although a little less sleeping might prove a little more entertaining, if my last trip here was any indication.”

I saw the storm brewing on Hespe’s face and spoke up quickly. “Whatever’s in the pot and a bunk for each of us,” I said firmly. “Anything else comes out of your own pocket.”

Dedan looked as if he couldn’t quite believe his ears. “Come off it. We’ve been sleeping rough for days. Besides, ’taint your money, don’t be a stingy shim with it.”

“We haven’t done our job yet,” I said calmly. “Not even a piece of it. I don’t know how long we may be out here, but I know I’m not rich. If we run through the Maer’s purse too quickly we’re going to have to hunt for what we eat.” I looked around at everyone. “Unless someone else has enough coin to keep us fed and cares to share?”

Marten smiled ruefully at the suggestion. Hespe’s eyes were for Dedan, who continued glowering in my direction.

Tempi fidgeted, his expression unreadable as ever. Avoiding my eyes, he glanced at everyone in turn, his expression blank. His eyes moved, not from face to face, but at Dedan’s hands, then Dedan’s feet. Then Marten’s feet, then Hespe’s, then mine. He shifted his weight and moved a half-step closer to Dedan.

Hoping to dispel the tension, I softened my tone and said, “After everything is done we’ll split what’s left of the purse. That way each of us will have a little extra in our pocket before we even get back to Severen. We can each spend our lots as we want to. Then.”

I could tell Dedan wasn’t pleased and waited to see if he would press the point.

Instead it was Marten who spoke up. “After a day of long walking,” he said in a musing voice, as if talking to himself. “A drink would go down nice.”

Dedan looked to his friend, then back to me expectantly.

“I think the purse can stand a round of drinks,” I conceded with a smile. “I don’t think the Maer is trying to make priests of us, do you?”

This got a throaty laugh from Hespe, while Marten and Dedan cracked smiles. Tempi glanced at me with his pale eyes, fidgeted, and looked away.

A few minutes of relaxed haggling got the five of us common bunks, a simple supper, and a round of drinks for a single silver bit. After that was done, I found a table in a quieter corner of the room and tucked my lute out of harm’s way under my bench. Then I sat down, bone weary and wondering what I could do to get Dedan to stop acting like such a little swaggercock.

Such was the distracted turning of my thoughts when my dinner thumped onto the table in front of me. I looked up to see a woman’s face and well-advertised bosom framed by a tumble of bright red curls. Her skin was white as cream with just the barest hint of freckle. Her lips a pale, dangerous pink. Her eyes a bright, dangerous green.

“Thank you,” I said, somewhat belatedly.

“You’re welcome, love.” She smiled playfully with her eyes and brushed her hair back from her bare shoulder. “It looked like you were almost a-sleeping in your seat.”

“I nearly was. A long day and a long road.”

“That’s a shame indeed,” she said with playful regret as she rubbed the back of her neck. “If I thought you’d 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.

His scowl gave way to curiosity, and I lowered my voice a little more. “You’ve been here before, right?” He nodded, leaning a little closer. “Do you know what that girl’s name is?” I nodded my head in the redhead’s direction.

Dedan took an over-careful look over his shoulder that surely would have drawn her attention if she hadn’t been facing away from us. “The blonde one the Adem’s pawin’ at?” Dedan asked.

“Redhead.”

Dedan’s broad forehead wrinkled as he squinted the far side of the room into focus. “Losine?” He asked softly. He turned to me, still squinting. “Little Losi?”

I shrugged and began to regret my choice of diversionary tactic.

An explosive laugh burst out of the big man and he half fell, half slid onto the bench across from me.

“Losi,” he chuckled a little more loudly than I liked. “Kvothe, I had you all wrong.” He slapped the table with the flat of his hand and laughed again, nearly tipping himself over backward on the bench. “Ah, you’ve got a good eye, boy, but you haven’t got a damn chance.”

My battered pride pricked up at this. “Why not? Isn’t she, well—” I trailed off, making an inarticulate gesture.

He somehow managed to gather my meaning. “A whore?” he asked incredulously. “God boy, no. There’s a couple around.” He made a sweeping gesture over his head, then lowered his voice to a more private level. “Not really whores, mind you. Just girls who don’t mind a little extra at night.” He paused, blinked. “Money. Extra money. And extra other things.” He chortled.

“I just thought . . .” I began weakly.

“Ay, any man who ever had eyes and balls thought that.” He leaned a little closer. “She’s a lusty little one. She’ll trip a man who catches her eye, but she can’t be talked or bought into bed. If she could, she’d be rich as the king of Vint.” He looked in her direction. “How much’s a roll with that worth? I’d give—”

He squinted in her direction, his lips moving as if going through some silent, complex arithmetic. After a moment he shrugged. “More than I’ve got.” He looked back to me, shrugged again. “Still, it’s no good wishing. Save yourself the trouble. If ye want, I know a lady here who’s no shame to look at. Might be willing to brighten up your evening.” He started to look around the room.

“No!” I put my hand on his arm to stop him. “I was just curious, that’s all.” I sounded insincere and I knew it. “Thanks for filling me in.”

“Nothin’ to it.” He carefully got to his feet.

“Oh,” I said, as if a thought had just occurred to me. “Could you do me a favor?” He nodded and I gestured him closer. “I’m worried Hespe might end up talking about our job for the Maer. If the bandits hear we’re hunting them, things will get ten times harder.” A guilty look flashed across his face. “I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t mention it, but you know how women like to talk.”

“I understand,” he said quickly as he stood up. “I’ll talk to her. Better to be careful.”

The hawk-faced fiddler finished his jig, and everyone clapped and stomped and pounded empty mugs on their tables. I sighed and rubbed my face into my hands. When I looked up I saw Marten at the table next to mine. He touched his fingers to his forehead and nodded a small salute. I gave a slight, seated bow. It’s always nice to have an appreciative audience.