The Wise Man's Fear

  “I submit,” I said. This is easier to say in Ademic: Veh. An easy noise to make when you are winded, tired, or in pain. I’d become rather used to saying it lately.

  Celean let go of me and stepped away, watching as I sat up.

  “You really aren’t very good,” she said with brutal honesty.

  “I am not used to striking young girls,” I said.

  “How could you become used to it?” She laughed. “To grow used to a thing, you must do it over and again. I expect you have never struck a woman even once.”

  Celean extended a hand. I took it in what I hoped was a gracious manner, and she helped pull me to my feet. “I mean where I come from, it is not right to fight with women.”

  “I do not understand,” she said. “Do they not let the men fight in the same place as the women?”

  “I mean, for the most part, our women do not fight,” I explained.

  Celean rolled her wrist over, opening and closing her hand as if there were some dirt on the palm and she was absentmindedly trying to rub it off. It was the hand-talk equivalent of puzzlement, a confused frown of sorts. “How do they improve their Ketan if they do not practice?” she asked.

  “Where I come from, the women have no Ketan at all.”

  Her eyes narrowed, then brightened. “You mean to say they have a secret Ketan,” she said, using the Aturan word for “secret.” Though her face was composed, her body vibrated with excitement. “A Ketan only they know, that the men are not allowed to see.”

  Celean pointed over to the bench where our teachers sat ignoring us. “Vashet has such a thing. I have asked her to show it to me many times, but she will not.”

  “Vashet knows another Ketan?” I asked.

  Celean nodded. “She was schooled in the path of joy before she came to us.” She looked over at her, her face serious, as if she would pull the secret out of the other woman by sheer force of will. “Someday I will go there and learn it. I will go everywhere, and I will learn all the Ketans there are. I will learn the hidden ways of the ribbon and the chain and of the moving pool. I will learn the paths of joy and passion and restraint. I will have all of them.”

  When she spoke, Celean didn’t say this in a tone of childish fancy, as if she were daydreaming of eating an entire cake. Neither was she boastful, as if she were describing a plan she had put together on her own and thought very clever.

  Celean said it with a quiet intensity. It was almost as if she were simply explaining who she was. Not to me. She was telling herself.

  She turned back to look at me. “I will go to your land too,” she said. Absolute . “And I will learn the barbarian Ketan your women keep secret from you.”

  “You will be disappointed,” I said. “I did not misspeak. I know the word for secret. What I meant to say is that where I come from, many women do not fight.”

  Celean rolled her wrist again in puzzlement, and I knew I had to be more clear. “Where I come from, most women spend their whole lives without holding a sword. Most grow up not knowing how to strike another with a fist or the blade of their hand. They know nothing of any sort of Ketan. They do not fight at all.” I stressed the last two words with strong negation.

  That finally seemed to get the point across to her. I had half expected her to look horrified, but instead she simply stood there blankly, hands motionless, as if at a loss for what to think. It was as if I’d just explained to her that the women where I came from didn’t have any heads.

  “They do not fight?” she asked dubiously. “Not with the men or with each other or with anyone at all?”

  I nodded.

  There was a long, long pause. Her brow furrowed and I could actually see her struggling to come to grips with this idea. Confusion. Dismay. “Then what do they do?” she said at last.

  I thought of the women I knew: Mola, Fela, Devi. “Many things,” I said, having to improvise around the words I didn’t know. “They make pictures out of stones. They buy and sell money. They write in books.”

  Celean seemed to relax as I recited this list, as if relieved to hear these foreign women, empty of any Ketan, weren’t strewn around the countryside like boneless corpses.

  “They heal the sick and mend wounds. They play ...” I almost said play music and sing songs, but caught myself in time. “They play games and plant wheat and make bread.”

  Celean thought for a long moment. “I would rather do those things and fight as well,” she said decisively.

  “Some women do, but for many it is considered not of the Lethani.” I used the phrase “of the Lethani” because I could not think of how to say “proper behavior” in Ademic.

  Celean gestured sharp disdain and reproach. I was amazed how much more it stung coming from this young girl in her bright yellow shirt than it ever had from Tempi or Vashet. “The Lethani is the same everywhere,” she said firmly. “It is not like the wind, changing from place to place.”

  “The Lethani is like water,” I responded without thinking. “It is itself unchanging, but it shapes itself to fit all places. It is both the river and the rain.”

  She glared at me. It was not a furious glare, but coming from one of the Adem, it had the same effect. “Who are you to say the Lethani is like one thing and not another?”

  “Who are you to do the same?”

  Celean looked at me for a moment, the hint of a serious line between her pale eyebrows. Then she laughed brightly and brought up her hands. “I am Celean,” she proclaimed. “My mother is of the third stone. I am Adem born, and I am the one who will throw you to the ground.”

  She was as good as her word.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEEN

  Purpose

  VASHET AND I FOUGHT, moving back and forth across the foothills of Ademre.

  After all this time, I barely noticed the wind anymore. It was as much a part of the landscape as the uneven ground beneath my feet. Some days it was gentle, and did little more than make patterns in the grass or flick my hair into my eyes. Other days it was strong enough to make the loose fabric of my clothes crack and snap against my skin. It could come at you from unexpected directions without a moment’s warning, pushing you as firmly as a hand between your shoulder blades.

  “Why do we spend so much time on my hand fighting?” I asked Vashet as I made Picking Clover.

  “Because your hand fighting is sloppy,” Vashet said, blocking me with Fan Water. “Because you embarrass me every time we fight. And because three times of four you lose to a child half your size.”

  “But my sword fighting is even worse,” I said as I circled, looking for an opening.

  “It is worse,” she acknowledged. “That is why I do not let you fight anyone but me. You are too wild. You could hurt someone.”

  I smiled. “I thought that was the point of this.”

  Vashet frowned, then reached out casually to grip my wrist and shoulder, twisting me into Sleeping Bear. Her right hand held my wrist over my head, stretching my arm at an awkward angle, while her left pressed firmly against my shoulder. Helpless, I was forced to bend at the waist, staring at the ground.

  “Veh,” I said in submission.

  But Vashet didn’t release me. She twisted, and the pressure against my shoulder increased. The small bones of my wrist began to ache.

  “Veh,” I said a little louder, thinking she hadn’t heard me. But still she held me, twisting a little harder at my wrist. “Vashet?” I tried to turn my head to look at her, but from this angle all I could see was her leg.

  “If the point of this is to hurt someone,” she said, “why should I let you go?”

  “That’s not what I meant . . .” Vashet pushed down harder, and I stopped talking.

  “What is the purpose of Sleeping Bear?” she asked calmly.

  “To incapacitate your opponent,” I said.

  “Very well.” Vashet began to bear down with the slow, relentless force of a glacier. Dull pain began to build in my shoulder as well as my wrist. “Soon your arm wi
ll be twisted from the cup of your shoulder. Your tendons will stretch and pull free of the bone. Your muscles will tear and your arm will hang like a wet rag at your side. Then will Sleeping Bear have served its purpose?”

  I struggled a bit out of pure animal instinct. But it only turned the burning pain into something sharper, and I stopped. Over the course of my training, I had been put into inescapable positions before. Every time I had been helpless, but this was the first time I had truly felt that way.

  “The purpose of Sleeping Bear is control,” Vashet said calmly. “Right now, you are mine to do with as I wish. I can move you, or break you, or let you free.”

  “I would prefer free,” I said, trying to sound more hopeful than desperate.

  There was a pause. Then she asked, calmly, “What is the purpose of Sleeping Bear?”

  “Control.”

  I felt her hands release me, and I stood, slowly rolling my shoulder to ease the ache.

  Vashet stood there, frowning at me. “The point of all of this is control. First you must have control of yourself. Then you can gain control of your surroundings. Then you gain control of whoever stands against you. This is the Lethani.”

  After the better part of a month in Haert, I could not help but feel that things were going well. Vashet acknowledged that my language was improving, congratulating me by saying I sounded like a child, rather than just an imbecile.

  I continued to meet with Celean in the grassy field next to the sword tree. I looked forward to these encounters despite the fact that she thrashed me with cheerful ruthlessness every time we fought. It took three days before I finally managed to beat her.

  That’s an interesting verse to add to the long story of my life, isn’t it?

  Come listen all, and I will tell

  A tale of brave and daring deeds.

  Of wonders Kvothe the Bloodless wrought,

  And of the time he bravely fought

  A twigling girl no more than ten.

  And listen how it came to pass,

  The mighty blow he bravely dealt

  That knocked her sprawling to the grass,

  And of the glow of joy he felt.

  Awful as it might sound, I was proud. And justifiably so. Celean herself congratulated me when it happened, seeming more than a little surprised that I had managed it. There, in the long shadow of the sword tree, she showed me her two-handed variant of Breaking Lion as a reward, flattering me with the familiarity of an impish grin.

  That same day we finished our prescribed number of bouts early. I went to sit on a nearby lump of stone that had been smoothed into a comfortable seat. I nursed my dozen small hurts from the fight and prepared to watch the sword tree until Vashet returned to fetch me.

  Celean, however, was not the sort to sit and wait. She skipped over to the sword tree, standing only a few feet from where the longest branches bobbed and danced in the wind, sending the round, razor-sharp leaves turning in wild circles.

  Then she lowered her shoulders and darted under the canopy, in among the thousand madly spinning leaves.

  I was too startled to cry out, but I did come halfway to my feet before I heard her laughing. I watched as she darted and jigged and spun, her tiny body dodging out of the way of the wind-tossed leaves as if she were playing tag. She made it halfway to the trunk and stopped. She ducked her head, reached out, and swatted away a leaf that otherwise would have cut her.

  No. She didn’t just lash out. She used Drifting Snow. Then I watched her move even closer to the trunk, weaving back and forth and protecting herself. First she used Maiden Combs Her Hair, then Dance Backwards.

  Then she skipped to one side, the Ketan abandoned. She crouched and sprinted through a gap in the leaves and made her way to the trunk of the tree, slapping it with one hand.

  And she was back among the leaves. She made Pressing Cider, ducked and spun and ran until she was clear of the canopy. She didn’t shout out in triumph as a Commonwealth child might have, but she jumped into the air, hands raised in victory. Then, still laughing, she did a cartwheel.

  Breathless, I watched Celean play her game again and again, moving in and out of the tree’s dancing leaves. She didn’t always make it to the trunk. Twice she scampered back out of the reach of the leaves without making it, and it was obvious even from where I sat that she was angry. Once she slipped and was forced to crawl out under the reach of the leaves.

  But she made it to the trunk and back four times, each time celebrating her escape with upraised hands, laughter, and a single perfect cartwheel.

  She only stopped when Vashet returned. I watched from a distance as Vashet stormed over and gave the girl a stern telling off. I couldn’t hear what was said, but their body language spoke volumes. Celean looked down and shuffled her feet. Vashet shook a finger and cuffed the young girl on the side of her head. It was the same scolding any child receives. Stay out of the neighbor’s garden. Don’t tease the Bentons’ sheep. Don’t play tag among the thousand spinning knives of your people’s sacred tree.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED NINETEEN

  Hands

  ONCE VASHET JUDGED MY language only moderately embarrassing, she arranged for me to talk with an odd handful of people scattered around Haert.

  There was a garrulous old man who spun silk thread while chattering endlessly, telling strange, pointless, half-delirious stories. There was a story of a boy who put shoes on his head to keep a cat from being killed, another where a family swore to eat a mountain stone by stone. I could never make any sense of them, but I listened politely and drank the sweet beer he offered me.

  I met with twin sisters who made candles and showed me the steps of strange dances. I spent an afternoon with a woodcutter who spoke for hours of nothing but splitting wood.

  At first I thought these were important members of the community. I thought Vashet might be parading me in front of them in order to show how civilized I had become.

  It wasn’t until I spent the morning with Two-fingers that I realized she sent me to each of these people with the hope I would learn something.

  Two-fingers was not his real name. I’d merely come to think of him as that. He was a cook at the school, and I saw him at every meal. His left hand was whole, but his right was viciously crippled, with only his thumb and forefinger remaining.

  Vashet sent me to him in the morning, and together we prepared lunch and talked. His name was Naden. He told me he had spent ten years among the barbarians. What’s more, he had brought more than two hundred and thirty silver talents back into the school before he was injured and could no longer fight. He mentioned the last several times, and I could tell that it was a particular point of pride with him.

  The bells rang and folk filtered into the dining hall. Naden ladled up the stew we’d made, hot and thick with chunks of beef and carrot. I cut slices of warm white bread for those who wanted it. I exchanged nods and occasional polite gestures with those who moved through the line. I was careful to make only the briefest eye contact, and tried to convince myself it was just a coincidence so few people seemed interested in bread today.

  Carceret made a show of her feelings for everyone to see. First she made it to the front of the line, then made a widely visible gesture of abhorrent disgust before walking away, leaving her wooden plate behind.

  Later Naden and I tended to the washing up. “Vashet tells me your swordplay is progressing poorly,” he said without preamble. “She says you fear too much for your hands, and this makes you hesitant.” Firm reproach.

  I froze at the abruptness of it, fighting the urge to stare at his ruined hand. I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

  He turned from the iron pot he was scrubbing and held out his hand in front of him. It was a defiant gesture, and his face was hard. I looked then, as ignoring it would be rude. Only his thumb and forefinger remained, enough to grip at things, but not enough for any delicate work. The half of his hand that remained was a mass of puckered scar.

  I kept my face
even, but it was hard. In some ways I was looking at my worst fear. I felt very self-conscious of my uninjured hands and fought the urge to make a fist or hide them behind my back.

  “It has been a dozen years since this hand held a sword,” Naden said. Proud anger. Regret. “I have thought long on that fight where my fingers were lost. I did not even lose them to a skilled opponent. They fell to some barbarian whose hands were better suited to a shovel than the sword.”

  He flexed his two fingers. In some ways, he was lucky. There were other Adem in Haert who were missing entire hands, or eyes, or limbs to the elbow or knee.

  “I have thought a long time. How could I have saved my hand? I have thought about my contract, protecting a baron whose lands were in rebellion. I think: What if I had not taken that contract? I think: What if I had lost my left hand? I could not talk, but I could hold a sword.” He let his hand drop to his side. “But holding a sword is not enough. A proper mercenary requires two hands. I could never make Lover out the Window or Sleeping Bear with only one. . . .”

  He shrugged. “It is the luxury of looking backward. You can do it forever, and it is useless. I took the red proudly. I brought over two hundred and thirty talents to the school. I was of the second stone, and I would have made the third in time.”

  Naden held up his ruined hand again. “I could have gained none of these things if I had lived in fear of losing my hand. If I flinched and cringed, I would never have been accepted into the Latantha. Never made the second stone. I would be whole, but I would be less than I am now.”

  He turned back and began to scrub the pots again. After a moment I joined him.

  “Is it bad?” I asked quietly, unable to help myself.

  Naden didn’t answer for a long moment. “When it first happened, I thought to myself it was not so bad. Others have had worse wounds. Others have died. I was luckier than them.”

  He drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I tried to think it was not bad. My life would continue on. But no. Life stops. Much is lost. Everything is lost.”