The Wise Man's Fear

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.”

Then he said, “When I dream, I have two hands.”

We finished the dishes together, sharing silence between us. Sometimes that is all you can share.

Celean had a lesson of her own to teach me. Namely that there are opponents who will not hesitate to punch, kick, or elbow a man directly in his genitals.

Never hard enough to permanently injure me, mind you. She’d been fighting her entire young life and had the control Vashet valued so highly. But that meant she knew exactly how hard to strike to leave me stunned and reeling, making her victory utterly unquestionable.

So I sat on the grass, feeling grey and nauseous. After incapacitating me, Celean had given me a comforting pat on the shoulder before skipping blithely away. No doubt going to dance among the wind-tossed branches of the sword tree again.

“You were doing well until the end,” Vashet said, lowering herself onto the ground across from me.

I said nothing. Like a child playing find-and-catch, it was my sincere hope that if I closed my eyes and remained perfectly still, the pain wouldn’t be able to find me.

“Come now, I saw her kick,” Vashet said dismissively. “It was not so hard as that.” I heard her sigh. “Still, if you need someone to look at them and make sure they are still intact. . . .”

I chuckled slightly. It was a mistake. Unbelievable pain uncoiled in my groin, radiating down to my knee and up to my sternum. Nausea rolled over me, and I opened my eyes to steady myself.

“She will grow out of it,” Vashet said.

“I should hope so,” I said through gritted teeth. “It’s a noxious habit.”

“That is not what I meant,” Vashet said. “I mean she will grow taller. Hopefully then she will distribute her attentions more evenly across the body. Right now she attacks the groin too regularly. It makes her easy to predict and defend against.” She gave me a pointed look. “To anyone with a shred of wit.”

I closed my eyes again. “No lessons right now, Vashet,” I begged. “I’m ready to vomit up yesterday’s breakfast.”

She climbed to her feet. “It sounds like the perfect time for a lesson. Stand up. You should learn how to fight while wounded. This is an invaluable skill Celean has given you the chance to practice. You should thank her.”

Knowing it was pointless to argue, I climbed to my feet and began to walk gingerly toward my training sword.

Vashet caught me by the shoulder. “No. Hands only.”

I sighed. “Must we, Vashet?”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Must we what?”

“Must we focus always on hand fighting?” I said. “My swordplay is falling farther and farther behind.”

“Am I not your teacher?” she asked. “Who are you to say what is best?”

“I am the one who will have to use these skills out in the world,” I said pointedly. “And out in the world, I would rather fight with a sword than a fist.”

Vashet lowered her hands, her expression blank. “And why is that?”

“Because other people have swords,” I said. “And if I’m in a fight, I intend to win.”

“Is winning a fight easier with a sword?” she asked.

Vashet’s outward calm should have warned me I was stepping onto thin conversational ice, but I was distracted by the nauseating pain radiating from my groin. Though honestly, even if I hadn’t been distracted, it’s possible I wouldn’t have noticed. I had grown comfortable with Vashet, too comfortable to be properly careful.

“Of course,” I said. “Why else carry a sword?”

“That is a good question,” she said. “Why does one carry a sword?”

“Why do you carry anything? So you can use it.”

Vashet gave me a look of raw disgust. “Why do we bother to work on your language, then?” She asked angrily, reaching out to grab my jaw, pinching my cheeks and forcing my mouth open as if I were a patient in the Medica refusing my medicine. “Why do you need this tongue if a sword will do? Tell me that?”

I tried to pull away, but she was stronger than me. I tried to push her away, but she shrugged my flailing hands away as if I were a child.

Vashet let go of my face, then caught my wrist, jerking my hand up in front of my face. “Why do you have hands at all and not knives at the ends of your arms?”

Then she let go of my wrist and struck me hard across the face with the flat of her hand.

If I say she slapped me, you will take the wrong impression. This wasn’t the dramatic slap of the sort you see on a stage. Neither was it the offended, stinging slap a lady-in-waiting makes against the smooth skin of a too-familiar nobleman. It wasn’t even the more professional slap of a serving girl defending herself from the unwelcome attention of a grabby drunk.

No. This was hardly any sort of slap at all. A slap is made with the fingers or the palm. It stings or startles. Vashet struck me with her open hand, but behind that was the strength of her arm. Behind that was her shoulder. Behind that was the complex machinery of her pivoting hips, her strong legs braced against the ground, and the ground itself beneath her. It was like the whole of creation striking me through the flat of her hand, and the only reason it didn’t cripple me is that even in the middle of her fury, Vashet was always perfectly in control.

Because she was in control, Vashet didn’t dislocate my jaw or knock me unconscious. But it made my teeth rattle and my ears ring. It made my eyes roll in my head and my legs go loose and shaky. I would have fallen if Vashet hadn’t gripped me by the shoulder.

“Do you think I am teaching you the secrets of the sword so you can go out and use them?” she demanded. I dimly realized she was shouting. It was the first time I had ever heard one of the Adem raise their voice. “Is that what you think we are doing here?”

As I lolled in her grip, stupefied, she struck me again. This time her hand caught more of my nose. The pain of it was amazing, as if someone had driven a sliver of ice directly into my brain. It jolted me out of my daze so I was fully alert when she hit me the third time.

Vashet held me for a moment while the world spun, then let go. I took one unsteady step and crumpled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. Not unconscious, but profoundly dazed.

It took me a long time to collect myself. When I was finally able to sit up, my body felt loose and unwieldy, as if it had been taken apart and put back together again in a slightly different way.

By the time I gathered my wits enough to look around, I was alone.