The Wise Man's Fear

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FORTY-THREE Bloodless

There was one final surprise waiting for me on my return to the University.

I’d been back for a handful of days before I returned to my work in the Fishery. While I was no longer in desperate need of money, I missed the work. There is something deeply satisfying in shaping something with your hands. Proper artificing is like a song made solid. It is an act of creation.

So I went to Stocks, thinking to start with something simple, as I was out of practice. As I approached the window, I saw a familiar face. “Hello Basil,” I said. “What did you do to get stuck here this time?”

He looked down. “Improper handling of reagents,” he muttered.

I laughed. “That’s not so bad. You’ll be out in a span or so.”

“Yeah.” He looked up and gave a shamefaced grin. “I heard you were back. You come for your credit?”

I stopped halfway through my mental list of everything I’d need to make a heat funnel. “I beg your pardon?”

Basil cocked his head to the side. “Your credit,” he repeated. “For the Bloodless.” He looked at me for a moment, then realization dawned on his face. “That’s right, you wouldn’t know. . . .” He stepped away from the window for a moment, and returned with something that looked like an eightsided lamp made entirely of iron.

It was different than the arrowcatch I’d made. The one I’d constructed was built from scratch and rather rough around the edges. This one was smooth and sleek. All the pieces fit together snugly, and it was covered in a thin layer of clear alchemical enamel that would protect it from rain and rust. Clever, I should have included that in my original design.

While part of me was flattered that someone had liked my design enough to copy it, a larger part of me was irritated to see an arrowcatch so much more polished than my original. I noticed a telltale uniformity in the pieces. “Someone made a set of moldings?” I asked.

Basil nodded. “Oh yes. Ages ago. Two sets.” He smiled. “I’ve got to say, it’s clever stuff. Took me a long while to get my head around how the inertial trigger worked, but now that I’ve got it. . .” He tapped his forehead. “I’ve made two myself. Good money for the time they take. Beats the hell out of deck lamps.”

That wrung a smile out of me. “Anything is better than deck lamps,” I agreed, picking it up. “Is this one of yours?”

He shook his head. “Mine sold a month back. They don’t sit long. Clever of you to price them so low.”

I turned it over in my hands and saw a word grooved into the metal. The blocky letters went deep into the iron, so I knew they were part of the mold. They read, “Bloodless.”

I looked up at Basil. He smiled. “You took off without giving it a proper name,” he said. “Then Kilvin formalized the schema and added it to the records. We needed to call it something before we started to sell it.” His smile faded a bit. “But that was around the same time word came back you’d been lost at sea. So Kilvin brought in Master Elodin. . . .”

“To give it a proper name,” I said, still turning it in my hands. “Of course.”

“Kilvin grumbled a bit,” Basil said. “Called it dramatic nonsense. But it stuck.” He shrugged and ducked down and rummaged a bit before bringing up a book. “Anyway, you want your credit?” He started flipping pages. “You’ve got to have a chunk of it built up by now. Lot of folk have been making them.”

He found the page he wanted and ran his finger along the ledger line. “There we are. Sold twenty-eight so far . . .”

“Basil,” I said. “I really don’t understand what you’re talking about. Kilvin already paid me for the first one I made.”

Basil furrowed his brow. “Your commission,” he said matter-of-factly. Then, seeing my blank look, he continued. “Every time Stocks sells something, the Fishery gets a thirty percent commission and whoever owns the schema gets ten percent.”

“I thought Stocks kept the whole forty,” I said, shocked.

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Most times it does. Stocks owns most of the old schemas. Most things have already been invented. But for something new . . .”

“Manet never mentioned that,” I said.

Basil gave an apologetic grimace. “Old Manet is a workhorse,” he said politely. “But he’s not the most innovative fellow around. He’s been here, what, thirty years? I don’t think he has a single schema to his name.” He flipped through the book a bit, scanning the pages. “Most serious artificers have at least one just as a point of pride, even if it’s something fairly useless.”

Numbers spun in my head. “So ten percent of eight talents each,” I murmured, then looked up. “I’ve got twenty-two talents waiting for me?”

Basil nodded, looking at the entry in the book. “Twenty-two and four,” he said, bringing out a pencil and a piece of paper. “You want all of it?”

I grinned.

When I set out for Imre my purse was so heavy I feared I might develop a limp. I stopped by Anker’s and picked up my travelsack, resting it on my opposite shoulder to balance things out.

I wandered through town, idly passing by all the places Denna and I had frequented in the past. I wondered where in the world she might be.

After my ritual search was complete, I made my way to a back alley that smelled of rancid fat and climbed a set of narrow stairs. I knocked briskly on Devi’s door, waited for a long minute, then knocked again, louder.

There was the sound of a bolt being thrown and a lock turning. The door cracked open and a single pale blue eye peered out at me. I grinned.

The door swung open slowly. Devi stood in the doorway, staring blankly at me, her arms at her sides.

I raised an eyebrow at her. “What?” I said. “No witty banter?”

“I don’t do business on the landing,” she said automatically. Her voice was absolutely without inflection. “You’ll have to come inside.”

I waited, but she didn’t step out of the doorway. I could smell cinnamon and honey wafting out from the room behind her.

“Devi?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

“You’re a . . .” She trailed off, still staring at me. Her voice was flat and emotionless. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“In this and many other things, I aim to disappoint,” I said.

“I was sure he’d done it,” Devi continued. “His father’s barony is called the Pirate Isles. I was sure he’d done it because we’d set fire to his rooms. I was the one that actually set the fire, but he couldn’t know that. You were the only one he saw. You and that Cealdish fellow.”

Devi looked up at me, blinking in the light. The pixie-faced gaelet had always been fair-skinned, but this was the first time I’d ever seen her look pale. “You’re taller,” she said. “I’d almost forgotten how tall you are.”

“I almost forgot how pretty you are,” I said. “But I couldn’t quite manage it.”

Devi continued to stand in the doorway, pale and staring. Concerned, I stepped forward and laid my hand lightly on her arm. She didn’t pull away as I half-expected. She simply looked down at my hand.

“I’m waiting for a quip here,” I teased gently. “You’re usually quicker than this.”

“I don’t think I can match wits with you right now,” she said.

“I never suspected you could match wits with me,” I said. “But I do like a little banter now and then.”

Devi gave a ghost of a smile, a little color coming back to her cheeks. “You’re a horse’s ass,” she said.

“That’s more like it,” I said encouragingly as I drew her out of the doorway into the bright autumn afternoon. “I knew you had it in you.”

The two of us walked to a nearby inn, and with the help of a short beer and long lunch, Devi recovered from the shock of seeing me alive. Soon she was her usual sharp-tongued self again, and we bantered back and forth over mugs of spiced cider.

Afterward we strolled back to her rooms behind the butcher shop, where Devi discovered she’d forgotten to lock her door.

“Merciful Tehlu,” she said, once we were inside, looking around frantically. “That’s a first.”

Looking around, I saw that little had changed in her rooms since I’d last seen them, though her second set of bookshelves was almost half full. I looked over the titles as Devi searched the other rooms to make sure nothing was missing.

“Anything you’d like to borrow?” she asked, as she came back into the room.

“Actually,” I said, “I have something for you.”

I set my travelsack on her desk and rooted around until I found a flat rectangular package wrapped in oilskin and tied with twine. I moved my travelsack onto the floor and put the package on the desk, nudging it toward her.

Devi approached the desk wearing a dubious expression, then sat down and unwrapped the parcel. Inside was the copy of Celum Tinture I’d stolen from Caudicus’ library. Not a particularly rare book, but a useful resource for an alchemist exiled from the Archives. Not that I knew anything about alchemy, of course.

Devi looked down at it. “And what’s this for?” she asked.

I laughed. “It’s a present.”

She eyed me narrowly. “If you think this will get you an extension on your loan. . . .”

I shook my head. “I just thought you’d like it,” I said. “As for the loan . . .” I brought out my purse and counted nine thick talents onto her desk.

“Well then,” Devi said, mildly surprised. “It looks like someone had a profitable trip.” She looked up at me. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait until after you’ve paid tuition?”

“Already taken care of,” I said.

Devi made no move to take the money. “I wouldn’t want to leave you penniless at the start of the new term,” she said.

I hefted my purse in one hand. It clinked with a delightful fullness that was almost musical.

Devi brought out a key and unlocked a drawer at the bottom of her desk. One by one she brought out my copy of Rhetoric and Logic, my talent pipes, my sympathy lamp, and Denna’s ring.

She piled them neatly on her desk, but still didn’t reach for the coins. “You still have two months before your year and a day is up,” she said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to wait?”

Puzzled, I looked down at the money on the table, then around at Devi’s rooms. Realization came to me like a flower unfurling in my head. “This isn’t about the money at all, is it?” I said, amazed it had taken me this long to figure it out.

Devi cocked her head to the side.

I gestured at the bookshelves, the large velvet-curtained bed, at Devi herself. I’d never noticed before, but while her clothes weren’t fancy, the cut and cloth were fine as any noble’s.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with money,” I repeated. I looked at her books. Her collection had to be worth five hundred talents if it was worth a penny. “You use the money as bait. You lend it out to desperate folks who might be useful to you, then hope they can’t pay you back. Your real business is favors.”

Devi chuckled a bit. “Money is nice,” she said, her eyes glittering. “But the world is full of things that people would never sell. Favors and obligation are worth far, far more.”

I looked down at the nine talents gleaming on her desk. “You don’t have a minimum loan amount, do you?” I asked, already knowing the answer. “You just told me that so I’d be forced to borrow more. You were hoping I’d dig myself a hole too deep and not be able to pay you back.”

Devi smiled brightly. “Welcome to the game,” she said as she began to pick up the coins. “Thanks for playing.”