The Wise Man's Fear

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Secrets

Two days later I was heading off to the Fishery, hoping some honest work would clear my head and make me better able to tolerate two hours of Elodin’s jackassery. I was three steps from the door, when I saw a young girl in a blue cloak hurrying across the courtyard toward me. Underneath the hood, her face was a startling mix of excitement and anxiety.

We made eye contact and she stopped moving toward me. Then, still eyeing me, she made a motion so furtive and stiff I couldn’t understand what she meant until she repeated it: she wanted me to follow her.

Puzzled, I nodded. She turned and walked out of the courtyard, moving with the awkward stiffness of someone trying desperately to be nonchalant.

I followed her. Under other circumstances I would have thought she was a shill luring me into a dark alley where thugs would kick out my teeth and take my purse. But there weren’t any decently dangerous alleys this close to the University, and it was a sunny afternoon besides.

Eventually she stepped into a deserted piece of road behind a glassblower and a clocksmith’s shop. She looked around nervously, then turned, her face beaming under the shelter of her hood. “I finally found you!” she said breathlessly.

She was younger than I’d thought, no more than fourteen. Curls of mousy brown hair framed her pale face and fought to escape the hood. Still, I couldn’t place her. . . .

“I’ve had a drummer of a time tracking you down,” she said. “I spend so much time here my ma thinks I have a beau at the University,” she said the last almost shyly, her mouth making a tiny curve.

I opened my mouth to admit I didn’t have the slightest idea who she was. But before I could get a word out, she spoke again. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I hain’t let anyone know I was coming to see you.” Her bright eyes went dark with anxiety, like a pool when the sun goes behind a cloud. “I know it’s safer that way.”

It was only when her face went dark with worry that I recognized her. She was the young girl I’d met in Trebon when I’d gone to investigate rumors of the Chandrian.

“Nina,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.” She thrust out her chin proudly. “I knew you must be from here cause you knew all sorts of magic.” She looked around. “But it’s bigger than I thought it would be. I know you didn’t give anyone in Trebon your name because then they’d have power over you, but I have to say it makes you terribly hard to find.”

Had I not told anyone my name in Trebon? Some of my memories of that time were vague, as I’d had a bit of a concussion. It was probably for the best I’d kept myself anonymous, given that I’d been responsible for burning down a sizable portion of the town.

“I’m sorry to put you to so much work,” I said, still not sure what this was all about.

Nina took a step closer. “I had dreams after you left,” she said, her voice low and confidential. “Bad dreams. I thought they were coming for me because of what I told you.” She gave me a meaningful look. “But then I started sleeping with the amulet you gave me. I made my prayers every night, and the dreams went away.” One of her hands absentmindedly fingered a piece of bright metal that hung around her neck on a leather cord.

I realized with sudden guilt that I’d inadvertently lied to Master Kilvin. I hadn’t sold anyone a charm, or even made anything that would look like one. But I had given Nina an engraved piece of metal and told her it was an amulet to set her mind at ease. Before that she’d been on the edge of nervous hysteria, worried that demons were going to kill her.

“So it’s been working then?” I asked, trying not to sound guilty.

She nodded. “As soon as I had it under my pillow and said my prayers, I slept like a babe at the tit. Then I started having my special dream,” she said, and smiled up at me. “I dreamed about the big pot Jimmy showed me before those folks were kilt up at the Mauthen farm.”

I felt hope rise in my chest. Nina was the only person alive who had seen the ancient piece of pottery. It had been covered with pictures of the Chandrian, and they are jealous of their secrets.

“You remembered something about the pot with the seven people painted on it?” I asked excitedly.

She hesitated for a moment, frowning. “There was eight of them,” she said. “Not seven.”

“Eight?” I asked. “Are you sure?”

She nodded earnestly. “I thought I told you before.”

The rising hope in my chest suddenly fell into the pit of my stomach where it lay heavy and sour. There were seven Chandrian. It was one of the few things I knew for certain about them. If there were eight people on the painted vase Nina had seen . . .

Nina continued to chatter away, unaware of my disappointment. “I dreamed about the pot for three nights in a row,” she said. “And it weren’t a bad dream at all. I woke up all rested and happy every night. I knew then what God was telling me to do.”

She began to root around in her pockets and brought out a length of polished horn more than a handspan long and big around as my thumb. “I remembered how you were so curious about the pot. But I couldn’t tell you anything cause I’d only seen it for a moment.” She handed me the piece of horn, proudly.

I looked down at the cylindrical piece of horn in my hands, not sure what I was supposed to do with it. I looked up at her, confused.

Nina gave an impatient sigh and took the horn back. She twisted it, removing the end like a cap. “My brother made this for me,” she said as she carefully drew a rolled piece of parchment from inside the horn. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t know what it was for.”

She handed me the parchment. “It’s not very good,” she said nervously. “My mum lets me help paint the pots, but this is different. It’s harder doing people than flowers and designs. And it’s hard getting something right that you can only see in your head.”

I was amazed my hands weren’t shaking. “This is what was painted on the vase?” I asked.

“It’s one side of it,” she said. “Something round like this, you can only see a third of it when you’re looking at it from one side.”

“So you dreamed of a different side each night?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Just this side. Three nights in a row.”

I slowly unrolled the piece of paper and instantly recognized the man she had painted. His eyes were pure black. In the background there was a bare tree, and he was standing on a circle of blue with a few wavy lines on it.

“That’s supposed to be water,” she said, pointing. “It’s hard to paint water though. And he’s supposed to be standing on it. There were drifts of snow around him too, and his hair was white. But I couldn’t get the white paint to work. Mixing paints for paper is harder than glazes for pots.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. It was Cinder, the one who had killed my parents. I could see his face in my mind without even trying. Without even closing my eyes.

I unrolled the paper further. There was a second man, or rather the shape of a man in a great hooded robe. Inside the cowl of the robe was nothing but blackness. Over his head were three moons, a full moon, a half moon, and one that was just a crescent. Next to him were two candles. One was yellow with a bright orange flame. The other candle sat underneath his outstretched hand: it was grey with a black flame, and the space around it was smudged and darkened.

“That’s supposed to be shadow, I think,” Nina said, pointing to the area under his hand. “It was more obvious on the pot. I had to use charcoal for that. I couldn’t get it right with paint.”

I nodded again. This was Haliax. The leader of the Chandrian. When I’d seen him he had been surrounded by an unnatural shadow. The fires around him had been strangely dimmed, and the cowl of his cloak had been black as the bottom of a well.

I finished unrolling the paper, revealing a third figure, larger than the other two. He wore armor and an open-faced helmet. On his chest was a bright insignia that looked like an autumn leaf, red on the outside brightening to orange near the middle, with a straight black stem.

The skin of his face was tan, but the hand he held poised upright was a bright red. His other hand was hidden by a large, round object that Nina had somehow managed to color a metallic bronze. I guessed it was his shield.

“He’s the worst,” Nina said, her voice subdued.

I looked down at her. Her face looked somber, and I guessed she’d taken my silence the wrong way. “You shouldn’t say that,” I said. “You’ve done a wonderful job.”

Nina gave a faint smile. “That’s not what I meant,” she said. “He was hard to do. I got the copper pretty okay here.” She touched his shield. “But this red,” her finger brushed his upraised hand, “is supposed to be blood. He’s got blood all over his hand.” She tapped his chest. “And this was brighter, like something burning.”

I recognized him then. It wasn’t a leaf on his chest. It was a tower wrapped in flame. His bloody, outstretched hand wasn’t demonstrating something. It was making a gesture of rebuke toward Haliax and the rest. He was holding up his hand to stop them. This man was one of the Amyr. One of the Ciridae.

The young girl shivered and pulled her cloak around herself. “I don’t like looking at him even now,” she said. “They were all awful to look at. But he was the worst. I can’t get faces right, but his was terrible grim. He looked so angry. He looked like he was ready to burn down the whole world.”

“If this is one side,” I asked, “Do you remember the rest of it?”

“Not like this. I remember there was a woman with no clothes on, and a broken sword, and a fire. . . .” She looked thoughtful, then shook her head again. “Like I told you, I only saw it for a quick second when Jimmy showed me. I think an angel helped me remember this piece in a dream so I could paint it down and bring it to you.”

“Nina,” I said. “This is really amazing. You really have no idea how incredible this is.”

Her face lit up again with a smile. “I’m glad of that. I’ve had a world of trouble making it.”

“Where did you get the parchment?” I asked, noticing it for the first time. It was actual vellum, high-quality stuff. Far better than anything I could afford.

“I practiced on some boards at first,” she said. “But I knew that wasn’t going to work. Plus I knew I’d have to hide it. So I snuck into the church and cut some pages out of their book,” she said the last without the faintest hint of self-consciousness.

“You cut this out of the Book of the Path?” I asked, somewhat aghast. I’m not particularly religious, but I do have a vestigial sense of propriety. And after so many hours in the Archives, the thought of cutting pages out of a book was horrifying to me.

Nina nodded easily. “It seemed the best thing, since an angel gave me the dream. And they can’t lock the church up properly at night, since you tore off the front of the building, and killed that demon.” She reached over and brushed at the paper with a finger. “It hain’t that hard. All you need to do is take a knife and scrape at it a bit and all the words come off.” She pointed. “I was careful never to scrape off Tehlu’s name though. Or Andan’s, or any of the other angels,” she added piously.

I looked at it more closely and saw it was true. She’d painted the Amyr so the words Andan and Ordal rested directly on top of his shoulders, one on each side. Almost as if she were hoping the names would weigh him down, or trap him.

“Plus you said I shouldn’t tell anyone what I saw,” Nina said. “And painting is like telling with pictures instead of words. So I figured it would be safer to use pages from Tehlu’s book, because no demon would ever look at a page of that book. Especially one with Tehlu’s name still writ all over it.” She looked up at me proudly.

“That was cleverly done,” I said approvingly.

The belling tower began to ring the hour, and Nina’s expression flared into sudden panic. “Oh no!” she said pitifully. “I should have been back at the docks by now. My mum’s going to give me a birching!”

I laughed. Partly because I was utterly amazed by this unexpected piece of luck. And partly at the thought of a young girl brave enough to defy the Chandrian, but still terrified of making her mother angry. Such is the way of the world.

“Nina, you’ve done me a wonderful favor. If you ever need anything, or if you have another dream, you can find me at an inn called Anker’s. I play music there.”

Her eyes went wide. “Is it magic music?”

I laughed again. “Some people think so.”

She looked around nervously. “I really have to go!” she said, then waved and took off running toward the river, the wind blowing her hood back as she went.

I carefully rerolled the piece of paper and tucked it back into the hollow piece of horn. My mind spun with what I had just learned. I thought of what I’d heard Haliax say to Cinder all those years ago: Who keeps you safe from the Amyr, the Singers, the Sithe?

After my months of searching, I was fairly certain the Archives held nothing more than faerie stories about the Chandrian. Nobody considered them more real than shamble-men or faeries.

But everyone knew about the Amyr. They were the bright knights of the Aturan Empire. They were the strong hand of the church for two hundred years. They were the subject of a hundred stories and songs.

I knew my history. The Amyr had been founded by the Tehlin Church in the early days of the Aturan Empire.

But the pottery Nina had seen had been much older than that.

I knew my history. The Amyr had been condemned and disbanded by the church before the empire fell.

But I knew the Chandrian were still afraid of them today.

It seemed like there was more to the story.