The Wise Man's Fear

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX Tinder

The sun was starting to set by the time we found a good place to camp on the second night. Dedan went foraging for firewood. Marten began cutting up carrots and potatoes and sent Hespe to fill the cookpot with water. I used Marten’s small spade to dig a pit for our fire.

Without being asked, Tempi picked up a branch and used his sword to shave thin strips of dry wood to use for tinder. Unsheathed, his sword still didn’t seem terribly impressive. But given how easily it was peeling away paper-thin strips of wood, it must have been sharp as a shaving razor.

I finished lining the pit with stones. Wordlessly, Tempi handed me a handful of tinder.

I nodded. “Would you like to use my knife?” I asked, hoping to draw him into a bit of a conversation. I’d barely shared a dozen words with him in the last two days.

Tempi’s pale grey eyes looked at the knife on my belt, then back at his sword. He shook his head, fidgeting nervously.

“Isn’t it bad for the edge?” I asked.

The mercenary shrugged, avoiding my eye.

I began to lay the fire, and that was when I made my first mistake.

As I’ve said, there was a chill in the air, and we were all of us tired. So rather than spend half an hour slowly nursing a spark into a decent campfire, I arranged twigs around Tempi’s tinder, then stacked progressively bigger sticks around it, making a tightly packed cluster of wood.

Dedan returned with another armload of firewood just as I was finishing. “Lovely,” he groused, quiet enough he could pretend he was just talking to himself, but loud enough so everyone could hear. “And you’re in charge. Wonderful.”

“What’s stuck in your teeth now?” Marten asked, tiredly.

“Boy’s making a little wooden fort, not a fire.” Dedan sighed dramatically, then assumed a tone he probably thought was fatherly, but came across as profoundly condescending. “Here, I’ll help you out. A spark will never catch on that. Do you have flint and steel? I’ll show you how to use them.”

No one enjoys being talked down to, but I have a particular aversion to it. Dedan had been making it clear for two days that he thought I was an idiot.

I gave a tired sigh. My oldest, most world-weary sigh. That was how I needed to play it. He thought of me as young and useless. I needed to drive home the point that I was nothing of the sort. “Dedan,” I asked, “what do you know about me?”

He gave me a blank look.

“You know one thing about me,” I said calmly. “You know the Maer put me in charge.” I looked him in the eye. “Is the Maer an idiot?”

Dedan made a dismissive gesture. “Of course not, I was just sayin’. . .”

I stood up and regretted it, as it just brought into sharp contrast how much taller he was. “Would the Maer have put me in charge if I were an idiot?”

He gave an insincere smile, trying to pass off two days’ worth of derogatory muttering as some sort of misunderstanding. “Now don’t get all twisted up over—”

I held up my hand. “This isn’t your fault. You just don’t know anything about me. But let’s not waste time on it tonight. We’re all tired. For now, rest assured that I’m not some rich tit’s son, out for a lark.”

I pinched a thin piece of Tempi’s tinder between my fingers and concentrated. I pulled more heat than I needed and felt my arm go chilly all the way to the shoulder. “And rest assured I know how to start a fire.”

The shaved pieces of wood caught fire, flaring up hot and sudden, catching the rest of the tinder and making flames leap up almost instantly.

I’d meant it to be a dramatic gesture so Dedan would stop thinking of me as some useless boy. But the time I spent at the University had made me jaded. Starting a fire like this was as simple as putting on your boots for a member of the Arcanum.

Dedan, on the other hand, had never met an arcanist, and probably hadn’t ever been within five hundred miles of the University. Everything he knew about magic was from campfire stories.

So when the fire flared up, he went pale as a sheet and took several sudden steps back. He looked for all the world as if I’d suddenly called up a roaring sheet of fire like Taborlin the Great.

Then I saw Marten and Hespe wearing the same expression, native Vintish superstition written clearly on their faces. Their eyes went to the flickering fire, then back to me. I was one of those. I meddled with dark powers. I summoned demons. I ate the entire little cheese, including the rind.

Looking at their stunned faces, I realized nothing I said would set them at ease. Not right now. So instead I sighed and began to set up my sleeping roll for the night.

While there wasn’t much cheerful conversation around the fire that night, there wasn’t any muttering from Dedan either. I’d like respect, but failing that, a little healthy fear can go a long way to making things run smoothly.

Two days with no further dramatics on my part helped everyone relax. Dedan was still all bluff and bravado, but he had quit calling me “boy” and was only complaining about half as much, so I considered it a victory.

Flushed with this lukewarm success, I decided to make an active attempt to draw Tempi into a conversation. If I was going to be in charge of this little group, I needed to know more about him. Most importantly, I needed to know if he could speak more than five words in a row.

So I approached the Adem mercenary when we stopped for our midday meal. He was sitting slightly apart from the rest of us. He wasn’t standoffish. It’s just that the rest of us would sit and talk while we ate. Tempi, on the other hand, simply ate.

But today I made a point of sitting down next to him with my lunch: a chunk of hard sausage and some cold potatoes. “Hello, Tempi.”

He looked up and nodded. For a second I caught a glimpse of his pale grey eyes. Then he looked away, shifting restlessly. He ran his hand through his hair, and for a second he reminded me of Simmon. They both had the same slender build and sandy hair. Simmon wasn’t this quiet though. Sometimes I could barely get a word in edgewise with Sim.

I’d tried to talk to Tempi before, of course. Ordinary small talk: the weather, sore feet after a long day’s walk, the food. These had all come to nothing. At best a word or two. More often a nod or a shrug. But most common was a blank look followed by fidgeting and a stubborn refusal to do so much as look me in the eye.

So today I had a conversational gambit. “I have heard stories about the Lethani,” I said. “I would like to know more. Would you tell me about it?”

Tempi’s pale eyes touched mine briefly, his expression still blank. Then he looked away again. He tugged one of the red leather straps that held his shirt close to his body and fidgeted with his sleeve. “No. I will not speak on Lethani. It is not for you. Do not ask.”

He looked away from me again, down at the ground.

I counted in my head. Sixteen words. That answered one of my questions at least.