The Name of the Wind

I stood and went over to my cloak. “Let me give you something,” I said, reaching into one of the pockets. I brought a piece of the sympathy lamp I was working on in the Fishery, it was a disk of bright metal covered with intricate sygaldry on one side.

I brought it back to her. “I got this charm when I was in Veloran. Far away, across the Stormwal mountains. It is a most excellent charm against demons.” I took her hand and pressed it into her palm.

Nina looked down at it, then up at me. “Don’t you need it?”

I shook my head. “I have other ways of keeping safe.”

She clutched it, tears spilling down her cheeks again. “Oh thank you. I’ll keep it with me all the time.” Her hands were white-knuckled around it.

She would lose it. Not soon, but in a year, or two, or ten. It was human nature, and when that happened, she would be even worse off than before. “There’s no need for that,” I said quickly. “Here’s how it works.” I took her hand that clutched the piece of metal and wrapped it in my own. “Close your eyes.”

Nina closed her eyes, and I slowly recited the first ten lines of Ve Valora Sartane. Not very appropriate really, but it was all I could think of at the time. Tema is an impressive sounding language, especially if you have a good dramatic baritone, which I did.

I finished and she opened her eyes. They were full of wonder, not tears.

“Now it’s tuned to you,” I said. “No matter what, no matter where it is, it will protect you and keep you safe. You could even break it and melt it down and the charm would still hold.”

She threw her arms around me and kissed my cheek. Then stood suddenly, blushing. No longer pale and stricken, her eyes were bright. I hadn’t noticed before, but she was beautiful.

She left soon after that and I sat for a while on my bed, thinking.

Over the last month I had pulled a woman from a blazing inferno. I had called fire and lighting down on assassins and escaped to safety. I had even killed something that could have been either a dragon or a demon, depending on your point of view.

But there in that room was the first time I actually felt like any sort of hero. If you are looking for a reason for the man I would eventually become, if you are looking for a beginning, look there.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE Return

That evening i gathered up my things and made my way down to the common room. The townsfolk eyed me and murmured excitedly among themselves. I overheard a few comments as I walked to the bar, and realized that yesterday most of them had seen me wrapped in bandages, presumably with terrible wounds underneath. Today the bandages were gone, and all they saw were some minor bruises. Another miracle. I fought to keep from smiling.

The sullen innkeeper told me that he couldn’t possibly dream of charging me, seeing as how the entire town was in my debt and all that. I insisted. No no. Absolutely not. He wouldn’t hear of it. If only there was something else he could do to show his gratitude.

I put on a thoughtful expression. Now that he mentioned it, I said, if he happened to have another bottle of that lovely strawberry wine ...

I made my way to Evesdown docks and got a seat on a barge heading downriver. Then, while I was waiting, I asked if any of the dockworkers had seen a young woman come through here in the last couple days. Dark haired, pretty ...

They had. She had been by yesterday afternoon and shipped downriver. I felt a certain amount of relief, knowing that she was safe and relatively sound. But other than that, I didn’t know what to think. Why hadn’t she come to Trebon? Did she think I had abandoned her? Did she remember anything we had talked about that night as we lay on the greystone together?

We docked in Imre a few hours after dawn, and I went straightaway to Devi’s. After some spirited bargaining, I gave her the loden-stone and a single talent in order to wipe out my extremely short term loan of twenty talents. I still owed my original debt, but after all I’d been through, a four-talent debt no longer seemed terribly ominous, despite the fact that my purse was largely empty again.

It took a while to put my life back together. I’d only been gone four days, but I needed to make apologies and give explanations to all manner of people. I’d missed an appointment with Count Threpe, and two meetings with Manet, and a lunch with Fela. Anker’s had gone without a musician for two nights. Even Auri reproached me gently for not coming to visit her.

I’d missed classes with Kilvin, Elxa Dal, and Arwyl. They all accepted my apologies with gracious disapproval. I knew that when next term’s tuitions were set, I would end up paying for my sudden, largely unexplained absence.

Most important were Wil and Sim. They had heard rumors of a student attacked in an alley. Given Ambrose’s smugger-than-usual expression of late, they expected I had been run out of town, or, at worst, that I was weighted down with rocks at the bottom of the Omethi.