The Wise Man's Fear (43 page)

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Authors: Patrick Rothfuss

Tags: #Mercenary troops, #Magicians, #Magic, #Attempted assassination, #Fairies, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #Heroes, #Epic

BOOK: The Wise Man's Fear
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“Anyone in the Arcanum could do the same thing with basic sympathy,” Wilem pointed out.
“There’s a big difference,” I said. “Once I made that device,
anyone
could use it. Again and again.”
“That’s insane,” Simmon said. “Why would anyone make anything like that?”
“Money,” Wilem said grimly. “People do stupid things for money all the time.” He gave me a significant look. “Such as borrowing from bloodthirsty
gattesors
.”
“Which brings me to my second piece of news,” I said uncomfortably. “I confronted Devi.”
“Alone?” Simmon said. “Are you stupid?”
“Yes,” I said. “But not for the reasons you think. Things got unpleasant, but now I know she wasn’t responsible for the attacks.”
Wilem frowned. “If not her, then who?”
“There’s only one thing that makes sense,” I said. “It’s Ambrose.”
Wil shook his head. “We’ve already gone through this. Ambrose would never risk it. He—”
I held up a hand to stop him. “He’d never risk malfeasance against
me
,” I agreed. “But I don’t think he knows who he’s attacking.”
Wilem closed his mouth and looked thoughtful.
I continued. “Think about it. If Ambrose suspected it was me, he’d bring me up on charges in front of the masters. He’s done it before.” I rubbed my wounded arm. “They’d discover my injuries and I’d be caught.”
Wil looked down at the tabletop.
“Kraem,”
he said. “It makes sense. He might suspect you of hiring a thief, but not that you’d break in yourself. He’d never do something like that.”
I nodded. “He’s probably trying to find the person who broke into his rooms. Or just get a little easy revenge. That explains why the attacks have been getting stronger. He probably thinks the thief ran off to Imre or Tarbean.”
“We’ve got to go to the masters with this,” Simmon said. “They can search his rooms tonight. He’ll be expelled for this, and whipped.” A wide, vicious grin spread over his face. “God, I’d pay ten talents if I got to hold the lash.”
I chuckled at his bloodthirsty tone. It took a lot to get on Sim’s bad side, but once you made it there was no going back. “We can’t, Sim.”
Sim gave me a look of sheer disbelief. “You can’t be serious. He can’t get away with this.”
“I’d get expelled for breaking into his rooms in the first place. Conduct Unbecoming.”
“They wouldn’t expel you for that,” Sim said, but his voice was far from certain.
“I’m not willing to take the risk,” I said. “Hemme hates me. Brandeur follows Hemme’s lead. I’m still in Lorren’s bad books.”
“And somehow he still finds the strength to pun,” Wilem muttered.
“That’s three votes against me right there.”
“I think you don’t give Lorren enough credit,” Wilem said. “But you’re right. They’d expel you. If for no other reason, they’d do it to smooth things over with Baron Jakis.”
Sim looked at Wilem. “You really think so?”
Wil nodded. “It’s possible they wouldn’t even expel Ambrose,” he said grimly. “He’s Hemme’s favorite, and the masters know the trouble his father could make for the University.” Wil snorted. “Think of the trouble Ambrose could make when he inherits.” Wilem lowered his eyes and shook his head. “I’m with Kvothe on this one, Sim.”
Simmon gave a great, weary sigh. “Wonderful,” he said. Then he looked up at me with narrow eyes. “I told you,” he said. “I told you to leave Ambrose alone from the very beginning. Getting into a fight with him is like stepping into a bear trap.”
“A bear trap?” I said thoughtfully.
He nodded firmly. “Your foot goes in easy enough, but you’re never getting it out again.”
“A bear trap,” I repeated. “That’s exactly what I need.”
Wilem chuckled darkly.
“I’m serious,” I said. “Where can I get a bear trap?”
Wil and Sim looked at me strangely, and I decided not to push my luck. “Just a joke,” I lied, not wanting to complicate things any further. I could find one on my own.
“We need to be sure it’s Ambrose,” Wilem said.
I nodded. “If he’s locked away in his rooms the next few times I’m attacked, that should be evidence enough.”
The conversation lapsed a bit, and for a couple of minutes we ate quietly, each of us tangled in our own thoughts.
“Okay,” Simmon said, seeming to have reached some conclusion. “Nothing’s really changed. You still need a gram. Right?” He looked at Wil, who nodded, then back to me. “Now hurry up with the good news before I kill myself.”
I smiled. “Fela has agreed to help me search the Archives for the schema.” I gestured toward the two of them. “If the two of you care to join us, it will mean long, grueling hours in close contact with the most beautiful woman this side of the Omethi River.”
“I might be able to spare some time,” Wilem said casually.
Simmon grinned.
 
Thus began our search of the Archives.
Surprisingly, it was fun at first, almost like a game. The four of us would scatter to different sections of the Archives then return and comb through the books as a group. We spent hours chatting and joking, enjoying the challenge and one another’s company.
But as hours turned into days of fruitless searching, the excitement burned away, leaving only a grim determination. Wil and Sim continued to watch over me at night, protecting me with their Alar. Night after night they lost sleep, making them sullen and irritable. I cut my sleep down to five hours a night to make things easier for them.
Under ordinary circumstances, five hours of sleep would be a great plenty for me, but I was still recovering from my injuries. What’s more, I needed to constantly maintain the Alar that kept me safe. It was mentally exhausting.
On the third day of our search I nodded off while studying my metallurgy. I only dozed for half a minute before my head lolled, startling me awake. But the icy fear followed me for the rest of the day. If Ambrose had attacked at that moment, I could have been killed.
So, even though I couldn’t afford it, I began dipping into my thinning purse to buy coffee. Many of the inns and cafes near the University catered to noble tastes, so it was readily available, but coffee is never cheap. Nahlrout would have been less expensive, but it had harsher side effects that I didn’t want to risk.
In between bouts of research, we set about confirming my suspicions that Ambrose was responsible for the attacks. In this, if nothing else, we were lucky. Wil watched Ambrose return to his room after his rhetoric lecture, and at the same time I was forced to stave off binder’s chills. Fela watched him finish a late lunch and return to his rooms, and a quarter hour later I felt a sweaty prickle of heat along my back and arms.
Later that evening I watched him head back to his rooms in the Golden Pony after his shift in the Archives. Not long after, I felt the faint pressure in both my shoulders that let me know he was trying to stab me. After the shoulders, there followed several other prods in a more personal area.
Wil and Sim agreed that it couldn’t be coincidence: it was Ambrose. Best of all, it let us know that whatever Ambrose was using against me, he kept it in his rooms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
 
Kindling
 
T
HE ATTACKS WEREN’T PARTICULARLY frequent, but they came with no warning.
On the fifth day after we started searching for the schema, when Ambrose must have been feeling particularly cussed or bored, there were eight of them: one as I was waking up in Wilem’s room, two during lunch, two while I was studying physiognomy in the Medica, then three in quick succession while I was coldsmithing iron in the Fishery.
The next day there were no attacks at all. In some ways that was worse. Nothing but hours of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
So I learned to maintain an iron-hard Alar as I ate and bathed, as I attended class and had conversations with my teachers and friends. I even maintained it while dueling in Adept Sympathy. On the seventh day of our search, this distraction and my general exhaustion led to my first defeat at the hands of two of my classmates, ending my perfect string of undefeated duels.
I could say that I was too weary to care, but that wouldn’t be entirely true.
 
On the ninth day of our search Wilem, Simmon, and I were combing through books in our reading hole when the door opened and Fela slipped inside. She was carrying a single book instead of her usual armload. She was breathing heavily.
“I’ve got it,” she said, her eyes bright. Her voice so excited it was almost fierce. “I found a copy.” She thrust the book out at us so we could read the gold leaf on the thick leather spine:
Facci-Moen ve Scrivani
.
We had learned about the
Scrivani
early in our search. It was an extensive collection of schemata by a long-dead Artificer named Surthur. Twelve thick volumes of detailed diagrams and descriptions. When we found the index, we had thought our search was nearly finished, as it listed “Diagrames Detaling the Construction of a Marvelous Five-Gramme, proven most Effectatious in the Preventing of Maleficent Sympathe.” Location: volume nine, page eighty-two.
We tracked down eight versions of the
Scrivani
in the Archives, but we never found the whole set. Volumes seven, nine, and eleven were always missing, no doubt tucked away in Kilvin’s private library.
We’d spent two entire days searching before finally giving up on the
Scrivani
. But now Fela had found it, not just a piece to the puzzle, but the whole thing.
“Is it the right one?” Simmon asked, his voice a mixture of excitement and disbelief.
Fela slowly removed her hand from the lower binding, revealing in bright gold:
9
.
I scrambled up out of my chair, almost knocking it over in my rush to get to her. But she smiled and held the book high over her head. “First you have to promise me dinner,” she said.
I laughed and reached for the book. “Once this is over, I’ll take everyone to dinner.”
She sighed. “And you have to tell me I’m the best scriv ever.”
“You’re the best scriv ever,” I said. “You’re twice as good as Wil could ever be, even if he had a dozen hands and a hundred extra eyes.”
“Ick.” She handed me the book. “Here you go.”
I hurried to the table and cracked the book open.
“The pages will be missing, or something like that,” Simmon said in a low voice to Wil. “It can’t be this easy after all this time. I know something’s going to spike our wheel.”
I stopped turning pages and rubbed my eyes. I squinted at the writing.
“I knew it,” Sim said, he leaned his chair back on two legs, covering his tired eyes with his hands. “Let me guess, it’s got the grey rot. Or bookworm, or both.”
Fela stepped close and looked over my shoulder.“Oh no!” she said mournfully. “I didn’t even look. I was so excited.” She looked up at us. “Do any of you read Eld Vintic?”
“I read the chittering gibberish you people call Aturan,” Wilem said sourly. “I consider myself sufficiently multilingual.”

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