Kindness

T WO HOURS LATER I sat alone in the dining hall. My head ached, and the side of my face was hot and swollen. I’d bitten my tongue at some point, so it hurt to eat and everything tasted of blood. My mood was exactly what you might imagine, except worse.

When I saw a red form slide onto the bench across from me, I dreaded looking up. If it was Carceret, it would be bad. But Vashet would be even worse. I had waited until the dining hall was almost empty before coming to eat, hoping to avoid them both.

But glancing up, I saw it was Penthe, the fierce young woman who had beaten Shehyn.

“Hello,” she said in lightly accented Aturan.

I gestured, polite formal greeting . Considering the way my day was going, I thought it best to be as careful as possible. Vashet’s comments led me to believe Penthe was a high-ranking and well-respected member of the school.

For all that, she wasn’t very old. Perhaps it was her small frame or her heart-shaped face, but she didn’t look much more than twenty.

“Could we speak your language?” she asked in Aturan. “It would be a kindness. I am in need of practice with my talking.”

“I will gladly join you,” I said in Aturan. “You speak very well. I am jealous. When I speak Ademic, I feel I am a great bear of a man, stomping around in heavy boots.”

Penthe gave a small, shy smile, then covered her mouth with her hand, blushing slightly. “Is that correct, to smile?”

“It is correct, and polite. A smile such as that shows a small amusement. Which is perfect, as mine was a very small joke.”

Penthe removed her hand and repeated the shy smile. She was charming as spring flowers. It eased my heart to look at her.

“Normally,” I said, “I would smile in answer to yours. But here, I worry others would view it as impolite.”

“Please,” she said, making a series of gestures wide enough for anyone to see. Bold invitation. Imploring entreaty. Familiar welcome . “I must practice.”

I smiled, though not quite as widely as I would have ordinarily. Partly out of caution, and partly because my face hurt. “It feels good to smile again,” I said.

“I have anxiousness about my smiling.” She started to gesture and stopped herself. Her expression shifted, her eyes narrowing a bit, as if she were irritated.

“This?” I asked, gesturing mild worry .

She nodded. “How do you make that with the face?”

“It is like this,” I drew my brows together slightly. “Also, as a woman, you would do this,” I pursed my lips slightly. “I would do this, as I am a man.” I drew my lips down into a small frown instead.

Penthe looked at me blankly. Aghast . “It is different for men and women?” she asked, disbelief creeping into her tone.

“Only some,” I reassured her. “And only small things.”

“There is so much,” she said, allowing a note of despair into her voice. “With one’s family one knows what every small movement of face means. You grow up watching. You know the all of what is in them. Those friends you are young with, before you know better than to grin at everything. It is easy with them. But this . . .” She shook her head. “How can one possibly remember when to correctly show one’s teeth? How often am I supposed to touch eyes?”

“I understand,” I said. “I am very good at speaking in my language. I can make the cleverest meanings. But here that is useless.” I sighed. “Keeping my face still is very hard. I feel I am always holding my breath.”

“Not always,” she said. “We are not always still of the face. When you are with . . .” She trailed off, then quickly gestured, apology .

“I have none I am close to,” I said. Gentle regret . “I had hoped I was growing close to Vashet, but I fear I ruined that today.”

Penthe nodded. “I saw.” She reached out and ran her thumb along the side of my face. It felt cool against the swelling. “You must have angered her very.”

“I can tell that by the ringing of my ears,” I said.

Penthe shook her head. “No. Your marks.” She gestured to her own face this time. “With another, it might be a mistake, but Vashet would not leave such if she did not wish everyone to see.”

The bottom dropped out of my stomach and my hand went unconsciously to my face. Of course. This wasn’t mere punishment. It was a message to all of Ademre.

“Fool that I am,” I said softly. “I did not realize this until now.”

We ate quietly for several minutes, before I asked, “Why did you come to sit with me today?”

“When I saw you today, I thought I had heard many people speak about you. But I knew nothing of you from personal knowing.” A pause.

“And what do others say?” I said with a small, wry smile.

She reached out to touch the corner of my mouth with her fingertips. “That,” she said. “What is the bent smile?”

Gentle mocking , I gestured in explanation. “But of myself, not you. I can guess what they say.”

“Not all is bad,” she said gently.

Penthe looked up at me and met my eyes then. They were huge in her small face, slightly darker grey than usual. They were so bright and clear that when she smiled, the sight of it almost broke my heart. I felt tears well up in my eyes and I quickly looked down, embarrassed.

“Oh!” she said softly, and gestured a hurried distressed apology . “No. I am wrong with my smiling and eye touching. I meant this.” Kind encouragement .

“You are right with your smiling,” I said without looking up, blinking furiously in an attempt to clear the tears away. “It is an unexpected kindness on a day when I do not deserve such a thing. You are the first to speak with me from your own desire. And there is a sweetness in your face that hurts my heart.” I made gratitude with my left hand, glad that I didn’t need to meet her eyes to show her how I felt.

Her left hand crossed the table and caught hold of mine. Then she turned my hand face up and pressed comfort softly into my palm.

I looked up and gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile.

She mirrored it almost exactly, then covered her mouth again. “I maintain anxiousness about my smiling.”

“You should not. You have the perfect mouth for smiling.”

Penthe looked up at me again, her eyes meeting mine for a heartbeat before darting away. “True?”

I nodded. “In my own language, it is a mouth I would write a—” I brought myself up short, sweating a bit when I realized I’d almost said “song.”

“Poem?” she suggested helpfully.

“Yes,” I said quickly. “It is a smile worthy of a poem.”

“Make one then,” she said. “In my language.”

“No,” I said quickly. “It would be a bear’s poem. Too clumsy for you.”

This just seemed to spur her on, and her eyes grew eager. “Do. If it is clumsy, it will make me feel better of my own stumbling.”

“If I do,” I threatened, “you must, too. In my language.”

I’d thought this would scare her away, but after only a moment’s hesitation she nodded.

I thought of the only Ademic poetry I had heard: a few snippets from the old silk spinner and the piece from the story Shehyn had told about the archer. It wasn’t much to go on.

I thought of the words I knew, the sounds of them. I felt the absence of my lute sharply here. This is why we have music, after all. Words cannot always do the work we need them to. Music is there for when words fail us.

Finally I looked around nervously, glad there were only a scattered handful of people left in the dining hall. I leaned toward her and said:

Double-weaponed Penthe

No sword in hand,

Her flower-mouth curves,

And cuts a heart a dozen steps away.

She gave the smile again, and it was just as I said. I felt the sharpness of it in my chest. Felurian had had a beautiful smile, but it was old and knowing. Penthe’s smile was bright as a new penny. It was like cool water on my dry, tired heart.

The sweet smile of a young woman. There is nothing better in the world. It is worth more than salt. Something in us sickens and dies without it. I am sure of this. Such a simple thing. How strange. How wonderful and strange.

Penthe closed her eyes for a moment, her mouth moving silently as she chose the words of her own poem.

Then she opened her eyes and spoke in Aturan.

Burning as a branch,

Kvothe speaks.

But the mouth that threatens boots

reveals a dancing bear.

I smiled wide enough to make my face hurt. “It is lovely,” I said honestly. “It is the first poem anyone has ever made for me.”

* * *

After my conversation with Penthe, I felt considerably better. I was uncertain as to whether or not we had been flirting, but that hardly mattered. It was enough for me to know there was at least one person in Haert who didn’t want me dead.

I walked to Vashet’s house as I usually did after meals. Half of me hoped she would greet me, smiling and sarcastic, the morning’s unpleasantness put wordlessly behind us. The other half of me feared she would refuse to speak with me at all.

As I came over the rise, I saw her sitting on a wooden bench outside her door. She leaned against the rough stone wall of her house, as if she were merely enjoying the afternoon sun. I drew a deep breath and let it out, feeling myself relax.

But as I came closer, I saw her face. She was not smiling. Neither did she wear the impassive Adem mask. She watched me approach, her expression hangman grim.

I spoke as soon as I came close enough. “Vashet,” I said earnestly. “I’m—”

Still sitting, Vashet held up her hand, and I stopped speaking as quickly as if she had struck me across the mouth. “Apology now is of little consequence,” she said, her voice flat and chill as slate. “Anything you say at this point cannot be trusted. You know I am well and truly angry, so you are in the grip of fear.

“This means I cannot trust any word you say, as it comes from fear. You are clever, and charming, and a liar. I know you can bend the world with your words. So I will not listen.”

She shifted her position on the bench, then continued. “Early on I noticed a gentleness in you. It is a rare thing in one so young, and it was a large piece of what convinced me you were worth teaching. But as the days pass, I glimpse something else. Some other face that is far from gentle. I have dismissed these as flickers of false light, thinking them the brags of a young man or the odd jokes of a barbarian.

“But today as you spoke, it came to me that the gentleness was the mask. And this other half-seen face, this dark and ruthless thing, that is the true face hiding underneath.”

Vashet gave me a long look. “There is something troubling inside you. Shehyn has seen it in your conversations. It is not a lack of the Lethani. But this makes my unease more, not less. That means there is something in you deeper than the Lethani. Something the Lethani cannot mend.”

She met my eye. “If this is the case, then I have been wrong to teach you. If you have been clever enough to show me a false face for so long, then you are a danger to more than just the school. If this is the case, then Carceret is right, and you should be killed swiftly for the safety of everyone involved.”

Vashet came to her feet, moving as if she were very tired. “This I have thought today. And I will continue to think for long hours tonight. Tomorrow I will have decided. Take this time to order your thoughts and make whatever preparations seem best to you.”

Then, without meeting my eye, she turned and went into her house, closing the door silently behind her.

* * *

For a while, I wandered aimlessly. I went to watch the sword tree, hoping I might find Celean there, but she was nowhere to be seen. Watching the tree itself did nothing to soothe me. Not today.

So I went to the baths, where I soaked myself joylessly. Afterward, in one of the mirrors scattered through the smaller rooms, I caught the first glimpse of my face since Vashet had struck me. Half my face was red and swollen, with bruises beginning to mottle blue and yellow around my temple and the line of my jaw. I also had the raw beginnings of a profoundly blackened eye.

As I stared at myself in the mirror I felt a low anger flicker to life deep in my belly. I was, I decided, tired of waiting helplessly while others decided whether I could come or go. I had played their game, learned their language, been unfailingly polite, and in return I had been treated like a dog. I had been beaten, sneered at, and threatened with death and worse. I was finished with it.

So I made my way slowly around Haert. I visited the twin sisters, the talkative smithy, and the tailor where I had bought my clothes. I chatted amiably, passing the time, asking questions, and pretending I didn’t look as if someone had beaten me unconscious a handful of hours ago.

My preparations took a long time. I missed dinner, and the sky was growing dark by the time I came back to the school. I went straight to my room and closed the door behind me.

Then I emptied the contents of my pockets onto my bed, some purchased, some stolen. Two fine, soft beeswax candles. A long shard of brittle steel from a poorly forged sword. A spool of blood-red thread. A small stoppered bottle of water from the baths.

I closed my fist tightly around the last. Most people don’t understand how much heat water holds inside it. That is why it takes so long to boil. Despite the fact that the scalding-hot pool I had pulled this from was more than half a mile away, what I held in my hand was of better use to a sympathist than a glowing coal. This water had fire in it.

I thought of Penthe with a twinge of regret. Then I picked up a candle and began to turn it in my hands, warming it with my skin, softening the wax and beginning to shape a doll of it.

I sat in my room, thinking dark thoughts as the last of the light faded from the sky. I looked over the tools I had gathered and knew deep in my gut that sometimes a situation grows so tangled that words are useless. What other option did I have, now that words had failed me?

What do any of us have when words fail us?

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 862