The Wise Man's Fear (106 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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Looking back and forth between the two men, the boy decided that he would, actually, like to have a bit of a cry. His face clouded over, and he began to wail.
“This is your fault,” Bast said flatly.
Kvothe picked the little boy up off the bar and jiggled him in a marginally successful attempt to calm him. A moment later when Mary came back into the taproom, the baby howled even louder and leaned toward her, reaching with both hands.
“Sorry,” Kvothe said, sounding abashed.
Mary took him back and he went instantly quiet, tears still standing in his eyes. “None of yours,” she said. “He’s just mother-hungry lately.” She touched her nose to his, smiling, and the baby gave another delighted, burbling laugh.
 
“How much did you charge them?” Kvothe asked as he walked back to Chronicler’s table.
Chronicler shrugged. “Penny and a half.”
Kvothe paused in the act of sitting down. His eyes narrowed. “That won’t cover the cost of your paper.”
Chronicler asked. “I have ears, don’t I? The smith’s prentice mentioned the Bentleys are on hard times. Even if he hadn’t, I still have eyes. Fellow’s got seams on both knees and boots worn nearly through. Little girl’s dress is too short for her and half patches besides.”
Kvothe nodded, his expression grim. “Their south field’s been flooded out two years running. And they had both their goats die this spring. Even if these were good times it would be a bad year for them. With their new little boy . . .” He drew a long breath and let it out in a long, pensive sigh. “It’s the levy taxes. Two this year already.”
“Do you want me to wreck the fence again, Reshi?” Bast said eagerly.
“Hush about that, Bast.” A smile flickered around the edges of Kvothe’s mouth. “We’ll need something different this time.” His smile faded. “Before the next levy.”
“Maybe there won’t be another,” Chronicler said.
Kvothe shook his head. “It won’t come until after the harvest, but it’ll come. Regular taxmen are bad enough, but they know enough to occasionally look the other way. They know they’ll be back next year, and the year after. But the bleeders . . .”
Chronicler nodded. “They’re different,” he said grimly. Then recited, “‘If they could, they’d take the rain. If they can’t get gold, they’ll take the grain.’ ”
Kvothe gave a thin smile and continued.
If you’ve got no grain, they’ll take your goat.
They’ll take your firewood and your coat.
If you’ve a cat, they’ll take your mouse.
And in the end, they’ll take your house.
 
“Everyone hates the bleeders,” Chronicler agreed darkly. “If anything, the nobles hate them twice as much.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Kvothe said. “You should hear the talk around here. If the last one hadn’t had a full armed guard, I don’t think he would have made it out of town alive.”
Chronicler gave a bent smile. “You should have heard the things my father used to call them,” he said. “And he’d only had two levies in twenty years. He said he’d rather have locusts followed by a fire than the king’s bleeder moving through his lands.” Chronicler glanced at the door of the inn. “They’re too proud to ask for help?”
“Prouder than that,” Kvothe said. “The poorer you are, the more your pride is worth. I know the feeling. I never could have asked a friend for money. I would have starved first.”
“A loan?” Chronicler asked.
“Who has money to lend these days?” Kvothe asked grimly. “It’s already going to be a hungry winter for most folk. But after a third levy tax the Bentleys will be sharing blankets and eating their seed grain before the snow thaws. That’s if they don’t lose their house as well. . . .”
The innkeeper looked down at his hands on the table and seemed surprised that one of them was curled into a fist. He opened it slowly and spread both hands flat against the tabletop. Then he looked up at Chronicler, a rueful smile on his face. “Did you know I never paid taxes before I came here? The Edema don’t own property, as a rule.” He gestured at the inn. “I never understood how galling it was. Some smug bastard with a ledger comes into town, makes you pay for the privilege of owning something.”
Kvothe gestured for Chronicler to pick up his pen. “Now, of course, I understand the truth of things. I know what sort of dark desires lead a group of men to wait beside the road, killing tax collectors in open defiance of the king.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX
 
The Broken Road
 
W
E FINISHED SEARCHING THE north side of the king’s highway and started on the southern half. Often the only thing that marked one day from the next were the stories we told around the fire at night. Stories of Oren Velciter, Laniel Young-Again, and Illien. Stories of helpful swineherds and the luck of tinker’s sons. Stories of demons and faeries, of riddle games and barrow draugs.
The Edema Ruh know all the stories in the world, and I am Edema down to the center of my bones. My parents told stories around the fire every night while I was young. I grew up watching stories in dumbshow, listening to them in songs, and acting them out on stage.
Given this, it was hardly surprising that I already knew the stories Dedan, Hespe, and Marten told at night. Not every detail, but I knew the bones of them. I knew their shapes and how they would end.
Don’t mistake me. I still enjoyed them. Stories don’t need to be new to bring you joy. Some stories are like familiar friends. Some are dependable as bread.
Still, a story I haven’t heard before is a rare and precious thing. And after twenty days of searching the Eld, I was rewarded with one of those.
 
“Once, long ago and far from here,” Hespe said as we sat around the fire after dinner, “there was a boy named Jax, and he fell in love with the moon.
“Jax was a strange boy. A thoughtful boy. A lonely boy. He lived in an old house at the end of a broken road. He—”
Dedan interrupted. “Did you say a
broken
road?”
Hespe’s mouth went firm. She didn’t scowl exactly, but it looked like she was getting all the pieces of a scowl together in one place, just in case she needed them in a hurry. “I did. A broken road. That’s how my mother told this story a hundred times when I was little.”
For a minute it looked like Dedan was going to ask another question. But instead he showed a rare foresight and simply nodded.
Hespe reluctantly put the pieces of her scowl away. Then she looked down at her hands, frowning. Her mouth moved silently for a moment, then she nodded to herself and continued.
 
Everyone who saw Jax could tell there was something different about him. He didn’t play. He didn’t run around getting into trouble. And he never laughed.
Some folk said, “What can you expect of a boy who lives alone in a broken house at the end of a broken road?” Some said the problem was that he never had any parents. Some said he had a drop of faerie blood in him and that kept his heart from ever knowing joy.
He was an unlucky boy. There was no denying that. When he got a new shirt, he would tear a hole in it. If you gave him a sweet, he would drop it in the road.
Some said the boy was born under a bad star, that he was cursed, that he had a demon riding his shadow. Other folks simply felt bad for him, but not so bad that they cared to help.
One day, a tinker came down the road to Jax’s house. This was something of a surprise, because the road was broken, so nobody ever used it.
“Hoy there, boy!” the tinker shouted, leaning on his stick. “Can you give an old man a drink?”
Jax brought out some water in a cracked clay mug. The tinker drank and looked down at the boy. “You don’t look happy, son. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing is the matter,” Jax said. “It seems to me a person needs something to be happy about, and I don’t have any such thing.”
Jax said this in a tone so flat and resigned that it broke the tinker’s heart. “I’m betting I have something in my pack that will make you happy,” he said to the boy. “What do you say to that?”
“I’d say that if you make me happy, I’ll be grateful indeed,” Jax said. “But I haven’t got any money to spend, not a penny to borrow to beg or to lend.”
“Well that is a problem,” said the tinker. “I am in business, you see.”
“If you can find something in your pack that will make me happy,” Jax said. “I will give you my house. It’s old and broken, but it’s worth something.”
The tinker looked up at the huge old house, one short step away from being a mansion. “It is at that,” he said.
Then Jax looked up at the tinker, his small face serious. “And if you can’t make me happy, what then? Will you give me the packs off your back, the stick in your hand, and the hat off your head?”
Now the tinker was fond of a wager, and he knew a good bet when he heard one. Besides, his packs were bulging with treasures from all over the Four Corners, and he was confident he could impress a small boy. So he agreed, and the two of them shook hands.
First the tinker brought out a bag of marbles all the colors of sunlight. But they didn’t make Jax happy. The tinker brought out a ball and cup. But that didn’t make Jax happy.
“Ball and cup doesn’t make anyone happy,
”
Marten muttered. “That’s the worst toy ever. Nobody in their right mind enjoys ball and cup.
”
The tinker went through his first pack. It was full of ordinary things that would have pleased an ordinary boy: dice, puppets, a folding knife, a rubber ball. But nothing made Jax happy.
So the tinker moved on to his second pack. It held rarer things. A gear soldier that marched if you wound him. A bright set of paints with four different brushes. A book of secrets. A piece of iron that fell from the sky. . . .
This went on all day and late into the night, and eventually the tinker began to worry. He wasn’t worried about losing his stick. But his packs were how he made his living, and he was rather fond of his hat.
Eventually, he realized he was going to have to open his third pack. It was small, and it only had three items in it. But they were things he only showed to his wealthiest customers. Each was worth much more than a broken house. But still, he thought, better to lose one than to lose everything and his hat besides.

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