“Well,” he said, trying not to look pleased. “Well don’t let it get around or people will start expecting great things from me.” He turned and was quickly swallowed by the crowd.
I slid the seven talents into my pocket and felt a great weight lift from my shoulders. It was like a stay of execution. Perhaps literally, as I had no idea how Devi might have encouraged me to pay my debt. I drew my first carefree breath in two months. It felt good.
After Threpe left, one of the talented musicians came to offer his compliments. After him it was a Cealdish moneylender who shook my hand and offered to buy me a drink.
Then there was a minor nobleman, another musician, and a pretty young lady that I thought might be my Aloine until I heard her voice. She was the daughter of a local moneylender, and we talked of small things, briefly, before she moved on. I remembered my manners almost too late and kissed her hand before she left.
They all blurred together after a while. One by one they came to give me their regards, compliments, handshakes, advice, envy, and admiration. Though Stanchion was true to his word and managed to keep them all from coming at me in a mass, it wasn’t long before I began having trouble telling one from another. The metheglin wasn’t helping matters either.
I’m not sure how long it was before I thought to look for Ambrose. After scanning the room, I nudged Simmon with an elbow until he looked up from the game he and Wilem were playing with shims. “Where’s our best friend?” I asked.
Simmon gave me a blank look and I realized that he was too far into his cups to catch sarcasm. “Ambrose,” I clarified. “Where’s Ambrose?”
“Scoffered off,” Wilem announced with an edge of bellicosity. “As soon as you finished playing. Before you’d even got your pipes.”
“He knew. He knew,” Simmon singsonged delightedly. “He knew you would get them and couldn’t bear to watch.”
“Looked bad when he left,” Wilem said with a quiet malice. “Pale and shaking. Like he’d found out someone’d been lanting in his drinks all night.”
“Maybe someone was,” Simmon said with uncharacteristic viciousness. “I would.”
“Shaking?” I asked.
Wilem nodded. “Trembling. Like someone’d gut-punched him. Linten was giving him an arm to lean on when he left.”
The symptoms sounded familiar, like binder’s chills. A suspicion began to form. I pictured Ambrose, listening to me glide through the most beautiful song he’d ever heard, and realizing I’m about to win my pipes.
He wouldn’t do anything obvious, but perhaps he could find a loose thread, or a long splinter from the table. Either one would provide only the most tenuous sympathetic link to my lute string: one percent at best, perhaps only a tenth of that.
I imagined Ambrose drawing on his own body’s heat, concentrating as the chill slowly worked into his arms and legs. I pictured him, trembling, his breath growing labored, until finally the string breaks…
…And I finish the song in spite of him. I grinned at the thought. Pure speculation of course, but something had certainly broken my lute string, and I didn’t doubt for a second that Ambrose would try something of the sort. I focused back in on Simmon.
“…it up to him and say, No hard feelings about that time in the Crucible when you mixed my salts and I was nearly blind for a day. No. No really, drink up! Ha!” Simmon laughed, lost in his own vengeful fantasy.
The flood of well-wishers slowed somewhat: a fellow lutist, the talented piper I’d seen on stage, a local merchant. A heavily perfumed gentleman with long, oiled hair and a Vintic accent clapped me on the back and gave me a purse of money, “for new strings.” I didn’t like him. I kept the purse.
“Why does everyone keep going on about that?” Wilem asked me.
“About what?”
“Half the people that come over to shake your hand bubble over about how beautiful the song was. The other half hardly mention the song at all, and all they talk about is how you played with a broken string. It’s like they didn’t hardly hear the song at all.”
“The first half don’t know anything about music,” Simmon said. “Only people who take their music seriously can really appreciate what our little E’lir here did tonight.”
Wilem grunted thoughtfully. “It’s hard then, what you did?”
“I’ve never seen anyone play ‘Squirrel in the Thatch’ without a full set of strings,” Simmon told him.
“Well,” he said. “You made it look easy. Since you have come to your sense in pushing aside that Yllish fruit drink, will you let me buy you a round of fine dark scutten, drink of the kings of Cealdim?”
I know a compliment when I hear it, but I was reluctant to accept as I was just beginning to feel clear-headed again.
Luckily, I was saved from having to make an excuse by Marea coming to pay her respects. She was the lovely, golden-haired harper who had tried for her talent and failed. I thought for a moment that she might be the voice of my Aloine, but after a moment’s listening to her, I realized it couldn’t be.
She was pretty though. Even prettier than she had seemed on stage, as is not always the case. Talking, I found she was the daughter of one of Imre’s councilmen. Against the tumble of her deep golden hair, the soft blue of her gown was a reflection of the deep blue of her eyes.
Lovely as she was, I couldn’t give her the concentration she deserved. I itched to be away from the bar to find the voice that had sung Aloine with me. We talked a while, smiled, and parted with kind words and promises to speak again. She disappeared back into the crowd, a wonderful collection of gently moving curves.
“What was that shameful display?” Wilem demanded after she had gone.
“What?” I asked.
“What?” he mocked my tone. “Can you even pretend to be that thick? If a girl as fair as that looked at me with one eye the way she looked at you with two…We’d have a room by now, to say it carefully.”
“She was friendly,” I protested. “And we were talking. She asked me if I would show her some harp fingerings, but it’s been a long time since I played harp.”
“It’ll be a lot longer if you keep missing passes like that,” Wilem said frankly. “She was doing everything but taking down another button for you.”
Sim leaned over and lay his hand on my shoulder, the very picture of the concerned friend. “Kvothe, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this very problem. If you honestly couldn’t tell that she was interested in you, you might want to admit the possibility that you are impossibly thick when it comes to women. You may want to consider the priesthood.”
“The both of you are drunk,” I said to cover my flush. “Did you happen to notice from our conversation that she is a councilman’s daughter?”
“Did you notice,” Wil replied in the same tone, “how she looked at you?”