“Just the part where I passed out and dropped you. It was sheer stupidity. I forgot to hold my breath and sucked down some bad air. Were you hurt anywhere else?”
“Nowhere I can show you in public,” she said with a slight grimace, shifting her hips in a way I found most distracting.
“Nothing too bad, I hope.”
She put on an fierce expression. “Yes, well. I expect you to do a better job next time. A girl gets her life saved, she expects gentler treatment all-round.”
“Fair enough,” I said, relaxing. “We’ll treat this as a practice run.”
There was a heartbeat of silence between us, and Fela’s smile faded a bit. She reached out halfway to me with one hand, then hesitated and let it fall back to her side. “Seriously, Kvothe. I…that was the worst moment of my whole life. There was fire everywhere….”
She looked down, blinking. “I knew I was going to die. I really knew it. But I just stood there like…like some scared rabbit.” She looked up, blinking away tears and her smile burst out again, dazzling as ever. “Then you were there, running through the fire. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. It was like…have you ever seen Daeonica?”
I nodded and smiled.
“It was like watching Tarsus bursting out of hell. You came through the fire and I knew everything was going to be alright.” She took a half step toward me and rested her hand on my arm. I could feel the warmth of it through my shirt. “I was going to die there—” she broke off, embarrassed. “I’m just repeating myself now.”
I shook my head. “That’s not true. I saw you. You were looking for a way out.”
“No. I was just standing there. Like one of those silly girls in those stories my mother used to read me. I always hated them. I used to ask, ‘Why doesn’t she push the witch out the window? Why doesn’t she poison the ogre’s food?’” Fela was looking down at her feet now, her hair falling to hide her face. Her voice grew softer and softer until it was barely louder than a sigh. “‘Why does she just sit there waiting to be saved? Why doesn’t she save herself?’”
I lay my hand on top of hers in what I hoped was a comforting way. When I did, I noticed something. Her hand wasn’t the delicate, fragile thing I had expected. It was strong and calloused, a sculptor’s hand that knew hard hours of work with hammer and chisel.
“This isn’t a maiden’s hand,” I said.
She looked up at me, her eyes luminous with the beginning of tears. She gave a startled laugh that was half sob. “I…what?”
I flushed with embarrassment as I realized what I’d said, but pushed ahead. “This isn’t the hand of some swooning princess who sits tatting lace and waiting for some prince to save her. This is the hand of a woman who would climb a rope of her own hair to freedom, or kill a captor ogre in his sleep.” I looked into her eyes. “And this is the hand of a woman who would have made it through the fire on her own if I hadn’t been there. Singed perhaps, but safe.”
I brought her hand to my lips and kissed it. It seemed like the thing to do. “All the same, I am glad I was there to help.” I smiled. “So…like Tarsus?”
Her smile dazzled me again. “Like Tarsus, Prince Gallant, and Oren Velciter all rolled into one,” she said laughing. She gripped my hand. “Come see. I have something for you.”
Fela pulled me back to the table where she’d been sitting and handed me a bundle of cloth. “I asked Wil and Sim what I could get you as a gift, and it seemed somehow appropriate….” She paused, suddenly shy.
It was a cloak. It was a deep forest green, rich cloth, fine cut. It hadn’t been bought off the back of some fripperer’s cart, either. This was the sort of clothing I could never hope to afford for myself.
“I had the tailor sew a bunch of little pockets into it,” she said nervously. “Wil and Sim both mentioned how that was important.”
“It’s lovely,” I said.
Her smile beamed out again. “I had to guess at the measurements,” she admitted. “Let’s see if it fits.” She took the cloak out of my hands and stepped close to me, spreading it over my shoulders, her arms circling me in something very near to an embrace.
I stood there, to use Fela’s words, like a scared rabbit. She was close enough that I could feel the warmth of her, and when she leaned to adjust the way the cloak lay across my shoulders, one of her breasts brushed my arm. I stood still as a statue. Over Fela’s shoulder I saw Deoch grin from where he leaned in the doorway across the room.
Fela stepped back, eyed me critically, then stepped close again and made a small adjustment to the way the cloak fastened across my chest. “It suits you,” she said. “The color brings out your eyes. Not that they need it. They’re the greenest thing I’ve seen today. Like a piece of spring.”
As Fela stepped back to admire her handiwork, I saw a familiar shape leaving the Eolian through the front door. Denna. I only caught a brief glimpse of her profile, but I recognized her as surely as I know the backs of my own hands. What she had seen, and what conclusions she had drawn from it, I could only guess.
My first impulse was to bolt out the door after her. To explain why I had broken our date two days ago. To say I was sorry. To make it clear that the woman with her arms around me had just been giving me a gift, nothing more.
Fela smoothed the cloak over my shoulder and looked at me with eyes that only moments before had been luminous with the beginnings of tears.
“It fits perfectly,” I said, taking the cloth between my fingers and fanning it out to the side. “It’s much better than I deserve, and you shouldn’t have, but I thank you.”
“I wanted to show you how much I appreciated what you did.” She reached out to touch my arm again. “This is nothing, really. If there’s anything I can ever do for you. Any favor. You should stop by….” She paused, looking at me quizzically. “Are you alright?”
I glanced past her toward the doorway. Denna could be anywhere by now. I’d never be able to catch her.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
Fela bought me a drink and we chatted for a while about small things. I was surprised to learn that she’d been working with Elodin for the last several months. She did some sculpting for him, and in exchange he occasionally tried to teach her. She rolled her eyes. He woke her in the middle of the night and took her to an abandoned quarry north of town. He put wet clay in her shoes and made her spend the entire day walking around in them. He even…she flushed and shook her head, breaking off the story. Curious, but not wanting to make her uncomfortable, I didn’t pursue it any further and we agreed between the two of us that he was more than half mad.
All the while, I sat facing the door, vainly hoping that Denna might return and I could explain the truth of matters to her.
Eventually Fela headed back to the University for Abstract Maths. I stayed at the Eolian, nursing a drink and trying to think how I could make things right between Denna and myself. I would have liked to have a good, maudlin drunk, but I couldn’t afford it, so I made my slow, limping way back across the river as the sun was setting.