THAT EVENING I GATHERED up my things and made my way down to the common room. The townsfolk eyed me and murmured excitedly among themselves. I overheard a few comments as I walked to the bar, and realized that yesterday most of them had seen me wrapped in bandages, presumably with terrible wounds underneath. Today the bandages were gone, and all they saw were some minor bruises. Another miracle. I fought to keep from smiling.
The sullen innkeeper told me that he couldn’t possibly dream of charging me, seeing as how the entire town was in my debt and all that. I insisted. No no. Absolutely not. He wouldn’t hear of it. If only there was something else he could do to show his gratitude.
I put on a thoughtful expression. Now that he mentioned it, I said, if he happened to have another bottle of that lovely strawberry wine…
I made my way to Evesdown docks and got a seat on a barge heading downriver. Then, while I was waiting, I asked if any of the dockworkers had seen a young woman come through here in the last couple days. Dark haired, pretty…
They had. She had been by yesterday afternoon and shipped downriver. I felt a certain amount of relief, knowing that she was safe and relatively sound. But other than that, I didn’t know what to think. Why hadn’t she come to Trebon? Did she think I had abandoned her? Did she remember anything we had talked about that night as we lay on the greystone together?
We docked in Imre a few hours after dawn, and I went straightaway to Devi’s. After some spirited bargaining, I gave her the loden-stone and a single talent in order to wipe out my extremely short term loan of twenty talents. I still owed my original debt, but after all I’d been through, a four-talent debt no longer seemed terribly ominous, despite the fact that my purse was largely empty again.
It took a while to put my life back together. I’d only been gone four days, but I needed to make apologies and give explanations to all manner of people. I’d missed an appointment with Count Threpe, and two meetings with Manet, and a lunch with Fela. Anker’s had gone without a musician for two nights. Even Auri reproached me gently for not coming to visit her.
I’d missed classes with Kilvin, Elxa Dal, and Arwyl. They all accepted my appologies with gracious disapproval. I knew that when next term’s tuitions were set, I would end up paying for my sudden, largely unexplained absence.
Most important were Wil and Sim. They had heard rumors of a student attacked in an alley. Given Ambrose’s smugger-than-usual expression of late, they expected I had been run out of town, or, at worst, that I was weighted down with rocks at the bottom of the Omethi.
They were the only ones that got a real explanation of what had happened. Though I didn’t tell them the entire truth about why I was interested in the Chandrian, I did tell them the whole story, and showed them the scale. They were appropriately amazed, though they did tell me in plain terms that next time I would leave a note for them or there would be hell to pay.
And I looked for Denna, hoping to make my most important explanation of all. But, as always, looking did no good.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR
A Sudden Storm
IN THE END I found Denna as I always do, through pure accident.
I was walking hurriedly along, my mind full of other things, when I turned a corner and had to pull up short to keep from running headlong into her.
We both stood there for a half-second, startled and speechless. Despite the fact that I’d been searching out her face in every shadow and carriage window for days, the sight of her stunned me. I’d remembered the shape of her eyes, but not the weight of them. Their darkness, but not their depth. Her closeness pressed the breath out of my chest, as if I’d suddenly been thrust deep underwater.
I’d spent long hours thinking about how this meeting might go. I had played the scene a thousand times in my mind. I feared she would be distant, aloof. That she would spurn me for leaving her alone in the woods. That she would be silent and sullenly hurt. I worried that she might cry, or curse me, or simply turn and leave.
Denna gave me a delighted smile. “Kvothe!” She caught up my hand and pressed it between her own. “I’ve missed you. Where have you been?”
I felt myself go weak with relief. “Oh, you know. Here and there.” I made a nonchalant gesture. “Around.”
“You left me dry in the dock the other day,” she said with a mock-serious glare. “I waited, but the tide never came.”
I was about to explain things to her when Denna gestured to a man standing beside her. “Forgive my rudeness. Kvothe, this is Lentaren.” I hadn’t even noticed him. “Lentaren, Kvothe.”
Lentaren was tall and lean. Well muscled, well dressed, and well-bred. He had a jawline a mason would have been proud of and straight, white teeth. He looked like Prince Gallant out of a storybook. He reeked of money.
He smiled at me, his manner easy, friendly. “Nice to meet you, Kvothe,” he said with a graceful half-bow.
I returned the bow on pure reflex, smiling my most charming smile. “At your service, Lentaren.”
I turned back to Denna. “We should have lunch one of these days,” I said blithely, arching one eyebrow ever so slightly, asking, is this Master Ash? “I have some interesting stories for you.”
“Absolutely,” she shook her head slightly, telling me, No. “You left before you could finish your last one. I was terribly disappointed that I missed the end. Distraught, in fact.”
“Oh it’s just the same thing you’ve heard before a hundred times before,” I said. “Prince Gallant kills the dragon but loses the treasure and the girl.”
“Ah, a tragedy,” Denna looked down. “Not the ending I’d hoped for, but no more than I expected, I suppose.”
“It would be something of a tragedy if it stopped there,” I admitted. “But it depends on how you look at it, really. I prefer to think of it as a story that’s waiting for an appropriately uplifting sequel.”
A carriage trundled by on the road and Lentaren stepped out of the way, incidentally brushing up against Denna as he moved. She took hold of his arm absentmindedly. “I don’t generally go in for serial stories,” she said, her expression momentarily serious and unreadable. Then she shrugged and gave me a hint of a wry smile. “But I’ve certainly changed my mind about these things before. Maybe you’ll convince me otherwise.”
I gestured to the lute case I carried slung over my shoulder. “I still play at Anker’s most nights if you’d like to stop in….”
“I will.” Denna sighed and looked up at Lentaren. “We’re already late, aren’t we?”
He squinted up at the sun and nodded. “We are. But we can still catch them if we hurry.”
She turned back to me. “I’m sorry, we have a riding appointment.”
“I would never dream of keeping you,” I said, graciously stepping to one side, out of their way.