Everything grew quiet again. Seeing he wasn’t going to get the rise he had expected from me, Ambrose affected nonchalance. “Some people have no sense of humor,” he said with a sigh. “Catch.”
He tossed it to me, but lutes are not meant to be tossed. It twisted awkwardly in the air, and when I grabbed, there was nothing in my hands. Whether he was clumsy or cruel makes not the slightest difference to me. My lute hit the cobblestones bowl first and made a splintering noise.
The sound reminded me of the terrible noise my father’s lute had made, crushed beneath my body in a soot-streaked alley in Tarbean. I bent to pick it up and it made a noise like a wounded animal. Ambrose half-turned to look back at me and I saw flickers of amusement play across his face.
I opened my mouth to howl, to cry, to curse him. But something other tore from my throat, a word I did not know and could not remember.
Then all I could hear was the sound of the wind. It roared into the courtyard like a sudden storm. A nearby carriage slid sideways across the cobblestones, its horses rearing up in panic. Sheet music was torn from someone’s hands to streak around us like strange lightning. I was pushed forward a step. Everyone was pushed by the wind. Everyone but Ambrose, who pinwheeled to the ground as if struck by the hand of God.
Then everything was still again. Papers fell, twisting like autumn leaves. People looked around, dazed, their hair tousled and clothes in disarray. Several people staggered as they braced against a storm that was no longer there.
My throat hurt. My lute was broken.
Ambrose staggered to his feet. He held his arm awkwardly at his side and blood was running down from his scalp. The look of wild, confused fear he gave me was a brief, sweet pleasure. I considered shouting at him again, wondering what would happen. Would the wind come again? Would the ground swallow him up?
I heard a horse whinnying in panic. People began to pour from the Eolian and the other buildings around the courtyard. Musicians looked around wildly, and everyone was talking at once.
“…was that?”
“…notes are all over. Help me before they get…”
“…did it. Him over there, with the red…”
“…demon. A demon of wind and…”
I looked around in mute confusion until Wilem and Simmon hurried me away.
“We didn’t know where to take him,” Simmon said to Kilvin.
“Say it all to me again,” Kilvin said calmly. “But this time only one talks.” He pointed at Wilem. “Try to put the words all in a tidy row.”
We were in Kilvin’s office. The door was closed and the curtains drawn. Wilem began to explain what had happened. As he gained speed he switched to Siaru. Kilvin kept nodding along, his face thoughtful. Simmon listened intently, occasionally interjecting a word or two.
I sat on a stool nearby. My mind was a whirl of confusion and half-formed questions. My throat was sore. My body was weary and full of sour adrenaline. In the middle of it all, deep in the center of my chest, a piece of me burned in anger like a forge coal fanned red and hot. All around me there was a great numbness, as if I were sealed in wax ten inches thick. There was no Kvothe, only the confusion, the anger, and the numbness wrapping them. I was like a sparrow in a storm, unable to find a safe branch to cling to. Unable to control the tumbling motion of my flight.
Wilem was reaching the end of his explanation when Elodin entered the room without knocking or announcing himself. Wilem fell silent. I spared the Master Namer half a glance then looked back toward the shattered lute in my hands. As I turned it over in my hands, one of its sharp edges cut my finger. I blankly watched the blood well up and fall to the floor.
Elodin came to stand directly in front of me, not bothering to speak to anyone else. “Kvothe?”
“He’s not right, Master,” Simmon said, his voice shrill with worry. “He’s gone all dumb. He won’t say a thing.” While I heard the words, knew they had meaning, even knew the meanings that belonged to them, I couldn’t pull any sense from them.
“I think he struck his head,” Wilem said. “He looks at you, but nothing is there. His eyes are like a dog’s eyes.”
“Kvothe?” Elodin repeated. When I didn’t respond or look up from my lute he reached forward and gently tipped my chin up until I met his eye. “Kvothe.”
I blinked.
He looked at me. His dark eyes steadied me somewhat. Slowed the storm inside me. “Aerlevsedi,” he said. “Say it.”
“What?” Simmon said somewhere in the distant background. “Wind?”
“Aerlevsedi,” Elodin repeated patiently, his dark eyes intent upon my face.
“Aerlevsedi,” I said numbly.
Elodin closed his eyes briefly, peacefully. As if he were trying to catch a faint strain of music wafting gently on a breeze. Unable to see his eyes, I began to drift. I looked back down toward the broken lute in my hands, but before my gaze wandered too far he caught my chin again, tilting my face up.
His eyes caught mine. The numbness faded, but the storm still turned inside my head. Then Elodin’s eyes changed. He stopped looking toward me and looked into me. That is the only way I can describe it. He looked deep into me, not into my eyes, but through my eyes. His gaze went into me and settled solidly in my chest, as if he had both his hands inside me, feeling the shape of my lungs, the movement of my heart, the heat of my anger, the pattern of the storm that thundered inside me.
He leaned forward and his lips brushed my ear. I felt his breath. He spoke…and the storm stilled. I found a place to land.
There is a game all children try at some time or another. You fling out your arms and spin round and round, watching as the world blurs. First you are disoriented, but if you continue to spin long enough the world resolves itself, and you are no longer dizzy as you spin with the world blurring around you.
Then you stop and the world lurches into regular shape. The dizziness strikes you like a thunderclap, everything lurches, moves. The world tilts around you.
That is what happened when Elodin stilled the storm in my head. Suddenly, violently dizzy I cried out and raised my hands to keep myself from falling sideways, falling upward, falling inward. I felt arms catch me as my feet tangled in the stool and I began to topple to the floor.
It was terrifying, but it faded. By the time I recovered, Elodin was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
Hands Against Me
SIMMON AND WILEM TOOK me to my room at Anker’s where I fell into bed and spent eighteen hours behind the doors of sleep. When I woke the next day I felt surprisingly good, considering I had slept in my clothes and my bladder felt stretched to the size of a sweetmelon.
Fortune smiled on me, giving me enough time for a meal and a bath before one of Jamison’s errand boys tracked me down. I was needed in the Masters’ Hall. I was due to be on the horns in half an hour.