I tried not to think of what I knew from my work in the Media. Any deep wound to the gut was a virtual guarantee of a long, painful trip to the grave. A skilled physicker with the right equipment could make a difference, but I couldn’t be farther from civilization. I might as well wish for a piece of the moon.
I wiped my sword, sat in the wet grass in front of the tent, and began to think.
III
I had been busy for more than an hour when the sun finally peered over the tops of the trees and began to burn the dew from the grass. I had found a flat rock and a hammer and was proceeding to pound a spare horseshoe I’d found into a different shape. Above the fire a pot of oats was boiling.
I was just putting the finishing touches on the horseshoe when I saw a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye. It was Krin peeking around the corner of the wagon. I guessed I’d woken her with the sound of hammering iron.
“Oh my god.” Her hand went to her mouth and she took a couple stunned steps out from behind the wagon. “You killed them.”
“Yes,” I said simply, my voice sounding dead in my ears.
Her eyes ran up and down my body, staring at my torn and bloody shirt. “Are . . . ” her voice caught in her throat and she swallowed. “Are you alright?”
I nodded silently. When I had finally worked up the courage to look, I discovered that Felurian’s cloak had saved my life for the first time that night, turning aside the knife as well as any armored coat. Alleg had given me a long shallow cut across my belly hardly breaking the skin. He had also ruined a perfectly good shirt, but I had a hard time feeling bad about it, all things considered.
I examined the horseshoe that I had hammered into a rough circular shape and decided it was close enough. I tied it firmly to the end of a long, straight branch I had cut, then thrust the horseshoe into the coals of the fire.
Seeming to recover from some of her shock, Krin slowly approached, eyeing the row of bodies I had laid on the other side of the fire. I had done nothing other than lay them out in a rough line. It wasn’t tidy. Blood stained the corpses bodies and their clothes, and their wounds gaped openly. After coming within a couple feet of them, Krin stopped and stared as if she were afraid they might start to move again.
“What are you doing?” she asked finally.
In answer, I pulled the now-hot horseshoe from the coals and approached the nearest body. It was Tim. I pressed the hot iron against the back of his remaining hand. The skin smoked and hissed and stuck to the hot metal. After a moment I pulled it away, leaving a black burn against his white skin. A broken circle. I moved back to the fire and began to heat the iron again.
Krin stood mutely, still a little too stunned to react normally. Not that there could be a normal way to react in a situation like this. But she didn’t scream or run off as I thought she might. She simply looked at the broken circle and asked again, “What are you doing?”
I thought for a long moment before responding, when I finally spoke, my voice sounded strange to my own ears. “All of the Edema Ruh are one family, like a closed circle. It doesn’t matter if some of us are strangers to others, we are still family, still close. We have to be this way, because we are scattered, and people hate us.
“We have laws. Rules we follow. When one of us does a thing that cannot be forgiven or mended, if he jeopardizes the safety or the honor of the Edema Ruh, he is branded with the broken circle to show that he is no longer one of us. It is rarely done. There is rarely a need.”
I pulled the iron from the fire and walked to the next body. Otto. I pressed it to the back of his hand and listened to it hiss. “These men were not Edema Ruh. But they made themselves out to be. They did things that no Edema would do, so I am making sure the world knows that they were not part of our family. The Ruh do not do the sort of things these men did.”
“But the wagons,” she protested, “the instruments.”
“They were not Edema Ruh.” I said firmly. “They probably weren’t even real troupers, just a group of thieves who killed a band of Ruh performers and thought that they could take their place.”
“But . . . how?”
“I am curious about that myself,” I said. Pulling the broken circle from the fire again, I moved to Alleg and pressed it onto his palm.
The false trouper jerked and screamed himself awake.
“He isn’t dead!” Krin exclaimed shrilly.
I had examined the wound earlier. “He’s dead,” I said coldly. “He just hasn’t stopped moving yet.” I turned to look him in the eye. “How about it, Alleg? How did you come by a pair of Edema wagons?”
“Ruh bastard,” he cursed at me with blurry defiance.
“Yes,” I said, “I am. And you are not. So how did you learn my family’s signs and customs?”
“How did you know?” he asked. “We knew the words, the handshake. We knew water and wine and songs before supper. How did you know?”
“Ruh don’t do what you did. Ruh don’t steal, don’t kidnap girls.”
He shook his head with a mocking smile. There was blood on his teeth. “Everyone knows what you people do . . . .”
My temper exploded. “Everyone thinks they know! They think rumor is the truth! Ruh don’t do this!” I gestured wildly around me. “People only think those things because of people like you!” My anger flared even hotter and I found myself screaming. “Now tell me what I want to know or god will weep when he hears what I’ve done to you!”
He paled, and had to swallow before he found his voice. “There was an old man and his wife and a couple other players. I traveled guard with them for a while and they kind of took me in . . . ” He ran out of breath and gasped a bit as he tried to get it back.
He’d said enough. “So you killed them.”
He shook his head. “No. . . . were attacked on the road. I showed the others afterward . . . acting like a troupe.” He gaped again, trying to draw a breath against the pain. “ . . . good life.”
I turned away, disgusted. He was one of us, in a way. One of our adopted family. Somehow it made everything ten times worse knowing that. I pushed the circle into the coals of the fire again, then looked to the girl as it heated. Her eyes had gone to flint again as she watched Alleg.
Not sure if it was the right thing to do, I offered her the brand. Her face went hard and she took it.
Alleg didn’t seem to understand what was about to happen until she had the hot iron against his chest. He shrieked and twisted but lacked the strength to get away as she pressed it hard against him. She grimaced as he struggled weakly against the iron, her eyes brimming with angry tears.
After a long minute she pulled the iron away and stood, crying quietly. I let her be.
Alleg looked up at her and somehow managed to find his voice. “Ah girl, we had some good times, didn’t we?” She stopped crying and looked at him. “Don’t—”
I kicked him sharply in the side before he could say anything else. He stiffened in mute pain and then spat blood at me. I landed another kick and he went limp. Not knowing what else to do, I took back the brand and began heating it again.
There was a long silence. “Is Ell still asleep?”
Krin nodded.
“Do you think it would help for her to see this?”
She thought about it, wiping at her face with a hand. “I don’t think so,” she said finally. “I don’t think she could see it right now. She’s not right in her head.”
I nodded. “The two of you are from Levinshir?” I asked to keep the silence at arm’s length.
“My family farms just north of Levinshir,” Krin said. “Ell’s father is mayor.”
“When did they come into your town?” I asked as I set the brand to the back of another hand. The smell of burned flesh was becoming thick in the air.
“What day is it?”
I counted in my head, “Luten.”
“They came into town on Theden,” she paused. “Five days ago?” Her voice tinged with disbelief. “
We were glad to have the chance to see a play, hear the news from far off. Listen to some music.” Her voice choked off for a moment, and she looked down. “They were camped on the east edge of town. When I came by to get my fortune read they told me to come back that night. They seemed so friendly, so exciting.” She looked away, back at the tent. “I guess Ell got an invitation too.”
I finished branding the backs of their hands. I had been planning to do their faces too, but the iron was slow to heat in the fire, and I was quickly growing sick of this work. I hadn’t slept that night and the anger that had burned so hot for so long was in its final flicker, leaving me feeling cold and numb.
I made a gesture to the pot of oats I’d pulled off the fire. “Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” she said, then darted a look toward the bodies. “No.”
I gave a faint smile. “Me neither. Go wake up Ell and we can get you home.”
Krin hurried off to the tent. After she disappeared inside, I turned to the line of bodies. “I have taken the third piece of my payment,” I said formally. “Does anyone object to my leaving the troupe?”
None of them did. So I left.
IV
It was an hour’s work to drive the wagons into a thick piece of forest and hide them. I destroyed their Edema markings and unhitched the horses. There was only one saddle, so I loaded the other two horses with food and whatever other portable valuables I could find.
When I returned with the horses, Krin and Ell were waiting for me. More precisely, Krin was waiting for me and Ell was standing nearby. Her expression vacant, her eyes empty.
“Do you know how to ride?” I asked Krin. She nodded and I handed her the reins to the saddled horse. She got one foot in the stirrup and seemed to change her mind. “I’ll walk.”
“Do you think Ell would stay on a horse?”
Krin looked over to where the blonde girl was standing. One of the horses nuzzled her curiously and got no response. “Probably. But I don’t think it would be good for her. After . . . .”
I nodded in understanding. “We’ll all walk then.”
“What is the heart of the way?” I asked Tempi.
“Success and right action.”
“Which is the more important, success or rightness?”
“They are the same. If you act rightly, success follows.”
“But others may succeed by doing wrong things,” I pointed out.
“Wrong things never lead to success,” Tempi said firmly. “If a man acts wrongly and succeeds, that is not the way. Without the way there is no true success.”
Sir? A voice called. “Sir?”
My eyes focused on Krin. Her hair was windblown, her young face tired. She looked at me timidly. “Sir? It’s getting dark.”
I looked around and saw twilight creeping in from the east. I was bone weary and had fallen into a walking doze after we had stopped for a rest and lunch at midday.
“Just call me Kvothe, Krin. And thanks for waking me up, my mind was somewhere else.”
Krin and I set up camp. She gathered wood and started a fire. I unsaddled the horses, fed them and rubbed them down. Then I took a few minutes to set up the tent. Normally I don’t bother with a tent, but there had been room for it on the horses and I guessed the girls weren’t used to sleeping out of doors.
After I finished with the tent I realized that in my distracted, weary state, I’d neglected to load the blankets and furs that had filled the tent the night before. In fact, I’d only brought one extra blanket from the troupe’s supplies. There would be a chill tonight too, if I was any judge of the weather.
“Dinner’s ready,” I heard Krin call. So I tossed my blanket and the spare one into the tent and headed back to where she was finishing up. She’d done a good job with what was available. Potato soup with bacon and toasted bread. There was a green summer squash nestled into in the coals of the fire as well.
Ell sat blankly by the fire, staring into nothing. She worried me. She had been the same all day. Walking listlessly, never speaking or responding to anything Krin or I said to her. Her eyes would follow things, but there was no thought behind them. Krin and I had discovered the hard way that if left to herself she would stop walking, or wander off the road if something in the trees caught her eye.
Krin handed me a bowl and spoon as I sat down. “It smells good.” I complimented her.
She half-smiled as she dished a second bowl for herself. She started to fill a third bowl, then hesitated, realizing that Ell couldn’t feed herself.
“Would you like some soup, Ell?” I asked in normal tones. “It smells good.”
She gave no response. Her eyes reflected the dancing patterns of the fire.
“Do you want to share mine?” I asked as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I moved closer to where she sat, and blew on a spoonful to cool it. “Here you go.”
She ate it mechanically. I blew on another spoonful. “It’s Ellie, isn’t it?” I asked her, then looked to Krin. “Is it short for Ellie?”
Krin nodded. I fed Ellie another mouthful.
“It sure was a long walk today,” I said conversationally. “How do your feet feel, Krin?”
She continued to watch me with her serious dark eyes. “A little sore.”
“Mine too. I can’t wait to get my shoes off. Are your feet sore, Ellie?”
No response. I fed her another bite.
“It was pretty hot too. It should cool off tonight, though. Good sleeping weather. Won’t that be nice, Ellie?”
No response. Krin continued to watch me from the other side of the fire. I took a bite of soup for myself. “This is truly fine, Krin.” I said earnestly, then turned back to the vacant girl. “It’s a good thing we have Krin to cook for us, Ellie. Everything I cook tastes like horseshit.”
On her side of the fire, Krin laughed with a mouthful of soup with predictable results. I thought a saw a flicker in Ellie’s eyes. “If I had some horse apples I could make us a horse apple pie for desert,” I offered. “I could make some tonight if you want . . . ” I trailed off, making it a question.
Ell gave the slightest frown, a small wrinkle creased her forehead.
“You’re probably right,” I said. “It wouldn’t be very good. Would you like more soup instead?”
The barest nod. I gave her a spoonful.
“It’s a little salty, though. You probably want some water.”
Another nod. I handed her the waterskin and she lifted it to her lips. She drank for a long minute. She was probably parched from our long walk today. I would have to watch her more closely tomorrow to make sure she drank enough.
“Would you like a drink, Krin?”
“Yes please,” Krin said, her eyes fixed on Ellie’s face.
Moving automatically, Ellie held the waterskin out toward Krin, holding it directly over the fire with the shoulder strap dragging in the coals. Krin grabbed it as quickly as she could, then added a belated, “Thank you, Ellie.”
I kept the slow stream of conversation going through the whole meal. Ellie fed herself toward the end of it, and though her eyes were clearer, it was as if she were looking out through a thick pane of frosted glass, seeing but not seeing. Still, it was an improvement.
After she ate two bowls of soup and half a loaf of bread, her eyes began to bob closed. “Would you like to go to bed, Ellie?” I asked.
A more definite nod.
“Should I carry you to the tent?”
Her eyes snapped open at this and she shook her head firmly, once.
“Maybe Krin would help you get ready for bed if you asked her.”
Ellie turned to look in Krin’s direction. Her mouth moved in a slight, vague way. Krin darted a glance at me and I nodded.
“Let’s go and get tucked in then,” Krin said, sounding every bit the older sister. She came over and took Ellie’s hand, helping her to her feet. As they went into the tent, I finished off what the soup and ate a piece of bread that had been too badly bu
rnt for either of the girls to want.
Before too long Krin came back to the fire. “Is she sleeping?” I asked.
“Before she hit the pillow. Do you think she will be all right?”
She was in shock, her mind had stepped through the doors of madness to protect itself from what was happening. “It’s probably just a matter of time,” I said tiredly, hoping it was the truth. “The young heal quickly.” I chuckled humorlessly as I realized that she was probably about the same age as me. I felt every year twice tonight, some of them three times.
Despite the fact that I felt covered in lead, I forced myself to my feet and helped Krin clean the dishes. I sensed her growing unease as we finished cleaning up, then repicketed the horses to a new piece of grazing. Her tension grew worse as we approached the tent. I stopped and held the flap open for her. “I’ll sleep out here tonight.”
Her relief was tangible. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. She slipped inside and I let the flap fall closed behind her. Her head poked back out almost immediately, followed by a hand holding a blanket.
I shook my head. “You’ll need them both, there’ll be a chill tonight.” I pulled my cloak around me and lay directly in front of the tent. I didn’t want Ellie wandering out during the night and getting lost or hurt.
“But won’t you . . . ”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. My cloak was warm and soft, but it hardly mattered, I was tired enough to sleep on a running horse. I was tired enough to sleep under a running horse.
Krin ducked her head back into the tent. Soon I heard her nestling into the blankets. Then everything was quiet.
I remembered the startled look on Otto’s face as I cut his throat. I heard Alleg struggle weakly and curse me as I dragged him back to the wagons. I remembered the blood. The way it had felt against my hands. The thickness of it.
I had never killed anyone like that before. Not coldly, not close up. I remembered how warm their blood had been. I remembered they way Kete had cried as I stalked her through the woods. “It was them or me!” She had screamed hysterically. “I didn’t have a choice. It was them or me!”
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