“You know I’d never try something like that, Devi.”
“The fact remains,” Devi continued, “my risk is the same, no matter if the loan is small or large. Why should I take those risks for small loans?”
“Small?” I asked. “I could live for a year on four talents!”
She tapped the desk with a finger, pursing her mouth. “Collateral?”
“The usual,” I said, giving her my best smile. “My boundless charm.”
Devi snorted indelicately. “For boundless charm and three drops of blood you can borrow six talents at my standard rate. Fifty percent interest over a two-month term.”
“Devi,” I said ingratiatingly. “What am I going to do with the extra money?”
“Throw a party,” she suggested. “Spend a day in the Buckle. Find yourself a nice game of high-stakes faro.”
“Faro,” I said, “is a tax on people who can’t calculate probabilities.”
“Then run bank and collect the tax,” she said. “Buy yourself something pretty and wear it next time you come in to see me.” She looked me up and down with dangerous eyes. “Maybe then I’ll be willing to cut you a deal.”
“How about six talents for a month at twenty-five percent?” I asked.
Devi shook her head, not unkindly. “Kvothe, I respect the impulse to bargain, but you don’t have any leverage. You’re here because you’re over a barrel. I’m here to capitalize on that situation.” She spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “That’s how I make my living. The fact that you have a sweet face doesn’t really enter into it.”
Devi gave me a serious look. “Conversely, if a guild moneylender would give you the time of day, I wouldn’t expect you to come here simply because I’m pretty and you like the color of my hair.”
“It is a lovely color,” I said. “We fiery types should really stick together.”
“We should,” she agreed. “I propose we stick together at fifty percent interest over a two month term.”
“Fine.” I said, slumping back into my chair. “You win.”
Devi gave me a winsome smile, dimples showing again. “I can only win if we were both actually playing.” She opened a drawer in the desk, bringing out a small glass bottle and a long pin.
I reached out to take them, but instead of sliding them across the desk, she gave me a thoughtful look. “Now that I think of it, there might be another option.”
“I’d love another option,” I admitted.
“The last time we talked,” Devi said slowly, “you implied you had a way into the Archives.”
I hesitated. “I did imply that.”
“That information would be worth quite a bit to me,” she said overcasually. Though she tried to hide it, I could see a fierce, lean hunger in her eyes.
I looked down at my hands and didn’t say anything.
“I’ll give you ten talents right now,” Devi said bluntly. “Not a loan. I’ll buy the information outright. If I get caught in the Stacks, I never learned it from you.”
I thought of everything I could do with ten talents. New clothes. A lute case that wasn’t about to fall to pieces. Paper. Gloves for the coming winter.
I sighed and shook my head.
“Twenty talents,” Devi said. “And guild rates on any loans you want in the future.”
Twenty talents would mean half a year of worry-free tuition. I could pursue my own projects in the Fishery rather than slaving away at deck lamps. I could buy tailored clothes. Fresh fruit. I could use a laundry rather than wash my clothes myself.
I drew a reluctant breath. “I—”
“Forty talents,” Devi said hungrily. “Guild rates. And I will take you to bed.”
For forty talents I could buy Denna her own half-harp. I could . . .
I looked up and saw Devi staring at me from across the desk. Her lips were wet, her pale blue eyes intense. She shifted her shoulders back and forth in the slow, unconscious motion of a cat before it pounces.
I thought of Auri, safe and happy in the Underthing. What would she do if her tiny kingdom was invaded by a stranger?
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t. Getting in is . . . complicated. It involves a friend, and I don’t think they’d be willing.” I decided to ignore the other part of her offer, as I hadn’t the slightest idea what to say about it.
There was a long, tense moment. “Goddamn you,” Devi said at last. “You sound like you’re telling the truth.”
“I am,” I said. “It’s unsettling, I know.”
“Goddamn.” She scowled as she pushed the bottle and pin across the desk.
I pricked the back of my hand and watched the blood well up and roll down my hand to fall into the bottle. After three drops I tipped the pin into the mouth of the bottle as well.
Devi swabbed some adhesive around the stopper and drove it angrily into the bottle. Then she reached into a drawer and pulled out a diamond stylus. “Do you trust me?” She asked as she etched a number into the glass. “Or do you want this sealed?”
“I trust you,” I said. “But I’d like it sealed all the same.”
She melted a daub of sealing wax onto the top of the bottle. I pressed my talent pipes into it, leaving a recognizable impression.
Reaching into another drawer, Devi brought out six talents and clattered them onto the desk. The motion might have seemed petulant if her eyes hadn’t been so hard and angry.
“I’m getting in there one way or another,” she said with a chill edge to her voice. “Talk to your friend. If you’re the one that helps me, I’ll make it worth your time.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Haven
I returned to the University in good spirits despite the burden of my new debt. I made a few purchases, gathered up my lute, and headed out over the rooftops.
From the inside, Mains was a nightmare to navigate: a maze of irrational hallways and stairways leading nowhere. But moving across its jumbled rooftops was easy as anything. I made my way to a small courtyard that at some point in the building’s construction had become completely inaccessible, trapped like a fly in amber.
Auri wasn’t expecting me, but this was the first place I’d met her, and on clear nights she sometimes came out to watch the stars. I checked to make sure the classrooms overlooking the courtyard were dark and empty, then I brought out my lute and began to tune it.
I had been playing for almost an hour when I heard a rustling movement in the overgrown courtyard below. Then Auri appeared, scurrying up the overgrown apple tree and onto the roof.
She ran toward me, her bare feet skipping lightly across the tar, her hair blowing behind her. “I heard you!” she said as she came close. “I heard you all the way down in Vaults!”
“I seem to remember,” I said slowly, “that I was going to play music for someone.”
“Me!” She held both her hands close to her chest, grinning. She moved from foot to foot, almost dancing with her eagerness. “Play for me! I have been as patient as two stones together,” she said. “You are just in time. I could not be as patient as three stones.”
“Well,” I said hesitantly. “I suppose it all depends on what you’ve brought me.”
She laughed, rising up onto the balls of her feet, her hands still together, close to her chest. “What did you bring me?”
I knelt and began to untie my bundle. “I’ve brought you three things,” I said.
“How traditional,” she said, grinning. “You are quite the proper young gentleman tonight.”
“I am.” I held up a heavy dark bottle.
She took it with both hands. “Who made it?”
“Bees,” I said. “And brewers in Bredon.”
Auri smiled. “That’s three bees,” she said, and set the bottle down by her feet. I brought out a round loaf of fresh barley bread. She reached out and touched it with a finger, then nodded approvingly.
Last I brought out a whole smoked salmon. It had cost four drabs by itself, but I worried Auri didn’t get enough meat in whatever she managed to scrounge up when I wasn’t around. It would be good for her.
Auri looked down at it curiously, tilting her head to look into its single staring eye. “Hello fish,” she said. Then she looked back up at me. “Does it have a secret?”