Elodin held up a finger, attempting to strike a sage pose and failing because of the leaves in his hair. “Small facts lead to great knowing,” he intoned. “Just as small names lead to large names.”
He clapped his hands and rubbed them together eagerly. “Right! Fela! Open your prize and we can give Kvothe the lesson he so greatly desires.”
Fela cracked the dry husk of the milkweed pod. The white fluff of the floating seeds spilled out into her hands.
Master Namer motioned for her to toss it into the air. Fela threw it, and everyone watched the mass of white fluff sail toward the high ceiling of the lecture hall, then fall back heavily to the ground.
“Goddammit,” Elodin said. He stalked over to the bundle of seeds, picked it up, and waved it around vigorously until the air was full of gently floating puffs of milkweed seed.
Then Elodin started to chase the seeds wildly around the room, trying to snatch them out of the air with his hands. He clambered over chairs, ran across the lecturer’s dais, and jumped onto the table at the front of the room.
All the while he grabbed at the seeds. At first he did it one-handed, like you’d catch a ball. But he met with no success, and so he started clapping at them, the way you’d swat a fly. When this didn’t work either, he tried to catch them with both hands, the way a child might cup a firefly out of the air.
But he couldn’t get hold of one. The more he chased, the more frantic he became, the faster he ran, the wilder he grabbed. This went on for a full minute. Two minutes. Five minutes. Ten.
It might have gone on for the entire class period, but eventually he tripped over a chair and tumbled painfully to the stone floor, tearing open the leg of his pants and bloodying his knee.
Clutching his leg, he sat on the ground and let loose with a string of angry cursing the like of which I had never heard in my entire life. He shouted and snarled and spat. He moved through at least eight languages, and even when I couldn’t understand the words he used, the sound of it made my gut clench and the hair on my arms stand up. He said things that made me sweat. He said things that made me sick. He said things I didn’t know it was possible to say.
I expect this might have continued, but while drawing an angry breath, he sucked one of the floating milkweed seeds into his mouth and began to cough and choke violently.
Eventually he spat out the seed, caught his breath, got to his feet, and limped out of the lecture hall without saying another word.
This was not a particularly odd day’s class under Master Elodin.
After Elodin’s class I ate a bit of lunch at Anker’s, then went to my shift in the Medica, watching more experienced El’the diagnose and treat incoming patients. After that I headed over the river with the hope of finding Denna. It was my third trip in as many days, but it was a crisp, sunny day, and after all my time in the Archives, I felt the need to stretch my legs a bit.
I stopped at the Eolian first, though it was far too early for Denna to be there. I chatted with Stanchion and Deoch before moving on to a few of the other inns I knew she occasionally frequented: Taps, Barrel and Bale, and Dog in the Wall. She wasn’t at any of those either.
I wandered through a few public gardens, their trees almost entirely devoid of leaves. Then I visited all the instrument shops I could find, browsing the lutes and asking if they’d seen a pretty dark-haired woman looking at harps. They hadn’t.
It was fully dark by then. So I stopped by the Eolian again and wandered slowly through the crowd. Denna was still nowhere to be seen, but I did meet up with Count Threpe. We shared a drink and listened to a few songs before I left.
I pulled my cloak more tightly around my shoulders as I started back to the University. Imre’s streets were busier now than they had been during the day, and despite the chill in the air, there was a festival feel to the town. Music of a dozen different kinds poured from the doorways of inns and theaters. People crowded in and out of restaurants and exhibition halls.
Then I heard a laugh rise high and bright over the low murmuring of the crowds. I would have recognized it anywhere. It was Denna’s laugh. I knew it like the backs of my own hands.
I turned around, feeling a smile spread across my face. This was always the way of it. I only seemed to be able to find her after I’d given up hope.
I scanned the faces in the milling throng and found her easily. Denna stood by the doorway of a small café, wearing a long dress of dark blue velvet.
I took a step toward her, then stopped. I watched as Denna spoke to someone standing behind the open door of a carriage. The only part of her companion I could see was the very top of his head. He was wearing a hat with a tall white plume.
A moment later, Ambrose closed the carriage door. He gave her a wide, charming smile and said something that made her laugh. Lamplight glittered on the gold brocade of his jacket, and his gloves were dyed the same dark, royal purple as his boots. The color should have looked garish on him, but it didn’t.
As I stood staring, a passing two-horse fetter cart nearly knocked me flat and trampled me, which would have been fair, as I was standing in the middle of the road. The driver cursed and flicked out with his horse whip as he went past. It caught me on the back of the neck, but I didn’t even feel it.
I regained my balance and looked up in time to see Ambrose kiss Denna’s hand. Then, moving gracefully, he offered her his arm and they entered the café, together.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Unspoken Fear
After seeing Ambrose and Denna in Imre, I fell into a dark mood. On the walk back to the University my head spun with thoughts of them. Was Ambrose doing this purely out of spite? How had it happened? What was Denna thinking?
After a largely sleepless night, I tried not to think of it. Instead I burrowed deep into the Archives. Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find. I consoled myself by hunting through the dark corners of the Archives for the Chandrian. I read until my eyes burned and my head felt thick and cramped.
Nearly a span passed, and I did little but attend classes and pillage the Archives. For my pains I gained lungs full of dust, a persistent headache from hours of reading by sympathy light, and a knot between my shoulder blades from hunching over a low table while I paged through the faded remains of the Gilean ledgers.
I also found a single mention of the Chandrian. It was in a handwritten octavo titled A Quainte Compendium of Folke Belief. At my best guess, the book was two hundred years old.
The book was a collection of stories and superstitions gathered by an amateur historian in Vintas. Unlike The Mating Habits of the Common Draccus, it made no attempt to prove or disprove these beliefs. The author had simply collected and organized the stories with occasional brief commentaries about how beliefs seemed to change from region to region.
It was an impressive volume, obviously comprising years of research. There were four chapters about demons. Three chapters for faeries: one of which was entirely devoted to tales of Felurian. There were pages on the shamble-men, rendlings, and the trow. The author recorded songs about the grey ladies and white riders. A lengthy section on barrow draugar. There were six chapters on folk magic: eight ways to cure warts, twelve ways to talk to the dead, twenty-two love charms . . .
The entire entry on the Chandrian was less than half a page:
Of the Chaendrian there is little to be said. Every Man knows of them. Every child chants their song. Yet folke tell no stories.
For the price of a small beer a Farmer will talk two hours on Dannerlings. But mention the Chaendrian and his mouth goes tight as a Spinner’s Asse and he is touching iron and pushing back his chair.