Chapter Three - Gentle Hands In Innocent Locations

So I began sleeping with Devi - in only the strictest sense.

Of course you're assuming things progressed that night. Caught up in the whirlwind of emotions that narrowly escaping victimization brings, Devi thrust herself into my arms and pleaded that I "make love feel good again" or other such. Of course, that's tripe. The last thing on either of our minds was carnal pleasure - and if it was, you might say it was in a distinctly unflattering light. So sleep we did.

That isn't to say I did not wake with her curled against my torso, or that it wasn't pleasant. Of course it was; she was soft and fragile beneath her tough exterior. I pressed my nose into her strawberry-blond hair and breathed in the scent of her (which, oddly enough, was not strawberries but merely soap; she wasted little finery on her own appearance in spite of the roaring trade she did in that little one-room above the butcher's shop). It nearly drove me up the wall. Here I was with my arms around a woman - an older woman, mind, nearly one-and-a-half times my negligible age. What would she do when she woke?

But something about her presence was so comforting that I did nothing. Relaxing back into the pillow, I stroked her back, no longer mad with dismay or nervous. Ample layers of clothing separated us. There was also the matter of what she'd endured the previous night to keep my mind from wandering down dark corridors.

When at last she did wake, she gaped at me for a long moment before her mind was besieged by the horrors that had resulted in that scenario. A quiet whimper escaped her throat as she clung to my chest, but then she relaxed, and after a time her hand wandered up to my neck and stroked lightly along my skin.

"Devi?"

"Thank you for being so prone to disaster. Your bad luck has resulted in my good fortune."

On a whim, I kissed her crown, and she tensed for the briefest moment before pinching the skin on my neck; just enough to draw attention without causing pain. "None of that, now. We're not suddenly going to betroth ourselves to each other over this."

"Perish the thought, my gaelet."

For a long while we stayed thusly, and I did not force my lips on her again, nor did she pinch me. Gentle hands in innocent locations; it was peaceful. Then she sprang from the bed and began to heat water for her bath, and I busied myself checking the floor for any scratches or bloodstains from the assailant's fall.

Again, I went out and "sang for my supper" as Devi so eloquently put it. Quite a larger crowd was at the Eolian, and they were more than willing to part with a jot or two, or buy me drinks (I employed my tried and true method of ordering pretend drinks and actually being served water by the bartender, thereby saving my benefactor's money to slip into my pocket at the end of the night). A ballad I'd been composing about a girl who could not sing brought tears from nearly everyone, and I suddenly found my purse doubling. A sound three talents and then some at my disposal, I indulged in a large, filling meal and brought the remainder home to our lovable moneylender.

"Ah, that's more like it!" she said with a grin as she spied the trio of silver talents on her desk. "Better audience?"

"Better audience and better selections," I said with a shrug. "Of course, I took a bit off the top so I might have a bite to eat; you don't mind, do you?"

"As long as you didn't eat over a talent's worth," she said suspiciously. "Otherwise, who am I to bar a man from his victuals?"

"Maybe if this keeps up, I can find a smaller inn on this side of the river that'll put me up and give me a daily fee to play for them. It worked rather well for me before... well, before circumstances beyond my control yanked the good life out from under me."

Devi smiled shrewdly at him. "Yes, in light of that... perhaps you could call us even, as I have saved your hide once before. Not that I like to brag about my altruistic deeds..."

"Really?"

"A bloke came in asking about you. Said if, by some chance, I had my hands on the blood of some red-haired horse's ass that he was willing to pay for it - in MARKS."

"Ambrose," I swore. It was essentially a dirty word in my vocabulary now. "What did you tell him?"

"It was a tempting offer. If he'd asked me yesterday, I might have sold it to him due to your appalling lack of funds... bah, who am I kidding? No I wouldn't have. I'm too fond of you."

My grin was probably the stupidest one I'd ever made. "You are?"

"Down, boy!" she laughed musically. "Roiling hell, I'm only trying to say I wouldn't sell your blood to your worst enemy, even when they offered to pay double your debt!"

"Double? You turned down double my debt?"

"You had always paid your interest," she said glumly. "Now you can barely pay that, and can't scrape anything off the principal. Floundering is an ugly word, but it's an applicable one, too. Even so, I somehow couldn't sell you out... and after what you did for me last night, I know I can't. Merciful Tehlu shelter me."

I goggled at her for a moment, and she seemed amused by the attention. Then I whispered, "You may be the very last friend I have."

"Moneylenders don't make good friends, Kvothe." Her tone was serious; she was trying to warn me away from becoming too close to her. As my father always said: "There are two sure ways to lose a friend, one is to borrow, the other to lend." But how does it work when the friend in question was your moneylender first?

"Not always," I corrected. "Sometimes."

The glow in her cheeks was a little more modest now. "Sometimes."

-0-0-0-0-0-

A few more days passed in this way. We chatted and bemoaned our fates, she took all of my hard-earned money with that pixie smile of hers, and we bunked together in a bed scarcely large enough to hold both of us. It was cozy and strange, and what I imagined the life of the newly married to be like. I began to grow used to it, even if it chafed at times. More often than not, it was a welcome relief to have someone waiting for you to come home... even if they hold your fate in their hands.

Once or twice more she was intimidated by one of her customers, but none of them were foolhardy enough to do anything more than make idle threats and storm off. Then she would pull one of her myriad strings and land them in irons, or else make them mysteriously turn up with all the money they owed to settle their debt before vanishing from her life. I wondered at her ability to bend men and women to her will.

It saddened me to see Mola come in. I'd thought she was getting along just fine, but she had to borrow five talents for tuition and supplies, promising that as soon as her father's luck turned around she wouldn't need to borrow anything. Until then, she'd work like a dog at the Medica to earn back the five plus two in interest before end of term. Silently from beneath the bed, I begged Tehlu that her luck would not fail her as it did me.

Over a light supper, I mentioned this to Devi, and she seemed surprised. "I thought Mighty Kvothe had no time to dally with local damsels - earnestly seeking out his paramour that no one seems to know anything about."

"Gossip is going to turn you into a conspiracy theorist."

"Maybe. And you didn't answer my question. Have you designs on this Mola?"

My nose crinkled. "Are you drunk? Mola's nothing more than a friend who's stitched me back together once or twice. By that logic, I have designs on you."

A false gasp. "Was that a proposition?"

"It is open to interpretation," I said in the same cautiously-flirtatious fashion she used so often.

"Fine, be that way," she said airily, taking great pains to cut through her potato as daintily as possible. "I'm only trying to help your wounded love life along."

"Wounded l- Tehlu's blackened ass, I don't need that!"

Her laughter was enough to set my blood boiling further.

To Be Continued...