“T—Tehlu’s blessing be upon you!” the owner of the Half-Mast stammered explosively.
“It is,” the Justice said simply. He took another long look around the room. Finally he turned his head to the second priest who stood back from the bar. “Anthony, would a fine place such as this be harboring heretics?”
“Anything is possible, Justice.”
“Ahhh,” the Justice said softly and looked slowly around the room, once again ending with an inspection of the man behind the bar.
“Can I offer your honors a drink? If’n it please you?” the owner offered quickly.
There was only silence.
“I mean … a drink for you and your brothers. A fine barrel of fallow white? To show my thanks. I let him stay because his stories were interesting, at first.” He swallowed hard and hurried on, “But then he started to say wicked things. I was afraid to throw him out, because he is obviously mad, and everyone knows God’s displeasure falls heavy on those who raise their hands to madmen… .” His voice broke, leaving the room suddenly quiet. He swallowed, and I could hear the dry click his throat made from where I stood by the door.
“A generous offer,” the Justice said finally.
“Very generous,” echoed the shorter priest.
“However, strong drink sometimes tempts men to wicked actions.”
“Wicked,” whispered the priest.
“And some of our brothers have taken vows against the temptations of the flesh. I must refuse.” The Justice’s voice dripped pious regret.
I managed to catch Skarpi’s eye, he gave me a little half-smile. My stomach churned. The old storyteller didn’t seem to have any idea what sort of trouble he was in. But at the same time, deep inside me, something selfish was saying, if you’d come earlier and found out what you needed to know, it wouldn’t be so bad now, would it?
The barman broke the silence. “Could you take the price of the barrel then, sirs? If not the barrel itself.”
The Justice paused, as if thinking.
“For the sake of the children,” the bald man pleaded. “I know you will use the money for them.”
The Justice pursed his lips. “Very well,” he said after a moment, “for the sake of the children.”
The shorter priest’s voice had an unpleasant edge. “The children.”
The owner managed a weak smile.
Skarpi rolled his eyes at me and winked.
“You would think,” Skarpi’s voice rolled out like thick honey, “fine churchmen such as yourselves could find better things to do than arresting storytellers and extorting money from honest men.”
The clinking of the barman’s coins trailed off and the room seemed to hold its breath. With a studied casualness, the Justice turned his back toward Skarpi and spoke over one shoulder toward the shorter priest. “Anthony, we seem to have found a courteous heretic, how strange and wonderful! We should sell him to a Ruh troupe; in a way he resembles a talking dog.”
Skarpi spoke to the man’s back. “It’s not as if I expect you to bound off looking for Haliax and the Seven yourself. ‘Small deeds for small men,’ I always say. I imagine the trouble is in finding the job small enough for men such as yourselves. But you are resourceful. You could pick trash, or check brothel beds for lice when you are visiting.”
Turning, the Justice snatched the clay cup off the bar and dashed it against Skarpi’s head, shattering it. “Do not speak in my presence!” he crackled. “You know nothing!”
Skarpi shook his head a little, as if to clear it. A trickle of red lined its way down his driftwood face, down into one of his sea-foam eyebrows. “I suppose that could be true. Tehlu always said—”
“Do not speak his name!” the Justice screamed, his face a livid red. “Your mouth dirties it. It is a blasphemy upon your tongue.”
“Oh come now, Erlus.” Skarpi chided as though talking to a small child. “Tehlu hates you even more than the rest of the world does, which is quite a bit.”
The room became unnaturally still. The Justice’s face grew pale. “God have mercy on you,” he said in a cold, trembling voice.
Skarpi looked at the Justice mutely for a moment. Then he started to laugh. Great, booming, helpless laughter from the bottom of his soul.
The eyes of the Justice flicked to one of the men who had tied the storyteller. With no preamble the grim-faced man struck Skarpi with a tight fist. Once in the kidney, once in the back of the neck.
Skarpi crumpled to the ground. The room was silent. The sound of his body hitting the wood planking of the floor seemed to fade before the echoes of his laughter did. At a gesture from the Justice, one of the guards picked the old man up by the scruff of his neck. He dangled like a rag doll, his feet trailing on the ground.
But Skarpi was not unconscious, merely stunned. The storyteller’s eyes rolled around to focus on the Justice. “Mercy on my soul.” He gave a weak croak that might have been a chuckle on a better day. “You don’t know how funny that sounds coming from you.”
Skarpi seemed to address the air in front of him. “You should run, Kvothe. There’s nothing to be gained by meddling with these sort of men. Head to the rooftops. Stay where they won’t see you for a while. I have friends in the church who can help me, but there’s nothing you can do here. Go.”
Since he wasn’t looking at me when he spoke, there was a moment of confusion. The Justice gestured again and one of the guards struck Skarpi a blow to the back of the head. His eyes rolled back, and his head lolled forward. I slipped out the door, onto the street.
I took Skarpi’s advice and was on a rooftop running before they left the bar.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Doors of My Mind
Up onto the rooftops and back to my secret place, I wrapped myself in my blanket and cried. I cried as if something inside me had broken and everything was rushing out.
When I had worn myself out with sobbing it was deep into the night. I lay there looking at the sky, weary but unable to sleep. I thought of my parents and of the troupe, and was surprised to find the memories less bitter than before.
For the first time in years, I used one of the tricks Ben had taught me for calming and sharpening the mind. It was harder than I remembered, but I did it.
If you have ever slept the whole night without moving, then awoke in the morning, your body stiff with inaction. If you can remember how that first terrific stretch feels, pleasant and painful, then you may understand how my mind felt after all these years, stretching awake on the rooftops of Tarbean.
I spent the rest of that night opening the doors of my mind. Inside I found things long forgotten: my mother fitting words together for a song, diction for the stage, three recipes for tea to calm nerves and promote sleep, finger scales for the lute.
My music. Had it really been years since I held a lute?
I spent a long time thinking about the Chandrian, about what they had done to my troupe, what they had taken from me. I remembered blood and the smell of burning hair and felt a deep, sullen anger burning in my chest. I will admit I thought dark, vengeful thoughts that night.
But my years in Tarbean had instilled an iron-hard practicality. I knew revenge was nothing more than a childish fantasy. I was fifteen. What could I possibly do?
I did know one thing. It had come to me as I lay remembering. It was something Haliax had said to Cinder. Who keeps you safe from the Amyr? The singers? The Sithe? From all that would harm you in the world?
The Chandrian had enemies. If I could find them, they would help me. I had no idea who the singers or the Sithe were, but everyone knew that the Amyr were church knights, the strong right hand of the Aturan Empire. Unfortunately, everyone also knew that there had been no Amyr in three hundred years. They had been disbanded when the Aturan Empire collapsed.
But Haliax had spoken of them as if they still existed. And Skarpi’s story implied that the Amyr had begun with Selitos, not with the Aturan Empire as I had always been taught. There was obviou
sly more to the story, more that I needed to know.
The more I thought on it, the more questions arose. The Chandrian obviously didn’t kill everyone who gathered stories or sang songs about them. Everyone knew a story or two about them, and every child at one point has sung the silly rhyme about their signs. What made my parent’s song so different?
I had questions. There was only one place for me to go, of course.
I looked over my meager possessions. I had a rag blanket and a burlap sack with some straw that I used for a pillow. I had a pint bottle with a cork in it, half full of clean water. A piece of canvas sailcloth that I weighted down with bricks and used as a windbreak on cold nights. A crude pair of salt-dice and a single, tatty shoe that was too small for me, but that I hoped to trade for something else.
And twenty-seven iron pennies in common coin. My rainy-day money. A few days ago it had seemed like a vast treasure trove, but now I knew it would never be enough.
As the sun was rising, I removed Rhetoric and Logic from its hiding place underneath a rafter. I unwrapped the scrap of treated canvas I used to protect it and was relieved to find it dry and well. I felt the smooth leather in my hands. I held it to my face and smelled the back of Ben’s wagon, spice and yeast with the bitter tang of acids and chemical salts mingled in. It was the last tangible piece of my past.
I opened it to the first page and read the inscription Ben had made more than three years ago.
Kvothe,
Defend yourself well at the University. Make me proud.
Remember your father’s song. Be wary of folly.
Abenthy.
I nodded to myself and turned the page.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Broken Binding
The sign over the doorpost read: THE BROKEN BINDING. I took it to be an auspicious sign and walked in.
A man sat behind a desk. I assumed he was the owner. He was tall and reedy with thinning hair. He looked up from a ledger, his expression vaguely irritated.
Deciding to keep niceties to a minimum, I walked to his desk and handed him the book. “How much would you give me for this?”
He leafed through it professionally, feeling the paper between his fingers, checking the binding. He shrugged. “A couple of jots.”
“It’s worth more than that!” I said indignantly.
“It’s worth what you can get for it,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’ll give you one and a half.”
“Two talents and I have the option to buy it back for a month.”
He gave a short, barking laugh. “This is not a pawnshop.” He slid the book across the desk toward me with one hand as he picked up his pen with the other.
“Twenty days?”
He hesitated, then gave the book another cursory once-over and brought out his purse. He pulled out two heavy silver talents. It was more money than I’d seen in one place for a long, long time.
He slid them across the desk. I restrained the desire to snatch them up immediately and said, “I’ll need a receipt.”
This time he gave me such a long hard look that I began to get a little nervous. It was only then I realized how I must look, covered in a year’s worth of alley dirt, trying to get a receipt for a book I’d obviously stolen.
Eventually he gave another bland shrug and scratched out a note on a slip of paper. At the bottom of it he drew a line and made a motion with his pen. “Sign here.”
I looked at the paper. It read:
I, by signing below, hereby attest to the fact that I can neither read nor write.
I looked up at the owner. He held a straight face. I dipped the pen and carefully wrote the letters “D D” as if they were initials.
He fanned the ink dry and slid my “receipt” across the desk toward me. “What does D stand for?” he asked with the barest hint of a smile.
“Defeasance,” I said. “It means to render something null and void, usually a contract. The second D is for Decrepitate. Which is the act of throwing someone into a fire.” He gave me a blank look. “Decrepication is the punishment for forgery in Junpui. I think false receipts fall in that category.”
I made no move to touch the money or the receipt. There was a tense silence.
“This isn’t Junpui,” he said, his face carefully composed.
“True enough,” I admitted. “You have a keen sense of defalcation. Perhaps I should add a third D.”
He gave another sharp, barking laugh and smiled. “You’ve convinced me, young master.” He pulled out a fresh slip of paper and set it in front of me. “You write me a receipt, and I will sign it.”
I took up the pen and wrote. “I the undersigned, do agree to return the copy of the book Rhetoric and Logic with the inscription “to Kvothe” to the bearer of this note in exchange for two silver pennies, provided he present this receipt before the date—”
I looked up. “What day is it?”
“Shuden. The thirty-fifth.”
I had fallen out of the habit of keeping track of the date. On the streets, one day is largely the same as the next, save that people are a little more drunk on Hepten, a little more generous on Mourning.
But if it was the thirty-fifth then I only had five days to get to the University. I knew from Ben that admissions only lasted until Cendling. If I missed them, I would have to wait two months for the next term to start.
I filled in the date on the receipt and drew a line for the bookseller to sign. He looked a little bemused as I slid the paper toward him. What’s more, he didn’t notice that the receipt read pennies instead of talents. Talents were worth significantly more. This meant he had just agreed to give me back the book for less money than he had bought it for.
My satisfaction damped itself when it occurred to me how foolish all of this was. Pennies or talents, I wouldn’t have enough money to buy the book back in two span. If everything went well I wouldn’t even be in Tarbean tomorrow.
Despite its uselessness, the receipt helped ease the sting of parting with the last thing I owned from my childhood. I blew on the paper, folded it carefully into a pocket, and collected my two silver talents. I was surprised when the man held out his hand to me.
He smiled in an apologetic way. “Sorry about the note. But you didn’t look like you’d be coming back.” He gave a little shrug. “Here.” He pressed a copper jot into my hand.
I decided that he was not an altogether bad fellow. I smiled back at him and for a second I almost felt guilty about how I’d written the receipt.
I also felt guilty about the three pens I’d stolen, but only for a second. And since there was no convenient way to give them back, I stole a bottle of ink before I left.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Nature of Nobility
The two talents had a reassuring weight to them that had nothing to do with how heavy they were. Anyone who has been without money for a long time will know what I’m talking about. My first investment was a good leather purse. I wore it underneath my clothes, tight against my skin.
Next was a real breakfast. A plateful of hot eggs and a slice of ham. Bread that was fresh and soft, plenty of honey and butter on the side, and a glass of milk not two days from the cow. It cost me five iron pennies. It may be the best meal I ever ate.
It felt strange sitting at a table, eating with a knife and fork. It felt strange being around people. It felt strange having a person bring me food.
As I mopped up the remnants of my breakfast with an end of bread, I realized that I had a problem.
Even in this slightly grubby inn Waterside, I was attracting attention. My shirt was nothing more than an old burlap sack with holes for my arms and head. My pants were made out of canvas and too big by several degrees. They reeked of smoke, grease, and stagnant alley water. I’d been holding them up with a length of rope I had dug out of some trash. I was filthy, barefoot, and I stank.
Should I buy clothes or try to find a bath? If I bathed first, I would have to wear my old clothes afterward. However, if I t
ried to buy clothes looking the way I did now, I might not even be let into the store. And I doubted that anyone would want to measure me for a fit.
The innkeep came to take my plate, and I decided on a bath first, mainly because I was sick to death of smelling like a week-dead rat. I smiled up at him. “Where can I find a bath near here?”
“Here, if you have a couple pennies.” He looked me over. “Or I’ll work you an hour instead, a good hard hour. The hearth could use scrubbing.”
“I’ll need a lot of water, and soap.”
“Two hours then, I’ve got dishes too. Hearth first, then bath, then dishes. Fair?”
An hour or so later my shoulders ached and the hearth was clean. He showed me to a back room with a large wooden tub and a grate on the floor. There were pegs along the walls for clothes, and a sheet of tin nailed to the wall served as a crude mirror.
He brought me a brush, a bucket of steaming water, and a cake of lye soap. I scrubbed until I was sore and pink. The innkeeper brought a second bucket of hot water, then a third. I gave a silent prayer of thanks that I didn’t seem to be lousy. I had probably been too filthy for any self-respecting louse to take up residence.
As I rinsed myself for the last time, I looked at my discarded clothes. Cleaner than I’d been in years, I didn’t want to touch them, let alone wear them. If I tried to wash them they’d simply fall apart.
I dried myself off and I used the rough brush to pull through the snarls in my hair. It was longer than it had seemed when it was dirty. I wiped the fog from the makeshift mirror and was surprised. I looked old, older at any rate. Not only that, I looked like some young noble’s son. My face was lean and fair. My hair needed a bit of a trim, but was shoulder-length and straight, as was the current fashion. The only thing missing was a noble’s clothes.
And that gave me an idea.
Still naked, I wrapped myself in a towel and left by the back door. I took my purse but kept it out of sight. It was a little before noon and people were everywhere. Needless to say, quite a few eyes were turned in my direction. I ignored them and set a brisk pace, not trying to hide. I composed my features into an impassive, angry mask without a trace of embarrassment.
The Name of the Wind tkc-1 Page 23