Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind

So her name really was Nell. I would have found that amusing under different circumstances.

He turned to me and gave a smile that was really just a different sort of scowl. “Lord, boy, does your face hurt? It’s killing me.” He chortled at his own joke.

I glared at him. “I asked about my cousin.”

He shook his head. “She hasn’t come back. Good riddance to bad luck, I say.”

“Bring me bread, fruit, and whatever meat you have ready in the back,” I said. “And a bottle of Avennish fruit wine. Strawberry if you have it.”

He leaned up against the bar and raised an eyebrow at me. His scowl reshaped itself into a small, patronizing smile. “No sense rushing about, son. The constable will be wanting to talk to you now that you’re up.”

I clenched my teeth against my first choice of words and took a deep breath. “Listen, I’ve had an exceptionally irritating couple of days, my head hurts in ways you don’t have the full wit to understand, and I have a friend who might be in trouble.” I stared at him, icy in my calm. “I have no desire to have things turn unpleasant. So I am asking you, kindly, to get me what I asked for.” I brought out my purse. “Please.”

He looked at me, anger slowly bubbling up onto his face. “You mouthy little swaggercock. If you don’t show me a little respect, I’ll sit you down and tie you to a chair until the constable comes.”

I tossed an iron drab onto the bar, keeping another clenched tight in my fist.

He scowled at it. “What’s that?”

I concentrated and felt a chill begin to bleed up my arm. “That is your tip,” I said as a thin curl of smoke began to curl up from the drab. “For your quick and courteous service.”

The varnish around the drab began to bubble and char in a black ring around the piece of iron. The man stared at it, mute and horrified.

“Now fetch me what I asked for,” I said, looking him in the eye. “And a skin of water too. Or I will burn this place down around your ears and dance among the ashes and your charred, sticky bones.”

I came to the top of the greystone hill with my travelsack full. I was barefoot, out of breath, and my head was throbbing. Denna was nowhere to be seen.

Making a quick search of the area, I found all my scattered possessions where I’d left them. Both blankets. The waterskin was mostly empty but other than that, everything was here. Denna might have just stepped away for a call of nature.

I waited. I waited for longer than was entirely sensible. Then I called for her, softly at first, then louder, though my head throbbed when I shouted. Finally I just sat. All I could think about was Denna waking alone, aching, thirsty, and disoriented. What must she have thought?

I ate a little then, trying to think of what I could do next. I considered opening the bottle of wine, but knew it was a bad idea, as I undoubtedly had a mild concussion. I fought off the irrational worry that Denna might have wandered into the woods in a delirium, and that I should go look for her. I considered lighting a fire, so she would see it and come back. . . .

But no. I knew she was simply gone. She woke, saw that I wasn’t there, and left. She had said it herself when we left the inn in Trebon. I leave where I’m not wanted. The rest I can make up as I go. Did she think I had abandoned her?

Regardless, I knew in my bones that she was long gone from here. I packed up my travelsack. Then, just in case I was wrong, I wrote a note explaining what had happened and that I would wait for her in Trebon for a day. I used a piece of coal to write her name on one of the greystones, then drew an arrow down to where I left all the food I had brought, a bottle of water, and one of the blankets.

Then I left. My mood was not a pleasant one. My thoughts were not gentle or kind.

When I came back to Trebon, dusk was closing over the city. I made my way onto the rooftops with a little more care than usual. I wouldn’t be able to trust my balance until my head had a few days to mend itself.

Still it was no great feat to make it to the roof of the inn where I collected my boots. From this vantage, in the dim light, the town looked grim. The front half of the church had completely collapsed and nearly a third of the town had been scarred by fire. Some buildings were merely singed, but others were little more than ash and cinders. Despite my best efforts, the fire must have raged out of control after I was knocked unconscious.

I looked to the north and saw the peak of the greystone hill. I hoped to see the flicker of a fire, but there was nothing, of course.

I made my way over to the flat roof of the town hall and climbed the ladder to the cistern. It was almost empty. A few feet of water rippled near the bottom, far below where my knife pinned a charred shingle to the wall. That explained the state the town was in. When the water level had dropped below my makeshift sygaldry, the fire had flared up again. Still, it had slowed things down. If not for that, there might not be any town left at all.

Back at the inn a great many somber, sooty people were gathering to drink and gossip. My scowling friend was nowhere to be seen, but a cluster of folk were gathered around the bar, excitedly discussing something they saw there.

The mayor and constable were there too. As soon as they spotted me, they rushed me into a private room to talk.

I was tight-lipped and grim, and, after the events of the last several days, not terribly intimidated by the authority of two paunchy old men. They could tell, and that made them nervous. I had a headache and didn’t feel like explaining myself, and was quite comfortable tolerating an uncomfortable silence. Because of this, they talked quite a bit, and in asking their own questions, they told me most of what I wanted to know.

The town’s injuries were blessedly minor. Because it had been the harvest festival, no one had been caught sleeping. There were a lot of bruises, singed hair, and folk that had breathed more smoke than was good for them, but aside from a few bad burns and the fellow whose arm had been crushed by a falling timber, I looked to have gotten the worst of it.

They knew beyond all certainty that the draccus was a demon. A huge black demon breathing fire and poison. If there had been any slim sliver of doubt as to that fact, it had been laid to rest when the beast had been struck down by Tehlu’s own iron.

It was also agreed upon that the demon beast had been responsible for the destruction of the Mauthen farm. A reasonable conclusion despite the fact that it was dead wrong. Trying to convince them of anything else would be a pointless waste of my time.

I had been found unconscious atop the iron wheel that had killed the demon. The local sawbone doctor had patched me up as best he could, and, unfamiliar with the remarkable thickness of my skull, expressed serious doubts as to whether or not I would ever wake.

At first the general opinion was that I was merely an unlucky bystander, or that I had somehow pried the wheel off the church. However, my miraculous recovery combined with the fact that I had charred a hole into the bar downstairs encouraged people to finally take notice of what a young boy and an old widow had been saying all day: that when the old oak had gone up like a torch, they had seen someone standing on the roof of the church. He was lit by the fire below. His arms were raised in front of him, almost as if he were praying. . . .

Eventually the mayor and constable ran out of things to say to fill the silence, and merely sat there looking anxiously back and forth from me to each other.

It occurred to me they didn’t see a penniless, ragged boy sitting across from them. They saw a mysterious battered figure who had killed a demon. I saw no reason to dissuade them. In fact it was high time I caught a piece of luck in this business. If they considered me some sort of hero or holy man, it gave me useful leverage.