Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind

“It fits,” I said, somewhat surprised.

“They’re your secrets,” she said, as if explaining something to a child. “Who else would it fit?”

Auri brushed her hair away behind her and made her curious half step to the side again. Almost like a curtsey, almost like a tiny dance. “I was wondering if you would join me for dinner tonight, Kvothe,” she said, her face serious. “I have brought apples and eggs. I can also offer a lovely honey wine.”

“I’d love to share dinner with you, Auri,” I said formally. “I have brought bread and cheese.”

Auri scampered down into the courtyard and in a few minutes returned with a delicate porcelain teacup for me. She poured the honey wine for both of us, drinking hers in a series of dainty sips from a silver beggar’s cup hardly bigger than a thimble.

I sat down on the roof and we shared our meal. I had a large loaf of brown barley bread and a wedge of hard white Dalonir cheese. Auri had ripe apples and a half dozen brown-spotted eggs that she had somehow managed to hard-boil. We ate them with salt I brought out from a pocket in my cloak.

We shared most of the meal in silence, simply enjoying each other’s company. Auri sat cross-legged with her back straight and her hair fanning out to all sides. As always, her careful delicacy somehow made this makeshift meal on a rooftop seem like a formal dinner in some nobleman’s hall.

“The wind has been bringing leaves into the Underthing lately,” Auri said conversationally toward the end of the meal. “Through the grates and tunnels. They settle in the Downings, so things are all a-rustle there.”

“Is that so?”

She nodded. “And a mother owl has moved in. Made her nest right in the middle of the Grey Twelve, bold as brass.”

“She’s something of a rarity then?”

She nodded. “Absolutely. Owls are wise. They are careful and patient. Wisdom precludes boldness.” She sipped from her cup, holding the handle daintily between her thumb and forefinger. “That is why owls make poor heroes.”

Wisdom precludes boldness. After my recent adventures in Trebon I couldn’t help but agree. “But this one is adventurous? An explorer?”

“Oh yes,” Auri said, her eyes wide. “She is fearless. She has a face like a wicked moon.”

She refilled her tiny silver cup with honey wine and emptied the last of it into my teacup. After tipping the bottle all the way upside-down, she pursed her lips and blew across the top of it in two sharp bursts so that it made a hooting noise. “Where’s my question?” she demanded.

I hesitated, unsure as to how she would respond to my request. “I was wondering, Auri. Would you mind showing me the Underthing?”

Auri looked away, suddenly shy. “Kvothe, I thought you were a gentleman,” she said, tugging self-consciously at her ragged shirt. “Imagine, asking to see a girl’s underthing.” She looked down, her hair hiding her face.

I held my breath for a moment, choosing my next words carefully lest I startle her back underground. While I was thinking, Auri peeked at me through the curtain of her hair.

“Auri,” I asked slowly, “are you joking with me?”

She looked up and grinned. “Yes, I am,” she said proudly. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

Auri took me through the heavy metal grate in the abandoned courtyard, down into the Underthing. I brought out my hand lamp to light the way. Auri had a light of her own, something she held in her cupped hands that gave off a soft, blue-green glow. I was curious about what she held but didn’t want to press her for too many secrets at once.

At first the Underthing was exactly what I had expected. Tunnels and pipes. Pipes for sewage, water, steam, and coal gas. Great black pig-iron pipes a man could crawl through, small, bright brass pipes no bigger around than your thumb. There was a vast network of stone tunnels, branching and connecting at odd angles. If there were any rhyme or reason to the place, it was lost on me.

Auri gave me a whirlwind tour, proud as a new mother, excited as a little girl. Her enthusiasm was infectious and I soon lost myself in the excitement of the moment, ignoring my original reasons for wanting to explore the tunnels. There is nothing quite so delightfully mysterious as a secret in your own backyard.

We made our way down three spiral staircases made of black wrought iron to reach the Grey Twelve. It was like standing in the bottom of a canyon. Looking up I could see faint moonlight filtering in through drain grates far overhead. The mother owl was gone, but Auri showed me the nest.

The deeper we went, the stranger things became. The round tunnels for drainage and pipes disappeared and were replaced with squared-off hallways and stairways strewn with rubble. Rotting wooden doors hung off rusted hinges, and there were half-collapsed rooms filled with moldering tables and chairs. One room had a pair of bricked-up windows despite the fact that we were, at my best guess, at least fifty feet below ground.

Deeper still, we came to Throughbottom, a room like a cathedral, so big that neither Auri’s blue light nor my red one reached the highest peaks of the ceiling. All around us were huge, ancient machines. Some lay in pieces: broken gears taller than a man, leather straps gone brittle with age, great wooden beams that were now explosions of white fungus, huge as hedgerows.

Other machines were intact but worn by centuries of neglect. I approached an iron block as big as a farmer’s cottage and broke off a single flake of rust large as a dinner plate. Underneath was nothing but more rust. Nearby there were three great pillars covered in green verdigris so thick it looked like moss. Many of the huge machines were beyond identifying, looking more melted than rusted. But I saw something that might have been a waterwheel, three stories tall, lying in a dry canal that ran like a chasm through the middle of the room.

I had only the vaguest of ideas as to what any of the machines might have done. I had no guess at all as to why they had lain here for uncounted centuries, deep underground. There didn’t seem—

The sound of heavy boots on the wooden landing startled the men sitting in the Waystone Inn. Kvothe bolted to his feet midsentence and was halfway to the bar before the front door opened and the first of the Felling night crowd made their way inside.

“You’ve got hungry men here, Kote!” Cob called out as he opened the door. Shep, Jake, and Graham followed him inside.

“We might have a little something in the back,” Kote said. “I could run and fetch it straightaway, unless you’d like drinks first.” There was a chorus of friendly assent as the men settled onto their stools at the bar. The exchange had a well-worn feel, comfortable as old shoes.

Chronicler stared at the red-haired man behind the bar. There was nothing left of Kvothe in him. It was just an innkeeper: friendly, servile, and so unassuming as to almost be invisible.

Jake took a long drink before noticing Chronicler sitting at the far end of the room. “Well, look at you, Kote! A new customer. Hell, we’re lucky to have got any seats at all.”

Shep chuckled. Cob swiveled his stool around and peered at where Chronicler sat next to Bast, pen still poised over his paper. “Is he a scribe or sommat?”

“He is,” Kote said quickly. “Came into town late last night.”

Cob squinted toward them. “What’s he writing?”

Kote lowered his voice a bit, drawing the attention of the customers away from the guest and back to his side of the bar. “Remember that trip Bast made to Baedn?” They nodded attentively. “Well, turns out he had a scare with the pox, and he’s been feeling his years a bit since then. He thought he’d best get his will writ down while he had the chance.”