Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind

She smiled at me and might have said something, but I got a strange feeling near the base of my neck. Someone was watching me. On the street you either develop a sensitivity to certain things, or your life is miserable and short.

I looked around and saw a shopkeeper talking with a guard and gesturing in my direction. This wasn’t some Waterside guard. He was clean-shaven and upright. He wore a black leather jerkin with metal studs and carried a brass-bound club as long as his arm. I caught scraps of what the shopkeeper was saying.

“. . . customers. Who’s going to buy chocolate with . . .” He gestured my way again and said something I couldn’t catch. “. . . pays you? That’s right. Maybe I should mention . . .”

The guard turned his head to look in my direction. I caught his eyes. I turned and ran.

I headed for the first alley I saw, my thin shoes slipping on the light layer of snow that covered the ground. I heard his heavy boots pounding behind me as I turned into a second alley branching off from the first.

My breath was burning in my chest as I looked for somewhere to go, somewhere to hide. But I didn’t know this part of the city. There were no piles of trash to worm into, no burned-out buildings to climb through. I felt sharp frozen gravel slice through the thin sole of one of my shoes. Pain tore through my foot as I forced myself to keep running.

I ran into a dead end after my third turning. I was halfway up one of the walls when I felt a hand close around my ankle and pull me to the ground.

My head hit the cobblestones and the world spun dizzily as the guard lifted me off the ground, holding me by one wrist and my hair. “Clever boy, aren’t you?” he panted, his breath hot on my face. He smelled like leather and sweat. “You’re old enough, you should know not to run by now.” He shook me angrily and twisted my hair. I cried out as the alley tilted around me.

He pressed me roughly against a wall. “You should know enough not to be coming Hillside either.” He shook me. “You dumb, boy?”

“No,” I said muzzily as I felt for the cool wall with my free hand. “No.”

My answer seemed to infuriate him. “No?” he bit off the word. “You got me in trouble, boy. I might get written up. If you aren’t dumb, then you must need a lesson.” He spun me around and threw me down. I slid in the greasy alley snow. My elbow struck the ground and my arm went numb. The hand clutching a month of food, warm blankets, and dry shoes came open. Something precious flew away and landed without even a clink as it hit the ground.

I hardly noticed. The air hummed before his club cracked against my leg. He snarled at me, “Don’t come Hillside, understand?” The club caught me again, this time across the shoulder blades. “Everything past Fallow Street is off limits to you little whore’s sons. Understand?” he backhanded me across the face and I tasted blood as my head careened off the snow-covered cobbles.

I curled into a ball as he hissed down at me. “And Mill Street and Mill Market is where I work, so you never. Come. Back. Here. Again.” He punctuated each word with a blow from his stick. “Understand?”

I lay there shaking in the churned-up snow, hoping it was over. Hoping he would just go away. “Understand?” He kicked me in the stomach and I felt something tear inside of me.

I cried out and must have babbled something. He kicked me again when I didn’t get up, then went away.

I think I passed out or lay in a daze. When I finally came to my senses again, it was dusk. I was cold to the very center of my bones. I crawled around in the muddy snow and wet garbage, searching for the silver penny with fingers so numb with cold they would barely work.

One of my eyes was swelled shut and I could taste blood, but I searched until the last scrap of evening’s light was gone. Even after the alley had gone black as tar I kept sifting the snow with my hands, though I knew in my heart of hearts that my fingers were too numb to feel the coin even if I chanced across it.

I used the wall to get to my feet and started to walk. My wounded foot made progress slow. Pain stabbed up my leg with each step, and I tried to use the wall as a crutch to keep some weight off it.

I moved into Waterside, the part of the city that was more a home to me than anywhere else. My foot grew numb and wooden from the cold, and while that worried some rational piece of me, my practical side was just glad there was one less part of me that hurt.

It was miles back to my secret place, and my limping progress was slow. At some point I must have fallen. I don’t remember it, but I do remember lying in the snow and realizing how delightfully comfortable it was. I felt sleep drawing itself over me like a thick blanket, like death.

I closed my eyes. I remember the deep silence of the deserted street around me. I was too numb and tired to be properly afraid. In my delirium, I imagined death in the form of a great bird with wings of fire and shadow. It hovered above, watching patiently, waiting for me. . . .

I slept, and the great bird settled its burning wings around me. I imagined a delicious warmth. Then its claws were in me, tearing me open—

No, it was just the pain of my torn ribs as someone rolled me onto my back.

Blearily, I opened an eye and saw a demon standing over me. In my confused and credulous state, the sight of the man in the demon mask startled me into wakefulness, the seductive warmth I had felt a moment ago vanished, leaving my body limp and leaden.

“It is . I told you. There’s a kid lying in the snow here!” The demon lifted me to my feet.

Now awake, I noticed his mask was sheer black. This was Encanis, Lord of Demons. He set me unsteadily onto my feet and began to brush away the snow that covered me.

Through my good eye I saw a figure in a livid green mask standing nearby. “Come on . . .” the other demon said urgently, her voice sounding hollowly from behind the rows of pointed teeth.

Encanis ignored her. “Are you okay?”

I couldn’t think of a response, so I concentrated on keeping my balance as the man continued to brush the snow away with the sleeve of his dark robe. I heard the sound of distant horns.

The other demon looked nervously down the road. “If we don’t keep ahead of them we’ll be up to our shins in it,” she hissed nervously.

Encanis brushed the snow out of my hair with his dark gloved fingers, then paused and leaned in closer to look at my face. His dark mask loomed oddly in my blurry vision.

“God’s body, Holly, someone’s beaten hell out of this kid. On Midwinter’s Day, too.”

“Guard,” I managed to croak. I tasted blood when I said the word.

“You’re freezing,” Encanis said and began to chafe my arms and legs with his hands, trying to get my blood flowing again. “You’ll have to come with us.”

The horns sounded again, closer. They were mixed with the dim sounds of a crowd.

“Don’t be stupid,” the other demon said. “He’s in no shape to go running through the city.”

“He’s in no shape to stay here,” Encanis snapped. He continued to massage my arms and legs roughly. Some feeling was slowly returning to them, mostly a stinging, prickly heat that was like a painful mockery of the soothing warmth I had felt a minute ago when I was drifting off to sleep. Pain jabbed at me each time he went over a bruise, but my body was too tired to flinch away.

The green-masked demon came close and laid a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “We have to go now, Gerrek! Someone else will take care of him.” She tried to pull her friend away and met with no success. “If they find us here with him they’ll assume we did it.”

The man behind the black mask swore, then nodded and began to rummage around underneath his robe. “Don’t lie down again,” he said to me in urgent tones. “And get inside. Somewhere you can warm up.” The crowd sounds were close enough for me to hear individual voices mixed with the noise of horses’ hooves and creaking wooden wheels. The man in the black mask held out his hand.