Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind

Chronicler shook his head.

Looking up, Kvothe grinned and tossed his shoulders in a nonchalant shrug. “Neither do I. You’d think that sort of thing would stick in a person’s mind. You’d think I would remember how many bones I’ve had broken. You’d think I’d remember the stitches and bandages.” He shook his head. “I don’t. I remember that young boy sobbing in the dark. Clear as a bell after all these years.”

Chronicler frowned. “You said yourself that there was nothing you could have done.”

“I could have,” Kvothe said seriously, “and I didn’t. I made my choice and I regret it to this day. Bones mend. Regret stays with you forever.”

Kvothe pushed himself away from the table. “That’s enough of Tarbean’s darker side, I imagine.” He came to his feet and gave a great stretch, arms over his head.

“Why, Reshi?” The words poured out of Bast in a sudden gush. “Why did you stay there when it was so awful?”

Kvothe nodded to himself, as if he had been expecting the question. “Where else was there for me to go, Bast? Everyone I knew was dead.”

“Not everyone,” Bast insisted. “There was Abenthy. You could have gone to him.”

“Hallowfell was hundreds of miles away, Bast,” Kvothe said wearily as he wandered to the other side of the room and moved behind the bar. “Hundreds of miles without my father’s maps to guide me. Hundreds of miles without wagons to ride or sleep in. Without help of any sort, or money, or shoes. Not an impossible journey, I suppose. But for a young child, still numb with the shock of losing his parents. . . .”

Kvothe shook his head. “No. In Tarbean at least I could beg or steal. I’d managed to survive in the forest for a summer, barely. But over the winter?” He shook his head. “I would have starved or frozen to death.”

Standing at the bar, Kvothe filled his mug and began to add pinches of spice from several small containers, then walked toward the great stone fireplace, a thoughtful expression on his face. “You’re right, of course. Anywhere would have been better than Tarbean.”

He shrugged, facing the fire. “But we are all creatures of habit. It is far too easy to stay in the familiar ruts we dig for ourselves. Perhaps I even viewed it as fair. My punishment for not being there to help when the Chandrian came. My punishment for not dying when I should have, with the rest of my family.”

Bast opened his mouth, then closed it and looked down at the tabletop, frowning.

Kvothe looked over his shoulder and gave a gentle smile. “I’m not saying it’s rational, Bast. Emotions by their very nature are not reasonable things. I don’t feel that way now, but back then I did. I remember.” He turned back to the fire. “Ben’s training has given me a memory so clean and sharp I have to be careful not to cut myself sometimes.”

Kvothe took a mulling stone from the fire and dropped it into his wooden mug. It sank with a sharp hiss. The smell of searing clove and nutmeg filled the room.

Kvothe stirred his cider with a long-handled spoon as he made his way back to the table. “You must also remember that I was not in my right mind. Much of me was still in shock, sleeping if you will. I needed something, or someone, to wake me up.”

He nodded to Chronicler, who casually shook his writing hand to loosen it, then unstoppered his inkwell.

Kvothe leaned back in his seat. “I needed to be reminded of things I had forgotten. I needed a reason to leave. It was years before I met someone who could do those things.” He smiled at Chronicler. “Before I met Skarpi.”

I had been in Tarbean for years at this point. Three birthdays had slipped by unnoticed and I was just past fifteen. I knew how to survive Waterside. I had become an accomplished beggar and thief. Locks and pockets opened to my touch. I knew which pawnshops bought goods “from uncle” with no questions asked.

I was still ragged and frequently hungry, but I was in no real danger of starving. I had been slowly building my rainy-day money. Even after a hard winter that had frequently forced me to pay for a warm spot to sleep, my hoard was over twenty iron pennies. It was like a dragon’s treasure to me.

I had grown comfortable there. But aside from the desire to add to my rainy-day money I had nothing to live for. Nothing driving me. Nothing to look forward to. My days were spent looking for things to steal and ways to entertain myself.

But that had changed a few days earlier in Trapis’ basement. I had heard a young girl speaking in an awed voice about a storyteller who spent all his time in a Dockside bar called the Half-Mast. Apparently, every sixth bell he told a story. Any story you asked for, he knew. What’s more, she said that he had a bet going. If he didn’t know your story, he would give you a whole talent.

I thought about what the girl had said for the rest of the day. I doubted it was true, but I couldn’t help thinking about what I could do with a whole silver talent. I could buy shoes, and maybe a knife, give money to Trapis, and still double my rainy-day fund.

Even if the girl was lying about the bet, I was still interested. Entertainment was hard to come by on the streets. Occasionally some ragamuffin troupe would mum a play on a street corner or I’d hear a fiddler in a pub. But most real entertainment cost money, and my hard-won pennies were too precious to squander.

But there was a problem. Dockside wasn’t safe for me.

I should explain. More than a year before, I had seen Pike walking down the street. It had been the first time I’d seen him since my first day in Tarbean when he and his friends had jumped me in that alley and destroyed my father’s lute.

I followed him carefully for the better part of a day, keeping my distance and staying in the shadows. Eventually he went home to a little box alley Dockside where he had his own version of my secret place. His was a nest of broken crates he had cobbled together to keep the weather off.

I perched on the roof all night, waiting until he left the next morning. Then I made my way down to his nest of crates and looked around. It was cozy, filled with the accumulated small possessions of several years. He had a bottle of beer, which I drank. There was also half a cheese that I ate, and a shirt that I stole, as it was slightly less raggedy than my own.

Further searching revealed various odds and ends, a candle, a ball of string, some marbles. Most surprising were several pieces of sailcloth with charcoal drawings of a woman’s face. I had to search for nearly ten minutes until I found what I was really looking for. Hidden away behind everything else was a small wooden box that showed signs of much handling. It held a bundle of dried violets tied with a white ribbon, a toy horse that had lost most of its string mane, and a lock of curling blond hair.

It took me several minutes with flint and steel to get the fire going. The violets were good tinder and soon greasy clouds of smoke were billowing high into the air. I stood by and watched as everything Pike loved went up in flames.

But I stayed too long, savoring the moment. Pike and a friend came running down the box alley, drawn by the smoke, and I was trapped. Furious, Pike jumped me. He was taller by six inches and outweighed me by fifty pounds. Worse, he had a piece of broken glass wrapped with twine at one end, making a crude knife.

He stabbed me once in the thigh right above my knee before I smashed his hand into the cobblestones, shattering the knife. After that he still gave me a black eye and several broken ribs before I managed to kick him squarely between the legs and get free. As I pelted away he limped after me, shouting that he would kill me for what I’d done.