Patrick Rothfuss - The Slow Regard of Silent Things

She uncovered Foxen and went to look at the leak again. The air was still hot and thick with wet, so she went back to her sitting place where there was nothing to do but fidget and worry. Auri considered running back to fetch the brazen gear. Then at least she would have company. But no. She had to stay.

A leak was bad. But a leak might go unnoticed for some time. Now, with the water to this piece of pipe turned off entire, there was every chance that something vital up above was all alack. No knowing what. The pipe could lead to some disused piece of Mains, where it could stay dry for years with no one anyways the wiser.

But perhaps it led to the Master’s Hall, and right now one of them was halfway through a bath. What if it led to Crucible, and some experiment left to calmly calcinate was instead undergoing unintended exothermic full cascade?

It led to the same thing. Upset. Folk finding keys. Folk opening doors. Strangers in her Underthing, shining their unseemly lights about. Their smoke. The braying of their voices. Tromping everywhere with hard, uncaring boots. Looking at everything without a single thought of what a look entails. Poking things and messing them about without the slightest sense of what was proper.

Auri realized her fists were knots of knuckle white. She shook herself and stood. Her hair hung lank around her head.

The air was clearer now. Not wet and steaming any more. She gathered up her tools and was glad to see the steampipe had finally roasted both itself and everything around it dry. Better still, the slow regard of silent things had wafted off the moisture in the air.

Auri brought Foxen close to the black iron pipe, and was relieved to see the trouble was no greater than a hair-thin crack. Though the pipe looked dry, she wiped it with her handkerchief. Wiped it again. Then she unstoppered the bottle, dipped her brush, and spread clear liquid all across the tiny break.

Wrinkling her nose at the knifelike smell, Auri dipped her brush again, painting all around the pipe. She grinned and eyed the bottle. It was lovely. Tenaculum was tricky stuff, but this was perfect. Not thick like jam, not thin like water. It clung and stuck and spread. It was full of green grass and leaping and . . . sulphonium? Naphtha? Hardly what she would have used, but you couldn’t argue with results. The craft employed was undeniable.

Soon she had coated the entire pipe around the crack in glistening liquid. She licked her lips, looked up, then worked her mouth and spat delicately onto the far edge of the wet. The surface of the tenaculum rippled and her grin grew wider. She reached out a finger and was pleased to find it hard and smooth as glass. Oh yes. Whoever wrought and factored this was living proof that alchemy was art. It showed pure mastery of craft.

Auri painted two more coats, laving all way round the pipe and for a handspan off beside the hairline crack. Twice more she spat to set and glaze it. Then she stoppered up the bottle, kissed it, smiled, and sprinted back to turn the water on.

Her duty done, Auri tended to the brush and headed back to Tenance. She pressed her ear against the door. Listened. She heard a faint . . . No. Nothing. She held her breath and listened. Nothing.

Even so, she opened the door slowly. She looked inside to see there was no light around the other door. For a moment her heart stuttered as she thought she saw new bootprints on . . . But no. Just shadow. Just her own breath-catching fear.

Carefully she put the bottle back upon its shelf, setting it inside its own dark dustless ring where she had found it. And then the brush. She stepped carefully inside the big black brutish treadings of the boots. She wasn’t one for rucking things about. She stepped the way the water moves within a gentle wave. Never mind the motion, the water stays unchanged. That was the proper way of things.

She slowly closed the heavy door behind her. She checked the latch to make herself most certain sure. Stepping back into the Underthing, the stones should have been sweet beneath her feet. But they were not. They were mere stones. The air seemed strange and strained. Something was wrong.

She stopped and listened at the door again. She listened closer, then opened up the door a crack to peer inside. Nothing. She closed the door and checked the latch. She leaned her weight against the door and tried to sigh but could not find the breath for it inside her chest. Something was wrong. She had forgotten something.

Auri ran back to Rubric, heart stuttering as she turned wrong. Then wrong again. But then she found the valve again. She went down on her knees to make herself most certain sure she’d turned it open and not closed. She put both hands upon the pipe and felt the tremble of the water running through.

Not that then. But still. Had she moved carefully enough? Had she left a smudge upon the floor? Auri sprinted back to Tenance and put her ear against the door. Nothing. She opened the door and lifted Foxen high so that his light shone down onto the dust. Nothing.

By now her skin was all asheen with sweat. She closed the heavy door. She checked the latch and leaned her slender weight against it, pressing with her hands and forehead. She tried to breathe more deeply but her heart was stiff and tight inside her chest. There was something wrong about the air. The door refused to sit right in its frame. She pressed against it with both palms. She checked the latch. Foxen’s light seemed suddenly too thin. Had she moved carefully enough? No. She knew. She listened, then opened up the door and looked again. Nothing. But simply seeing did not help. She knew that seeming wasn’t hardly half of things. Something was wrong. She tried, but she could simply not unclench. She could not catch her breath. The stones beneath her feet were nothing like her stones. She needed to get somewhere safe.

Despite the stones, the strangeness in the air, Auri started walking back to Mantle. She took the safest way, but even so her steps were slow. And even so, she sometimes had to stop and close her eyes and merely breathe. And even so, the breathing hardly helped. How could it when the air itself had gone untrue?

The angles were all wrong in Pickering but she didn’t realize how lost she had become until she looked around and found herself in Scaperling. She did not know how she had come to be so out of place, but there was no denying where she was. The damp was all around. The smell of rot. The grit under her feet. The way the walls were leering. She turned and turned again but could not find her place.

She tried to push ahead. She knew that if she walked and turned and walked eventually she must leave grim, gritty Scaperling behind. She would come out into a friendly place. Or at least a place that did not twist and cramp and loom all round her.

So she walked and turned and looked around, hoping beyond hope for a glimpse of the familiar. Hoping that the stones might slowly start to belong underneath her feet. But no. The hammer of her heart told her to run. She needed her safe place. She needed to get back to Mantle. But where was the way of it? Even if she knew the way, the air was growing tight and dizzy all around her. Though she was loath to touch them, Auri stretched her hand to lean against the sharp unkindness of the wall.

Slow steps. A turn. She smiled to see things open up ahead of her. Finally. Her chest began to loosen up when finally she saw the end of Scaperling ahead. She took two steps before she realized what way it offered out. She stopped. No. No no. The tangle of unwelcome tunnel opened up ahead. But it opened out into the vast and empty quiet of Black Door.

Auri did not even turn around. She merely took step after slow and sliding step back the same way she had come. It was hard. The wall caught at her hand and worried it, scraping skin off of her knuckles. The damp tight knot of Scaperling did not want her back inside. But Black Door did. The wide and welcome path to Black Door stretched before her like a dark black open mouth. A maw. A maul.