We live in a civilized age, and few places are more civilized than the University and its immediate environs. But parts of the iron law are left over from darker times. It had been a hundred years since anyone had been burned for Consortation or Unnatural Arts, but the laws were still there. The ink was faded, but the words were clear.
Ambrose wasn’t directly involved, of course. He was much too clever for that. This sort of trial was bad for the University’s reputation. If Ambrose had brought this case against me it would have infuriated the masters. They worked hard to protect the good name of the University in general and of the Arcanum in particular.
So Ambrose was in no way connected with the charges. Instead, the case was brought before Imre’s courts by a handful of Imre’s influential nobles. Oh, certainly they knew Ambrose, but that wasn’t incriminating. Ambrose knew everyone with power, blood, or money on either side of the river, after all.
Thus was I brought up against the iron law. For the space of six days it was a source of extraordinary irritation and anxiety to me. It disrupted my studies, brought my work in the Fishery to a standstill, and drove the final nail into the coffin I used to bury my hopes of ever finding a local patron.
What started as a terrifying experience quickly became a tedious process filled with pomp and ritual. More than forty letters of testimony were read aloud, confirmed, and copied into the official records. There were days filled with nothing but long speeches. Quotations from the iron law. Points of procedure. Formal modes of address. Old men reading out of old books.
I defended myself to the best of my ability, first in the Commonwealth court, then in church courts as well. Arwyl and Elxa Dal spoke on my behalf. Or rather, they wrote letters, then read them aloud to the court.
In the end, I was cleared of any wrongdoing. I thought I was vindicated. I thought I had won. . . .
But I was still terribly naive in many ways.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Interlude—A Bit of Fiddle
KVOTHE CAME SLOWLY TO his feet and gave a quick stretch. “Let’s pause there for now,” he said. “I expect we’ll see more than the usual number of people for lunch today. I need to check on the soup and get a few things ready.” He nodded to Chronicler. “You might want to do the same.”
Chronicler remained seated. “Wait a minute,” he said. “This was your trial in Imre?” He looked down at the page, dismayed. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Kvothe said. “Not much to it, really.”
“But that’s the first story I ever heard about you when I came to the University,” Chronicler protested. “How you learned Tema in a day. How you spoke your entire defense in verse and they applauded afterward. How you . . .”
“A lot of nonsense, I expect,” Kvothe said dismissively as he walked back to the bar. “You’ve got the bones of it.”
Chronicler looked down at the page. “You seem to be giving it pretty short shrift.”
“If you’re desperate for the full account, you can find it elsewhere,” Kvothe said. “Dozens of people saw the trial. There are already two full written accounts. I see no need to add a third.”
Chronicler was taken aback. “You’ve already spoken to a historian about this?”
Kvothe chuckled deep in his throat. “You sound like a jilted lover.” He began to bring out stacks of bowls and plates from beneath the bar. “Rest assured, you’re the first to get my story.”
“You said there were written accounts,” Chronicler said. Then his eyes widened. “Are you telling me you’ve written a memoir?” There was a strange note in the scribe’s voice, something almost like hunger.
Kvothe frowned. “No, not really.” He gave a gusty sigh. “I started something of the sort, but I gave it up as a bad idea.”
“You wrote all the way to your trial in Imre?” Chronicler said, looking at the paper in front of him. Only then did he realize he was still holding his pen poised above the page. He began to unscrew and clean the brass nib of the pen on a cloth with an air of vast irritation. “If you already had all this written down, you could have saved me cramping my hand for the last day and a half.”
Kvothe’s forehead creased in confusion. “What?”
Chronicler rubbed the nib briskly with a cloth, every motion screaming with affronted dignity. “I should have known,” he said. “It all fit together too smoothly.” He glared up. “Do you know how much this paper cost me?” He made an angry gesture to the satchel that held the finished pages.
Kvothe simply stared at him for a moment, then laughed with sudden understanding. “You misunderstand. I gave up the memoir after a day or so. I wrote a handful of pages. Not even that.”
The irritation faded from Chronicler’s face, leaving a sheepish expression. “Oh.”
“You are like a wounded lover,” Kvothe said, amused. “Good lord, calm yourself. My story is virginal. Yours are the first hands to touch it.” He shook his head. “There’s something different about writing a story down. I don’t seem to have the knack for it. It came out all wrong.”
“I’d love to see what you wrote,” Chronicler said, leaning forward in his chair. “Even if it’s just a few pages.”
“It was quite a while ago,” Kvothe said. “I don’t know if I remember where the pages are.”
“They’re up in your room, Reshi,” Bast said brightly. “On your desk.”
Kvothe gave a deep sigh. “I was trying to be gracious, Bast. The truth is, there’s nothing on them worth showing to anyone. If I’d written anything worth reading, I would have kept writing it.” He walked into the kitchen and there were muted, bustling sounds from the back room.
“Good try,” Bast said softly. “But it’s a lost cause. I’ve tried.”
“Don’t coach me,” Chronicler said testily. “I know how to get a story out of a person.”
There was more bumping from the back room, a splash of water, the sound of a door closing.
Chronicler looked at Bast. “Shouldn’t you go help him?”
Bast shrugged, lounging further back into his chair.
After a moment, Kvothe emerged from the back room carrying a cutting board and a bowl full of freshly scrubbed vegetables.
“I’m afraid I’m still confused,” Chronicler said. “How can there already be two written accounts if you never wrote it yourself or talked to a historian?”
“Never been brought to trial, have you?” Kvothe said, amused. “The Commonwealth courts keep painstaking records, and the church is even more obsessive. If you have a desperate desire for the details, you can dig around in their deposition ledgers and act books respectively.”
“That might be the case,” Chronicler said. “But your account of the trial . . .”
“Would be tedious,” Kvothe said. He finished paring the carrots, and began to cut them. “Endless formal speeches and readings from the Book of the Path. It was tedious to live through, and it would be tedious to repeat.”
He brushed the sliced carrots from the board into a nearby bowl. “I’ve probably kept us at the University too long, anyway,” he said. “We’ll need the time for other things. Things no one has ever seen or heard.”
“Reshi no!” Bast shouted in alarm, sitting bolt upright in his chair. His expression was plaintive as he pointed to the bar. “Beets?”
Kvothe looked down at the dark red root on the cutting board as if surprised to see it there.
“Don’t put beets in the soup, Reshi,” Bast said. “They’re foul.”
“A lot of people like beets, Bast,” Kvothe said. “And they’re healthful. Good for the blood.”
“I hate beets,” Bast said piteously.
“Well,” Kvothe said calmly, “since I’m finishing the soup, I get to pick what goes into it.”
Bast came to his feet and stomped toward the bar. “I’ll take care of it then,” he said impatiently, making a shooing motion. “You go get some sausage and one of those veiny cheeses.” He pushed Kvothe toward the basement steps
before storming into the kitchen, muttering. Soon there was the sound of rattling and thumping from the back room.
Kvothe looked over at Chronicler and gave a wide, lazy smile.
People began to trickle into the Waystone Inn. They came in twos and threes, smelling of sweat and horses and freshly mown wheat. They laughed and talked and tracked chaff across the clean wooden floors.
Chronicler did a brisk business. Folk sat leaning forward in their chairs, sometimes gesturing with their hands, sometimes speaking with slow deliberation. The scribe’s face was impassive as his pen scratched across the page, occasionally darting back for ink.
Bast and the man who called himself Kote worked together as a comfortable team. They served up soup and bread. Apples, cheese, and sausage. Beer and ale and cool water from the pump out back. There was roasted mutton too, for those who wanted it, and fresh apple pie.
Men and women smiled and relaxed, glad to be off their feet and sitting in the shade. The room was full of the gentle buzz of conversation as folk gossiped with neighbors they had known their whole lives. Familiar insults, soft and harmless as butter, were traded back and forth, and friends had comfortable arguments about whose turn it was to buy the beer.
But underneath it all, there was a tension in the room. A stranger would never have noticed it, but it was there, dark and silent as an undertow. No one spoke of taxes, or armies, or how they had begun to lock their doors at night. No one spoke of what had happened in the inn the night before. No one eyed the stretch of well-scrubbed wooden floor that didn’t show a trace of blood.
Instead there were jokes and stories. A young wife kissed her husband, drawing whistles and hoots from the rest of the room. Old Man Benton tried to lift up the hem of the Widow Creel’s skirt with his cane, cackling when she swatted him. A pair of little girls chased each other around the tables, shrieking and laughing while everyone watched and smiled fond smiles. It helped a bit. It was all that you could do.
The inn’s door banged open. Old Cob, Graham, and Jake trudged in out of the brilliant midday sunlight.
“Hullo Kote!” Old Cob called, looking around at the handful of people spread around the inn. “You’ve got a bit of a crowd in here today!”
“You missed the bigger part of it,” Bast said. “We were downright frantic for a while.”
“Anything left for the stragglers?” Graham asked as he sank onto his stool.
Before he could reply, a bull-shouldered man clattered an empty plate onto the bar and set a fork down gently beside it. “That,” he said in a booming voice, “was a damn fine pie.”
A thin woman with a pinched face stood next to him. “Don’t you cuss, Elias,” she said sharply. “There’s no call for that.”
“Oh honey,” the big man said. “Don’t get yourself in a twit. Damfine is a kind of apple, innit?” He grinned around at the folks sitting at the bar. “Sort of foreign apple from off in Atur? They named it after Baron Damfine if I remember correct.”
Graham grinned back at him. “I think I heard that.”
The woman glared at all of them.
“I got these from the Bentons,” the innkeeper said meekly.
“Oh,” the big farmer said with a smile. “That’s my mistake then.” He picked up a crumb of crust from the plate and chewed it speculatively. “I’d swear it was a Damfine pie for all that. Maybe the Bentons got them some Damfine apples and don’t know it.”
His wife sniffed, then saw Chronicler sitting idle at his table and pulled her husband away.
Old Cob watched them go, shaking his head. “I don’t know what that woman needs in her life to make her a little happy,” he said. “But I hope she finds it before she pecks old Eli bloody.”
Jake and Graham made vague grumbles of agreement.
“Nice to see folks filling up the place.” Old Cob looked at the red-haired man behind the bar. “You’re a fine cook, Kote. And you’ve got the best beer in twenty miles. All folk need is a bit of an excuse to stop by.”
Old Cob tapped the side of his nose speculatively. “You know,” he said to the innkeeper. “You should bring in a singer or sommat on nights. Hell, even the Orrison boy can play a bit of his daddy’s fiddle. I bet he’d be glad to come in for the price of a couple drinks.” He looked around at the inn. “A little music is just what this place needs.”
The innkeeper nodded. His expression was so easy and amiable it almost wasn’t an expression at all. “I expect you’re right,” Kote said. His voice was perfectly calm. It was a perfectly normal voice. It was colorless and clear as window glass.
Old Cob opened his mouth, but before he could say anything else Bast rapped one knuckle hard on the bar. “Drinks?” he asked the men sitting at the bar. “I’m guessing you’d all like a little something before we bring you out a bite to eat.”
They did, and Bast bustled around behind the bar, pulling beer into mugs and pressing them into waiting hands. After a slow moment, the innkeeper swung silently into motion alongside his assistant, heading into the kitchen to fetch soup. And bread with butter. And cheese. And apples.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Interlude—The Hempen Verse
CHRONICLER SMILED AS HE made his way to the bar. “That’s a solid hour’s work,” he said proudly as he took a seat. “I don’t suppose there’s anything left in the kitchen for me?”
“Or any of that pie Eli mentioned?” Jake asked hopefully.
“I want pie too,” Bast said, sitting next to Jake, nursing a drink of his own.
The innkeeper smiled, wiping his hands on his apron. “I think I might have remembered to set one by, just in case you three came in later than the rest.”
Old Cob rubbed his hands together. “Can’t remember last time I had warm apple pie,” he said.
The innkeeper went back into the kitchen. He pulled the pie from the oven, sliced it, and laid the pieces neatly onto plates. By the time he carried them out toward the taproom he could hear raised voices in the other room.
“It was too a demon, Jake,” Old Cob was saying angrily. “I told you last night, and I’ll tell you again a hundred times. I’m not a one to change my mind like other folk change their socks.” He held up a finger. “He called up a demon and it bit this fellow and sucked out his juice like a plum. I heard it from a fella who knew a woman that seen it herself.That’s why the constable and the deputies came and hauled him off. Meddling with dark forces is against the law over in Amary.”
“I still say folk just thought it was a demon,” Jake persisted. “You know how folk are.”
“I know folk.” Old Cob scowled. “I’ve been around longer than you Jacob. And I know my own story too.”
There was a long moment of tense silence at the bar before Jake looked away. “I was just sayin’,” he muttered.
The innkeeper slid a bowl of soup toward Chronicler. “What’s this then?”
The scribe gave the innkeeper a sly look. “Cob’s telling us about Kvothe’s trial in Imre,” he said, a hint of smugness in his voice. “Don’t you remember? He started the story last night but only made it halfway through.”
“Now.” Cob glared around, as if daring them to interrupt. “It was a tight spot. Kvothe knew if he was found guilty they’d string him up and let him hang.” Cob made a gesture to one side of his neck like he was holding a noose, tilting his head to the side.
“But Kvothe had read a great many books when he was at the University, and he knew himself a trick.” Old Cob stopped to take a forkful of pie and closed his eyes for a moment as he chewed. “Oh lord and lady,” he said to himself. “That’s a proper pie. I swear it’s better than me mam used to make. She always skint on the sugar.” He took another bite, a blissful expression spreading over his weathered face.
“So Kvothe knew a trick?” Chronicler prompted.
“What? Oh.” Cob seemed to remember himself. “Right. You see, there’s two lines in the Book of the Path, and if you can read them out loud in the old Tema only priests know,
then the iron law says you get treated like a priest. That means a Commonwealth judge can’t do a damn thing to you. If you read those lines, your case has to be decided by the church courts.”
Old Cob took another bite of pie and chewed it slowly before swallowing. “Those two lines are called the hempen verse, because if you know them, you can keep yourself from getting strung up. The church courts can’t hang a man, you see.”
“What are the lines?” Bast asked.
“I dearly wish I knew,” Old Cob said mournfully. “But I don’t speak Tema. Kvothe didn’t know it himself. But he memorized the verse ahead of time. Then he pretended to read it and the Commonwealth court had to let him go.
“Kvothe knew he had two days until a Tehlin Justice could make it all the way to Amary. So he set about learning Tema. He read books and practiced for a whole day and a whole night. And he was so powerful smart that at the end of his studying he could speak Tema better than most folk who been doing it their whole lives.
“Then, on the second day before the Justice showed up, Kvothe mixed himself a potion. It was made out of honey, and a special stone you find in a snake’s brain, and a plant that only grows at the bottom of the sea. When he drank the potion, it made his voice so sweet anyone who listened couldn’t help but agree with anything he said.
“So when the Justice finally showed up, the whole trial only took fifteen minutes,” Cob said, chuckling. “Kvothe gave a fine speech in perfect Tema, everyone agreed with him, and they all went home.”
“And he lived happily ever after,” the red-haired man said softly from behind the bar.
Things were quiet at the bar. Outside the air was dry and hot, full of dust and the smell of chaff. The sunlight was hard and bright as a bar of gold.
Inside the Waystone it was dim and cool. The men had just finished the last slow bites of their pie, and there was still a little beer in their mugs. So they sat for a little while longer, slouching at the bar with the guilty air of men too proud to be properly lazy.