The Slow Regard of Silent Things: A Kingkiller Chronicle Novella (The Kingkiller Chronicle) (10 page)

And it
bit
her. It sunk its teeth into the meaty bit between her finger and her thumb.

Auri blinked and pulled herself back to the edge, cupping the small skunk gently in her hand. It struggled, and she was forced to grip it tighter than she liked. If it fell into the pool again, it might gasp and drown before she found and fetched it out.

Once both her feet were back upon the stone, Auri made a cage for the tiny skunk with both her hands against her chest. With no hands left to hold her lamp, Auri trusted to the moonlight as she scurried up Old Ironways. It squirmed and scratched at her chest, fighting to be free, biting her a second time on the tip-pad of her smallest finger.

But by then she’d reached the nearest grate. She lifted up her hand and nudged the poor lost thing outside. Out of the Underthing and back toward its proper nighttime place of mothers, bins, and cobblestones.

Auri made her way back to the bottom of The Silver Twelve and ducked her throbbing hand into the pool. It stung quite badly, but truthfully, it was her feelings that were worst hurt. It had been a mortal age since anything had been so rude to her.

Her name hung dark and heavy in her chest as Auri dragged her dress on over her head. It didn’t fit her properly today. It felt like everything was leering at her in the yellow light. Her hair was dreadful.

Auri walked back to Mantle, taking the long way around to avoid Van so she wouldn’t have to see herself in her mirror. Coming into Port, she saw that nearly everything was wrong. Of course. It was just that sort of day.

She set the lamp on the table harder than she needed to, making the flame jump high. Then she did her best to set the place to rights. Hollybottle close beside the folded secrets of the all uncut octavo book? No. By itself on the farthest edge of secondshelf. The resin wanted its own space. The brimful jar of dark blue laurel fruit moved back onto the corner table. The tiny stone figurine perched high upon the wine rack, as if it were so much better than the rest of them.

The only thing that kept its place was her new-won perfect piece of honeycomb. She almost took a bite of it for no good reason other than to brighten up her day. She might have too, selfish as that would be. But she couldn’t bear the thought of touching it, given the state that she was in.

When things were squared away as well as she could manage, Auri took the lamp and stepped through, into Mantle. Her cedar box was in a state of minor disarray, and there were broken matches strewn about, but both of those were quickly mended. The brazen gear was fine. Her perfect leaf. Her box of stone. Her ring of autumn gold. Her grey glass bottle filled with lavender. All fine. She felt herself relax a bit.

Then she saw her blanket. Her perfect blanket she had made herself in only the most proper way. It had twisted and the corner lay all naked on the floor.

Auri merely stood there for a long moment. She thought that she might cry, but when she felt around inside herself she found she had no crying left. She was full of broken glass and burrs. She was weary and disappointed with all of everything. And her hand hurt.

But there was no crying left in her. So instead she gathered up her blanket and carried it to Billows. After searching out a clean brass pipe, she hung it like a curtain in the center of the tunnel, let the endless wind brush past, and watched it wicker gently back and forth. It billowed and luffed, but that was all.

Auri frowned and moved to pull the blanket down again. But she was careless, and a puff of wind blew out her lamp. Re-lighting it cost her another precious match.

Once Billows was full of flickerlight again, Auri tugged the blanket down, turned it over, and hung it on the pipe again. But no. Frontways or backways, it didn’t make a lick of difference.

Next she climbed Old Ironways and found the grate that loved the moon the most. Her pale light feathered down like snowdrops, like a silver spear. Auri spread the blanket out to catch the moon, to bask in it.

It didn’t help.

She carried the blanket backward through the whole of Winnoway. She took it to the top of Draughting, threw it off, and watched it plummet through the maze of wires until it snagged one near the bottom and hung there, bobbing gently up and down. She carried it back to Mantle and wrapped it round the horrid, galling, stubborn brazen gear that stood there gloating and golden in the flickerling light.

None of it did a bit of good.

Unable to think of anywhere else that might help ease the offense, Auri carried the blanket all the way down to Wains and into her new perfect sitting room. She draped it over the back of the couch. She folded it and set it in the chair.

Finally, in true desperation, Auri set her jaw and spread her blanket flat across the lush red rug in the center of the room. She smoothed it with both hands, careful not to let it touch the stone of the floor. It overlapped the rug almost perfectly. And for a second she felt hope rise in her chest that—

But no. It didn’t fix things at all. She knew it then. She’d known all along, really. Nothing was going to make the blanket right again.

Scowling, Auri snatched the blanket up, wadded the ungrateful thing into a ball, and headed up the unnamed stair. She felt flat and scraped as an old hide. Dry as paper written on both sides. Even the playful teasing of the new stone stair could stir no breath of joy in her.

She climbed over the debris, through the broken wall, and into Tumbrel. The room looked different in the yellow flickerling. Full of looming fear and disappointment.

And when her eyes passed over the vanity, she saw it differently. It was not rakish now. In the shifting light she saw it had a sinister bent, and caught a glimpse of what was turning it from true. She could feel the tattered edges of its disarray.

But tanglehaired and sticky, all unwashed and hollow as she was, she was hardly in the proper state for mending. She was in no mood to tend to the ungrateful thing.

Instead Auri knelt before the wardrobe and set the spirit lamp beside her. Her knees were chilly on the stone floor as she pulled open the drawer and looked down at the creamy folded sheets inside.

Auri closed her eyes. She took a long, stiff breath and sighed it out again.

Eyes still closed, she stuffed the blanket hard into the drawer. Then she lay her hand upon the topmost sheet. Yes. This was fair. Even blind she could sense the sweetness of it. Her fingers trailed across the creamy surface. . . .

She heard a tiny frizzling noise and caught the scent of burning hair.

Auri sprang back, scrabbling madly backward on all fours, away from the vicious spitting yellow flame. Catching hold of her hair, it was cold comfort to see only a few stray strands were charred. Auri stomped back to the wardrobe, snatched her blanket up, and slammed the drawer, too furious to even think of being properly polite.

Then, climbing through the broken wall, Auri stubbed her toes against a jutting block of stone. She didn’t drop her lamp, but it was a near thing. Instead she merely cried in pain, staggering to catch her balance.

Auri sat down hard upon the floor, clutching her foot. It was only then she realized she’d dropped her blanket. It was laying on the naked stone beside her. She grit her teeth so hard she feared that they would break.

After a long moment she gathered up her things, trudged back to Port, and stuffed the blanket angrily into the wine rack. Since that’s where it belonged now. Since that’s the way things had to be.

Auri spent a long time sitting in her thinking chair, glaring at the brazen gear. It was all glimmer and warm honey in the yellow light. She glared at it all the same. As if it were to blame. As if it were the one that made a mess of everything.

Eventually her sulk burned out. Eventually she calmed enough to realize the truth.

You couldn’t fight the tide or change the wind. And if there was a storm? Well, a girl should batten down and bail, not run the rigging. How could she help but make a mess of things, the state that she was in?

She’d strayed from the true way of things. First you set yourself to rights. And then your house. And then your corner of the sky. And after that . . .

Well, then she didn’t rightly know what happened next. But she hoped that after
that
the world would start to run itself a bit, like a gear-watch proper fit and kissed with oil. That was what she hoped would happen. Because honestly, there were days she felt rubbed raw. She was so tired of being all herself. The only one that tended to the proper turning of the world.

Still, it was sulk or sail. So Auri stood and rinsed her face and hands and feet. There was no soap, of course. It was no kind of proper wash. It didn’t make her feel even a little better. But what else could she do?

She brought the lamp to her lips and puffed out the yellow tongue of flame. Darkness flooded in to fill the room, and Auri climbed into her narrow, naked bed.