Free The Slow Regard of Silent Things: A Kingkiller Chronicle Novella (The Kingkiller Chronicle) by Patrick Rothfuss Page A

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.

    Auri lay in the dark for a long while. She was tired and tangled and hungry and hollow. She was weary in her heart and head. But even so, sleep would not come.
    She thought it was the loneliness at first. Or the chill that kept her gritty-eyed and shifty. Perhaps it was the dull ache of her twice-bit hand. . . .
    But no. Those were no less than she deserved. They were not enough to keep