The Name of the Wind

But my ongoing feud with Ambrose added to my reputation more than anything else. Everyone was stunned that I dared openly defy a powerful noble’s firstborn son.

We had several dramatic encounters that first term. I won’t bore you with the details. We’d cross paths and he would make some offhand comment loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. Or he would sneer at me under the guise of a compliment. “You must tell me who cuts your hair ...”

Anyone with a lick of common sense knew how to deal with arrogant nobility. The tailor I had terrorized back in Tarbean knew what to do. You take your lumps, duck your head, and get the whole thing over as quickly as possible.

But I always fought back, and while Ambrose was intelligent and reasonably well-spoken, he was no match for my trouper’s tongue. I had been raised on the stage, and my sharp Ruh wits ensured that I got the better of our exchanges.

Still Ambrose continued to seek me out, like a dog too stupid to avoid a porcupine. He would snap at me and leave with a face full of barbs. And each time we parted ways we hated each other just a little more.

People noticed, and by the end of the term I had a reputation for reckless bravery. But the truth is, I was merely fearless.

There’s a difference, you see. In Tarbean I’d learned real fear. I feared hunger, pneumonia, guards with hobnail boots, older boys with bottleglass knives. Confronting Ambrose required no real bravery on my part. I simply couldn’t muster any fear of him. I saw him as a puffed-up clown. I thought he was harmless.

I was a fool.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT Interlude—A Silence of a Different Kind

Bast sat in the Waystone Inn and tried to keep his hands motionless in his lap. He had counted fifteen breaths since Kvothe had spoken last, and the innocent silence that had gathered like a clear pool around the three men was beginning to darken into a silence of a different kind. Bast took another breath—sixteen—and braced himself against the moment he feared would come.

It would not be to Bast’s credit to say that he was afraid of nothing, as only fools and priests are never afraid. But it is true that very few things unnerved him. Heights, for instance, he didn’t care for very much. And the great summer storms that came through these parts that blackened the sky and tore up deep-rooted oaks made him feel uncomfortably small and helpless.

But when you came down to it, nothing really frightened him, not storms, not tall ladders, not even the scrael. Bast was brave by being largely fearless. Nothing would turn him pale, or if it did, he didn’t stay pale for very long.

Oh, certainly he didn’t relish the thought of someone hurting him. Stabbing him with bitter iron, searing him with hot coals, that sort of thing. But just because he didn’t like the thought of his blood on the outside didn’t mean he was really afraid of those things. He just didn’t want them to happen. To really fear something you have to dwell on it. And since there was nothing that preyed on Bast’s waking mind in this fashion, there was nothing his heart truly feared.

But hearts can change. Ten years ago he had lost his grip climbing a tall rennel tree to pick fruit for a girl he fancied. After he slipped, he had hung for a long minute, head down, before falling. In that long minute, a small fear rooted inside him, and had stayed with him ever since.

In the same way, Bast had learned a new fear of late. A year ago he had been fearless as any sane man can hope to be, but now Bast feared silence. Not the ordinary silence that came from a simple absence of things moving about and making noise. Bast feared the deep, weary silence that gathered around his master at times, like an invisible shroud.

Bast breathed in again—seventeen. He fought not to wring his hands as he waited for the deep silence to invade the room. He waited for it to crystallize and show its teeth on the edges of the cool quiet that had pooled in the Waystone. He knew how it came, like the frost that bleeds out of the winter ground, hardening the clear water that an early thaw leaves in wagon ruts.

But before Bast could draw another breath, Kvothe straightened in his chair and made a motion for Chronicler to lay down his pen. Bast nearly wept as he sensed the silence scatter like a dark bird startled into flight.

Kvothe gave a sigh that hovered between annoyance and resignation. “I will admit,” he said. “That I am not sure how to approach the next part of the story.”

Afraid to let the silence stretch for too long, Bast chirruped, “Why don’t you simply talk about what is most important first? Then you can go back and touch on other things, if you need to.”

“As if it were as simple as that,” Kvothe said sharply. “What is most important? My magic or my music? My triumphs or my follies?”

Bast flushed a deep crimson and bit his lips.