The Name of the Wind

I was tight-lipped and grim, and, after the events of the last several days, not terribly intimidated by the authority of two paunchy old men. They could tell, and that made them nervous. I had a headache and didn’t feel like explaining myself, and was quite comfortable tolerating an uncomfortable silence. Because of this, they talked quite a bit, and in asking their own questions, they told me most of what I wanted to know.

The town’s injuries were blessedly minor. Because it had been the harvest festival, no one had been caught sleeping. There were a lot of bruises, singed hair, and folk that had breathed more smoke than was good for them, but aside from a few bad burns and the fellow whose arm had been crushed by a falling timber, I looked to have gotten the worst of it.

They knew beyond all certainty that the draccus was a demon. A huge black demon breathing fire and poison. If there had been any slim sliver of doubt as to that fact, it had been laid to rest when the beast had been struck down by Tehlu’s own iron.

It was also agreed upon that the demon beast had been responsible for the destruction of the Mauthen farm. A reasonable conclusion despite the fact that it was dead wrong. Trying to convince them of anything else would be a pointless waste of my time.

I had been found unconscious atop the iron wheel that had killed the demon. The local sawbone doctor had patched me up as best he could, and, unfamiliar with the remarkable thickness of my skull, expressed serious doubts as to whether or not I would ever wake.

At first the general opinion was that I was merely an unlucky bystander, or that I had somehow pried the wheel off the church. However, my miraculous recovery combined with the fact that I had charred a hole into the bar downstairs encouraged people to finally take notice of what a young boy and an old widow had been saying all day: that when the old oak had gone up like a torch, they had seen someone standing on the roof of the church. He was lit by the fire below. His arms were raised in front of him, almost as if he were praying....

Eventually the mayor and constable ran out of things to say to fill the silence, and merely sat there looking anxiously back and forth from me to each other.

It occurred to me they didn’t see a penniless, ragged boy sitting across from them. They saw a mysterious battered figure who had killed a demon. I saw no reason to dissuade them. In fact it was high time I caught a piece of luck in this business. If they considered me some sort of hero or holy man, it gave me useful leverage.

“What did you do with the demon’s body?” I asked and watched them relax. Until this point I had barely spoken a dozen words, responding to most of their tentative questions with grim silence.

“No worry about that, sir,” the constable said. “We knew what to do with it.”

My stomach knotted, and I knew before they told me: they’d burned and buried it. The creature was a scientific marvel, and they had burned and buried it like trash. I knew naturalist scrivs in the Archives who would have cut off their hands to study such a rare creature. I had even hoped, deep in my heart, that bringing such an opportunity to their attention might win me my way back into the Archives.

And the scales and bones. Hundreds of pounds of denatured iron that alchemists would have fought over....

The mayor nodded eagerly and singsonged, “Dig a pit that’s ten by two. Ash and elm and rowan too.” He cleared his throat. “Though it had to be a bigger hole than that, of course. Everyone took a turn to get it done as quickly as possible.” He held up his hand, proudly displaying a set of fresh blisters.

I closed my eyes and fought down the urge to throw things around the room and curse them in eight languages. That explained why the town was still in such a sorry state. Everyone had been busy burning and burying a creature worth a king’s ransom.

Still, there was nothing to be done about it. I doubted my new reputation would be enough to protect me if they caught me trying to dig it up. “The girl that survived the Mauthen wedding,” I said. “Has anyone seen her today?”

The mayor looked at the constable questioningly “Not that I’ve heard. Do you think she was connected to the beast in some way?”

“What?” the question was so absurd I didn’t understand it at first. “No! Don’t be ridiculous.” I scowled at them. The last thing I needed was to somehow implicate Denna in all this. “She was helping me in my work.” I said, careful to keep things ambiguous.

The mayor glared at the constable, then looked back to me. “Is your ... work finished here?” He asked carefully, as if afraid of giving offense. “I certainly don’t mean to pry into your affairs ... but ...” He licked his lips nervously. “Why did this happen? Are we safe?”

“You’re as safe as I can make you,” I said ambiguously It sounded like a heroic thing to say. If all I was going to gain from this was a bit of reputation, I might as well make sure it was the right sort.