The Slow Regard of Silent Things: A Kingkiller Chronicle Novella (The Kingkiller Chronicle) (4 page)

It wasn’t the third door, or the seventh. Auri was already planning her route down to Throughbottom when she spied the ninth door. It was waiting. Eager. The latch turned and the door eased smoothly open on silent hinges.

Auri stepped inside, pulled the key from her pocket, and kissed it before she lay it carefully on an empty table just inside the door. The tiny tap as it touched the wood warmed her heart. She smiled to see it sitting there, all snug and in its proper place.

It was a sitting room. Very fine. Auri sat Foxen in a wall sconce and went to have a careful look around. A tall velvet chair. A low wooden table. A plush couch on a plush carpet. In the corner was a tiny cart filled with glasses and bottles. They were very dignified.

There was something wrong with the room. Nothing looming. Nothing like in Sit Twice or Faceling. No. This was a good place. A nearly perfect place. Everything was almost. If this hadn’t been a white day with everything done properly, she might not have been able to tell something was amiss. Still, it was, and she did.

Auri stepped around the room, hands clasped primly behind her back. She eyed the cart, more than a dozen bottles, all colors. Some stoppered and full, some holding little more than dust. There was a burnished silver gear watch on one of the tables, near the couch. There was a ring too, and a scattering of coins. Auri eyed them curiously, touching nothing.

She moved daintily. One step. Another. The dark plush of the carpet was sweet beneath her feet, like moss, and when she bent down to run her fingers over the hush of it, she glimpsed a tiny whiteness underneath the couch. She reached deep into the shadows with a small white hand, having to stretch a bit before her fingers caught it. Smooth and cool.

It was a tiny figurine carved from a piece of pale, retiring stone. A small soldier with clever lines to show his hauberk and his shield. But his truest treasure was the sweetness of his face, kind enough for kissing.

It didn’t belong here, but it wasn’t wrong. Or rather, it wasn’t what was wrong with the room. The poor thing was simply lost. Auri smiled and put the doll in her pocket with the crystal.

It was then she felt a tiny bump beneath one foot. She pulled up the edge of the carpet, rolled it back, and found a small bone button underneath. Auri eyed it for a long moment before giving it an understanding smile. That wasn’t it either. The button was just as it should be. Moving carefully, she lay the carpet back exactly as she’d found it, patting it into place with her hands.

She looked around the room again. It was a good place, and almost entirely as it ought to be. There wasn’t really anything for her to do here. It was startling really, as the place had obviously been alone for ages without anyone tending to it.

Even so, there
was
something wrong. Some lack. Some tiny thing, like a single cricket legging madly in the night.

A second door sat on the other side of the room, eager to be opened. She worked the latch, walked through a hallway, only to come to the foot of a set of stairs. There she looked around with some surprise. She’d thought that she was still in Wains. But clearly not. This was a different place entirely.

Auri’s heart beat faster then. It had been ages since she’d come on somewhere wholly new. A place that dared to be entirely itself.

Still, carefully. In Foxen’s steady light Auri looked closely at the walls and ceiling. A few cracks, but nothing thicker than a thumb. A few small stones had fallen, and there was dirt and mortar on the steps as well. The walls were bare and slightly condescending. No. She had obviously left Wains behind.

She ran a hand over the stones of the steps. The first few were solid, but the fourth was loose. As were the sixth and seventh. And the tenth.

There was a landing halfway up where the stairway turned back upon itself. There was a door, but it was terribly bashful, so Auri politely pretended not to see it. She made her careful way up the second flight of steps and found half of them were also loose or prone to tipping.

Then she went back down the stairs, making sure she’d found all the shifting stones. She hadn’t. It was terribly exciting. The place was tricky as a drunken tinker and a little sly. It had a temper too. It would be hard to find a place less like a garden path.

Some places had names. Some places changed, or they were shy about their names. Some places had no names at all, and that was always sad. It was one thing to be private. But to have no name at all? How horrible. How lonely.

Auri made her way up the stairs a second time, testing each one with her feet, avoiding the spots she knew were bad. As she climbed, she couldn’t tell what sort of place this was. Shy or secret? Lost or lonely? A puzzling place. It made her grin all the wider.

At the top of the stairs the ceiling had collapsed, but there was a gap made by a broken wall. Auri stepped through and found herself grinning with the thrill of it. Another new place. Two in one day. Her bare feet shifted back and forth on the gritty stone floor, almost dancing with excitement.

This place was not so coy as the stairway. Its name was Tumbrel. It was scattered and half-fallen and half-full. There was so much to see.

Half the ceiling had fallen in and everything was covered in dust. But for all its fallen stone, it was dry and tight. No damp, just dust and stiff air. More than half the room was a solid mass of fallen earth and stone and timber. The remnants of a four-post bed lay crushed beneath the wreckage. In the unfallen portion of the room, there was a triune mirror vanity and a dark wooden wardrobe taller than a tall woman standing on her toes.

Auri peered shyly through the wardrobe’s half-open doors. She glimpsed a dozen dresses there, all velvet and embroidery. Shoes. A robe of silk. Some gauzy bits of the sort the women wore in the frescoes down in Wains.

The vanity was a rakish thing: garrulous and unashamed. The top was scattered with pots of powders, small brushes, sticks of eyepaint. Bracelets and rings. Combs of horn and ivory and wood. There were pins and pens and a dozen bottles, some substantial, some delicate as petals.

It was in startling disarray. Everything resting atop the vanity was somehow askew: powders were spilled, bottles toppled, the dish of pins all higgledy-piggledy.

Dishevel or no, Auri couldn’t help but take a liking to the thing, gruff and bawdy as it was. She sat primly on the edge of the straight-backed chair. She ran her fingers through her floating hair and smiled to see her self reflected in a triptych.

There was a door too, opposite the broken wall. It was half-buried by a broken beam and blocks of shattered stone. But hidden as it was, it wasn’t shy.

Auri went to work then, setting things to rights as best she could.

She shifted the wooden beam that blocked the door. Lifting and straining, a few inches at a time until she could lever at it with another piece of fallen timber. Then she cleared away the stones, pushing the ones she could not carry. Rolling the ones she could not push.

She found the wreckage of a small table underneath the stones, and amid the splintered wood she found a length of fine white tatted lace. She folded this up carefully and put it in her pocket with the crystal and the small stone soldier.

Once the way was clear, the door pulled open easily, its rusted hinges moaning. Inside was a small closet. There was an empty porcelain chamberpot. There was a wooden bucket, a brush of the sort you would use to scrub the deck of a ship, and a tight birch broom. On the back of the door hung two empty linen sacks. The smaller of these was anxious to be about its business, so Auri smiled and tucked it in a pocket by itself.

The broom was eager after being trapped so long, so Auri brought it out and set to sweeping, brushing ancient dust and earth into a tidy pile. After that it was still restless, so Auri went to sweep the unnamed stair as well.

She brought Foxen with, of course. She would hardly trust a place like that to behave in the dark. But since a proper birching of the place required two hands, Auri tied Foxen to a long lock of her hanging hair. Foxen’s dignity was somewhat bruised by this, and Auri kissed him in sincere apology for the affront. But they both knew he took a certain secret joy from swingling wildly all about, making the shadows spin and skirl.

So for a while he hung and swung. Auri took care not to notice any undue exuberance on his part while she gave the unnamed stairs a brisk once-over. Up and down then up again, the tight birch broom flicked and tickled the stone steps clear of fallen rocks and grit and dust. They were flattered by the attention while remaining entirely coy.

After returning the broom to the closet, Auri brought out the chamberpot and set it near the wardrobe. She spun it slightly so it faced the proper way.

Charming as it was, the vanity was vexing, too. It seemed all askew, but nothing called out for tidying. The only exception was the hairbrush, which she moved closer to a cunning ruby ring.

Auri crossed her arms and stared at the vanity for a long minute. Then she went down on hands and knees and looked at its underside. She opened the drawers and moved the handkerchiefs from the left-hand drawer into the right, then frowned and moved them back again.

Finally she pushed the entire thing about two handspan to the left and slightly closer to the wall, careful not to let anything tumble to the floor. She slid the vanity’s high-backed chair the same amount, so it still faced the mirrors. Then she picked up the chair and examined the bottoms of its feet before putting it back in place with a tiny shrug.

There was a loose stone in the floor next to the wardrobe. Auri prized it up with her fingers, adjusted the small leather sack and piece of wool padding underneath, then slid the stone back into place, tamping it down firmly with the handle of the broom. She tested it with one foot and smiled when it no longer shifted under her weight.

Lastly, she opened the wardrobe. She moved the dress of burgundy velvet away from the gown of pale blue silk. She replaced the lid of a tall hatbox that had come ajar. She opened the drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe.

Her breath caught in her chest then. Folded tidily away at the bottom of the drawer were several perfect sheets, pale and smooth. Auri reached down to touch one and was amazed at the tightness of the weave. So fine her fingers couldn’t feel the thread. It was cool and sweet to the touch, like a lover come to kiss her, fresh in from the cold.

Auri brushed her hand across the surface. How lovely might it be to sleep on such a sheet? To lay on it and feel the sweetness of it all along her naked skin?

She shivered, and her fingers curled around the folded edges of the sheet. Hardly realizing what she did, she drew it from its proper place and brought it to her chest. She brushed her lips against its smoothness. There were other sheets beneath it. A treasure trove. Surely enough for a place like Tumbrel. Besides, she’d set so many other things to rights. Surely . . .