THE UNDERTHING WAS a place of stone and silence and slow water. It was not a place for Bast.
He was young, bright as copper jots, and quick as spilled mercury. He deserved what I had once known, that precious time of carefree peace. Mornings heavy with promise and possibility. Afternoons caught in tangled chords and wild laughter. Evenings thick with honey-gold light and the company of those whose fire matched his own. Every day I told him this, every day I encouraged him to seek that life.
He would go topside, following Auri’s secret paths. But he always came back. Always returned to sit in the darkness with me, when he could have been dancing in the light. I knew the shape of his worry. It sat between us like a third person at our table, silent and watchful. He would catch me hunched over two iron drabs, trying to hold a binding that Ben had taught me when I was nine. The link would form and slip. Form and slip. He would see me close my hand and watch three fingers pass straight through my palm. In those moments his smile would falter, just for a heartbeat, before blazing back twice as bright.
“You could leave,” I would say.
“I could dance on moonbeams,” he would answer. “I could kiss a duchess and steal her diamonds. I could do many things.”
And that would be the end of it, until the next time.
It was a Hepten morning when everything changed. Bast had been gone less than an hour when I heard his footsteps returning. The usual bounce was missing, replaced by something heavier.
I felt myself sinking. These past days I had begun to find my way back to something like myself. Not whole, never that, but climbing slowly toward the light. Now, with each of Bast’s heavy steps, I felt that fragile progress crumbling. The darkness I’d been holding at arm’s length began to seep through my skin.
“Reshi.” The word came out wrong.
I looked up from my bowl of porridge that had gone cold. “You look like a man who’s trying to swallow bad news.”
He pulled something from his pocket. Paper. Crumpled and worn at the edges. He set it on the table between us with the kind of care usually reserved for things that might explode. I smoothed it flat. The ink was cheap and the drawing was worse, but there was no mistaking the face that stared back at me. My face, more or less, caught in harsh black lines.
KVOTHE KINGKILLER, SON OF ARLIDEN. 100 MARKS.
“A hundred marks.” I pushed the paper away with one finger. “I’m almost insulted.”
“There’s more.” Bast’s voice had gone low. “Ambrose is here. In the city. He’s been making speeches in the squares, telling anyone who’ll listen that you killed the king. That you’re hiding somewhere close. That you’ve stolen Princess Ariel from him.”
“Ariel?” The little porridge I had eaten turned to stone. “Stolen?”
“He says she belongs to him. Says he’ll drag you through the streets and take her back to Renere where she belongs.”
“Take me to him,” I said, and was on my feet as the last word left my mouth, the chair clattering behind me.
“Reshi, wait. Think about this.”
But I was already moving. The Lethani, the University’s decorum, the Iron Law, all the wisdom of my years fell away. There was only motion. Only the terrible certainty of lightning finding its mark.
I found Ambrose in the square by the fountain. The same fountain where I’d first called the wind, all those years ago. The same stones where I’d broken his arm and earned his hatred. His men flanked him like a wall of sharp edges and bright steel. Eight of them. Maybe ten. I didn’t bother to count.
He was in the middle of some story when I stepped into view. His voice carried across the square, rich with the particular poison that comes from old money and entitlement. Even from across the square, I could see that ridiculous hat he’d taken to wearing.
“I hear you’ve been looking for me,” I called, and the square fell into that terrible quiet that comes before a thunderclap. Ambrose turned, and for just a moment, I saw surprise flicker across his face. Then his mouth curved into that familiar sneer.
“The Ruh bastard shows himself at last.” His voice filled the square, playing to the crowd that had begun to gather. “Kvothe the Arcane. Murderer of kings. Thief of virtue.”
“I was there when the king died,” I said. “But I didn’t kill him. We both know Alveron holds that particular honor.”
“Liar!” The word cracked like a whip. “Nothing is ever your fault, is it? Your blood is filth. Your very existence is a stain.”
Then his expression changed. The anger drained away, replaced by something worse. Satisfaction. He reached into his coat and pulled out a book. My heart stuttered. It was small and weathered, its edges browned, its cover soft leather faintly embossed with swirls.
“Did you really think no one would ever check the donation logs?” Ambrose’s smile was uglier than any curse. “How careless of you, Kvothe.”
“Don’t.”
One word. Heavy as mountains.
Ambrose laughed, an ugly sound, like glass breaking in a beautiful room. “Or what? You’ll kill me? Add another corpse to your collection? Once I’m done with you, I’ll drag Ariel back to Renere with me and take her wherever I please. And you? I’ll leave your body in pieces and your head on a spike for all to see.”
Then he opened the book, spoke the first words of binding, and the world clamped shut around me like a fist. Forty pages of my blood. The link was devastating. “Look at you. The mighty Kvothe Kingkiller. Held low by a Re’lar’s binding.” He gestured toward the crowd, arms wide. “All those years of Ruh trickery, and this is what’s underneath. A vagabond with a good memory.” He flicked his hand toward me the way you’d gesture at a servant. “Bind him. Hands and feet. Gag him too. If he wants to confess we can always give him a pen.”
His men moved forward. Good men, probably. I called the wind anyway.
It answered like a thousand storms screaming as one. The fountain cracked down the middle, water erupting skyward in a geyser that turned to mist. Cobblestones groaned and split beneath our feet. Ambrose’s men flew like leaves, and the crowd scattered screaming after them.
But Ambrose could not. The fool had bound himself to me, and now neither of us could move. Wind tore at his clothes, whipping the fine silk to ribbons, then found the skin beneath, scraping it raw and red, drawing thin lines of blood across his chest that the wind licked away before they could fall. His hands were white-knuckled on the book, feet shifted apart and braced. His jaw was set, his eyes locked on mine, and the binding between us held.
“Is that all?” He had to shout it through the gale. “The great Kvothe Kingkiller. One name and a bag of Ruh tricks.”
I called the name of fire.
The trench the wind had torn in the cobblestones lit behind him like a vein of lava. The heat hit his back and his stance changed, feet shuffling, shoulders drawing in. But his hands stayed on the book and the binding held.
“You threatened her.” Each word fell heavy as stone. “You came here with your stolen book and your hired swords and you threatened the only person who still matters to me.”
I took a step forward, pushing him back toward the edge.
“Stop.” His voice was small now. Young. Like the boy he’d been, before money and malice had carved him into the shape he wore. “Please.”
I took another step. Felt the heat of the flames through him. Felt his grip on the binding shudder, then crack, then release me all at once.
“CYAERBASALIEN,” I said, and the square crushed back together, remembering it was one.
And Ambrose became an absence where a person used to be.
The silence that followed was absolute. The kind of silence that comes after lightning, the air still sharp and metallic.
I stood in the ruined square, my throat burning like I’d swallowed coals. My knees wanted to buckle but I locked them straight. Around me, people stared with bloodless faces. In their eyes I saw myself reflected, and I didn’t recognize what looked back.
There. At the edge of the crowd. Elodin stood like a statue, his face unreadable except for the terrible weight in his eyes. Mola beside him, who had once stitched me back together and lied to keep me safe. She looked at me as though she wished she hadn’t. And behind them both, Bast. Out of breath. Too late.
I wanted to explain. Wanted to tell them about the blood and the threat and the terrible certainty that Auri wouldn’t be safe until Ambrose was gone. But the words turned to ash in my mouth.
So I did the only thing I could do.
I ran.
Behind me, the fountain continued to weep through its new cracks, whispering a different kind of silence. The silence that comes after endings. The silence that says some things, once broken, can never be made whole.