Interlude—Parts

K VOTHE HELD UP HIS hand, and Chronicler lifted his pen from the paper.

“Let’s pause there for a moment,” Kvothe said, nodding toward the window. “I can see Cob coming down the road.”

Kvothe stood and brushed off the front of his apron. “Might I suggest the two of you take a moment to compose yourselves?” He nodded to Chronicler. “You look like you’ve just been doing something you shouldn’t.”

Kvothe walked calmly to stand behind the bar. “Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. Chronicler, you are bored, waiting for work. That is why your writing gear is out. You wish you weren’t stuck without a horse in this nowhere town. But you are, and you’re going to make the best of it.”

Bast grinned. “Ooh! Give me something, too!”

“Play to your strengths, Bast.” Kvothe said. “You’re drinking with our only customer because you’re a shiftless layabout nobody would ever dream of asking for help in the fields.”

Bast grinned eagerly. “Am I bored too?”

“Of course you are, Bast. What else is there to be?” He folded the linen cloth and lay it on the bar. “I, on the other hand, am too busy to be bored. I am bustling about, tending to the hundred small tasks that keep the inn running smoothly.”

He looked at the two of them. “Chronicler, slouch back in your chair. Bast, if you can’t stop grinning, at least start telling our friend the story about the three priests and the miller’s daughter.”

Bast’s grin widened. “That’s a good one.”

“Everyone have their parts?” Kvothe picked up the cloth from the bar and walked through the doorway into the kitchen, saying, “Enter Old Cob. Stage left.”

There was the thump of feet on the wooden landing, then Old Cob stomped irritably into the Waystone Inn. He glanced past the table where Bast was grinning and making gestures to accompany some story, then made his way to the bar. “Hello? You in there, Kote?”

After a second the innkeeper came bustling in from the kitchen, drying his wet hands on his apron. “Hello there, Cob. What can I do for you?”

“Graham sent the little Owens boy to fetch me,” Cob said, irritated. “You have any idea why I’m here instead of haulin’ oats?”

Kote shook his head. “I thought he was bringing in the Murrions’ wheat today.”

“Damn foolishness,” Cob muttered. “We’re in for rain tonight, and I’m standing here with dry oats stacked in my field.”

“Since you’re here anyway,” the innkeeper said hopefully. “Can I interest you in some cider? Pressed it fresh this morning.”

Some of the irritation faded from the old man’s weathered face. “Since I’m waiting anyway,” he said. “Mug of cider would be proper nice.”

Kote went into the back room and returned with a pottery jug. There was the sound of more feet on the landing outside and Graham came through the door with Jake, Carter, and the smith’s prentice all in tow.

Cob turned to glare at them. “What’s so damned important it’s worth hauling me into town this time of morning?” he demanded. “Daylight’s burning, a—”

There was a sudden burst of laugher from the table where Chronicler and Bast sat. Everyone turned to see Chronicler flushing a bright red, laughing and covering his mouth with one hand. Bast was laughing too, pounding at the table.

Graham led the others to the bar. “I found out Carter and the boy are helping the Orrisons take their sheep to market,” he said. “Off to Baedn, wasn’t it?”

Carter and the smith’s prentice nodded.

“I see.” Old Cob looked down at his hands. “You’ll be missing his funeral then.”

Carter nodded solemnly, but Aaron’s expression went stricken. He looked from face to face, but everyone else was standing very still, watching the old farmer by the bar.

“Good,” Cob said at last, looking up at Graham. “It’s good you fetched us in.” He saw the boy’s face and snorted. “You look like you just killed your cat, boy. Mutton goes to market. Shep knew that. He wouldn’t think one jot less of you for doing what needs doing.”

He reached up to pat the smith’s prentice on the back. “We’ll all have a drink together to send ’im off proper. That’s the important thing. What happens in the church tonight is just a bunch of priestly speechifying. We know how to say good-bye better than that.” He looked behind the bar. “Bring us out some of his favorite, Kote.”

The innkeeper was already moving, gathering wooden mugs and filling them with a dark brown beer from a smaller keg behind the bar.

Old Cob held up his mug and the others followed suit. “To our Shep.”

Graham spoke first. “When we were kids, I broke my leg when we were out hunting,” he said. “I told him to run off for help, but he wouldn’t leave me. He rigged a little sled together out of pure nothing and cussedness. Dragged me the whole way back to town.”

Everyone drank.

“He introduced me to my missus,” Jake said.“I don’t know if I ever thanked him proper for that.”

Everyone drank.

“When I was sick with the croup, he came out to visit me every day,” Carter said. “Not many folk did. Brought me soup his wife made, too.”

Everyone drank.

“He was nice to me when I first came here,” the smith’s prentice said. “He would tell me jokes. And once I ruined a wagon couple he’d brought in for me to fix, and he never told Master Caleb.” He swallowed hard and looked around nervously. “I really liked him.”

Everyone drank.

“He was braver than all of us,” Cob said. “He was the first to stick a knife to that fella last night. If the bastard had been any way normal, that would have been an end to it.”

Cob’s voice shook a bit, and for a moment he looked small and tired and every bit as old as he was. “But that weren’t the case. These en’t good days to be a brave man. But he was brave all the same. I wish I’d been brave and dead instead, and him home right now, kissing his young wife.”

There was a murmur from the others, and they all drank to the bottom of their mugs. Graham coughed a bit before he set his down on the bar.

“I didn’t know what to say,” the smith’s prentice said softly.

Graham patted him on the back, smiling. “You did fine, boy.”

The innkeeper cleared his throat, and everyone’s eyes turned to him. “I hope you won’t think me too forward,” he said. “I didn’t know him as well as you. Not enough for the first toast, but maybe enough for the second.” He fidgeted with his apron strings, as if embarrassed for speaking up at all. “I know it’s early, but I’d dearly like to share a tumble of whiskey with you on Shep’s account.”

There was a murmur of assent and the innkeeper pulled glasses from beneath the bar and began to fill them. Not with bottle whiskey either—the red-haired man tapped it from one of the massive barrels resting on the counter behind the bar. Barrel whiskey was a penny a swallow, so they raised their glasses with more earnest warmth than might have otherwise been the case.

“What’s this toast going to be then?” Graham asked.

“To the end of a pisser of a year?” Jake said.

“That’s no kind of toast,” Old Cob grumbled at him.

“To the king?” Aaron said.

“No,” the innkeeper said, his voice surprisingly firm. He held up his glass. “To old friends who deserved better than they got.”

The men on the other side of the bar nodded solemnly and tossed back their drinks.

“Lord and lady, that’s a lovely tumble,” Old Cob said respectfully, his eyes watering slightly. “You’re a gentleman, Kote. And I’m glad to know you.”

The smith’s prentice set his glass down only to have it tip onto its side and roll across the bar. He snatched it up before it skittered over the edge and turned it over, eyeing its rounded bottom suspiciously.

Jake laughed a loud farmer’s laugh at his bewilderment while Carter made a point of setting his glass on the bar topside-down. “I don’t know how they do it in Rannish,” Carter said to the boy. “But round here there’s a reason we call it a tumble.”

The smith’s prentice looked properly abashed and turned his tumble upside down to match the others on the bar. The innkeeper gave him a reassuring smile before gathering up the glasses and disappearing into the kitchen.

“Right then,” Old Cob said briskly, rubbing his hands together. “We’ll have a whole evening of this after the two of you get back from Baedn. But the weather won’t wait on me, and I don’t doubt the Orrisons are eager to be on the road.”

After they filtered out of the Waystone in a loose group, Kvothe emerged from the kitchen and returned to the table where Bast and Chronicler sat.

“I liked Shep,” Bast said quietly. “Cob might be a bit of a crusty old cuss, but he knows what he’s talking about most of the time.”

“Cob doesn’t know half of what he thinks he does,” Kvothe said. “You saved everyone last night. If not for you, it would have gone through the room like a farmer threshing wheat.”

“That just isn’t true, Reshi,” Bast said, his tone plainly offended. “You would have stopped it. That’s what you do.”

The innkeeper shrugged the comment away, unwilling to argue. Bast’s mouth formed into a hard, angry line, his eyes narrowing.

“Still,” Chronicler said softly, breaking the tension before it grew too thick. “Cob was right. It was a brave thing to do. You have to respect that.”

“No I don’t,” Kvothe said. “Cob was right about that. These aren’t good times to be brave.” He motioned for Chronicler to pick up his pen. “Still, I wish I’d been braver and Shep was home kissing his young wife, too.”

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 985