The Slow Regard of Silent Things: A Kingkiller Chronicle Novella (The Kingkiller Chronicle) Read Online Free Page A

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