The Slow Regard of Silent Things (The Kingkiller Chronicle #2.5)(7)

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.