authority. The man was a sumner for the Commonwealth courts. Not just a regular sumner either, the gold bands meant he could order anyone to stand before the iron law: priests, government officials, even members of the nobility up to the rank of baron.
At this point Anker made his way through the crowd as well. He and Sim looked over the sumner’s document and found it to be very legitimate and official. It was signed and sealed by all manner of important people in Imre. There was nothing to be done. I was going to be brought up against the iron law.
Everyone at Anker’s watched as I was bound hand and foot in chains. Some of them looked shocked, some confused, but most of them simply looked frightened. When the constables dragged me through the crowd toward the door, barely a handful of my audience were willing to meet my eye.
They marched me the long way back to Imre. Over Stonebridge and down the flat expanse of the great stone road. All the way the winter wind chilled the iron around my hands and feet until it burned and bit and froze my skin.
The next morning Sim arrived with Elxa Dal and matters slowly became clear. It had been months since I had called the name of the wind in Imre after Ambrose broke my lute. The masters had brought me up on charges of malfeasance and had me publicly whipped at the University. It had been so long ago that the lash marks on my back were nothing more than pale silver scars. I had thought the matter resolved.
Apparently not. Since the incident had occurred in Imre, it fell under the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth courts.
We live in a civilized age, and few places are more civilized than the University and its immediate environs. But parts of the iron law are left over from darker times. It had been a hundred years since anyone had been burned for Consortation or Unnatural Arts, but the laws were still there. The ink was faded, but the words were clear.
Ambrose wasn’t directly involved, of course. He was much too clever for that. This sort of trial was bad for the University’s reputation. If Ambrose had brought this case against me it would have infuriated the masters. They worked hard to protect the good name of the University in general and of the Arcanum in particular.
So Ambrose was in no way connected with the charges. Instead, the case was brought before Imre’s courts by a handful of Imre’s influential nobles. Oh, certainly they
Thus was I brought up against the iron law. For the space of six days it was a source of extraordinary irritation and anxiety to me. It disrupted my studies, brought my work in the Fishery to a standstill, and drove the final nail into the coffin I used to bury my hopes of ever finding a local patron.
What started as a terrifying experience quickly became a tedious process filled with pomp and ritual. More than forty letters of testimony were read aloud, confirmed, and copied into the official records. There were days filled with nothing but long speeches. Quotations from the iron law. Points of procedure. Formal modes of address. Old men reading out of old books.
I defended myself to the best of my ability, first in the Commonwealth court, then in church courts as well. Arwyl and Elxa Dal spoke on my behalf. Or rather, they wrote letters, then read them aloud to the court.
In the end, I was cleared of any wrongdoing. I thought I was vindicated. I thought I had won. . . .
But I was still terribly naive in many ways.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Interlude—A Bit of Fiddle
Kvothe came slowly to his feet and gave a quick stretch. “Let’s pause there for now,” he said. “I expect we’ll see more than the usual number of people for lunch today. I need to check on the soup and get a few things ready.” He nodded to Chronicler. “You might want to do the same.”
Chronicler remained seated. “Wait a minute,” he said. “This was your trial in Imre?” He looked down at the page, dismayed. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Kvothe said. “Not much to it, really.”
“But that’s the first story I ever heard about you when I came to the University,” Chronicler protested. “How you learned Tema in a day. How you spoke your entire defense in verse and they applauded afterward. How you . . .”
“A lot of nonsense, I expect,” Kvothe said dismissively as he walked back to the bar. “You’ve got the bones of it.”
Chronicler looked down at the page. “You seem to be giving it pretty short shrift.”
“If you’re desperate for the full account, you can find it elsewhere,” Kvothe said. “Dozens of people saw the trial. There are already two full written accounts. I see no need to add a third.”
Chronicler was taken aback. “You’ve already spoken to a historian about this?”
Kvothe chuckled deep in his throat. “You sound like a jilted lover.” He began to bring out stacks of bowls and plates from beneath the bar. “Rest assured, you’re the first to get my story.”
“You said there were written accounts,” Chronicler said. Then his eyes widened. “Are you telling me you’ve written a memoir?” There was a strange note in the scribe’s voice, something almost like hunger.
Kvothe frowned. “No, not really.” He gave a gusty sigh. “I started something of the sort, but I gave it up as a bad idea.”
“You wrote all the way to your trial in Imre?” Chronicler said, looking at the paper in front of him. Only then did he realize he was still holding his pen poised above the page. He began to unscrew and clean the brass nib of the pen on a cloth with an air of vast irritation. “If you already had all this written down, you could have saved me cramping my hand for the last day and a half.”
Kvothe’s forehead creased in confusion. “What?”
Chronicler rubbed the nib briskly with a cloth, every motion screaming with affronted dignity. “I should have known,” he said. “It all fit together too smoothly.” He glared up. “Do you know how much this paper cost me?” He made an angry gesture to the satchel that held the finished pages.
Kvothe simply stared at him for a moment, then laughed with sudden understanding. “You misunderstand. I gave up the memoir after a day or so. I wrote a handful of pages. Not even that.”
The irritation faded from Chronicler’s face, leaving a sheepish expression. “Oh.”
“You
“I’d love to see what you wrote,” Chronicler said, leaning forward in his chair. “Even if it’s just a few pages.”
“It was quite a while ago,” Kvothe said. “I don’t know if I remember where the pages are.”
“They’re up in your room, Reshi,” Bast said brightly. “On your desk.”
Kvothe gave a deep sigh. “I was trying to be gracious, Bast. The truth is, there’s nothing on them worth showing to anyone. If I’d written anything worth reading, I would have kept writing it.” He walked into the kitchen and there were muted, bustling sounds from the back room.
“Good try,” Bast said softly. “But it’s a lost cause. I’ve tried.”
“Don’t coach me,” Chronicler said testily. “I know how to get a story out of a person.”
There was more bumping from the back room, a splash of water, the sound of a door closing.
Chronicler looked at Bast. “Shouldn’t you go help him?”
Bast shrugged, lounging further back into his chair.
After a moment, Kvothe emerged from the back room carrying a cutting board and a bowl full of freshly scrubbed vegetables.
“I’m afraid I’m still confused,” Chronicler said. “How can there already be two written accounts if you never wrote it yourself or talked to a historian?”
“Never been brought to trial, have you?” Kvothe said, amused. “The Commonwealth courts keep painstaking records, and the church is even more obsessive. If you have a desperate desire for the details, you can dig around in their deposition ledgers and act books respectively.”
