Chapter 6 Rewrite

CHAPTER SIX

The Price of Remembering

So, for those of you following along, Chapter 6: The Price of Remembering was an absolute bear to spork, because so much of it is just unnecessary.  More frustratingly, there's the skeleton of a very powerful scene hidden beneath all the bloat.  The challenge I set myself was to cut the chapter down to that skeleton to reveal the scene I think Rothfuss was trying to write: a scene in which two clever men play mind games with each other until one of them pushes the other too far, and they are forced to come to terms.  I cut over a thousand words from the chapter, but I did not change or reorder anything that remained.  All that you see below is Rothfuss' own words, just...fewer of them.

IT WAS EARLY EVENING of the next day before Chronicler came down the stairs to the common room of the Waystone Inn. Pale and unsteady, he carried his flat leather satchel under one arm.

Kote sat behind the bar, paging through a book. “Ah, our unintentional guest. How’s the head?”

Chronicler raised a hand to touch the back of his head. “Throbs a bit when I move around too quickly. But it’s still working.”

“Glad to hear it,” Kote said.

“Is this . . .” Chronicler hesitated, looking around. “Are we in Newarre?”

Kote nodded. “You are, in fact, in the middle of Newarre.” He made a dramatic sweeping gesture with one hand. “Thriving metropolis. Home to dozens.”

Chronicler stared at the red-haired man behind the bar. He leaned against one of the tables for support. “God’s charred body,” he said breathlessly. “It really is you, isn’t it?”

The innkeeper looked puzzled. “I beg your pardon?”

“I know you’re going to deny it,” Chronicler said. “But what I saw last night ...”

 “So what can I do for you?” Kote set aside the clean linen cloth and gave his best innkeeper’s smile. “Something to eat or drink? A room for the night?”

Chronicler hesitated.

“I have it all right here.” Kote gestured expansively behind the bar. “Old wine, smooth and pale? Honey mead? Dark ale? Sweet fruit liquor! Plum? Cherry? Green apple? Blackberry?” Kote pointed out the bottles in turn. “Come now, surely you must want something?” As he spoke, his smile widened, showing too many teeth for a friendly innkeeper’s grin.

Chronicler dropped his gaze. “I’d thought that—”

“You thought,” Kote said derisively, dropping all pretense of a smile. “I very much doubt it. Otherwise, you might have thought,” he bit off the word, “of how much danger you were putting me in by coming here.”

Chronicler’s face grew red.  “I was extraordinarily careful. No one knew I was coming. I didn’t mention you to anyone. I didn’t expect to actually find you.”

“Imagine my relief,” Kote said sarcastically.

Obviously disheartened, Chronicler spoke, “I’ll be the first to admit that my coming here may have been a mistake.” He paused, giving Kote the opportunity to contradict him. Kote didn’t. Chronicler gave a small, tight sigh and continued, “But what’s done is done. Won’t you even consider . . .”

Kote shook his head. “I am Kote. I tend to my inn. That means beer is three shims and a private room costs copper.” He began polishing the bar again with a fierce intensity. “As you said, ‘done is done.’ The stories will take care of themselves.”

“But—”

Kote looked up, and for a second Chronicler saw past the anger that lay glittering on the surface of his eyes. For a moment he saw the pain underneath, raw and bloody, like a wound too deep for healing. Then Kote looked away and only the anger remained. “What could you possibly offer me that is worth the price of remembering?”

“Everyone thinks you’re a myth.”

“I am a myth,” Kote said easily. “A very special kind of myth that creates itself. The best lies about me are the ones I told.”

Chronicler continued. “Some stories paint you as little more than a red-handed killer.”

“I’m that too.” Kote turned to polish the counter behind the bar. He shrugged again, not as easily as before. “I’ve killed men and things that were more than men. Every one of them deserved it.”

Chronicler shook his head slowly. “The stories are saying ‘assassin’ not ‘hero.’ Kvothe the Arcane and Kvothe Kingkiller are two very different men.”

Kote stopped polishing the bar and turned his back to the room.

“Some are even saying that there is a new Chandrian. A fresh terror in the night. His hair as red as the blood he spills.”

“The important people know the difference,” Kote said, but his voice was without conviction.

Chronicler gave a small laugh. “Certainly. For now. But you of all people should realize how thin the line is between the truth and a compelling lie. Between history and an entertaining story.” Chronicler gave his words a minute to sink in. “You know which will win, given time.”

Kote remained facing the back wall, hands flat on the counter. His head was bowed slightly, as if a great weight had settled onto him.  He did not speak.

Chronicler took an eager step forward, sensing victory. “Some people say there was a woman—”

Eight inches away a bottle shattered. The smell of strawberries filled the air alongside the sound of splintering glass. Chronicler felt himself go cold as he suddenly realized what a dangerous game he was playing. So this is the difference between telling a story and being in one, he thought numbly.

Kote turned. “What can any of them know about her?” he asked softly. Chronicler’s breath stopped when he saw Kote’s face. The placid innkeeper’s expression was haunted, eyes half in this world, half elsewhere, remembering.

“What can any of them know about me?” Kote demanded, a numb anger in his voice. “What can they know about any of this?” He made a short, fierce gesture that seemed to take in everything, the broken bottle, the bar, the world.

Chronicler swallowed against the dryness in his throat. “Only what they’re told.”

Tat tat, tat-tat. Liquor from the broken bottle began to patter an irregular rhythm onto the floor. “Ahhhh,” Kote sighed out a long breath. Tat-tat, tat-tat, tat. “Clever. You’d use my own best trick against me. You’d hold my story a hostage.”

“I would tell the truth.”

“Nothing but the truth could break me. What is harder than the truth?” A sickly, mocking smile flickered across his face. For a long moment, only the gentle tapping of drops against the floor kept the silence at bay.

Finally Kote walked through the doorway behind the bar. Chronicler stood awkwardly in the empty room, unsure whether or not he had been dismissed.

A few minutes later Kote returned with a bucket of soapy water. Without looking in the storyteller’s direction, he began to gently, methodically, wash his bottles. One at a time, Kote wiped their bottoms clean of the strawberry wine and set them on the bar between himself and Chronicler.

“So you went looking for a myth and found a man,” he said without looking up. “You’ve heard the stories and now you want the truth of things.”

Chronicler set his satchel down on one of the tables, surprised at the slight tremor in his hands. “We got wind of you a while back. Just a whisper of a rumor. I didn’t really expect . . .” Chronicler paused, suddenly awkward. “I thought you would be older.”

“I am,” Kote said. Chronicler looked puzzled, but before he could say anything the innkeeper continued. “What brings you into this worthless little corner of the world?”

“An appointment with the Earl of Baedn-Bryt,” Chronicler said. “Three days from now, in Treya.”

The innkeeper paused mid-polish. “You expect to make it to the earl’s manor in four days?” he asked quietly.

“I am behind schedule,” Chronicler admitted. He glanced out the window at the darkening sky. “But I’m willing to lose some sleep. I’ll be off in the morning and out of your hair.”

“Well I wouldn’t want to cost you any sleep,” Kote said sarcastically, his eyes gone hard again. “I can tell the whole thing in one breath.” He cleared his throat. “ ‘I trouped, traveled, loved, lost, trusted and was betrayed.’ Write that down and burn it for all the good it will do you.”

Chronicler spoke quickly, “If you’re certain you’ll need—”

 “I’ll need three days,” Kote said. “I’m quite sure of it.”

Chronicler blanched. “But . . . the earl.”

Kote waved a hand dismissively.

“No one needs three days,” Chronicler said firmly. “I interviewed Oren Velciter. Oren Velciter, mind you. He’s eighty years old, and done two hundred years worth of living. Five hundred, if you count the lies. He sought me out,” Chronicler said with particular emphasis. “He only took two days.”

“That is my offer,” the innkeeper said simply. “I’ll do this properly or not at all.”

“Wait!” Chronicler brightened suddenly. “I’ve been thinking about this all backward,” he said, shaking his head at his own foolishness. “I’ll just visit the earl, then come back. You can have all the time you like then.”

Kote gave Chronicler a look of profound disdain. “What gives you the slightest impression that I would be here when you came back?” he asked. “For that matter, what makes you think you’re free to simply walk out of here, knowing what you know?”

Chronicler went very still. “Are—” He swallowed and started again. “Are you saying that—”

“The story will take three days,” Kote interrupted. “Starting tomorrow. That is what I am saying.”

Chronicler closed his eyes and ran his hand over his face. The earl would be furious, of course. No telling what it might take to get back in his good graces. Still . . . “If that’s the only way that I can get it, I accept.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” The innkeeper relaxed into a half smile. “Come now, is three days really so unusual?”

Chronicler’s serious expression returned. “Three days is quite unusual. But then again—” Some of the self-importance seemed to leak out of him. “Then again,” he made a gesture as if to show how useless words were. “You are Kvothe.”

The man who called himself Kote looked up from behind his bottles.  “Yes, I suppose I am,” Kvothe said, and his voice had iron in it.