The innkeeper shrugged. “Only priests and fools are fearless, and I’ve never been on the best of terms with God.”
Chronicler frowned, aware that he was being baited. “Listen,” he continued calmly, “I was extraordinarily careful. No one except Skarpi 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. “It was a long time ago—”
“Not even two years,” Chronicler protested.
“—and I am not what I was,” Kote continued without pausing.
“And what was that, exactly?”
“Kvothe,” he said simply, refusing to be drawn any further into an explanation. “Now 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 dead.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Kote shook his head, stuck between amusement and exasperation. “That’s the whole point. People don’t look for you when you’re dead. Old enemies don’t try to settle scores. People don’t come asking you for stories,” he said acidly.
Chronicler refused to back down. “Other people say you’re a myth.”
“I am a myth,” Kote said easily, making an extravagant gesture. “A very special kind of myth that creates itself. The best lies about me are the ones I told.”
“They say you never existed,” Chronicler corrected gently.
Kote shrugged nonchalantly, his smile fading an imperceptible amount.
Sensing weakness, 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. He nodded once without looking up.
“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 as if he were trying to convince himself, but his voice was weary and despairing, 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—”
“What do they know?” Kote’s voice cut like a saw through bone. “What do they know about what happened?” He spoke so softly that Chronicler had to hold his breath to hear.
“They say she—” Chronicler’s words stuck in his suddenly dry throat as the room grew unnaturally quiet. Kote stood with his back to the room, a stillness in his body and a terrible silence clenched between his teeth. His right hand, tangled in a clean white cloth, made a slow fist.
Eight inches away a bottle shattered. The smell of strawberries filled the air alongside the sound of splintering glass. A small noise inside so great a stillness, but it was enough. Enough to break the silence into small, sharp slivers. 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, the fear.
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 like a shattered mask. Underneath, Kote’s expression was haunted, eyes half in this world, half elsewhere, remembering.
Chronicler found himself thinking of a story he had heard. One of the many. The story told of how Kvothe had gone looking for his heart’s desire. He had to trick a demon to get it. But once it rested in his hand, he was forced to fight an angel to keep it. I believe it, Chronicler found himself thinking. Before it was just a story, but now I can believe it. This is the face of a man who has killed an angel.
“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, as if they might defend him.
“So you went looking for a myth and found a man,” he said without inflection, without looking up. “You’ve heard the stories and now you want the truth of things.”
Radiating relief, 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.”