Chapter 25: Ambrose Returns

AMBROSE JAKIS CAME back to the University in a coach-and-four.

This alone was worth noting. Students arrived at the University in every conceivable manner---on foot, on horseback, in merchant caravans, by river barge, and once, memorably, by hot-air conveyance from the Cealdish highlands that crashed into the roof of the Artificery and required six students and a tame donkey to dismantle. But no one arrived in a coach-and-four. The roads around the University weren’t built for it. The cobblestones near the main gate were too narrow, the turns too tight, the old stone bridge that connected the grounds to the road south barely wide enough for a hay cart.

Ambrose made it work. Or rather, his family’s money made it work. The coach was lacquered black with gold fittings, drawn by four matched grey horses whose tack gleamed like polished silver. A driver in Jakis livery held the reins, and two footmen rode standing on the rear platform, their faces professionally blank. As the coach rattled through the main gate, students scattered like pigeons before a cat.

I watched from the steps of the Artificery, where I’d been heading to check on a project in the Fishery. The morning was bright, the air sharp with the first real cold of autumn, and the sound of hooves and iron wheels on cobblestone carried across the courtyard with the clarity of a bell.

“Well,” Wilem said, appearing at my elbow. “That’s new.”

“That’s Ambrose.”

“I can see that. I mean the coach. And the livery. And the general… production of it all.” Wil’s eyes narrowed. “He’s making a statement.”

“He’s always making a statement. Usually about how much money he has.”

“This is different.” Wil’s voice was quiet, and I looked at him more carefully. His jaw was set in the way it got when he was thinking something he didn’t want to say. “This isn’t vanity. This is politics.”

Wil was right, though it took me a day to understand how right.

The first sign was the meeting with the Masters.

Ordinarily, when a student returned from a leave of absence, they reported to the Registrar, paid whatever fees had accumulated, and resumed their studies without fanfare. If you were a Re’lar, you might have a brief conversation with your sponsor among the Masters. If you were an E’lir, you simply showed up and nobody noticed.

Ambrose was a Re’lar, which meant he should have reported to Hemme, his sponsor in the Arcanum. Instead, within an hour of his arrival, a runner appeared at the Masters’ Hall requesting the presence of all nine Masters for a private audience.

“All nine?” Simmon’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. We were in the Mess, picking at bowls of the brown stew that the University kitchen produced with depressing regularity. “That’s not a student meeting. That’s a tribunal.”

“Or a petition,” Fela said. She was sitting across from us, her dark hair pinned back with copper clips that caught the light. “Students can petition the full body of Masters for extraordinary considerations. Changes of status, special exemptions, that sort of thing.”

“What kind of special exemptions?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it done.” She frowned. “But I’ve read about it in the University charter. It’s an old provision, from the early days when the Arcanum was more closely tied to the nobility. A student of sufficient rank could request audience with the full Masters to discuss matters of… political consequence.”

“Political consequence,” I repeated.

“Those were the words in the charter.”

I looked at Simmon. Simmon looked at Wilem. Wilem looked at his stew and said nothing.

“This is going to be bad,” I said.

“Almost certainly,” Wil agreed.

The meeting lasted three hours.

I know this because I spent those three hours sitting on a bench outside the Masters’ Hall, pretending to read a treatise on advanced bindings while actually straining every sense for any fragment of what was happening behind the closed doors. The hall was well-built, thick-walled, designed by people who understood that the discussions within should remain private. I heard nothing.

But I could read the faces of the Masters when they emerged.

Kilvin came out first, his massive frame filling the doorway, his expression thunderous. He didn’t speak to anyone, just strode across the courtyard toward the Artificery with the focused intensity of a man trying to outpace his own anger. His great hands were clenched at his sides, and I noticed---with the attention to detail that had kept me alive at the University---that a muscle in his jaw was jumping.

Elodin came next. The Master Namer looked… amused. But it was the wrong kind of amusement---not the playful, manic delight he showed when something surprised him, but the cold, sharp amusement of someone watching a building catch fire from a safe distance. He saw me on my bench and winked, which told me nothing and everything.

Lorren. The Master Archivist’s face was, as always, perfectly composed. But his hands---normally still, normally precise---were clasped behind his back, and his fingers were moving. Not fidgeting. Counting. As if he were tallying something in his head, adding up figures that didn’t balance.

Arwyl. Dal. Mandrag. Brandeur. Each emerged with their own variation of disquiet, each masking it in their own way. The University’s Masters were practiced diplomats, accustomed to hiding their reactions behind years of academic composure. But I’d studied them for years, the way a trapper studies the animals he hunts, and I could read the tension in their shoulders, the careful neutrality of their expressions, the way they avoided each other’s eyes.

Something significant had happened in that room.

Hemme came out last, and he was smiling.

That was the worst sign of all. Hemme’s smile was a weaponized expression, a blunt instrument of self-satisfaction that he deployed when things had gone his way. I’d seen it after my first admissions interview, when he’d tried to have me expelled. I’d seen it after he’d maneuvered to raise my tuition to extortionate levels. I’d seen it every time he’d found a new way to make my life at the University harder, smaller, meaner.

Now he wore it like a crown, and behind him, Ambrose Jakis emerged from the Masters’ Hall and looked directly at me.

He’d changed.

Not physically---Ambrose was still the same broad-shouldered, sharp-featured, expensively dressed young man he’d always been. His hair was still artfully styled. His clothes were still tailored with the kind of precision that required a full-time valet. His rings still caught the light---though I noticed, with a prickle of unease, that there were more of them now. New sigils. New houses. New alliances, displayed on his fingers like a general displaying battle standards.

But the way he carried himself was different. The old Ambrose had been arrogant in the petty, personal way of young men who have never been denied anything. This Ambrose was arrogant in a larger way---not personal but positional. The arrogance of a man who represents something bigger than himself and knows it.

He crossed the courtyard toward me. Not hurrying, not hesitating. Walking with the measured pace of someone who knows that everyone is watching and wants to give them a good show.

I stood. Not because I wanted to---because sitting while Ambrose approached felt like a concession I couldn’t afford.

“Kvothe.” He stopped three paces away. Close enough for conversation, far enough to require me to close the distance if I wanted confrontation. Smart. He’d always been smarter than I wanted to admit. “You look well. The roof of Mains seems to agree with you.”

I said nothing. The fact that he knew about my rooftop retreat was its own kind of message.

“I’ve been away,” he continued, with the casual air of someone discussing the weather. “Family business. My father required my presence for certain… negotiations.”

“Negotiations.”

“Political negotiations. The kind that reshape borders and rearrange thrones.” He smiled, and it was a different smile from the one I remembered. Less smug, more certain. The smile of a man who has seen the future and finds it favorable. “My father, the Baron, has been very busy this past season. Alliances forged. Agreements signed. The kind of patient, careful work that people like you never see, because you’re too busy playing with fire and wind to notice the ground shifting under your feet.”

“I notice more than you think.”

“I’m sure you do. You’re observant, Kvothe. I’ve always given you that. You see patterns, connections, hidden meanings. It’s what makes you dangerous.” He said the word dangerous with a kind of relish, as if he’d been practicing it. “But observation isn’t the same as understanding. You see the pieces, but you don’t see the board.”

“Enlighten me.”

He reached into his coat and produced a folded letter, sealed with wax that bore an impression I recognized---the Jakis crest, but larger than I’d seen it before, encircled by a new border of oak leaves and crowned swords. A Baron’s seal augmented with additional honors.

“My family,” he said, holding the letter but not offering it, “is about to become very important, Kvothe. And you’ve made yourself an enemy of very important people.”

I should have walked away.

I know that now. Walking away from Ambrose would have been the smart play, the strategic play, the play that preserved my options and denied him the satisfaction of a reaction. Every lesson I’d learned about tak, about courtly maneuvering, about the delicate art of doing nothing when your opponent wants you to do something---all of it pointed toward turning on my heel and leaving him talking to empty air.

Instead, I said: “Your family has been important for generations, Ambrose. That hasn’t stopped me before.”

His smile widened. “Before, my family was a barony in Vintas. Wealthy, established, influential---but one of many. A piece on the board, not a player.” He tucked the letter back into his coat. “That’s changing.”

“Changing how?”

“My father has been in extended negotiations with the King’s court. With Roderic himself.” He let the name sit between us. King Roderic. The Vintish throne. The kind of power that made University politics look like children squabbling over toys. “There is a question of succession, as you may know. Roderic has daughters but no sons. The question of who those daughters marry is… of considerable interest.”

I felt a cold weight settle in my stomach.

“You’re talking about a royal marriage.”

“I’m talking about the future of Vintas.” His voice dropped, losing its performative quality, becoming something harder and more honest. “My father is in final negotiations for a betrothal between my eldest brother and the Princess Staelara. When that betrothal is formalized, the Jakis family will be one heartbeat from the Vintish throne.”

“One heartbeat and a wedding.”

“And a wedding.” He acknowledged this with a nod. “But the wedding is a formality. What matters is the alliance. Once the betrothal is announced, the Jakis family becomes untouchable. Anyone who has opposed us---anyone who has made themselves an enemy---will find themselves facing not just a noble house, but the power of the Vintish crown.”

He was looking at me the way a cat looks at a mouse it has cornered. Not with hunger---with patience. The certainty that the conclusion is inevitable and only the timing remains in question.

“You’re threatening me.”

“I’m informing you. There’s a difference.” He held up a hand, ticking off points on his fingers. “You’ve publicly humiliated me. Repeatedly. You’ve interfered with my affairs, undermined my standing, and---let’s be candid---assaulted me on more than one occasion. Under normal circumstances, these are offenses between students. Handled by the Masters. Resolved within the University’s framework.”

“And now?”

“Now they’re offenses against a member of a family allied with the Vintish throne. And the framework changes accordingly.” He lowered his hand. “My father has already written to the Chancellor. Not as a complaint---as an observation. An expression of concern about the safety of his son at an institution that seems unable to control one particularly troublesome student.”

“The Chancellor doesn’t answer to your father.”

“The Chancellor doesn’t have to. He answers to the University’s charter, which requires the maintenance of good relations with the noble houses that fund its operation.” Ambrose’s eyes were steady. “Do you know how much of the University’s annual endowment comes from Vintish noble houses, Kvothe? Houses that are loyal to Roderic? Houses that will be loyal to whoever Roderic elevates through marriage?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. The University’s dependence on noble patronage was one of those uncomfortable truths that everyone knew and no one discussed, like the existence of the Underthing or the real reason Lorren kept certain books locked away.

“Roughly forty percent,” Ambrose said, answering his own question. “Which means that when my family speaks, the University listens. Not out of fear---out of fiscal necessity. And my family is about to have the loudest voice in Vintas.”

Hemme appeared at Ambrose’s shoulder, materializing with the timing of a man who has been waiting for his cue. The Master Rhetorician was dressed more formally than usual---dark robes, silver chain of office, the carefully groomed appearance of someone attending a state function rather than an ordinary day at the University.

“Kvothe,” he said, and the word dripped with the satisfaction of a man who has been handed a weapon he’s been dreaming about for years. “I trust you and Master Jakis are having a productive conversation.”

“Master Hemme.” I kept my voice level. “I didn’t realize you’d taken up the role of Ambrose’s herald.”

The satisfaction flickered, replaced by something sharper. “I am a Master of the University. It is my duty to ensure that students of distinction are treated with appropriate respect. Something you have consistently failed to provide.”

“Students of distinction.” I let the words hang. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

“It’s what the University’s charter calls it. And the charter, as you may recall, predates both of us.” Hemme stepped closer, lowering his voice. Not out of discretion---out of relish. He wanted to be sure I heard every word. “Things are going to change around here, Kvothe. The political landscape is shifting, and people who have relied on clever tricks and borrowed luck to survive are going to find the ground less stable than they thought.”

“Is that a threat, Master Hemme?”

“It’s a prediction. I’m a rhetorician. I study the art of persuasion, the mechanics of power, the way words shape the world.” He smiled, and it was the cold, precise smile of a man laying down a winning hand. “And right now, the words that matter are coming from the Jakis estate. Not from a ravel orphan with no family, no fortune, and no patron.”

The word ravel was deliberate. Not Ruh---ravel. The slur. The word that reduced the Edema Ruh from a people with a thousand years of history to a collection of beggars and thieves. Hemme knew what it meant. He said it anyway, here in the open courtyard, in front of any student who happened to be watching.

I felt the anger rise. Hot and clean and savage, burning through the careful composure I’d been maintaining. My hands clenched. The sleeping mind stirred, reaching for the name of the wind, for the name of fire, for any of the names I’d learned to call when the world needed to be reminded that I was not someone to be dismissed.

But I didn’t call them. Not because I was wise. Not because I’d learned the lesson Auri had tried to teach me about stillness and restraint. But because Ambrose was watching me with those calculating eyes, and behind the calculation I could see something that looked like hope. He wanted me to react. He wanted me to call the wind, to break something, to give him the excuse he needed to bring the full weight of his family’s new power down on my head.

So I smiled instead.

It was the hardest thing I’d done in months. Harder than naming. Harder than sympathy. Harder than climbing the walls of Mains or sitting on a rooftop all day without food or water. I smiled, and I said:

“Thank you for the warning, Ambrose. I’ll keep it in mind.”

And I walked away.

Behind me, I heard Hemme say something sharp and Ambrose say something soothing, and then their voices faded as I crossed the courtyard and pushed through the doors of the Artificery, where the heat and noise of the Fishery swallowed everything else.

Kilvin was at his forge, hammering something with more force than was strictly necessary. He saw me enter and nodded once---a heavy, significant nod that contained a conversation we would have later, when there were no ears to overhear.

I found my workbench, sat down, and stared at nothing for a long time.

The political reality was simple. Ambrose’s family was ascending, and I was standing directly in their path. Everything I’d done to him over the years---the humiliations, the confrontations, the endless back-and-forth of a rivalry that had defined my University years---was being recategorized. What had been student misbehavior was becoming political opposition. What had been pranks and counter-pranks was becoming evidence of a pattern of hostility toward a family that was about to hold real, throne-adjacent power.

The infuriating thing: Ambrose was right. Not about the morality of it---he was still the same petty, vindictive, dangerous man he’d always been. But about the mechanics. The University was dependent on noble patronage. The Chancellor would have to weigh the concerns of a family allied with the Vintish throne. The Masters---even the ones who despised Ambrose, and there were several---would have to consider the political consequences of standing against him.

I thought about Threpe’s words: You can’t unring a bell.

The bell of Jakis power was ringing, and its sound was carrying further than I’d imagined possible.

Simmon found me in the Fishery an hour later, his face a map of barely contained alarm.

“Tell me,” I said.

“I talked to Fela. She talked to someone in the Registrar’s office.” He sat down heavily on a stool, running his hands through his already disheveled hair. “Ambrose petitioned the Masters for a change of status. Something called a ‘Writ of Noble Precedence.’ It’s an old provision---I mean old, Kvothe, centuries old---that grants students of sufficient noble rank certain privileges within the University.”

“What kind of privileges?”

“Exemption from corporal punishment. The right to have a personal servant in residence. Priority access to the Archives and the Fishery.” He paused. “And the right to bring formal charges against other students through the civil courts of Vintas, rather than through the University’s internal disciplinary process.”

The last one hit like a hammer blow.

“Civil courts,” I repeated.

“Vintish civil courts. Where the Jakis family has judges, connections, and the presumptive support of the crown.” Sim’s voice was strained. “Kvothe, if he files charges in Vintish court, you’d have to answer them in Vintas. Under Vintish law. Where you have no allies, no standing, and no rights as Edema Ruh.”

“Did the Masters grant the petition?”

“Split vote. Five to four.” He swallowed. “Hemme, Brandeur, Mandrag, and the Chancellor voted in favor. Kilvin, Elodin, Arwyl, and Lorren voted against. Dal was the swing vote.”

“And Dal voted…?”

“In favor. With reservations, apparently. Fela said the record shows he expressed concern but ultimately deferred to the charter’s provisions.” Sim looked at me, and his eyes were frightened. “Kvothe, this changes everything. Ambrose can’t just get you horsewhipped or expelled anymore. He can have you arrested. Tried in a Vintish court. Imprisoned.”

I sat very still.

The Fishery hummed around me, bellows wheezing, hammers ringing, the smells of hot metal and coal smoke and the sharp chemical tang of solvents filling the air. Students moved between workbenches, absorbed in their projects, oblivious to the political earthquake that was reshaping the ground beneath them.

“What are we going to do?” Sim asked.

I thought about Auri’s words: Some doors only close.

I thought about Denna’s song, spreading across the Four Corners.

I thought about the Chandrian, moving in the shadows.

I thought about the crack in the Lackless door, and the thing that pressed against it from the other side.

And I thought about Ambrose Jakis, standing in the University courtyard with the weight of the Vintish crown behind him, smiling the smile of a man who has finally gained the upper hand in a game he’s been losing for years.

The world was full of closing doors. And I was standing in all of their paths.

“I don’t know yet,” I told Simmon. “But I’m going to figure it out.”

It was the truth. And like most truths I told in those days, it was also a promise I didn’t know how to keep.

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

I lay in my narrow bed in my narrow room, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the University settling into darkness. The distant clang of the Fishery’s night shift. The murmur of students in the halls. The wind---always the wind---moving through the eaves with a voice that sounded, if you listened the right way, almost like a name.

I thought about power.

Not the power of sympathy or naming or any of the Arcanum’s disciplines. Political power. The kind that doesn’t require talent or knowledge or any of the things I’d spent my life cultivating. The kind that simply is, conferred by birth and blood and the arbitrary accident of being born into the right family.

I had none of it. I was Edema Ruh, which in the eyes of Vintas---in the eyes of most of the civilized world---was barely a step above outlaw. I had no family, no fortune, no noble connections beyond the Maer’s grudging tolerance. Everything I’d achieved at the University, I’d achieved through intelligence, determination, and a willingness to take risks that more prudent people would have refused.

But intelligence and determination and risk-taking had limits. You could be the cleverest person in the world, and it wouldn’t matter if the game was rigged. And Ambrose was rigging the game with the only tool that had ever truly mattered in the Four Corners: the threat of legitimate, state-sanctioned violence.

The old rules---the University’s rules, the rules of academic rivalry and student politics---had been a level field. Not perfectly level, but close enough that a resourceful orphan could compete with a baron’s son. Those rules were being replaced by a new set, written in a language I didn’t speak, governed by a power I couldn’t match.

Unless I found a way to change the game.

I turned onto my side. The moon was visible through my small window, hanging in the sky like a question I couldn’t answer.

The Maer. Alveron was still my patron, at least nominally. A Vintish noble with his own power, his own connections. But the Maer was dying---slowly, mysteriously, from a poison that I suspected had more to do with the opening doors than any mortal assassin. How much longer would his protection extend?

Bredon. The old man had revealed himself as more than he appeared. He had knowledge, resources, connections that ran deeper than any noble house. But Bredon’s allegiance was to his own agenda, and I wasn’t certain that agenda included keeping me alive.

The Masters. Kilvin, Elodin, Lorren, Arwyl---they’d voted against Ambrose’s petition. They were allies, of a sort. But academic allies, constrained by the University’s charter, by their own positions, by the web of obligations and dependencies that bound the institution to the noble houses that funded it.

None of it was enough.

I lay in the dark and felt the future pressing in---not the distant future, not the abstract future of plans and possibilities, but the immediate, tangible future of tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. A future where Ambrose Jakis had the Vintish crown at his back and I had nothing but my wits and my music and the name of the wind.

The name of the wind.

The thought caught, like a match striking flint. Something Elodin had said, months ago, in one of his maddening, circuitous lectures: Power is not what you have. Power is what others believe you have. The wind doesn’t negotiate with the things it breaks.

I sat up in bed.

The wind doesn’t negotiate.

I didn’t have political power. I didn’t have noble connections or money or the machinery of state. But I had something that Ambrose Jakis, for all his family’s wealth and ascending influence, would never have.

I had called the name of the wind. I had walked in the Fae and returned. I had spoken with the Cthaeh and survived. I had powers that the Jakis family couldn’t buy, couldn’t threaten, couldn’t petition away through century-old charter provisions.

The question was whether I was willing to use them.

I lay back down. The moon had moved past my window, and the room was dark.

I thought about Auri’s words: Some doors only close.

I thought about my own words: I’m going to figure it out.

And somewhere in the space between those two promises, I fell asleep, and dreamed of doors, and woke to a world that had not gotten simpler in the night.