Chapter 34: Stapes and the Bone Ring

STAPES FOUND ME in the garden.

Not the formal garden—the small one behind the kitchens, where herbs grew in neat rows and the air smelled of rosemary and turned earth. I’d come there because it was the one place in the Maer’s estate where no one was watching, where no courtier would think to look for me, where I could breathe without measuring the political cost of each exhale.

I was wrong, of course. Stapes found me. Which meant Stapes had always known where this garden was, and what it was for, and who would eventually seek refuge in it.

“Master Kvothe.”

He appeared around the corner of the garden wall like something inevitable. Not rushed, not casual. Moving with the precise, unhurried gait of a man who has spent forty years navigating palace corridors and knows exactly how fast to walk to reach a person at the moment they most need reaching.

He looked older. That struck me first, before anything else. The last time I’d seen Stapes, he’d been a man of middle years disguised as an old one—grey-haired and careful, but with a vitality beneath the surface that most people missed. Now the disguise had become the truth. His shoulders had a stoop that hadn’t been there before. His hands, when he clasped them behind his back, trembled with a fine, constant vibration that spoke of sleepless nights and endless worry.

His eyes, though—his eyes were the same. Sharp as cut glass. Missing nothing.

“Stapes.” I stood from the stone bench where I’d been sitting. “I didn’t expect—”

“You didn’t expect me to find you here. Yes.” He looked around the garden with the practiced eye of someone checking for eavesdroppers. “This garden has seventeen possible listening positions, four of which are currently occupied by people who believe themselves to be invisible. We have approximately six minutes before someone with actual authority decides to investigate.”

“Six minutes for what?”

“For a conversation that should have happened the moment you arrived.” He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew something small, holding it out to me. “Do you remember this?”

I looked at his hand.

On his palm lay a ring. Not metal—bone. Carved from a single piece of what might have been whale ivory, yellowed with age, inscribed with tiny figures that I recognized as scenes from Vintish folk tales. A ring of bone, given from one person to another, signifying a debt so deep it could never be fully repaid.

He had given me this ring. After I saved the Maer from Caudicus’s poison, after I navigated the impossible politics of the court and emerged—barely—with my skin intact, Stapes had pressed this ring into my hand and said words I’d never forgotten:

“You saved him. Whatever else you are, whatever else you become, you saved him, and that is a debt I will carry to my grave.”

“I remember,” I said.

“Then you know what it means when I tell you that I am calling in that debt.” His voice was steady, but there was something underneath it—a tremor that had nothing to do with age. “Not the repayment. The ring isn’t about repayment. It’s about trust. I gave you that ring because I trusted you with the most important thing in my world. And now I need that trust returned.”

“What do you need?”

“I need you to listen.” He sat on the bench, and the movement was heavy with exhaustion. “And I need you to believe what I tell you, even though parts of it will sound impossible.”

I sat beside him. “I’ve developed a high tolerance for the impossible lately.”

“Yes.” A ghost of a smile. “I’ve heard.”

“The Maer is dying,” Stapes said. “You know this.”

“The poison.”

“Not just the poison. The poison is the mechanism, but the intent behind it…” He shook his head. “When you exposed Caudicus, we believed the threat was over. A lone poisoner, motivated by money and influence. Simple. Comprehensible. We took precautions. Changed everything. Made the Maer’s food and drink as secure as anything can be.”

“But the poisoning continued.”

“Continued and accelerated.” Stapes’s hands tightened in his lap. “Within a month of your departure, the symptoms returned. Within three months, they were worse than they’d ever been under Caudicus. We tried everything—new servants, new physicians, new suppliers. We brought in alchemists from Cealdland and physicians from the University and herbalists from the Tahl.”

“Nothing worked.”

“Nothing even slowed it.” He looked at me. “Do you understand what that means? It means the poisoner isn’t working through the food or the water or any physical medium we can identify. It means the mechanism is something else entirely.”

I thought about this. “Sympathy? Someone with a link to the Maer—a hair, a drop of blood—”

“We considered that. Had a sympathist examine every object in the Maer’s chambers. Nothing. No links, no bindings, no hidden connections.” Stapes’s voice dropped. “Whatever is killing him, it’s not any kind of poison or magic that anyone in the Four Corners seems to understand.”

“Then what is it?”

“I believe—and I have no proof of this, only the observation of a man who has watched over Alveron for forty years—I believe that the Maer is being killed by the same thing that is killing the world.”

I said nothing. Waited.

“You’ve seen it,” Stapes continued. “The wrongness. The fraying. The sense that things aren’t quite where they should be. Everyone feels it, even if they can’t name it.”

“I’ve seen it.”

“The Maer feels it more than most. He’s connected to this land, Master Kvothe, in ways that go beyond ownership or governance. The Alveron line has been bound to Vintas for centuries—a binding that was created deliberately, by people who understood what they were doing. The health of the lord mirrors the health of the land. When the land thrives, the lord thrives. When the land sickens…”

“The lord sickens.” I understood now. Not poison in the traditional sense. Something more fundamental. “Someone is attacking the land itself.”

“Someone—or something—is weakening the bindings that hold the world together. And because the Maer is woven into those bindings, he feels every fraying thread.” Stapes’s voice was barely audible. “He’s dying, Kvothe. Not from arsenic or nightshade. From the unraveling of everything.”

“There’s more,” Stapes said. “The court is fracturing.”

“I noticed the blue and white banners.”

“The Penitent King’s faction.” Stapes spoke the name with distaste most people reserve for diseases. “Baron Jakis is behind it—or rather, his money is behind it. The Jakis family has been positioning themselves for a power grab for generations. Ambrose’s grandfather started it. His father continued it. And now—”

“Ambrose.” The name tasted like bile.

“Is playing a longer game than you realize.” Stapes gave me a look. “You think of him as a bully. A petty tyrant with more money than sense. And at the University, perhaps that’s what he was. But at court, in the arena of real power…” He paused, choosing his words with the care of a man selecting tools for surgery. “The Jakis family has been cultivating alliances for three decades. Noble houses that owe them money. Merchants whose trade routes they control. Military officers whose promotions they arranged. They’ve been building an army—not of soldiers, but of obligations.”

“And the Penitent King?”

“A figurehead. A face for the Jakis ambitions, dressed in religious authority.” Stapes’s voice was contemptuous. “The theology is nonsense—cobbled together from Tehlin orthodoxy and folk superstition and whatever sounds properly pious. But it works. People are frightened. The world is changing in ways they don’t understand, and the Penitent King offers certainty. Obedience. A simple story to replace the complicated one.”

“And the Maer?”

“Is too weak to fight. Too honorable to use the Jakis’s methods. And too proud to ask for help from anyone except—” He looked at me. “Except you.”

“I’m flattered. And confused. What exactly does the Maer think I can do that his armies and his advisors and his money can’t?”

“Find the truth.” Stapes’s voice was simple. “The same thing you did before. Cut through the lies and the politics and the competing narratives and find the truth. Because the truth is the one weapon the Jakis can’t counter.”

I considered what he’d told me. The scope of it. The Jakis family—Ambrose’s family—building a shadow empire of obligation and debt, slowly positioning themselves to replace the Maer as the dominant power in Vintas. It was the kind of patient, multi-generational scheming that you read about in histories of fallen kingdoms but never expect to encounter in your own life.

“How deep does the Jakis influence go?” I asked.

Stapes’s expression tightened. “Deep enough that I trust fewer people in this estate than I can count on one hand. Deep enough that I’ve dismissed three servants in the past month alone—people who had served the Maer for years, decades even—because I discovered they were reporting to Jakis intermediaries.”

“And the other noble houses?”

“Split. The traditional houses—Alveron loyalists, families that have held their lands since before the Commonwealth—still support the Maer. But they’re cautious. Frightened. They see the world changing, and they see the Jakis family offering stability and certainty, and they wonder whether loyalty to an ailing lord is worth the risk.” He plucked a sprig of rosemary, rolling it between his fingers. The scent rose sharp and clean in the morning air. “The newer houses—those who’ve risen through trade or military service—are almost uniformly on the Jakis side. They owe their positions to Jakis money, and they know it.”

“What about the Lackless?”

Stapes went still. Just for a moment—a pause so brief that most people wouldn’t have noticed. But I’d spent weeks learning to read Vintish body language, and Stapes’s sudden immobility spoke volumes.

“The Lackless situation,” he said carefully, “is complicated.”

“Complicated how?”

“Meluan holds the Lackless name. The Lackless lands, the Lackless titles, the Lackless responsibilities. She married the Maer, which should have cemented the Lackless-Alveron alliance for a generation.” He crushed the rosemary between his fingers. “But she has no heir. The Maer is ill—perhaps dying. And if Alveron falls, the Lackless name falls with him. The lands, the titles, everything—it reverts to the crown, which means it goes to whoever controls the crown.”

“The Jakis.”

“The Jakis.” He let the crushed rosemary fall. “Unless there is another legitimate Lackless heir. Someone with a blood claim that supersedes the crown’s right of reversion.”

He looked at me. The look held weight.

“I see,” I said.

“I’m not sure you do. Not entirely.” He leaned closer. “The Lackless inheritance isn’t just land and money, Kvothe. It’s guardianship. The Lackless family was charged with protecting certain things—doors, keys, secrets—that predate every kingdom in the Four Corners. If the Jakis take control of the Lackless lands, they take control of those responsibilities too. And Baron Jakis is not a man who guards things. He’s a man who uses them.”

The implication settled over me like a shroud.

“You’re saying that if the Maer falls and the Jakis take the Lackless lands, they’ll have access to the Lackless door.”

“I’m saying that some things should not be in the hands of ambitious men who value power over preservation.” Stapes’s voice was quiet but fierce. “I’m saying that there is a reason the Lackless family has guarded those doors for three thousand years. And I’m saying that the current political situation makes that guardianship more fragile than it has ever been.”

We sat in silence for a moment, listening to the bees move through the rosemary.

Then Stapes said, quietly: “There’s one more thing.”

“Of course there is.”

“Meluan suspects.” He didn’t look at me. “About your parentage.”

The words landed like stones in still water.

“How?”

“The box opened for you. Only Lackless blood can open it—she knows that. And she’s not a fool, whatever else she may be.” Stapes finally met my eyes. “She hasn’t said anything to the Maer. Not yet. But I’ve seen her watching you. Studying your face. Comparing it to…” He hesitated. “To the portrait.”

“What portrait?”

“There’s a painting of Netalia in the family gallery. Done when she was seventeen, the year before she left.” Stapes’s voice softened. “You look like her, Kvothe. Not identical—you have your father’s coloring, his jaw. But the eyes. The shape of the face. The way you hold yourself when you’re thinking.” He shook his head. “It was bound to be noticed, sooner or later.”

“What will she do if she confirms it?”

“I don’t know. The woman I knew a year ago would have denounced you. Used it as evidence that you’d deceived the Maer. Turned your heritage into a weapon against you.” He paused. “But Meluan has changed. The door in the Lackless estate. The things she’s learned about her family’s true purpose. They’ve… shifted something in her. Made her question things she was previously certain about.”

“That doesn’t mean she’ll welcome a Ruh half-blood into the family.”

“No. It doesn’t.” Stapes stood, brushing dirt from his trousers with the automatic precision of a man who has spent decades keeping things clean. “But it means the situation is volatile. If Meluan discovers the truth on her own terms, at a time of her choosing, she’ll treat it as a threat. If she discovers it on your terms…”

“It might be an opportunity.”

“It might be anything. That’s what makes it dangerous.” He looked at me with those sharp, tired eyes. “You have allies here, Master Kvothe. The bone ring isn’t just a symbol. There are people in this court who remember what you did for the Maer. People who owe you more than they’ve paid. If you need them—”

“I’ll call on them.”

“See that you do.” He straightened. Drew his composure around him like a cloak. In an instant, the worried old man disappeared, and in his place stood the Maer’s retainer—correct, composed, unflappable. The mask he wore for the rest of the world.

“Our six minutes are nearly up,” he said. “The third fork on the left is for preserved fruits. The salad fork is the smaller one. And if you hold your wine glass by the bowl instead of the stem one more time, I will personally throw you off the estate wall.”

I laughed. It felt strange—laughing, in the middle of everything. But Stapes had always had that gift: the ability to make the unbearable feel, for a moment, merely difficult.

“Thank you, Stapes.”

“Don’t thank me. Save him.” His voice was matter-of-fact, but his eyes—for just a moment—showed everything he was feeling. Fear. Grief. The desperate hope of a man who has watched the person he loves most in the world slowly dying and has been helpless to stop it.

“I’ll save him,” I said.

He nodded. Once. Then turned and walked out of the garden, his footsteps precise and unhurried, his back straight, his hands steady.

The trembling, I noticed, had stopped.

I sat in the garden for a while after he left, turning the bone ring in my fingers.

Such a small thing. A circle of carved bone, light as a whisper, old as promises. In Vintas, a bone ring was the most serious pledge one person could make to another—more binding than a contract, more sacred than a wedding vow. It was a piece of yourself, given freely, acknowledging a debt that could never be repaid because the thing owed was beyond the reach of money or service.

Stapes had given me his trust. His vulnerability. The deepest thing he had.

And now he was asking me to be worthy of it.

I slipped the ring onto my finger—the left hand, the ring finger, the Vintish way. It fit loosely, clicking against the knuckle as I moved. A constant reminder.

Then I stood, straightened my coat, and walked back into the Maer’s estate.

There was a poisoner to find. A court to navigate. A world to keep from flying apart.

And I had a bone ring’s worth of trust to live up to.

That, at least, was a debt I intended to pay.