Chapter 151: Locks

Kvothe ends the night’s telling and closes the Waystone Inn, encouraging Bast to attend Shep’s wake. Bast, withdrawn and joyless, refuses and retreats to his room. After Chronicler retires, he slips through Bast’s window, determined to question him.

In Bast’s richly appointed room, Chronicler presses him about the Sithe and the Cthaeh. Bast, terrified and fatalistic, insists the Cthaeh sees all futures and always engineers the worst one. When Chronicler challenges this fear, Bast erupts, then falters as Chronicler coolly uses Bast’s dread against him.

Chronicler shocks Bast awake—literally—by slapping him twice, arguing that the Cthaeh cannot poison every joy or control every choice. Bast concedes the point partially and concludes that if all roads end badly, he might as well do what he wants. He takes a cloak and wine and leaves through the window to “go about his business.”

Meanwhile, Kvothe tidies his room and faces a locked chest at his bed’s foot. He retrieves a box of two keys—iron and copper—and performs a precise sequence on the opposing locks, then tries the word “Edro.” The chest does not open. Kvothe rests his head on the wood, resigned, accepting expected bad news that nevertheless weighs on him.