Is it possible that the sword named Folly is Cinder's sword and not Caesura? There was a brief mention of it reminding Kvothe of the cold of winter, pale and elegant and painful. And all descriptions of Folly give the impression that it too is a cold sword (for lack of a better word).

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Quotes:

The bar was decorated with glittering bottles, and Kote was standing on the now-vacant counter between the two heavy oak barrels when Bast came back into the room, black scabbard swinging loosely from one hand.

Kote paused in the act of setting the mounting board atop one of the barrels and cried out in dismay, “Careful, Bast! You’re carrying a lady there, not swinging some wench at a barn dance.”

Bast stopped in his tracks and dutifully gathered it up in both hands before walking the rest of the way to the bar.

Kote pounded a pair of nails into the wall, twisted some wire, and hung the mounting board firmly on the wall. “Hand it up, would you?” he asked with an odd catch in his voice.

Using both hands, Bast held it up to him, looking for a moment like a squire offering up a sword to some bright-armored knight. But there was no knight there, just an innkeeper, just a man in an apron who called himself Kote. He took the sword from Bast and stood upright on the counter behind the bar.

He drew the sword without a flourish. It shone a dull grey-white in the room’s autumn light. It had the appearance of a new sword. It was not notched or rusted. There were no bright scratches skittering along its dull grey side. But though it was unmarred, it was old. And while it was obviously a sword, it was not a familiar shape. At least no one in this town would have found it familiar. It looked as if an alchemist had distilled a dozen swords, and when the crucible had cooled this was lying in the bottom: a sword in its pure form. It was slender and graceful. It was deadly as a sharp stone beneath swift water.

Kote held it a moment. His hand did not shake.

Then he set the sword on the mounting board. Its grey-white metal shone against the dark roah behind it. While the handle could be seen, it was dark enough to be almost indistinguishable from the wood. The word beneath it, black against blackness, seemed to reproach: Folly.

- The Name of the Wind, Chapter 3: Wood and Word, pgs 25-26

I now stood in full view of the fire. One of the men tumbled backward and came to his feet with his sword out. His motion reminded me of quicksilver rolling from a jar onto a tabletop: effortless and supple. His expression was intent, but his body was relaxed, as if he had just stood and stretched.

His sword was pale and elegant. When it moved, it cut the air with a brittle sound. It reminded me of the quiet that settles on the coldest days in winter when it hurts to breathe and everything is still.

He was two dozen feet from me, but I could see him perfectly in the fading light of sunset. I remember him as clearly as I remember my own mother, sometimes better. His face was narrow and sharp, with the perfect beauty of porcelain. His hair was shoulder length, framing his face in loose curls the color of frost. He was a creature of winter’s pale. Everything about him was cold and sharp and white.

Except his eyes. They were black like a goat’s but with no iris. His eyes were like his sword, and neither one reflected the light of the fire or the setting sun.

…..

The one called Cinder sheathed his sword with the sound of a tree cracking under the weight of winter ice.

- The Name of the Wind, Chapter 16: Hope, pgs 126-127

The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the thick stone walls of the empty taproom, and in the flat, grey metal of the sword that hung behind the bar.

- The Name of the Wind, Epilogue: A Silence of Three Parts, pg 721

“You might have had a chance if you’d picked something easier to swallow,” he said. But everybody knows Kvothe’s sword was made of silver.” He flicked his eyes up to the sword that hung on the wall. “It was called Folly, either. It was Kay-sera, the poet-killer.”



- Wise Man’s Fear, Chapter 2: Holly, pg 22

Then, slowly, she laid her hand on another sword with a blade of burnished grey. She lifted it off the wall, gripped it, and seemed to age ten years.

Vashet avoided looking at Shehyn, and handed me the sword. The guard of this one extended out slightly, curving to give a hint of protection to the hand. It was nothing like a full hand guard. Anything that bulky would render half the Ketan useless. But it looked as if it would give my fingers an extra bit of shelter, and that was appealing to me.

….

Sensing something was expected of me, I drew it from its sheath. The faint ring of leather and metal seemed a whisper of its name: Saicere. It felt light in my hand. The blade was flawless. I slid it back into its sheath and the sound was different. It sounded like the breaking of a line. It said: Caesura.

- Wise Man’s Fear, Chapter 125: Caesura, pgs 912-913

“I can’t help notice that your description of Caesura doesn’t….” Chronicler hesitated. “Well, it doesn’t quite seem to match the actual sword itself.” His eyes flicked to the sword behind the bar. “The hand guard isn’t what you described.”



Kvothe gave a wide grin. “Well you’re just sharp as anything, aren’t you?”

“I don’t mean to imply–” Chronicler said quickly, looking embarrassed.



Kvothe laughed a rich warm laugh. The sound of it tumbled around the room, and for a moment the inn didn’t feel empty at all. “No. You’re absolutely right.” He turned to look at the sword. “That isn’t…what did the boy call it this morning?” His eyes went distant for a moment, then he smiled again. “Kay-sera. The poet-killer.”

- Wise Man’s Fear, Chapter 136; Interlude–Close to Forgetting, pg 990

Analysis:

I’ll start with what we know for sure. The sword hanging in the Waystone Inn is not the Adem sword Saicere/Caesura. Kvothe tells us this himself when Chronicler asks. Also, Shehyn made Kvothe promise to arrange for the sword to be returned to Haert upon his death. Since we know Kvothe faked his death to escape from his past life, he probably sent the sword home, if only to convince the Adem of his death.

So: Where did Folly come from?

I’ll start with her physical description. A sword in its purest form, made such as though by magic. This could be Alchemy, Grammarie, or Shaping, we don’t know. When Bast talks of Grammarie in “The Lightning Tree,” he gives an example of using the craft to make a knife more of a knife. The best knife, to anyone’s eyes. This doesn’t seem to be the case for Folly, since “no one in this town would have found it familiar.” It could be, since it is a sword in its purest form, but one way or the other, it doesn’t really matter what sort of magic was used to create Folly. We know a magic was used, and an ancient one.

Folly:

- Scabbard is black, handle is black, blade is grey-white

- Kvothe calls her a “lady.”

- The blade is a “dull grey-white.”- different than Caesura’s “burnished grey” (burnished = polished = shiny, not dull)

- Looks new, no scratches, notches, or rusting

- Old

- Deadly, slender, graceful, sharp

* No sound is mentioned when Kvothe draws the sword. *





Cinder’s Sword:

- Elegant, pale

- When it moves, it cuts the air with a “brittle” sound that reminds Kvothe of winter’s quiet

- When sheathed, it makes the sound of a branch breaking in winter

And that’s all we have. Cinder himself is described like “frost,” moving like “quicksilver,” “cold and sharp and white.” The Adem poem about the Rhinta describes him: “Ferule chill and dark of eye.” Kvothe calls him a “creature of winter’s pale.”



It seems to me that Cinder himself is tied to winter/ice/cold. His sword has the same characteristic.

So, either it was forged for him and made to mimic his power from the get-go, or it has taken on that characteristic.

I believe it is the second option because of this line: “It reminded me of the quiet that settles on the coldest days in winter when it hurts to breathe and everything is still.”

Even when Cinder is using it, the sword has its own silence. Perhaps this silence is what lets it act like Cinder and take on his “sign.” Cinder himself doesn’t seem one for silence. He taunts Kvothe, hints at the Chandrian’s secrets, and annoys Haliax.

Folly, as I noted above, contributes to the third part of the Silence of Three Parts. The part that comes from and contains the red-haired innkeeper.

The sword itself mimics and amplifies its wielder’s nature.

What is Kvothe’s true nature? Well, that’s harder. He is Edema Ruh to his bones. He is a performer. It’s pretty rare in the books for him to let his true self through. He is almost always putting on a show for somebody.



But when that mask breaks, we see how hurt he is, deep inside. When Auri comforts him after the plum bob incident. When he flashes back to the traumas he suffered in Tarbean. When he shows Vashet the darkness inside him, and the song. When he yells at Sim for long-past atrocities committed against his people.

The hurt inside him. It’s implied he never speaks of it until Chronicler comes. Bast doesn’t seem to know the details of his troupe’s murder before Kvothe tells Chronicler, since he’s so upset after (looking at Kvothe with “blubbery cow eyes”).

The one person Kvothe has so-far tried to tell is Denna, after their fight in Severen. He tries to write her a letter with the story, but, “It was a secret I had clutched so tightly for so long that when I dared think of it, it lay so heavy in my chest that I could barely breathe” (Wise Man’s Fear, Chapter 73: Blood and Ink, pg 552).

For Kvothe, it is easier to be anyone else, the Maer’s advisor, a rich lordling, a rebellious student, than to be the wounded boy he is. The silence we see in the Waystone has been inside him since the Chandrian killed his parents, maybe before.

Folly shares his silence. She adds it to her own and amplifies it. Maybe the other way around, or both ways. She is perfect for him. That said, I highly doubt that Kvothe fashioned her himself. We are told explicitly that she is old, and while we don’t know his exact age, Folly is older.

She must have come from somewhere. Anything around that long has to have a story.

Folly shares Kvothe’s silence.

Cinder’s sword shares his chill.

It’s very likely they are the same sword. She acts her part, channeling her owner’s characteristics, becoming his blade. Her own silence makes this her nature. Hiding or suppressing her secret self. A mistake Kvothe has made for most of his life. His folly.

So, final question: If Folly is so perfectly fitted for Kvothe, but spends however-many thousands of years in Cinder’s use, who was the original intended owner? Has Cinder been a stand-in this whole time, while Haliax waited for his true Seventh to take his place? It could explain why Cinder stands out from the rest of them, and why Haliax rebukes him specifically. Was Kvothe destined to become one of the Seven?

TL;DR

I think you’re right. Folly used to be Cinder’s sword. She has her own silence and acts as his blade, taking on his “sign.” Now, with Kvothe, she conducts his silence, his “sign,” if you will.