“Since you asked so sweetly, Cinder is the one you want. Remember him? White hair? Dark eyes? Did things to your mother, you know. Terrible. She held up well though. Laurian was always a trouper, if you’ll pardon the expression. Much better than your father, with all his begging and blubbering.”

My mind flashed pictures of things I had tried to forget for years. My mother, her hair wet with blood, her arms unnaturally twisted, broken at the wrist, the elbow. My father, his belly cut open, had left a trail of blood for twenty feet. He’d crawled to be closer to her. - The Wise Man’s Fear, Chapter 104: The Cthaeh, pg 757

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       Kvothe’s graphic description of his parents’ murders, finally given to us in Book 2 thanks to the Cthaeh’s taunting. Sorry for bringing it up again.

It’s obvious here that though both were killed horribly, Laurian was tortured prior to her death, and Arliden was not. He was given one fatal gut wound, and though he died slowly, like Alleg later in the same book, he was dead as soon as he was wounded, “he just hadn’t stopped moving yet” (WMF, Chapter 132: The Broken Circle, pg 961).

Maybe Cinder tortured Laurian just because some people like torturing women more. That’s what I assumed when I first read it. But Haliax went with them on that escapade. Haliax stopped Cinder from tormenting young Kvothe, saying, “This one has done nothing. Send him to the soft and painless blanket of his sleep.... You are too fond of your little cruelties. All of you. I am glad I decided to accompany you today. You are straying, indulging in whimsy. Some of you seem to have forgotten what it is we seek, what we wish to achieve” (NotW, Chapter 16: Hope, pgs 128-129).

Haliax was there enforcing their goals, which means torturing Laurian had a purpose other than cruelty.

Kvothe tells us his parents were writing the song about Lanre together. Everything Arliden knew about them, Laurian knew as well. So she was not tortured for information about their sources, or anything to do with the song. (Unless the Chandrian assumed she would be more likely to talk than Arliden, which is unlikely, because with seven of them there, they could easily have tortured both of them at the same time.)

So Laurian knew something that Arliden didn’t know (or the Chandrian thought she did).

It’s pretty widely accepted that Laurian used to be Natalia Lackless, the missing Lackless sister (there are a million posts about it on reddit, and it’s even in her Wiki page).

So the Chandrian found a Lackless heir unprotected, in a place where no one would ever know she was dead, and seized their chance.

The most likely thing they wanted information on: the Lackless Box.

Whatever theories you subscribe to about what the Box is, what’s in it, and how to open it, there’s no doubt that it is Important. A secret as old as the Lackless family, that they guard closer than anything else.

If the Chandrian were trying to get information about it from Laurian, then it’s a secret that has been kept even from them.

The Cthaeh says she “held up well.” Does that mean she told them nothing before she died? That she told them lies? That she held out for a while, but then gave in? We can’t know yet.

But, it means the Chandrian are coming for the Lacklesses. Finding out more about the Box serves their purpose. Which means the people who know about the box: Meluan, Alveron, Aculeus (possibly), and Kvothe, are all in their crosshairs.

Maybe they can’t go after the prestigious Lacklesses because they are protected. Maybe they’ll try, and there will be some upheaval in Temerant. Maybe that’s why Cinder was trying to destabilize the Maer. I could talk maybes all day, but there’s one thing we know.

Kvothe has none of the protections of money and power that Alveron and Meluan have. And now he knows about the Box. True, the Chandrian don’t know yet that he knows, but it’s only a matter of time. After all, he was in the company of Meluan Lackless, and shortly thereafter started researching Yllish story knots. Why would he do that? Not even Yllish people know Yllish anymore.

TL;DR

Now this..I’m definitely gonna have to search my books. Luckily my best friend recently gave back my dog-eared copies of NOTW and WMF

Kotes thrice locked chest:  “aroma of citrus quenching iron”  made of roah–dark as coal pg 15

Mounting board: charcoal color (roah again, pg 25, doesn’t burn)–pg 23 “stink like old leather and clover”–when burnt.

Cthaeth–pg 680–”strange sweet smell, like smoke and spice and leather and lemon”–compelled to put it in his mouth–doesn’t remark on the colornoticed that they said “you’d think a man with coal-black eyes would make an impression when he stops to buy a drink”–a man such as that was described when skarpi was telling his story--pg 684

Lackless box: pg 921, smooth polished stone, dark enough to be roah, but deep red grain “smelled almost like lemon”–maddeningly familiar (cthaeh??)