Naomi — Greymark
I chose her the night we lost six.
I didn't say so. There was nobody to say it to. Hana was asleep in the chair by my door with her notebook open on her knees. Fabian was on a mountain, further from me than he'd ever been, and the bond had been silent all night because I'd told it to be. Two candles listening. Nothing to do with my hands.
So I thought. That's what I do when there's nothing to do with my hands.
The thing in the hood goes to whoever stands closest. Liesel worked that out in the Queen's rooms. Closest to a teacher nobody asked. Closest to a lord who never learned his escort's name. Closest to a Saint at his prayers.
Who stands closest in Greymark, when I'm not in it?
That part didn't take long. The rest took until morning.
The war room was dark when I came down. I didn't light a lamp. The window looks east, over the last fields to the Gloamwood, and the sky behind the trees was just going gray.
I stood behind Mother's chair at the head of the table. I always do. I've never sat in it.
Greymark lay painted on the tabletop under my hands. The gate. The wall. The north stair, still the earth ramp. The town. The estate on its hill. The near-black green along the top edge, where the forest starts.
(Fabian.)
He answered at once. He hadn't slept either. (Big Sis.)
I listened, the way you listen for someone breathing in the next room. His pitcher was full. Good.
(Everyone,) I said.
They came one by one. Marika first, loud even when she's only listening. Liesel. Hana, from upstairs, half asleep. Cordelia last, the way she always comes: not a word, just there.
(I mean to kindle Sigrid,) I said. (This morning. Before we ride.)
Nobody spoke.
(The rules are mine. A full pitcher. Tell me first. Liesel in the room.) I looked at the window. (Liesel is in Sanctara. I can't keep the third. So I'm asking. All of you.)
A pause.
(Then this is the rule,) I said. (When one of the rules can't be kept, we ask. Every one of us.)
Liesel first. (Yes.) Then, shorter: (I'd have liked to watch. Tell me what her face does.)
(SIGRID?) said Marika. And before anyone could answer: (YES. Obviously yes. She counts EGGS, Naomi. Nothing's ever going to stir somebody who counts eggs.)
(Yes,) said Hana. Softly. (She'll cry. Let her.)
(Yes,) said Cordelia.
That was her word for the day. She'd spent it before sunrise.
Then Fabian. I waited.
(Your call, Big Sis.)
I stood very still behind Mother's chair.
I'd said that to him twice. Both times I'd meant: I trust you. It's yours now. I hadn't known what it sounded like from the other side.
(Noted,) I said.
Sigrid came at first light, the way I'd asked. Two knocks. She always knocks twice.
Hana came down behind her and stood inside the door. Liesel's place, this morning.
"My lady."
"Close the door."
She closed it. She stood where she always stands in this room: a pace inside, back to the wall, where she can see the window and the door at once. She'd stood in that place every time I'd called her here.
"Something has been walking into locked rooms," I said.
She didn't ask what. She waited.
"A teacher at the Academy. The Queen of Bellonia. An escort in Septentria who'd guarded her lord since he was twelve." I kept my eyes on the map. "She killed him at his prayers."
"The notice came," said Sigrid. "Dame Hildegard read it out to the guard."
"It goes to whoever stands closest."
Sigrid was quiet. I watched her work it out. It didn't take long. It never does with her.
"And I stand closest," she said. "When you're gone."
"To the gate. To the house. To everything I'm leaving."
"Then I'll stand somewhere else."
"No. You'll stand there. That's why it's you."
She looked at me properly then. She doesn't, mostly. Guards look past you, at whatever's coming. She looked at me the way she used to look at the line of patients at the estate gate, the year Fabian was blessed, when she stood beside him every afternoon and counted every one of them under her breath.
"There's a thing I can give," I said. "Once. It doesn't come back."
Her eyes went to Hana by the door, then to me.
"From the Young Master," she said.
Of course she knew. She'd seen the light come out of his hands before anyone in Octavia knew what it was.
"His light," I said. "My vow."
"What does it do?"
"Nothing gets into your head that you didn't put there yourself. You'll be stronger. Not as strong as us. Stronger than you are." I paused. "And I'll feel you. Wherever you are."
"You already know where I am, my lady. I'm at the gate."
"Now I'll know when you're not."
She didn't answer that.
"Does it hurt?" she said instead.
"No," said Hana, from the door. "It's warm. Wren smiled. Properly. I'd never seen her do it before."
Sigrid's eyebrows went up. "Wren smiled?"
"She did."
Sigrid thought about that for a while. Wren had been the youngest of her six since the day Wren came to the house. I don't think Sigrid had ever seen her smile either.
"It can't be broken," I said. "It won't end." I made myself look at her. "Choose like that."
"I chose this house a long time ago, my lady."
"Choose it again."
I held out my right hand, palm up.
She looked at it. Then she crossed the room, three paces, and put her hand in mine. A captain's hand, scarred over the knuckles. Warm. Not quite steady.
I said the words. I'd heard Liesel say them in Hana's kitchen, and I'd said them to myself every night since the Long Meadow, so I wouldn't get them wrong.
"By the light I carry, I kindle yours. What would stir you will find no hold. What presses on you, I will feel. It cannot be broken, and it will not end. Will you take it?"
Sigrid didn't answer at once. She looked at our hands. At the map under them. At Greymark.
"Yes," she said. "Count me, my lady. I've counted everybody else."
The circle opened under our hands. Small. White. One gold thread through it, finer than a hair.
Nine days west, Fabian's pitcher dipped. Five. I felt it go.
The gold lifted off the circle and went into her, just under the collarbone, and was gone. She breathed in. Her hand tightened in mine, and with the other she caught hold of the back of Mother's chair.
The wood cracked.
We both looked at it. A split, a hand long, down the carved back.
"Careful," I said. "It shows."
That's why we do it behind a closed door.
"That's Lady Erika's chair," said Sigrid, very quietly.
"Nobody sits in it."
She let go of it anyway, one finger at a time.
And there it was in my chest, under the five. Small. Steady. A spark I hadn't had a moment ago, standing three paces from me in the gray light from the window, exactly where I'd put it.
By the door, Hana was crying. Of course she was.
Sigrid's face did nothing for a long moment. Then it did everything at once, and she turned to the window so I wouldn't see. I looked at the map.
(Done,) I said.
(Her face?) said Liesel.
(Nothing,) I said. (Then everything.)
Sigrid turned back. Her eyes were red. Her voice wasn't.
"Orders, my lady."
"The gate is Dame Hildegard's. The wall is Captain Sirius's. Dame Constance has her own orders from the Queen, and her own guards." I looked at her. "The house is yours."
"And the Young Master's eggs?"
"Take them. You always do."
She put her hand in her coat and brought it out with an egg in it. Brown. Clean.
"Left at the gate this morning," she said. "For the Saint."
I took it. I held it a moment.
"I'll carry it," I said.
"Naomi," said Hana, wiping her face. "It's nine days. It'll—"
"I'll carry it carefully."
Tilly had the horses ready in the yard. Two to ride, one for the packs. Agnes had packed for a season, then unpacked half of it when I looked at her, then packed a third of it back when Hana looked at her.
Hana came out last, with a bundle under her arm that wasn't on Agnes's list.
"What's that?"
"For Pia."
"You've known her three days."
"She sleeps under an arch." Hana tucked it into the top of the pack, where it wouldn't crush. "A wool hood. And Father's old gray mittens. They'll be big on her." She tied the strap. "Cold is cold, whatever she likes."
I didn't argue. You don't, with Hana, once she's tied the strap.
General was on the well cover. He'd been on the well cover since the frost started. He watched us mount, chewing. Then he looked at the bucket by the well, and nodded at it, once.
"Hold the yard," I said.
He went on chewing. That's an answer, from General.
The town was awake by the time we came down the hill. Somebody had told somebody. Somebody always does.
Hana's girls were waiting at the corner by the cooperage, the ones she'd been teaching to mend since the siege. Nine of them. A girl of about twelve stood at the front with a needle case clutched in both hands.
"Lady Hana," she said. "Who checks our stitches?"
Hana leaned down from the saddle.
"You check each other's," she said. "Every one. Just to be safe."
The girl nodded hard. The others nodded behind her. Hana sat back up and didn't look round again until we were past the well in the square, and when she did, her eyes were dry. I noticed. I didn't say so.
The gate was open.
Dame Hildegard stood in it, the way she stands in it every day, with her weight on the knee Fabian mended. Dame Constance stood a little behind her, tall, crimson under mail, her eyes on the road. Up on the wall, Captain Sirius lifted a hand.
And Sigrid stood at Hildegard's shoulder. Closest to the gate. Exactly where I'd put her.
I felt her in my chest, small and steady, as I rode up. I'd felt her all morning. I suspected I'd feel her all winter.
"Marchioness," said Hildegard.
"Dame Hildegard."
"Nine days there. A season gone." She squinted up at me. "Gate'll be here."
"I know."
"So will I. I'm too old to be anywhere else."
I looked at Constance. "Dame Constance."
"My lady." Those eyes, like two holes burned in paper. "It'll hold."
I didn't doubt it. She'd gone under a falling slab for Marika once. She'd do it for a gate.
I looked at Sigrid last. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. She stood straighter, which I wouldn't have thought possible, and put her hand on the gate frame. Carefully. Like a woman who'd cracked a chair that morning and didn't mean to crack a gate.
We rode out under the tide bell. It hung silent. It had better stay that way.
The west road ran out in front of us between the fields, brown and frost-white. Behind us the Gloamwood lay along the edge of the world, dark under its branches the way it is even at noon. I listened to it as we rode away. Birds. A woodpecker somewhere, knocking. Something small in the bracken.
I counted eleven birds before it was too far to hear.
Then I stopped counting, and rode.
Fabian — Sanctara
Five splashes left at first light.
I was at my window with the shutters open, watching the sky over the Academy wall go from black to gray, and I felt them go. Not the way they go when I cast. Not the way they go when one of my sisters opens a circle through me, either, quick and close. These went a long way. East, and east, all the way to a room with a map painted on the table.
Then the pitcher sat at thirty-seven, and that was all.
I reached anyway. I knew better. I reached down the bond toward Greymark, past Naomi's candle, looking for whatever was on the other end of those five splashes now.
Nothing. She wasn't mine to feel. I'd thought it about Wren, in Hana's kitchen, and it was just as true of Sigrid.
(Done,) said Naomi.
Liesel asked about her face, and Naomi answered in three words. A little later Hana added the rest, very softly: (She said, "Count me, my lady. I've counted everybody else.")
I sat at the window a long time after that.
Sigrid had stood beside me at the estate gate every afternoon of my first months as a Saint, counting my patients under her breath, so I wouldn't have to. She'd taken every egg anybody left for me. I'd never once asked what she did with them.
Somebody had finally counted her.
Marika was in the passage before I'd got my boots on.
"SIGRID," she said.
"I know. I was there."
"You were NOT there. You were nine days away. I was nine days away. Only HANA was there." She folded her arms. "Naomi spent her place on SIGRID. That's—"
"Tactics?" said Liesel, from the escorts' doorway, tying back her hair.
Marika glared at the doorframe. "That's a VERY good idea," she said, as if it cost her something.
"You were going to spend yours on a goat," I said.
"That was a PRINCIPLE."
Wren came out behind Liesel, buckling her sword belt. She looked at me.
"Captain?"
"This morning."
Wren didn't say anything. She hummed, very low. Four notes. Not three: the fourth one, the rare one, the one I've heard a handful of times in my life, every time for something very good.
Liesel looked at her. Then at me. Then she smiled, very slightly, and went to get her spear.
The bottles went the way they always go, except that I started them with thirty-seven instead of forty-two and caught myself counting the difference twice. Twelve for the bottles. Five for the heals. Twenty left by midday. Plenty. It just felt different, knowing where the other five had gone.
Felix sang the first six verses, in order, and didn't skip anything. Pia counted. Mistress Salvia rolled bandages. Ambrose wrote Six. Held. in his notebook and nothing else, which for Ambrose is a quiet morning.
When the last bottle was corked, I said, "I'm going to ask the Queen for something."
Felix opened one eye. "Ask her for what?"
"For the two of you."
The spark at his fingertip snapped, once, loud.
"Excited," said Felix.
"The bottles need your song," I said. "And Ambrose's hands. I can't take the bottles north without taking both of you. And I'm not going north without the bottles."
Ambrose looked at the row on the windowsill. Then at me. He thought about it from every side, the way he does, for long enough that Pia stopped writing to watch him.
"Snow," he said at last.
"Snow?"
"Water." He considered. "Everywhere. Frozen." Another pause. "Extraordinarily."
That was, I realized, a yes. Possibly the most enthusiastic yes Ambrose had ever given anything.
Felix had recovered. "I'll need to pack," he said. "Winter essentials."
"No," said Marika, to the door.
"You don't know what's in them."
"I know there are SNAILS in them."
"There are no snails in them." He thought about it. "Yet."
Pia wrote that down.
Liesel took my request to the palace at midday.
"Mother or the Queen?" she'd asked, when I told her.
"The Queen. It's Crown business. Two young lords leaving the Academy for a season, and one of them is Bellonia's envoy."
"Then the Queen," said Liesel, and went, with Wren. Marika stayed, because Marika was Front, and Front was wherever I was.
She came back at lamp-lighting. Pia was already under the arch with her blankets and Wren's cloak, which Wren had not asked for back. Liesel stepped over her on the way in, dropped the second blanket on her the way she does every night, came up the stair, and stood in my doorway with a folded paper.
"Well?"
She read it out. It was short. The Queen's notes always are, when she writes as the Queen.
"The Crown will hear Lord Fabian when the Marchioness of Greymark is in Sanctara. Not before." Liesel lowered the paper. "That's all."
"Why wait for Naomi?"
Liesel folded the note again, very neatly, the way she does when she's thinking.
"The trouble with Mother," she said, "is that, sooner or later, you find out she's already asked someone else the question you were coming to ask."
"Asked who?"
"I don't know." She leaned on the doorframe. "But Mother doesn't make the Crown wait for anybody. Unless she needs them in the room."
(Camp,) said Naomi, that night, from somewhere on the west road. (First night. Nothing to report.)
(Did you eat?) said Hana, to me, from the same campfire, and I told her the truth, which was three helpings, and Marika said Pia said two and three quarters, and Hana said that was close enough, for once.
Then I drained the pitcher and lay in the dark and counted, because I count things.
Nine days. Then the Queen, and whatever she meant to ask, and whoever she meant to ask it of.