Marika — Sanctara
I didn't sleep. I want that written down at the top, so nobody can say later that I was calm about it.
I lay on the narrow bed in the gray house with my boots on, which Hana hates, and looked at the ceiling, and did not think about it. I did not think about it so hard that by the time the window went gray I could have drawn every crack in that ceiling from memory.
Breakfast was porridge. Hana made it. She smiled into the pot the whole time and didn't say one word, which is worse than if she'd sung.
Naomi was at the head of the table. Standing. She looked at me over the porridge.
"Is it him?"
Everybody stopped eating. Liesel. Fabian. Wren at the door. Even Pia, in her new hood, who didn't know what we were talking about and could tell anyway, because Pia can always tell when a room is about to boil over.
"It's him," I said.
"It can't be broken," said Naomi. "And it won't end."
"I KNOW."
"Choose like that."
"I CHOSE." I put my spoon down too hard. "I chose on the Long Meadow with my sword stuck in a dead cat. I chose on the road home behind a cart. I've chosen so many times I've lost COUNT, and I don't lose count. That's HIS thing." I pointed the spoon at Fabian.
Fabian kept very still. Wise.
Naomi looked at me for a long moment. Then she nodded, once. Not Noted. Just the nod. From Naomi, that's a whole speech.
"Liesel in the room," she said.
"Liesel," I said. "And NOBODY ELSE."
"I'll feel it anyway," said Fabian.
"Then FEEL it from the KITCHEN."
"Where?" said Liesel.
"The stable."
Liesel considered this. Liesel likes stables better than most rooms with chairs in them. "Good stable," she said.
"What's in the stable?" said Pia.
"Horses," said Liesel.
Pia wrote down Horses. and underlined it, because Pia underlines everything she doesn't understand, and that book is mostly underlining by now.
I went to fetch him myself.
Fabian had Liesel and Wren. That's two. That's the law. I counted, because I'm not completely unreasonable, and because if I'd stayed in that kitchen with Hana smiling at the porridge pot for one more minute, I'd have thrown it.
The Academy gate. The path. The low wall round the young lords' residence, and the guard in the doorway beyond it, who has kept one rule for forty years and looked at me as if I might be a second one.
"Lord Felix," I said. "Please."
She went in. I stood at the gate and glared at the wall. It was a perfectly good wall. It hadn't done anything. That's not the point.
He came down the steps with his coat half buttoned and his sling gone, which Mistress Salvia definitely didn't know about yet, and his two knights behind him, the ones who stand like a gate and not like a guard. He saw me and the grin started.
"Marika," he said.
Not Lady Marika. Not Terror of the Eastern Road. Just my name, first, before I could tell him to. He'd been doing that since the cart.
"Come with me."
"Where?"
"The gray house."
"Why?"
"TACTICS."
He looked at me. Felix has a way of looking at you that's mostly grin, with something underneath it that isn't. This time the grin didn't come all the way up.
"All right," he said.
One of his knights cleared her throat. "My lord—"
"You can walk behind," I said. "Far apart. The way you like."
She opened her mouth. Felix waved her back without looking, the same way he did the day of the chair. "She's a Valcrest," he said. "You know the rest."
We went down through the inner wall into the second ring, along the wide quiet streets, past the Gilded Lark with its little gold birds over the door. Felix talked. He talked about the snow, and Ambrose's notebook, and a dream he'd had about a goat in a hat. I didn't answer any of it.
About halfway down the second ring, he stopped talking.
We walked a whole street like that. I could hear his knights' boots behind us, far apart. I could hear my own heart, which I didn't want to.
"You're not shouting," said Felix.
"I shout."
"Not today."
Another street.
"Is it bad?" he said.
"It's not BAD."
"There. That was a shout." He sounded relieved. Then, quieter: "Is it about the verse?"
I stopped walking. So did he. So did both of his knights, too far apart, behind us.
He knew I'd noticed. Of course he knew. He'd watched me notice. He'd skipped it and then said Did I twice, the second time without the question mark, and looked anywhere but at me.
"Partly," I said.
And I started walking again before he could see my face.
Liesel was already in the stable.
She was sitting on an upturned bucket just inside the door with her spear across her knees, and she didn't look up when we came in. Felix's knights stopped at the yard gate, far apart.
"I'm a wall," said Liesel. "Walls don't listen."
"You're SUPPOSED to listen. That's the RULE."
"Then I'm a wall that listens. Go on."
The stable smelled of hay and horse and the cold coming in under the door. My mare put her head over the stall and looked at Felix the way she looks at anyone who isn't carrying an apple. Felix looked back at her. Then at me.
"Marika," he said. "What's tactical about a stable?"
I'd had it all planned. I'd planned it all night, while I wasn't thinking about it. First what it was. Then what it did. Then the words.
"Fabian binds people," I said.
Felix went still.
"It's called 「Covenant」. It's his. It isn't in any book, not even the ones in the shrine. Five people." I counted them off, because if I didn't do something with my hands I was going to hit the stall. "Me. Naomi. Hana. Liesel." I jerked my head at the bucket. "Cordelia."
"The circles," said Felix slowly. "At Greymark. In my mother's room. Liesel's hands, and Hana's—"
"His light. Our hands."
"And you always know where he is."
"That's TACTICS."
"That's what I said," said Felix.
From the bucket, Liesel made a sound that a wall shouldn't make.
"Each of us can light one more," I said. "Once. It's still his light. We just get to say who." I swallowed. "Liesel lit Wren."
Felix looked at Liesel. Liesel looked at her spear.
"What does it do?" said Felix.
"Nothing gets into you that you didn't let in. Not ever." I made myself look at him. "The thing that stood by your mother's bed. It would never get into you."
He didn't say anything. His hands closed, slowly, at his sides.
"You'd be stronger. Not like us. Stronger than you are." I kept going, because if I stopped I'd never start again. "And I'd feel you. Wherever you went."
"Wherever," said Felix.
"It can't be broken." Naomi's words. My mouth had gone dry. "And it won't end. So you have to want it. You have to say yes, in your own words. And mean it."
On the second-ring wall, the day of the chair, with the sun going down and him sitting in it, I'd heard these words in my own voice for the first time, and I'd known exactly what they sounded like. Like a girl at the end of a story, asking a boy. I'd said NO, out loud, to nobody, and run off with a chair.
They still sounded like that.
I held out my hand anyway, palm down, over the space between us, and said them.
"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?"
The circle opened under my hand. Small. White. One thread of gold through it, finer than a hair. Somewhere behind me my mare blew out through her nose and shifted her feet.
Felix looked at the circle. Then at me. And the grin came up, the whole thing, all the way, the one he wears like armor.
"Next question," he said.
The circle dimmed.
Not out. Just lower. Waiting. The gold thread went thin and still, like it was holding its breath.
"That's not an answer."
"I know. Sorry. It's—" The spark snapped at his fingertips, loud in the quiet, and he laughed, short. "Habit. All right. All right." He took a breath. "Yes. If the snails come too."
The circle dimmed again. Lower. The gold was barely there.
I could feel it in my hand, the way you feel a rope going slack. Waiting. It would wait a long time. It doesn't care how long. I did.
"Felix," I said.
I said it quietly. I don't say things quietly. He knew that. I watched him know it.
"If you can't say one true thing to me," I said. "One. Then I'll close my hand, and that's the end of it, and I won't ask again. Not ever. I don't get another one."
The stable was very quiet. My mare. The cold under the door. Liesel on her bucket, not moving at all.
Felix looked at the circle for a long time.
Then he said, not singing, just saying it, flat, the way you'd read a notice off a wall:
"'And the middle one went walking, and she never came back home.'"
I didn't breathe.
"I've skipped it every time since the mountain," he said. "Every time it comes round. Every bottle. I'm going to skip it every time, for the rest of my life."
He looked at me. No grin. Nothing on the end of it.
"Yes," he said.
The circle took.
The gold lifted off it and went into him, just under the collarbone, an inch from the white scar where the adder's fangs had been, and was gone. Across the yard, in the kitchen, Fabian's pitcher dipped. Five. I felt it go, the way you hear someone breathe out in the next room.
And in my chest, under my own candle, something new.
Small. Bright. Crackling very faintly at the edges, like it couldn't quite sit still.
It was a spark. Of COURSE it was a spark.
My ears went hot all the way to the tips, and I glared at the stall door, and the stall door, to its credit, didn't say anything.
Felix put a hand on the partition to steady himself. He took it off again and looked at it. Then he bent down, slowly, and picked up the water bucket by my mare's stall with one hand.
"It's light," he said.
"It's NOT light. It's FULL."
He looked at the bucket. Then at me, very seriously. "Should I nod at it?"
"Don't you DARE."
On her bucket by the door, Liesel stood up and leaned her spear on her shoulder.
"I didn't see anything," she said.
"You were SUPPOSED to see. It's the RULE."
"Then I saw it." She looked at Felix, and at me, and at the bucket. "It wasn't worth writing down."
Which, from Liesel, with Pia's book loose in the world, was the kindest thing anybody could have said.
Felix put the bucket down. Very carefully. Like it might break. Like he might.
"Marika."
"WHAT."
"Thank you."
Two words. No grin. He said them so quietly I almost didn't hear.
I'd said them to him once, behind a cart, on the road home. I knew exactly what came next. So did he.
"You said that very quietly," I said.
"...Shut up," said Felix.
Liesel laughed out loud, and my mare put her ears back at all three of us.
Fabian — Sanctara
Five splashes left the pitcher a little before noon.
Not east, this time. Not nine days. Barely across the yard.
I was at the kitchen table in the gray house, because I'd been told to feel it from the kitchen, in capitals. Hana was kneading bread for the road. Naomi was standing at the head of the table with a list of what we'd need in Septentria, which was mostly the word more. Pia had gone up to the Academy with Wren to fetch her blankets and her bolts, and, I suspected, to say goodbye to the arch.
The five went. Hana's hands stopped in the dough. Naomi didn't move at all, which is how Naomi moves when something matters.
I reached, the way I always reach, and there was nothing on the other end. Of course there wasn't. He wasn't mine to feel. That was the whole point. He was Marika's.
But Marika's candle, in my chest, had changed.
I've known that candle my whole life. Bright, and never still. Always leaning toward the door. And for one long moment, across the yard, it stood up straight and steady, like something had finally been set down beside it that it didn't have to watch.
Hana started kneading again. She was smiling at the dough.
"Well," she said.
Naomi said nothing. She wrote more on her list one more time.
Marika came in first.
She came through the kitchen like a thrown knife, her face shut like a door, looked at nobody, said nothing, and went straight up the stairs. A door shut overhead, not quite a slam.
Naomi watched the stairs.
"Noted," she said, to them.
Felix came in a while later with Liesel. He'd buttoned his coat properly, which I'd never seen him do. He sat down on the bench next to me without being asked, and Hana put a heel of yesterday's bread and a cup of milk in front of him without being asked either, and he looked at them as if he'd forgotten what they were for.
"You knew," he said.
"Since the Hollowcrown."
"You could have said."
"It wasn't mine to say."
He thought about that. Then he ate some of the bread, which I think surprised him.
"She threw a boot at me once," he said.
"Several."
"A hairbrush. A shoe that I'm fairly sure was Liesel's."
"It was mine," said Liesel, from the door.
"And a sock with something in it." Felix turned the cup in his hands. "I never found out what."
"Nobody did," I said. "It's better that way."
He was quiet for a moment. I watched him put things together, the way Felix does: fast, and mostly behind the grin, so you only see the end of it.
"I can't feel her," he said.
"No. She feels you."
"That's not fair."
"That's Marika."
He almost laughed. Then he looked round the table. At Naomi, at the head of it. At Hana, with flour to her elbows. At Liesel in the doorway. At the ceiling, where Marika was. And somewhere out past the window, up the hill, at the palace.
"Five," he said.
"Five."
"And you feel all of them."
"All of them."
"All the time."
"All the time."
Felix was quiet again. "In Fulmara," he said. "In my mother's room. When you went three below. Liesel turned round before you started to fall. I thought she'd heard something."
"She had," I said. "Sort of."
He nodded slowly. He opened his mouth to ask something else, and I watched him decide not to.
"Next question," he said, to himself, and didn't ask it.
"The bottles," I said, after a while. "On the road. I'm going to make them Blue."
Felix looked up. "Blue?"
"Heal and Cure. Both kinds." I'd been thinking about it since the Queen's rooms. "Albin rode north every autumn to a sickness nobody here has ever seen. We don't know what's in it. If Green turns out not to be enough, I don't want to find that out with somebody dying in front of me and a cart full of the wrong bottles behind me."
At the head of the table, Naomi lifted her eyes from her list.
"Cost," she said.
"Three a bottle."
"Then fewer."
"Then fewer," I said. "But the right ones."
Naomi looked at me for a moment. Then she nodded and wrote something on her list. I don't think it was more this time.
"Ambrose will say 'Three,'" said Felix.
"Ambrose will say 'Three,' and then fill a page."
"Two pages." Felix finished the milk. "He'll want to know if Blue keeps longer than Green."
I hadn't thought of that. Neither, I suspected, had anyone in five hundred years.
"Then we'll find out," I said.
That night I drained what was left, thirty-seven, and lay in my old room in the gray house and felt the candles.
Naomi, down the passage. Hana, next to her. Liesel, across the hall, already asleep. Cordelia, up the hill, awake, the way she always is. And Marika, overhead.
I've felt that candle every night since the night she knocked on my door. I know what it does when she's angry, and when she's laughing, and when she's lying awake pretending she isn't.
That night it burned steady until morning.
Five days later, we rode north.