I told Naomi first. Out loud, the way I'd promised, in the henhouse, before breakfast on the first morning she was gone.
(Big Sis. I'm going to do it. Today, at the infirmary, after the last patient.)
A long pause. I could feel her candle, still and straight, a day down the road and getting farther. I could almost hear the hooves.
(...Noted,) said Naomi. Then: (Tell me after, too.)
Mistress Salvia gave me the key to the infirmary herself, at the end of the afternoon, when the last first-year had gone out holding her wrist and complaining that it didn't hurt anymore.
She held it out to me, and didn't let go of it straight away.
"Not my cots," she said. "Not my floor." She looked at the three of us: me, and Ambrose with his notebook, and Felix with his hands in his pockets, trying to look like someone who'd only come along for the company. "Not my key, after tonight."
"Yes, Mistress Salvia."
She let go. Then, on her way out, she stopped beside our table, took the clean cloth she'd started leaving by Ambrose's elbow, and moved it a little closer to Felix's.
Wren shut the door behind her and stood outside it. Felix's two escorts stood outside it too, at the far end of the corridor, where Wren had looked at them until they went. Liesel stayed. Liesel always stays.
Ambrose set a stone bottle on the table. Water, clear and cold. He laid his hands on either side of it and held it still, and looked at me, and waited.
Felix sat down across from him, watching me with a small puzzled frown, the one he gets when he can't find the joke in something.
"Felix," I said. "I didn't lie to you. In my kitchen."
"I know. You never said anything."
"That's the part I'm sorry about."
I laid my hand over the mouth of the bottle, and reached. Not for a splash. Not for the plain White I pour into the bottles, or the Green I pour in the infirmary for the Crown to count. Past both of them, up one more step in the dark, to the top of what I had.
「Cure」.
The circle opened under my palm, wide and slow, turning over the mouth of the bottle with its edges bright.
Blue.
The exact blue of the sky above the inner wall just before sunset. Of a ribbon, and a braid on a spear. Threaded all through with light, so that for a moment the whole table and the three faces around it were lit from underneath, the way water lights a cave.
Felix had stopped breathing.
Ambrose looked at the circle for a long moment. Then, without taking his hands from the bottle, he said:
"Blue."
And, after a moment's thought:
"Hm."
I let the circle sink into the water, the way I always do. It went down into the bottle and settled there, and the water held it: not a green light, this time, turning at the bottom, but a blue one.
"You told me you were Green," said Felix. His voice had gone very strange.
"I never told you anything. You asked Mistress Salvia."
He stared at me. Then he laughed, the wet one, the one from the kitchen.
"Next question," he said.
"Since the night after the cider," I said. "And it's a secret, Felix. Not the Crown. Not anyone."
"Especially not my escorts," said Felix.
"Especially not."
"Spark," said Ambrose.
Felix reached out. His hand was shaking. He touched the water, and a spark snapped off his finger so hard the bottle rang, and the blue light flickered and nearly went out. He snatched his hand back.
"Sorry," he said. "Sorry. I can't— I'm—"
"Again," said Ambrose.
Felix tried again. Nothing at all this time, not even a crackle. He made a sound I'd never heard him make, very quietly, through his teeth.
I thought about every afternoon at this table. About which sparks came out right, and when.
"Sing," I said.
Felix looked at me. "What?"
"The miller's daughters. You're steady when you sing. You're always steady when you sing."
For a long moment he didn't move. Then, very quietly, terribly, with no tune at all, Felix Aquilan began to sing the first verse of the song about the miller's three daughters, with his finger on the surface of a bottle of water in an empty infirmary.
The spark came out small and steady. It ran down into the water and broke into a hundred threads, and the threads began to rise, silver, fizzing, and the blue light began to turn.
Ambrose pressed the cork home with his thumb. Felix snapped the wire bail down over it, still singing, and got to the end of the second verse before his voice gave out entirely.
The bottle sat on the table between us, breathing faintly through the stone.
Felix took a stub of chalk out of his pocket. He held it over the bottle for a long time. In the end, he didn't write DO NOT. He wrote two words, in that careful, straight hand that's nothing like his jokes.
For her.
"It's weaker than my hand," I said. I had to. "Every bottle is. Months of poison, and a bottle instead of a circle. It might not be enough. I won't know unless I'm there. 「Discern」 needs me to touch her."
"Then it's a start," said Felix.
He was looking at the bottle the way he'd looked at the flat cup. Only this time, when he glanced up and saw me watching, his face didn't smooth over. He just let me see it.
"There's something else," I said. "Naomi told me not to tell you until we knew what it was. I think we know."
I told him about the riders at the bend in the forest road. Forty, in a line, in the open. The black banner. The bronze bird with its wings out, and a lightning bolt in its claws.
Felix didn't say anything for a long time. His hand lay flat on the table beside the bottle. A spark crawled across his knuckles and down onto the wire bail, very small, and the bottle gave the faintest ring.
"That's why she was in such a hurry," he said at last.
"Why?"
"So that when it starts," said Felix, "I'm here."
He looked up.
"Fabian. When they come for me, and they will, don't do anything stupid."
"I'll do the usual," I said.
He laughed, properly this time, and came around the table and hugged me, which was a mistake, because there was a snap like a cat in winter and both of us yelped. Liesel didn't laugh. She put her hand flat on the bottle that said For her, very gently, the way you'd touch someone's shoulder, and kept it there.
They came for him the next morning.
Not guards. Cordelia, in her silver half-plate, with four knights of the Crown behind her, at the door of the young lords' residence while the sun was still low. She didn't knock. Cordelia has never needed to knock.
"Lord Felix Aquilan," she said, when he came down the stairs with his coat half buttoned and his hair losing its argument with the wind. "Her Majesty requests your presence at the palace."
"Requests?" said Felix.
Cordelia looked at him. "Requires."
"Ah." He finished buttoning his coat, slowly. The bronze eagle at his throat caught the light. "Is it a sitting room, or a cell?"
"The throne hall."
That was worse than either, and everybody on the stairs knew it.
"I'm coming," I said.
Cordelia's eyes moved to me. "You weren't asked, Lord Fabian."
"I know," I said. "I'm asking."
Cordelia looked at me for a long moment. Then at her sister, standing beside me on the step with her spear and her ring.
"He asks now," said Liesel. "He does that."
Cordelia closed her eyes, very briefly, the way she does when the world has once again declined to be simple.
"Fine," she said.
The throne hall was full. I'd never seen it so full, not even for the thanks. Silk and steel all along the walls, every noble in Sanctara who'd heard the word Bellonia in the last two days and wanted to be in the room when the Crown said it back. They watched Felix walk the length of the hall between Cordelia's knights, with his two dark-armored escorts behind him and Liesel and Wren and me behind them.
He walked as if he were going to a party. I've never admired anyone so much.
The Queen sat on the white throne in crimson and gold. She didn't smile.
"Lord Felix Aquilan."
"Your Majesty."
"Two nights ago, the Marchioness of Greymark reported to the Crown that riders under your house's eagle stood at the edge of the Gloamwood and looked at her wall." Her voice was formal and exact, every word set down like a stone in a road. "Forty of them. In the open. Under a banner they had kept rolled for a month."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"You knew?"
Felix didn't look at me. "Since last night."
A murmur ran along the walls. Someone, a woman in green silk near the front, said quite clearly, a cell, and someone else said the Bellonian, the way you'd say the snake.
The Queen lifted one hand. The hall went silent.
"A month of riders with no banner," she said. "Watching. Counting. Turning back. Then, the very week the Marchioness is in my city to tell me of it, a banner. Unfurled in the open, at the one place on that road where a Marchioness's sister would be sure to see it." She looked at Felix, and for a moment her face was exactly her elder daughter's, measuring. "That is not a scout, Lord Felix. Scouts don't carry banners. That is a letter."
The hall was very still.
"Somebody," said the Queen, "wants me to read it. And then wants me to do something about you."
She was quiet for a moment.
"I have been Queen of Octavia for a long time," she said, "and I have come to dislike, very much, being wanted to do things."
I let out a breath I hadn't known I was holding. Felix didn't move at all.
"Your Majesty," I said.
Every head in the hall turned. A man speaking in the throne hall without being spoken to. I could hear Cordelia not sighing.
"Lord Fabian."
"He's not a knife," I said. "Whatever that letter says. He isn't."
"Then what is he?"
"A son."
The Queen looked at me for a long time. Then she looked at Felix.
"Whose son is he, then," she said slowly, "that somebody is so very eager for me to break?"
Felix's eyes came to me, for the first time since we'd come in. Just for a moment. I didn't know what I was going to do until I did it: I nodded.
Felix took a breath.
"Your Majesty," he said. "My mother—"
The Queen raised her hand again. Not sharply. Just enough.
"Not in this room."
Her eyes went past Felix, very briefly, to the two women in dark armor standing behind him. Then back.
She'd seen it. I don't know how, but she'd seen it, in the half a heartbeat when Felix said mother: the way one of his escorts had gone very still, like a hound that has heard its name.
"Hear the Crown's decision," said the Queen.
The hall straightened.
"Lord Felix Aquilan is a student of the Royal Academy, and a guest of the Crown, and he will remain both. He will stay at the Academy, in the young lords' residence, under the Crown's protection. Two knights of my household will escort him from today." A pause, exactly long enough. "His own escorts have come a long way. They will be the Crown's guests at the palace, for their comfort, until the Crown decides otherwise."
One of the two dark-armored women opened her mouth. Cordelia looked at her. She shut it.
The other one, I noticed, looked almost relieved.
"Do your knights sing?" said Felix to the Queen, very politely.
"Not in my hearing," said the Queen.
"A pity."
The Queen's eyes moved to me.
"And you, Lord Fabian. You'll stand beside him, I take it."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Beside me, Liesel cleared her throat.
"That place is taken," she said, to her mother, in front of half the court of Octavia. Then, after a moment: "He can have the other side."
Somewhere along the wall, the woman in green silk made a small strangled sound. Cordelia looked at the ceiling. And one corner of the Queen's mouth moved, very slightly, the way it had when Wren said It was a scratch.
"So noted," said the Queen.
As the hall broke up, she said, without raising her voice, "Lord Fabian," and I went to the foot of the dais.
She looked down at me, and spoke so quietly that only I could hear.
"An army that wants to be seen," said the Queen, "is never the one that matters. Remember that, when you hear what it does."
I didn't know yet what she meant.
I found out that night.
I hadn't drained my pitcher since the night of the banner.
I'd told nobody. It just seemed wrong, to pour everything into myself every night and go to sleep empty, with forty riders sitting at the edge of the trees looking at Marika's wall. So I'd stopped. I counted it each night instead, and lay down with it full, and felt foolish, and kept doing it.
That night it was nineteen. Twenty-nine, less ten for the infirmary, for appearances.
Liesel was sitting on the end of my bed with her spear across her knees, the tassel hanging off the end of it, navy and blue. Upstairs, Felix was singing for his two new knights of the Crown, who had promised the Queen not to sing back, and were keeping their promise. Through the ceiling it sounded almost cheerful.
Then, in my chest, very quietly:
(They're here.)
Marika.
Not loud. She hadn't been loud about the riders for a month. But I'd never heard her voice do what it did on those two words.
Liesel's head came up. Upstairs, the singing went on.
(Where?) said Naomi, at once. She was two days down the road, on a horse, in the dark. I could feel her candle go hard and bright as a blade.
(Out of the trees. At the bend, where the forest road comes nearest the wall.) A pause. I could hear her breathing; you can, sometimes, on the bond, when someone forgets they're speaking. (Torches. A lot of them. The eagle. Ladders.)
(How many?)
(Three hundred. Maybe four.)
Three hundred. Against Greymark's wall, that was built for tides. I'd seen a tide. I'd seen what came out of those trees by the hundred. I'd never seen three hundred women with ladders, and I found, sitting on my bed in Sanctara with my hands in my lap, that I couldn't picture it at all, and that not being able to picture it was worse.
(Sirius?) said Naomi.
(On the wall.)
(Hildegard?)
(The gate.)
(You?)
(The stairs.) A breath. (Big Sis, I've got the stairs.)
Naomi was quiet for a moment.
(Then this is the rule,) she said. (Nobody talks. Nobody. Every word is his.)
I hadn't thought of that. I hadn't thought of anything. Every word between us is carried by me. Every Where and How many and I've got the stairs had come out of my pitcher, a drop at a time, and I'd been too frightened to feel them go.
The henhouse went silent.
It was the worst silence I've ever listened to. Four candles in my chest: Hana's wavering, down in the second ring; Naomi's on a dark road; Liesel's right beside me. And Marika's, a long way off, nine days away on the wall I grew up on, blazing so hard it hurt to hold.
I couldn't see anything. I couldn't hear anything. All I could do was feel her candle flare and dim and flare, like a flame in a gale, and not know what any of it meant.
Liesel took my hand. Neither of us said anything. We didn't dare.
Upstairs, the singing had stopped.
A long time went by. I don't know how long. I didn't count it. It's the only time in my life I can remember not counting something, because I couldn't make the numbers stay still.
Then Marika spoke once more. Very quietly, as if she couldn't help it.
(They're not even trying the gate,) she said. (They're just... there. Torches everywhere. Shouting. It's like they want us to look at them.)
An army that wants to be seen is never the one that matters.
I went cold all the way through.
(Quiet,) said Naomi.
Marika went quiet.
And then, a long time after that, in the middle of the silence, a drop left me.
I felt it go, the way you feel someone lower a cup into a well you're standing beside. One splash. Fast. Not the slow, careful dip of a cut hand at a ford in the afternoon sun. Fast, the way you'd grab for something falling.
Eighteen.
Liesel's hand tightened on mine. She'd felt me feel it.
Another.
Seventeen.
Then another, and another, one on the heels of the last, too fast to be anything but what they were. You can tell the difference, it turns out, between a splash taken because someone is hurt and a splash taken because someone is dying. I'd learned it from a girl with a broken leg on the Greymark road. I'd hoped I'd never have to know it again.
Sixteen. Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen.
White. It would all be White. That's all 「Borrowed Light」 can carry. White mends a cut, and eases a fever, and closes small things. It doesn't close what a person dies of. Marika knew that. She'd learned it on her knees in a road, with her hands on a girl's broken leg.
She was doing it anyway.
Twelve. Eleven. Ten.
I wanted to say something. I wanted to tell her take it, take all of it, and I wanted to ask her who is it, and I wanted to tell her I'm here. I had the words right there behind my teeth.
Every word between us is carried by me.
Every word I said would be a drop she couldn't have.
So I didn't say anything. I sat on the edge of my bed in Sanctara, nine days from the wall, with Liesel's hand crushing mine and my light pouring out of me through my sister's hands into someone I couldn't see, in the dark, and I kept my mouth shut, and I counted.
Nine.
Eight.
In the henhouse, I could feel Hana crying without a sound. On the dark road, Naomi's candle had gone so still it might have been carved. Nobody spoke. Nobody would.
Seven.
Somewhere on the wall where I learned to walk, my sister was kneeling over someone with my light in her hands, and it wasn't enough, and she knew it wasn't enough, and she wasn't stopping.
Six.
They didn't stop.
End of Volume 4.
Afterword
Thank you so much for reading Borrowed Light, Volume 4 of Fabian and His Three Sisters: The Hidden Saint of House Valcrest.
If Volume 3 was about saying things out loud, Volume 4 was about asking. In a kingdom where men are asked for, sent, and decided about, a boy learned to ask for things himself: a lunch, a hand to hold, the broken pieces of a spear, and finally the biggest thing there is, on his knees, on a wall, in the right order. Along the way, a princess ate her porridge left-handed, a Queen remembered a ring with eleven stones whose colors she couldn't recall, an escort made her first joke, and a goat named General was proposed, at various points, as a ring bearer, a fifth member of a sacred bond, and a principle. He was refused every time.
This was also the volume of Felix. I wanted to write someone who smiles the way Lady Amara smiled, and turns out to be carrying something completely different: not a seed, but a mother. A boy who sings badly in his bath so that nobody can see his face. I hope you liked him as quickly as Fabian did.
And it was the volume where the sisters finally did something no woman in their world has ever done. Hana cried (twice, on bread). Naomi said "Noted." Marika put on a hare mask and called herself Mari, and I have no regrets.
Volume 4 ends in the dark, I know. A bottle chalked For her is waiting in an infirmary. A Queen has read a letter written in a banner and decided not to do what it asked. And somewhere on Greymark's wall, someone is dying with Fabian's light pouring into them through his sister's hands, while he sits nine days away, counting, and not saying a word. All of it is waiting in Volume 5.
If you enjoyed this volume, I'd be truly grateful for your support. A comment, a rating, or adding the novel to your library helps the story find more readers, and it tells me you want to know what happens next. I read every comment, even when I can't reply to them all.
Thank you for climbing all these stairs with me. I'll see you on the wall in Volume 5.
Bonus: The Valcrest Siblings (and One Princess, and One Prince) Say Thank You
Hana: "Thank you all so much for reading! I started a fifth notebook. It's mostly drops."
Fabian: "Thirty-eight."
Hana: "I wrote that down."
Marika: "For the record, the hare mask was EXCELLENT TACTICS."
Naomi: "It had ears."
Marika: "That was the TACTIC."
Liesel: "Report from the afterword. Everyone read Volume 4." (Holds up her left hand.) "...I'm just stretching."
Hana: (is writing it down)
Felix: "Is this the part where everyone thanks the readers? Can I sing?"
Everyone: "No."
Felix: "One verse."
Ambrose: "Eleven verses. No tune."
Felix: "...Next question."
Wren: (hums four notes, then four more)
Fabian: "Wait. Who was on the wall? Who was—"
Naomi: "Volume 5."
Fabian: "But—"
Naomi: "Read Volume 5. Please."
General (in Greymark): "Meeeh."
Marika: "Before anyone asks, GENERAL IS FINE."
Naomi: "Noted."