Chapter 117: The Letter

Sera Coll was fourteen and she counted barley sacks at Bell crossing, and on the twenty-seventh of Pyrelon a man at the counter said her name out loud and she assumed she was in trouble.

"Coll. Sera Coll."

"I didn't take it," she said.

"Take what?"

"...Nothing."

He put a folded paper on the wood and went back to his ledger, and that was the whole of it, and she stood there long enough that he looked up again.

"It's yours. Go on."

Nobody had ever written to Sera Coll.

Before she picked it up she wiped both hands down her apron. She did that before touching anything that mattered, and she'd done it since she was six, and had never once noticed.

She got as far as the wall by the drying sheds, and then she couldn't do it.

Not the folding. The reading.

She had eleven words she was sure of and about thirty she could get at if nobody was watching and she had time, and this had four paragraphs in a hand she'd never seen, and there was a seal at the bottom, and seals meant a fee or a court.

*tk. tk tk.* Rain started on the shed roof, small and mean.

She got the third line about half open. *Eleven people in one parish.* Something in her chest went sideways, because she'd heard those words before. Somebody at the mill had said them a season back and she hadn't listened, because it was nothing to do with her.

She looked at the stove-house door across the yard. The fire in there ran all day for the drying.

It would take four seconds. Then it would never have come, and she'd go back to the sacks, and she'd be exactly what she'd been this morning. She had been fine this morning.

She stood there with the letter in one hand and the rain coming on properly, and for about a minute and a half she hated herself.

Then she folded it small and pushed it inside her shirt, where the paper went warm against her, and she went to find the only person at Bell she'd ever seen read anything for pleasure.

***

The old woman had a room over the rope-maker's and a satchel by the door that had been mended more times than it had been bought.

On the second knock she opened it, took one look at the girl standing in the rain with her hands in fists, and stepped back out of the way without a word.

"You read," said Sera.

"I do."

"I'll pay. I've got four coppers and I can do six more by the season."

Marda Vell shut the door behind her and put the kettle across the fire, and said nothing at all about the four coppers, and that was the kindest thing anybody had done for her in a year.

"Sit. Give it here."

The letter had gone soft from the rain and from being inside her shirt. Marda Vell put it flat on the table and smoothed it once with the side of her hand. *shff.*

Then she went absolutely still.

She had seen the same hand once already that week.

"...Where did this come from?"

"The counter. He said it was mine."

"It is yours." The old woman sat down slowly. "Sera. Before I read this to you. Do you want it in the room, or do you want it in your head only? Because once I say it out loud it's in the room, and I can't take it back out."

"What's the difference?"

"The difference is that in about four minutes you'll know what you are, and you don't now, and there are people who'd tell you the second one is better."

Sera Coll looked at her hands. They were on the table and she'd wiped them on her apron on the stair without noticing.

"Read it."

She read it once, straight through, in the register hand's own words. She didn't soften any of it. Twenty-three years of walking to doors had never once shown her that softening helped.

*It is sent to you because your name is not on it and there was no lawful way to put it there.*

Then she stopped, and put both hands flat on either side of it, and waited.

"Say it plain," said Sera.

"Your father died and something passed to you with him. A line. Money owed, going back further than either of us, and it wasn't his fault and it isn't yours."

"How much?"

"That's not in this."

"Then what *is* in it?"

"That eleven people in one parish four hundred miles from here died the same way, and nobody was told, and now somebody has been told." Marda Vell turned the sheet round so the girl could see the shape of it even if not the words. "And you're one of the two they could name and reach."

The girl did not cry. The old woman had half expected it and was ready for it.

What she did instead was go very quiet and ask a question that took the top of Marda Vell's head off.

"How long have you known about me?"

"...I've walked thirty-four doors for twenty-three years, and yours was never one of them, because I never knew there was a door." She looked at the table. "I've been at Bell crossing eleven years, girl. You've counted sacks two hundred yards from my window since you were nine."

"So nobody knew."

"Nobody knew. And that's not a comfort, and I'm not offering it as one."

Sera Coll picked the letter up and read the seal at the bottom. That was the only part she could manage on her own. Then she said the thing she'd been holding since the drying sheds.

"I nearly put it in the stove."

"I know."

"You *know*?"

"I've had four in my life that I nearly burned and two that I did." Marda Vell got up and moved the kettle off the fire. "The two I burned are the only things I've ever been properly ashamed of, and I'm sixty-two, and I've had a great deal of time to consider the competition."

The girl laughed. It came out wrong and wet and surprised her more than anybody, and she put her hand over her mouth as if she'd dropped something.

***

She stayed until the rain went off, and then she went back to the sacks, because there were sacks.

The letter went inside her shirt again. Not the stove.

On her way across the yard she stopped, came back, and put her head round the door.

"The man who sent it. Does he want something?"

Marda Vell had the second copy out on the table by then. The one that had come to her, six days earlier, from the same hand.

"He wrote at the bottom that he doesn't."

"Everyone wants something."

"Yes," said the old woman. "And in twenty-three years I have met exactly one who wrote it down in advance so you could hold him to it. Shut the door, you're letting the wet in."

[Bell crossing — 27 Pyrelon to 2 Ravenmark, 337 A.Z. — Days 525-530]

[SERA COLL — b. 3 Pyrelon, circuit 1, 295 A.Z. — THE ASH. Age 14. Counts barley sacks at Bell crossing. Signature beat: wipes both hands down her apron before touching anything that matters. Shadow of the Ash: burns the thing rather than carry it — and she nearly did.]

[She reads eleven words with certainty and about thirty with time and privacy. The letter that finally came, she could not read alone.]

[SHE NEARLY BURNED IT. The stove-house is four seconds across the yard. She stood in the rain for a minute and a half.]

[Instead she took it to Marda Vell, who had received her own copy six days before, from the same hand.]

[MARDA VELL GAVE HER THE CHOICE FIRST: in the room, or in her head only. *Once I say it out loud it's in the room, and I can't take it back out.*]

[SERA'S QUESTION: *How long have you known?* — Marda Vell has lived eleven years two hundred yards from a girl on the schedule and never knew there was a door.]

[*I've had four in my life that I nearly burned and two that I did. The two I burned are the only things I've ever been properly ashamed of.*]

[The letter went back inside her shirt. Not the stove.]

[Mataon does not appear. Level 43 — held.]