Ch. 162 What the House Had Taken

Chapter 162: What the House Had Taken

We left the hut with the fire properly out and enough dry wood stacked beside the hearth for the next person.

Eleanor checked the door twice.

Tessa watched her.

“It survived before you repaired it.”

“Badly.”

“It only has to remain a door.”

“It will now.”

I carried the tool bag while they settled that.

Behind us, the ridge disappeared into cloud.

By the time we reached the stream, snow had begun falling where the wayhouse stood.

Merrow met us at Northwatch with hot food and no questions until we had eaten.

I appreciated his judgment.

Then he asked whether we had found the place.

“Yes,” I said.

“Can the road be used?”

“Not safely beyond the shoulder.”

He looked toward Tessa.

She nodded.

“The lower approach is quieter now. I still wouldn’t let anyone sleep up there.”

Merrow reached for a sheet of paper.

“I’ll send word to the shepherds.”

Aurelia watched him write.

“The people who heard someone calling,” she said. “Please tell them they weren’t foolish.”

Merrow looked up.

Then added another line.

We spent the afternoon in a room above the hall.

Eleanor had spread Evelyn’s drawing beneath the window and was making a list.

A gripping tool narrow enough to fit the broken handle.

Wedges.

A small mirror.

Better lamps.

“Why the mirror?” I asked.

“So I can see the far side of the plate without putting my head over it.”

“That seems sensible.”

“Yes.”

I had begun to suspect she saved that tone for me.

Evelyn sat beside Aurelia at the other end of the table.

They were discussing the three symbols.

One opened the flow into the sleeping working.

One quieted it.

The third returned what had been gathered.

“The broken one,” I said.

Aurelia nodded.

“Of course.”

“The handle may have broken long afterward,” Eleanor said.

I looked at her.

“We don’t know who touched it last. Or whether they tried to turn it.”

She pointed to the shape Evelyn had drawn.

“That could be a clean break. Could be worn thin. I’ll tell you when I can see it properly.”

I sat down.

She was right.

I had begun filling the room with enemies before we had finished examining the floor.

Aurelia looked at the drawing.

“I would like someone to have tried.”

Eleanor’s expression softened.

“Then we’ll look.”

We returned to Greykeep the next morning.

Carol greeted Evelyn with both arms and an urgent complaint.

Garrick greeted me by attempting to climb out of his grandfather’s lap before I had reached them.

I caught him.

His hand closed around my collar.

For a while, I held him without moving.

He patted my cheek.

Then tried to put his fingers in my mouth.

I kissed his palm and moved it away.

Some things required less thought than others.

Aurelia went to her room.

She asked us to wake her before supper if she had not come out.

Evelyn nodded.

I almost offered to sit nearby.

Then remembered the way our teacher had looked at the stone couch.

A place where rest had become something done to her.

She had asked for a few hours.

So we let her have them.

At supper, she appeared wearing a different gown and looking better.

Helena moved a chair for her.

Nobody asked how much of the afternoon she had slept.

The Castellan studied our drawings that evening.

Mary wrote down what we had seen.

This time, there was no bell.

No convenient voice explaining the room.

Only the couch, the five sets of pins, and a plate with a broken handle.

I described the figure sitting up.

Then becoming Caroline.

My pen had been less steady when I tried to write that part on the mountain.

Mary listened until I finished.

“Did everyone see the same person?”

We looked at one another.

Eleanor shook her head.

“I saw a young woman. Dark hair. Didn’t recognize her.”

“Aurelia at first,” Evelyn said. “Then I looked at Uriah.”

Melody folded her arms.

“I saw someone I used to know.”

She said nothing more.

Mary did not ask.

“It borrows from whoever notices it,” Aurelia said.

The Castellan looked at the drawing of the couch.

“Does the image remain when nobody is watching?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then we should avoid assuming that the image and the stored power are the same thing.”

Evelyn leaned forward.

“The room changed what we saw. But Eleanor still saw the fittings.”

“Yes.”

“Could we cover the couch?”

I looked at her.

A cloth.

After everything that had happened, the suggestion seemed almost absurd.

Then I remembered being told to trust the thing more than the drawing.

“Would that help?”

“It might stop us looking directly at it,” she said. “That would be a beginning.”

We tried it with an ordinary chair in the workshop.

Aurelia placed a small light above the seat.

Not a face.

Not a voice.

Only something that gently drew the eye.

I found myself looking at it while Eleanor spoke.

Then again while she moved around the table.

Evelyn hung a cloth between us and the chair.

The pull did not vanish.

It became easier to notice as a pull.

I could see the cloth.

I knew what stood behind it.

“That helps,” I said.

Aurelia nodded.

“It won’t protect you from everything.”

“No.”

“But you have room to choose where to look.”

Eleanor began measuring two light poles.

The return itself was more difficult.

Aurelia explained it with a shallow bowl.

She let a little of her light gather inside.

Then reached for it again.

The light flowed back into her hand.

“What has been taken from me should recognize me,” she said.

“Should?” I asked.

“It has been held for a long time.”

Evelyn watched the empty bowl.

“And you have changed.”

“Yes.”

For a moment, Aurelia looked tired again.

“I don’t know how much there is.”

We did not answer that by choosing the largest crystals in the castle.

The Castellan shook his head when I suggested it.

“Those may help receive what escapes. They cannot decide what belongs to her.”

Aurelia nodded.

“And I don’t want you trying to draw me through yourselves.”

I looked at my hands.

That had been close to what I was imagining.

Evelyn touched my wrist.

“We hold the way open.”

“Yes,” Aurelia said. “And I come through it.”

There was no promise that it would be easy.

At least I understood what she was asking us to do.

For the next two mornings, we practiced returning a little power to someone who had stepped away from where they first placed it.

First across a table.

Then across the room.

Evelyn learned to feel the edge without closing around it.

I learned how much strength I wasted trying to make the passage rigid.

Aurelia corrected us.

Sometimes sharply.

When she did, she apologized.

On the second morning, Evelyn set down her cup and looked directly at her.

“You’re allowed to be frightened while teaching us.”

Aurelia went quiet.

Then sat beside her.

“Yes,” she said. “I seem to be finding that out.”

Thesra did not answer.

Aurelia told us that after the evening meal.

She had called her by name.

Once.

Then again the following day.

“Did you reach her?” I asked.

“I cannot tell.”

“Could she be gone?”

“Yes.”

“Or refusing?”

“Yes.”

I looked toward the window.

The mountains were beyond anything I could see from there.

Evelyn’s hand found mine beneath the table.

“We know enough to examine the return,” she said.

Aurelia nodded.

“I won’t wait for permission to stop this.”

Tessa came from Northwatch with news of a break in the weather.

Two clear days.

Perhaps three.

She would promise none of them beyond what she could see.

Eliza arranged the party.

Eleanor inspected the new gripping tool.

The Castellan supplied three small receiving crystals and explained their limits twice.

Mary prepared fresh pages.

Helena packed food as though we intended to feed everyone who had ever used the pass.

I looked into the basket.

“Will we need all of this?”

“Yes,” she said.

I closed it.

Experience was a useful thing.

Before we left, I found Aurelia in the south sitting room.

The finished portrait stood where Evelyn had placed it to dry.

Aurelia was looking at the painted children.

I stopped beside her.

“What are you thinking?”

“That I would like to see them grow.”

I looked at her.

She smiled faintly.

“I know. One restraint does not mean I will vanish tomorrow.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“What were you going to say?”

I considered it.

“Garrick is going to destroy a considerable amount of furniture.”

She laughed.

“Then his grandfather will be busy.”

“And Carol will help.”

“With the repairs?”

“No.”

Aurelia looked at the painting again.

“I would like to see that too.”

We reached the hut on the first clear evening.

Eleanor’s door still held.

The wood we had left was dry.

Tessa appeared pleased by both facts, though she credited neither of them to divine favor.

We ate.

Checked the equipment.

Slept in turns.

I dreamed of nothing I could remember.

When Evelyn woke me, light had begun to show around the shutter.

For once, I did not resent the cold floor.

We had come back.

Now there was work to do.

At the wayhouse, the opened passage remained clear.

The door still stood where Eleanor had secured it.

The figure lay on the couch.

I saw only the curve of a shoulder before looking away.

Evelyn and I held our shield close while Melody and Eleanor raised the cloth between the doorway and the far wall.

The room seemed to exhale.

For an instant, I heard Caroline laugh behind the fabric.

I said so.

Evelyn squeezed my arm.

The cloth did not make me stop wanting to look.

It gave me something plain and solid to keep looking at instead.

Eleanor knelt beside the plate.

Her mirror caught the marks around its rim.

The broken handle had left a short square stem.

She examined it.

Then sat back.

“Well?” I asked.

“Broken while someone was turning it.”

“Can you tell?”

“The shaft twisted before it snapped.”

Aurelia stood very still.

“Toward the return?”

Eleanor checked the stops.

“Yes.”

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Somebody had tried.

We did not know who.

The broken metal was all they had left us.

Eleanor fitted the new tool over the stem.

It held.

She did not turn it.

First, Aurelia traced the channel beneath the couch.

Evelyn watched the two intact controls.

I kept the shield steady and tried to remember that strength was useful only where it was needed.

At last, Aurelia lowered her hand.

“The first must close.”

Eleanor took the nearer handle.

Aurelia watched her.

“Slowly.”

The handle moved.

Behind the cloth, the laughter stopped.

The quiet was so sudden that I nearly lost my hold.

Gold brightened along the visible channel.

It moved toward Aurelia.

She drew a sharp breath.

Then lifted her hand.

“Stop there.”

Eleanor stopped.

Aurelia’s fingers trembled.

Evelyn remained beside her.

“What is it?”

Our teacher looked toward the hidden couch.

For the first time since we had entered the room, her expression held something besides dread.

“I can feel it trying to come back.”