Ch. 193 A Place to Stand

Chapter 193: A Place to Stand

Caldris spent the morning testing his voice.

He asked for water.

He thanked Beatrice for bringing it.

Then he asked for another cup, though the first was still half full.

By the time I found him in the small sitting room, Mary had filled two pages with everything he had said.

“You needn’t record my opinion of the weather,” he told her.

“You were unable to give it yesterday.”

“The weather has not improved.”

“That is recorded too.”

He looked at me for help.

I sat down beside him.

“She once wrote down an argument I had with a boot.”

“Who won?”

“The boot.”

Mary did not look up.

His voice tired after a while.

Evelyn had warned him it might.

Othellos’s oath had kept him silent for so long that its breaking had left him uncertain when to stop speaking. Now he rested his hands around the cup and watched the steam.

“I thought he would notice at once,” he said.

“The oath?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps he has.”

Caldris nodded.

“That’s what frightens me.”

I had no useful assurance to offer. The Castellan had checked the wards twice since dawn. Eliza had placed guards on the approaches. Caldris knew all of that; he had heard us arranging it from his bed.

“Are you sorry you stayed?” I asked.

“No.”

He looked surprised by the ease of his answer.

“I am frightened,” he said. “I can still be certain.”

Maelin and Thesra arrived that afternoon.

They came by the western road.

Eliza met them outside the gate with six guards, then sent word to Mary before allowing them through. By the time they reached the inner court, half the castle knew they were here and the other half had been told to keep working.

I stood beside Aurelia beneath the arch.

Maelin stopped several paces away.

Thesra stopped with her.

“You could have called,” I said.

“We wanted to arrive where you could see us coming,” Thesra replied.

Maelin looked past me toward the windows of the keep.

“Is Caldris here?”

“Yes.”

“May we speak with him?”

Aurelia studied them.

“You may ask him.”

Caldris came down with Evelyn.

He moved slowly on the stair but refused her arm for the last few steps. When he saw Maelin, he stopped.

She opened her mouth.

Closed it.

Then said, “I am sorry.”

He waited.

“For carrying his words to you,” she continued. “For knowing you could not answer freely and speaking to you as though silence meant agreement.”

Thesra stood beside her.

“I did that too.”

Caldris looked from one to the other.

“I knew you heard me,” he said.

Neither tried to deny it.

“I would like to talk,” he added. “Later. For now, I would like to sit.”

Mary had already sent for chairs.

We met in the council chamber that evening.

Caldris remained near the hearth with water at his elbow. Maelin and Thesra sat across from him. Eliza stood by the door, while Mary took the place from which she could see everyone’s face.

Aurelia did not sit until the others had.

“What brought you here?” she asked.

Maelin folded her hands.

“Othellos gave an account of Uriah’s offer.”

“That was quick,” I said.

“He left out the witnesses,” Thesra replied. “And the conditions.”

Mary’s pen moved.

“He said Uriah had demanded entry to the high court on terms of his own choosing,” Maelin continued. “He said you had encouraged it.”

“I did,” Aurelia said.

“He said Caldris remained bound because Caldris wished to remain apart from us.”

Caldris set his cup down carefully.

“I did not.”

“We know,” Thesra said.

“You knew before.”

“Yes.”

The room went quiet.

Maelin held Caldris’s gaze.

“I let his account stand,” she said. “I knew enough to question it. I chose not to.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because questioning him would have meant giving up the place I had learned to stand.”

Caldris looked at her for a long moment.

“That answer I believe.”

He picked up his cup again.

It was as much as he wished to say.

Aurelia turned to Thesra.

“And you?”

“I have watched him call fear prudence whenever it suited him. I kept telling myself I could do more by remaining near him.”

“Could you?”

“Sometimes.”

Thesra’s voice grew quieter.

“Less often than I claimed.”

I wanted to ask whether Othellos had sent them.

Eliza asked first.

“Did he order this visit?”

“No,” Maelin said.

“Does he know you’re here?”

“He knows we left.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“We did not tell him where we were going.”

Eliza accepted the distinction without relaxing.

Aurelia looked between the two goddesses.

“What do you want from Greykeep?”

“A hearing,” Maelin said. “After that, we can ask for more.”

Mary paused her pen.

“That is a manageable order.”

We spoke until the candles burned low.

Maelin told us which offices still treated Othellos’s account as the only record. Thesra described the summons she had refused to carry that morning. It had named Evelyn.

My wife was holding a sleeping Garrick when Mary read that part back.

She lifted her head.

“He changed the question,” she said.

Aurelia nodded.

Thesra looked toward our son.

“I did not bring the summons.”

“Thank you,” Evelyn said.

Thesra’s expression tightened.

“I should have refused others before this one.”

“Yes,” Evelyn replied.

Garrick shifted against her shoulder. She settled him and listened to the rest.

The following morning, Caldris joined their conversation.

I stayed because he asked me to.

Maelin did not ask him to forgive her. Thesra did not ask him to speak for them. They let him describe what it had cost to hear their voices while he could offer nothing back.

At one point, Maelin covered her face with both hands.

Caldris waited until she lowered them.

“I need you to remember that,” he said.

“I will.”

“I may need you to hear it again.”

“Then tell me again.”

He nodded.

Afterward, we went outside. The yard was full of carts and people who had work to finish before the light went.

Caldris stood in it for a while.

On the third day, Maelin found Aurelia in the old chapel.

I had come to fetch her for a lesson and stopped when I heard their voices.

“I cannot ask you to trust me,” Maelin said.

“No,” Aurelia replied.

“I did see what they wrote of you. I knew it was wrong. I thought that if I challenged one record, every decision I had made beside Othellos would come under question.”

“Would it have?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause.

“I cannot return the years you spent answering people who were told you had given no answer,” Maelin said.

“No.”

“I can stop adding to them.”

I stood outside until Maelin came away.

She saw me.

“I know you heard.”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell her I meant it?”

“You can tell her again tomorrow.”

Maelin considered that.

“I will.”

Thesra went to Aurelia the next day.

She did not know I was nearby until she turned to leave.

“I told myself I was keeping her safe,” she said to me.

“Was she in danger?”

“Yes. And I was afraid of what it would cost me to stand beside her.”

She looked toward the chapel door.

“That is the part I kept leaving out.”

I thought of all the times Aurelia had stopped a lesson to make me name what I was actually doing.

“She’ll hear you,” I said.

“Will she forgive me?”

“I don’t know.”

Thesra nodded. She went down the stair without asking anything else.

Aurelia asked them both to meet her in the chapel a week after they arrived.

She invited Caldris.

She invited Evelyn and me.

Mary came because Aurelia wanted the conversation recorded, though she left her book closed until everyone had taken a place.

Maelin looked tired. Thesra had spent the morning helping Ilyen in the infirmary and still had a small mark of flour on one sleeve from carrying bread there afterward.

Aurelia faced them beneath the open arch.

“I have listened to what you did,” she said. “And to what you have done since coming here. Caldris will decide for himself what he can give you. I cannot decide that for him.”

Caldris inclined his head.

“I forgive you,” Aurelia said.

Maelin drew a breath.

Thesra’s eyes filled.

Aurelia went on before either could speak.

“I will tell you when something hurts. I will expect you to answer plainly. I would like us to find out what we can do together.”

Light gathered at the edge of the stone basin.

I thought at first that sunlight had reached it through the upper window. Then it passed across the floor, though the window was behind us.

Aurelia gripped the back of the nearest chair.

Evelyn moved toward her.

“I’m here,” Aurelia said.

The light reached her hands.

I felt a change in her power.

I knew its familiar warmth from the garden and from every lesson in which she had guided me toward something I could not yet see. Now it spread through the chapel with a depth I had never felt from her.

An old crack in the basin held a bead of water.

It ran clear.

No stone joined itself. No wound vanished. Aurelia breathed, and the light remained around her.