Ch. 195 The Measure of a Watch

Chapter 195: The Measure of a Watch

Eliza discovered that we had three different lists of the people guarding Greykeep.

One counted everyone who owned a sword, spear or bow.

One counted everyone who had ever reported for a watch.

The third, which Mary preferred, counted the people who had actually appeared for duty in the past month.

The totals were nowhere near one another.

“I would like to know which list is correct,” Eliza said.

Mary put all three on the table.

“So would I.”

Melody looked at the first.

“This includes Perrin.”

“He owns a spear,” Eleanor said.

“He uses it to hold up a line of drying cloth.”

“It does that well.”

Perrin reached across and turned the page facedown.

Eliza took us to the lower yard.

There were guards on the walls, guards at the gates, and people arriving from the villages to find out where they should stand. A few brought weapons. Most brought the names of neighbors willing to help.

The Castellan had placed wooden markers across a map of Greykeep.

“This is everyone available today,” Eliza said.

I counted them.

“There are fewer than I thought.”

“Yes.”

“Are the others away?”

“Some. Others must tend fields, repair roofs, care for children, or sleep after last night’s watch.”

She moved one marker from the northern gate to the western wall.

“Now tell me who is guarding the gate.”

I looked at the empty place.

“I see your point.”

We spent the morning working through the lists.

A watch had to be relieved. A person sent to a village needed a way home. Someone who had trained once with a bow did not become an archer because a clerk needed to fill a column.

Eliza knew most of it already.

She wanted the rest of us to see it.

Mary wrote names beside duties people could actually perform. Melody spoke with each of the field companies. By noon, she had sent one man home to recover from a fever and found another who had been carrying messages between villages without appearing on any list.

“What did you think your duty was?” she asked him.

“Messages.”

“Then we should have written that down.”

He looked relieved.

Mary found him a page.

I tried to help by carrying practice shields.

Eleanor had made twelve of them from wood too rough for finer work. I lifted the stack from the workshop and brought it to the yard.

“Where?” I asked Eliza.

She pointed to a dry patch beside the wall.

I set them down.

Then stood with my hands open, feeling the strength that remained in the working.

Aurelia, who had followed us, noticed.

“Take your time.”

“I am.”

“The shields are no longer in the air.”

“I noticed.”

I drew the strength back slowly.

When I finished, Perrin took one shield from the stack and held it up.

“It still weighs something,” he said.

“I haven’t learned to change that.”

“Good,” Eleanor replied. “I know how to build for this weight.”

In the afternoon, Eliza arranged a simple exercise.

A bell would sound at the western gate.

The guards were to close it and send word to the keep. Nobody would know when she intended to ring it.

Half an hour later, Garrick fell asleep against my shoulder.

I sat on a bench beneath the gallery, careful not to move him.

The bell sounded.

I stood so quickly that he woke.

He looked at me.

Then at the gate.

Then began to cry.

Helena appeared from the passage.

“Eliza could have chosen a kinder hour,” she said.

“I don’t think she consulted him.”

“She’ll hear about it.”

I handed her our son and went to see the exercise.

The gate closed promptly.

The message did not arrive promptly.

A runner had gone to the old council chamber. We were in the lower yard. Another had assumed the Castellan would pass word through the walls.

“I can,” the Castellan said. “No one asked me.”

Eliza wrote that down.

When she rang the bell a second time, the runner came straight to her.

The western gate remained open.

Everyone looked toward it.

The guard responsible for the bar raised a hand.

“I thought we were testing the message.”

“We are testing what happens when the bell rings,” Eliza said.

He lowered his hand.

Then closed the gate.

She wrote that down too.

After supper, Evelyn found me looking over the notes.

“You weren’t assigned those.”

“I know.”

“You are frowning as though you were.”

I moved the papers so she could sit.

“We have gods in the castle. I thought that might make us safer.”

“It may.”

“And yet someone still has to remember where the runner goes.”

“Yes.”

She put her hand over mine.

“Our children will sleep better if the gate guards know what to do.”

“Garrick did not sleep through the bell.”

“He will forgive Eliza eventually.”

“Helena may take longer.”

Evelyn smiled and took the notes from me.

“We can read the rest tomorrow.”

The next morning, the gods joined us in the training chamber.

Maelin brought four small weights.

Thesra brought nothing I could see.

Caldris brought a chair.

“For yourself?” I asked.

“For whoever needs to sit down first.”

“That seems pessimistic.”

“Experience,” he said.

Aurelia placed the weights around the room.

“You will hold each one separately.”

I lifted them.

Maelin pressed against the first.

Thesra stepped toward the door.

Caldris spoke my name from behind me.

I lost the third weight.

It struck the floor.

Nobody caught it.

The sound made me wince.

“You heard me,” Caldris said.

“Yes.”

“Did I need you?”

“No.”

“Then why did you turn?”

“I thought you might.”

He nodded.

“That is what we are practicing.”

Aurelia set the weight upright again.

I looked at her.

“You could have caught it.”

“You could have let it fall.”

“It might have damaged the floor.”

“The floor has survived you before.”

Maelin’s mouth twitched.

We began again.

This time I heard Caldris and kept my attention on the weights.

We worked for three mornings.

On the fourth, Thesra went into the passage and asked someone to call to her from the lower stair.

The voice reached me faintly.

I could not make out the words.

Still, I knew where the speaker stood. I knew they wanted Thesra and that she intended to answer. For a moment, the whole distance between them seemed easy to cross.

My weights rose higher.

“Uriah,” Maelin said.

I lowered them.

Thesra returned.

“What did you feel?”

“Room for more.”

Aurelia watched me.

“Did you want more?”

“I wanted to find out how far I could go.”

That answer did not seem to please anyone.

We sat on the floor while I recovered.

Caldris had been right to bring the chair, though I refused to give him the satisfaction of using it.

“Curiosity is useful,” Thesra said.

“She says that when you’re the one holding the weights,” I told her.

“I have made the same mistake.”

Maelin lowered herself beside us.

“When power began answering me from beyond the places I knew, I followed it because I could. It took me a long time to learn that I had crossed a distance.”

“How did you learn?”

“I returned to find I had missed someone speaking beside me.”

I looked at Evelyn.

She had come in during the last attempt. I had not noticed.

“I don’t want to be absent when I’m here,” I said.

“Then tell us when you feel yourself going,” Evelyn replied.

“I didn’t know until Maelin called me.”

“You know now what it begins to feel like.”

She sat beside me.

I leaned my shoulder against hers.

Across the room, Aurelia retrieved the fallen weight. Its edge had left a pale mark on the floor.

She gave it to me.

“Feel where it ends,” she said.

I held the plain piece of metal in my hands until I was certain.

By the end of the week, Eliza had settled on a new watch schedule.

She brought it to the council with several names left blank.

“Are those vacancies?” Mary asked.

“They are places we cannot fill without asking people to give up necessary work.”

The village representatives studied the page.

One offered two people who had already volunteered. Another said she needed a day to speak with her miller before promising anyone.

Eliza left the blank places blank.

Melody examined the supply routes.

“We can train more people without putting them on a permanent watch.”

“For how long?” I asked.

“An afternoon each week to begin.”

“And if Othellos comes before they’re ready?”

“Then they know how to carry a message, move people from the road, and keep a gate clear.”

I looked again at the empty spaces.

They seemed more useful now that they were honest.

The Castellan had found something in the old southern barracks.

He waited until the meeting ended before showing us.

“There is a signal line between the outer watch posts,” he said.

“I thought you checked every connection,” I replied.

“I checked the wards. This line carries only sound.”

We followed him through a narrow corridor to a row of bronze bells.

Some were green with age.

One had a broken tongue.

Eleanor lifted it.

“I can repair this.”

“Will they answer one another?” Eliza asked.

“They once did.”

“Can they be rung by a person?”

“Yes,” the Castellan said.

“Good. Let’s learn that first.”

He looked at her for a moment.

Then inclined his head.

We tested the bells after the evening meal.

The western post rang.

A beat later, the southern bell answered.

Then the eastern.

The northern remained silent.

We waited.

It sounded twice, hurriedly.

Melody came down from the post with a young guard at her side.

“He thought he had broken it,” she said.

“I struck it once,” the guard explained. “Then nothing happened.”

“The sound takes a moment to travel,” the Castellan said.

“I know that now.”

He looked embarrassed.

Eliza showed him the line on the map and asked him to describe what he had heard.

By the time they finished, he could tell us which post had rung first.

Maelin came to the nursery that night carrying a length of blue cloth.

“Beatrice said it was left from the winter stores,” she told Evelyn. “May I?”

My wife took it.

“For what?”

“I thought the children might like another page in the book.”

Carol reached for the cloth before Evelyn could answer.

Maelin held it where she could touch it.

“We have established that she likes the color,” Evelyn said.

“Will you show me how Aurelia made the others?”

Aurelia, seated by the window, looked up from the mending in her lap.

“I will.”

Maelin drew a chair beside her.

For a while, they worked without speaking of courts or records.

The page became a sky.

Maelin stitched three small stars on it. Aurelia made a moon from a scrap of white linen. Carol climbed into her lap to inspect the work and nearly took the needle.

“I have learned why you waited until the children were asleep,” Maelin said.

“I did tell you.”

“You did.”

Garrick brought his wooden boat to her knee.

She set the needle out of reach and accepted it.

“Do you want a boat in the sky?”

“He often wants two things at once,” I said.

Maelin looked at him.

“I am beginning to understand that.”

Aurelia smiled without lifting her eyes from the page.

Caldris and Thesra came in later.

Thesra stood beside the new page.

“Those stars are crooked.”

“So are the ones outside,” Maelin replied.

“Only from where you stand.”

“Then this is what they look like from here.”

Thesra could not argue with that.

Caldris took the boat from Garrick when our son offered it, then gave it back when Garrick decided the offer had been misunderstood.

I watched Maelin move her chair so there was room for Thesra beside Aurelia.

No one announced anything.

Thesra sat.

The message from the high court arrived before dawn.

There was no bell this time.

Mary found a strip of white paper beneath the observation room door. The Castellan said no one had crossed the wards. The paper held no power he could feel.

Its words were written in a hand I did not know.

The high court has received notice of a proposed assembly at Greykeep. Its proceedings will have no standing before Othellos.

Mary read it twice.

“Standing for what?” I asked.

“That is a question I would like him to answer.”

Maelin stood beside us.

“He knows what we discussed.”

“Did one of you tell him?”

“No.”

I believed her.

I wanted to know how he had heard.

We brought the paper to the council.

Eliza checked the room and the passage.

Thesra examined the writing. Caldris read it aloud, listening to each word as though it might still be capable of closing around his throat.

Nothing happened.

“Does the high court have a way to leave paper inside a sealed room?” Melody asked.

“Many people serve it,” Maelin said.

“So do many people serve us.”

Mary laid the paper flat.

“We should find out who placed it here.”

“And answer it?” I asked.

“When we know who receives the answer.”

She copied the words into her book.

The original remained on the table for everyone to see.

That afternoon, I went with Eliza to the western gate.

The guards knew their positions. The runner knew where to go. The bar had been repaired where it caught against the stone.

Eliza struck the small signal bell.

The gate closed.

A message went to the yard.

The Castellan appeared from the passage with Mary close behind him.

“How long?” Eliza asked.

Mary checked the sand in a little glass.

“Better.”

“That is not a time.”

“It is when the glass has no marks.”

Eliza held out her hand for it.

Mary kept it.

“I’ll bring one tomorrow.”

They began discussing how many marks it needed.

I looked past the gate to the road.

Nothing moved there but a cart on its way home.

Aurelia found me after the watch changed.

“You felt something this morning,” she said.

“The paper?”

“Before we found it.”

I had.

A slight pressure at the edge of my attention. I had thought it belonged to the lesson still lingering in my head.

“I should have said.”

“You can say it now.”

I described it as best I could.

She listened.

Then she asked, “Where are you?”

“By the western gate.”

“With?”

“You.”

“And beyond it?”

“The road.”

The pressure did not return.

I took a breath.

“Will you ask me that every time?”

“Until you start asking yourself.”

We walked back through the yard.

Eleanor had set the repaired barracks bell on a bench for inspection. Perrin was making a bracket for it, and two guards were disagreeing about which wall would leave it easiest to reach.

From an upper window came Carol’s voice.

She called for Evelyn.

My wife answered from the room beside her.

I heard both of them clearly.

For a moment, I felt how much more I might hear if I reached.

I kept walking beside Aurelia.

At the stair, I stopped and looked up toward the nursery.

“Still here,” I said.

She glanced at me.

“Yes.”

The bell rang once behind us.

Someone was testing the bracket.