Ch. 206 Boat, Door and Grandma

Chapter 206: Boat, Door and Grandma

The next morning, Garrick called his bowl a boat again.

This time, he put it on the floor and pushed it toward the nursery door.

“It has never floated,” I told him.

“Boat.”

Carol followed it. When the bowl caught against the edge of the rug, she moved it without touching it.

Evelyn looked up from fastening her sleeve.

“Carol.”

Our daughter stopped.

“Ask him first.”

Carol turned to her brother.

Garrick picked up the bowl and carried it the rest of the way himself.

“That was a great deal to ask before breakfast,” I said.

“It was one question,” Evelyn replied.

“It was an important one.”

She kissed my cheek.

“Yes.”

The gods met again after breakfast.

Mary had given each of them a copy of the page they had begun the previous evening. By the time I arrived, Nathaniel had written in the margin of his.

“You’ve changed the first line,” Maelin said.

“I’ve suggested changing it.”

“From Any god may seek a place among us to Any person?”

“Yes.”

Dorian, who had spent the night above the western gate, looked between them.

“You’re writing an agreement for gods.”

“Mortals will live with its consequences,” Nathaniel said.

Mary turned the page toward me.

I read the line twice.

“Keep his suggestion,” I said.

“We haven’t decided yet,” Aurelia reminded me.

“I know. I’m adding my voice.”

Mary made a small mark beside Nathaniel’s note.

They did not finish the agreement that morning.

Sel wanted to know what the pantheon would owe people who sought help beyond Greykeep. Nara asked whether anyone could promise her warmth on her behalf.

“No,” Maelin said.

“Then write it where I can find it.”

Thesra thought the page was growing too long.

Mary handed her a clean sheet.

Thesra stared at it.

“I meant the agreement.”

“I know.”

Caldris laughed.

I left them discussing the difference between offering help and binding someone else to provide it.

It seemed likely to take most of the day.

The Castellan was waiting beneath the eastern wall.

He had opened the panel we had altered weeks before.

Its bronze strips held their usual faint light.

“We can begin examining what your change might do to the wards,” he said.

“Before it happens?”

“We should.”

Evelyn stood beside him with a copy of the ward plan.

“The supply you give the castle has grown,” she told me. “Slowly enough that we didn’t notice until we compared the older records.”

“Is that good?”

“It is useful to know,” the Castellan said.

That was not the answer I had requested.

It was the one he had.

We spent the morning measuring.

I held my usual contribution steady while Evelyn traced its course through the eastern wall.

The Castellan marked each place where my power joined hers.

At the third connection, he stopped.

“There is a little more reaching this branch than last month.”

“I haven’t been sending more.”

“I know.”

Evelyn followed the line back toward me.

“You’re keeping hold of it more cleanly,” she said. “Less is lost before it reaches the wall.”

I had learned that in the training room with a stone.

I looked at the bronze.

“Can we make it stronger?”

“Yes,” the Castellan said. “We need to know how much it can receive first.”

He asked me to increase my contribution by a small amount.

The light brightened.

So did a strip farther down the wall.

“That one wasn’t on the plan,” I said.

“It is,” Evelyn replied. “You’re looking at an old copy.”

“Mary gave me the book for my birthday.”

“The castle changed yesterday.”

I looked at her.

She smiled.

The Castellan adjusted the working and asked me to return to the amount I usually supplied.

I did it slowly.

No warmth rushed back beneath my ribs.

“No dizziness?” Evelyn asked.

“No.”

She added a note to her page.

That part, at least, had become easier.

At noon, Aldren came to fetch the Castellan.

The drain on the dry rise had reached a patch of old stone.

“Is it another passage?” I asked.

“It is a drain,” Aldren said. “But it turns where our drawing says it runs straight.”

The Castellan closed the panel.

We walked out together.

Perrin stood in the trench with mud on both knees, holding the end of a measuring cord. Eleanor had exposed a narrow channel beneath the stones.

“The water will take the turn,” she said. “The question is whether it comes out where we want it.”

The Castellan knelt.

For several minutes, they discussed slope, mortar, and a corner I could barely see.

Mary arrived in time to hear Eleanor say they would have to move the planned foundation of the chapel.

“How far?” she asked.

“Three paces.”

Mary opened her book.

The daughter whose house would stand beside the chapel came to inspect the new marks.

“Does this move my wall?” she asked.

“No,” Eleanor said.

“The bean field?”

“No.”

“The well?”

“Not if we move its path by one pace,” the Castellan replied.

She considered the stakes.

“Then mark the well too. I want to see it before I agree.”

Mary handed Perrin a length of cord.

He measured the new line.

I held one of the stakes while he drove it into the ground.

A city could shift three paces in an afternoon.

The people who would live there ought to see where it landed.

After the work, I went to the chapel.

Evelyn was teaching a student how to hold a patient’s arm still without pressing on an injury. Liora played the patient.

“You’re holding me so tightly I can feel my fingers going numb,” Liora told the student.

He loosened his grip.

“Now?”

“Better. I can also move away if I need to.”

“That seems to make his work harder,” I said.

“It makes it possible to tell him when it hurts,” Liora replied.

Evelyn looked at me over the student’s shoulder.

“We’ll be finished soon.”

I sat near the door and waited.

Nara kept a basin of water warm beside the washing table.

Nobody had asked her to. Liora thanked her anyway.

When the students left, Evelyn took me to the back of the room.

“We need another person who can keep records of the patients who come here,” she said.

“Mary?”

“Mary has enough to write.”

“I can ask her whether someone wants to learn.”

“Good.”

She showed me a stack of pages.

“These are lessons. These are accounts of people treated. They’ve begun to look alike when I’m tired.”

I looked at the writing.

“I can tell the difference.”

“That is because I have put a mark at the top of each page.”

“A sensible method.”

“One I began yesterday after putting a lesson in the wrong stack.”

She gathered the pages.

“The larger chapel needs a place to keep both.”

“I’ll tell the Castellan.”

“Tell Mary too.”

I had expected that.

Outside, Veyra waited with Caldris.

He had brought a door.

It was an ordinary wooden door in a frame set on two feet. Perrin had made it that morning after Caldris described the lesson.

“There’s no wall around it,” I said.

“That is the advantage,” Caldris replied.

“Where did Perrin find time?”

“He wanted to know why I needed it.”

“And after you told him?”

“He wanted to make it.”

Veyra stood on one side of the door.

I stood on the other.

Caldris opened it a finger’s breadth.

A draft touched my face.

“Keep it moving through the gap,” he said. “The same amount. No more.”

I could feel the air on both sides.

That was new.

I held the draft.

Caldris widened the gap.

The air rushed through. A sheet of paper lifted from a bench and struck Veyra’s shoulder.

She caught it.

“Too much,” I said.

“Yes,” Caldris replied.

“You widened the door.”

“The wind would have changed even if I hadn’t.”

I gave him a look.

He closed the door again.

On the fourth attempt, the paper remained on the bench.

On the seventh, Thesra called from the passage.

The paper flew off.

She came in to retrieve it.

“I was told to interrupt,” she said.

“I assumed you had volunteered.”

“That too.”

We stopped when my hands began to shake.

Veyra checked the air around the frame.

“No cold,” she said.

“Any wind?”

“Only what’s coming through the window.”

Caldris closed that window.

“Tomorrow, we make the gap wider.”

“You enjoy telling me that.”

“I enjoy giving you something measurable to improve.”

I looked at the door.

“Can it stay here?”

“Perrin expects it back eventually,” Caldris said. “He wants to make another one that folds.”

“Of course he does.”

Nathaniel found me after the lesson.

He carried a page from the archive.

“Ivara remembered a date,” he said. “The petition she copied was entered the same week a witness was called to Greykeep.”

“Yours?”

“Yes.”

“Did you find the petitioner’s name?”

“No. But we found the route she was meant to take after she left.”

He showed me the page.

A road ran south from Greykeep toward a town I recognized from Eliza’s maps.

“What was there?”

“A house where those leaving one god’s keeping could stay while they decided where to go.”

“Does it still stand?”

“We don’t know.”

I looked at the distance marked beside the road.

“Have you told Eliza?”

“She asked for the map before she would discuss sending anyone.”

“That sounds like Eliza.”

Nathaniel folded the page.

“It sounds like someone who intends to bring them home.”

At supper, Dorian told us that the western beacons needed cleaning.

“They still burn,” Eliza said.

“They do. One has a cracked cover. In rain, the flame will be hard to keep.”

“We’ll inspect it tomorrow.”

“I can come.”

Eliza nodded.

Sel asked Beatrice whether she might use a corner of the yard to examine the young fruit trees planted there.

“You may,” Beatrice said. “Tell the gardeners before you change anything.”

“I only want to look.”

“That is what Aurelia said before she rearranged my herbs.”

Aurelia raised her cup.

“The mint is happier.”

“The mint has taken half the bed.”

“They were not all pleased with me,” Aurelia admitted.

After supper, Mary brought the chapel plans to our table.

She had added a room for records.

“It’s small,” Evelyn said.

“It can be enlarged,” Mary replied.

“You’ve said that about three rooms.”

“I am allowing space beyond the rear wall.”

Aldren leaned over the plan.

“If you expect to add rooms, set the foundation for them now. It will save tearing up the yard later.”

Mary looked at Eleanor.

Eleanor nodded.

“It will also cost more stone now.”

“We can count it,” Mary said.

I knew that tone.

By morning she would have a number.

The twins were awake when we returned to the nursery.

Carol was sitting in Helena’s lap. Garrick stood beside his namesake, one hand around his grandfather’s finger.

He took a step.

Then another.

His grandfather moved slowly with him.

“He did that while you were at supper,” Helena told us.

“Has he done it before?” Evelyn asked.

“Only with the cradle rail.”

Garrick let go of Aldren.

For a moment he stood by himself.

Then he sat down hard.

He looked startled.

Carol laughed.

He looked at her and laughed too.

Evelyn went to him, but he was already trying to stand again.

Later, Nessa came to see both children.

She watched Garrick take three steps between Evelyn and me. She listened while Carol named the boat, the door in her book, and her grandmother.

“She’s added a word since yesterday,” Evelyn said.

“Two,” Helena corrected. “She calls the hearth ‘warm.’”

Nessa examined them as she had before.

“They’re well tonight,” she said. “I’ll keep coming. Let them sleep when they ask for it, even if the hour surprises you.”

Garrick leaned against my leg, breathing hard after his third walk across the rug.

“That part I can manage,” I said.

I picked him up.

He rested his head against my shoulder.

Once the children slept, Evelyn and I stayed beside their cradles.

“Does it feel too fast?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“To me too.”

I looked at Garrick’s small hand curled beside his face.

“I missed Carol saying ‘papa’ for the first time.”

“She said it to you again.”

“I know.”

Evelyn slipped her arm around my waist.

“We’ll miss some things even if they grow at an ordinary pace.”

“That isn’t much comfort.”

“No. I’m thinking aloud.”

I held her.

“Tomorrow I can stay with them in the morning.”

“You have the wards.”

“The Castellan can wait until after breakfast.”

“He may have a timetable.”

“He learned from Mary.”

Aurelia passed the open door on her way to bed.

She stopped when she saw us.

“Are they asleep?”

“For now,” Evelyn said.

Aurelia came in quietly.

She looked at Carol, then Garrick.

“I spoke to Maelin,” she told me. “We’ll take several days to examine the connections between your power, the wards, and theirs.”

“I’ve decided to prepare,” I said.

“I know.”

“I haven’t chosen a day to ascend.”

“There is no day to choose yet.”

She rested a hand on the cradle rail.

“We have time to learn what we can.”

Outside, a bell sounded at the western post.

One note.

The watch changing.

Garrick slept through it.

So did Carol.

I listened until the bell stopped, then followed Evelyn out of the nursery and left them to their dreams.