Ch. 207 The Way Out

Chapter 207: The Way Out

The Castellan brought two lamps to the eastern passage.

He placed one inside the shallow chamber behind the wall and the other on a crate beside the stair.

“What are they for?” I asked.

“To tell us if the light changes.”

“I thought you could feel the wards change.”

“I can. I want everyone else to see it too.”

Evelyn examined the bronze strips. Aurelia stood at her shoulder, following the separate lines of power.

Maelin had joined us to observe what happened when I withdrew my contribution.

“How much?” I asked.

“Less than yesterday,” the Castellan said. “We begin with the smallest change you can hold.”

I looked at the lamps.

Both flames burned steadily.

I drew back a little strength.

The light in the chamber dimmed.

The lamp beside the stair remained bright.

“That one?” I asked.

“An ordinary lamp,” the Castellan said.

“You could have told me.”

“I could have.”

Evelyn laughed.

I held the amount I had chosen while she traced the working through the eastern wall.

“No movement toward the nursery,” she said.

Aurelia checked for herself.

“None that I feel.”

“And if I give more?” I asked.

“First, put back what you took,” the Castellan replied.

I did.

Slowly.

The chamber brightened again.

We spent the rest of the morning making small changes and recording them.

The castle accepted more of my power along two branches.

The third became unsteady if I increased the supply too quickly.

“What does that branch guard?” I asked.

“Several rooms above us,” the Castellan said. “And part of the inner court.”

“Can it be altered?”

“Yes. Before we ask it to carry more.”

Mary arrived as we finished.

She looked at the pages spread over the crate.

“Is anything ready to be added to the plan?”

“The third branch needs repair,” Evelyn said.

Mary wrote that down.

“Who does it?”

“I do,” the Castellan replied.

“Who checks it?”

He looked at Aurelia.

“I will,” she said.

Mary closed her book.

“Good.”

At breakfast, Carol asked for the cloth book.

She did not say all the words. She pointed to the shelf and said, “Home.”

Evelyn took it down.

Garrick, who had been carrying his boat beneath one arm, held out his other hand.

“You have yours,” I told him.

He looked at Carol’s book.

Then at his boat.

“Home,” he said.

Carol opened the book to the page with the house and showed it to him.

They sat close together on the rug.

I watched them for a while.

Neither moved the book with power.

They turned its pages with their hands.

Nessa came after the midday sleep.

She measured both children again.

Carol had grown since her last visit. Garrick had too.

“How much?” Evelyn asked.

“Enough to notice. They’re both eating well, and I see no sign that the growth is tiring them.”

“Carol slept longer today,” Helena said.

“She used her power yesterday,” Nessa replied. “Keep telling me when that happens.”

Garrick tried to take the measuring cord.

Nessa gave him the end while keeping hold of the rest.

He carried it to Carol.

She examined it, then placed it around his shoulders as she had seen Nessa do.

“Are they learning quickly because they’re growing quickly?” I asked.

“I can’t tell you which is leading the other,” Nessa said.

I had begun to expect that answer.

It was still difficult to hear.

Eliza came to the nursery door while Nessa packed her things.

She had made her decision about the old house on the southern road.

“Nathaniel and Ivara want to come,” she said. “I’m taking four guards. We’ll leave at first light.”

“How long will you be away?”

“Two days if the road is clear. Three if it isn’t.”

“I could go.”

“You have work here.”

“That has never stopped me before.”

“Usually I’m the one telling you to stay.”

She looked at the children, then back at me.

“Nathaniel knows what he came to witness. Ivara knows the records. We need to see what remains of the house. I have the people for it.”

I nodded.

“Bring them back.”

“I intend to.”

Nathaniel spread the route across Mary’s table that evening.

The house had stood where two roads met south of Greykeep. Travelers leaving the high court’s keeping could stop there without declaring where they would go next.

“Who maintained it?” Mary asked.

“People appointed by the Hall of Accord,” Ivara replied.

“By the First Witness?”

“When there was one.”

“And afterward?”

Ivara hesitated.

“I signed the last order I saw. It kept the house open another year.”

“Did you ever visit?”

“No.”

She examined the mark for the crossroads.

“I wish I had.”

Nathaniel rested a hand on the map.

“We’re going now.”

Melody checked the party’s supplies.

She found enough rope for a crossing, dry coverings for the records they hoped to find, and more food than Nathaniel thought they needed.

“You don’t know who may be at the house,” she told him.

“I don’t.”

“Then leave the food.”

He did.

Ivara watched Eliza test the straps on one of the horses.

“Will she let us stop if I remember something on the way?” she asked me.

“Yes. Tell her why.”

“She asks a great many questions.”

“Less than Mary.”

Mary, who stood nearby, looked up.

“I ask questions while you’re warm and seated.”

Ivara reconsidered.

“That is true.”

After they left the next morning, I went to the lower yard.

Perrin had rebuilt Caldris’s practice door so it could fold flat against its frame.

“Does it still stand?” I asked.

He opened it and set a pin beneath one foot.

It stood.

“Better than the first one,” he said.

“Will Caldris keep making the gap wider?”

“He asked for marks along the floor so he can measure it.”

Perrin pointed them out.

There were eight.

“He only used the first two yesterday.”

“I know.”

“You’ve given him ideas.”

“I think he already had them.”

Caldris made me work with the third mark.

The draft crossed the room and moved a hanging strip of cloth. My task was to keep it from moving any farther.

Veyra watched the cloth.

Thesra stood in the passage.

“Are you calling again?” I asked her.

“Not yet.”

“That is less reassuring than silence.”

She smiled.

Caldris opened the door.

The cloth lifted.

I held the air where it was.

For a few breaths, it remained steady.

Then I felt another movement beyond the training chamber.

A familiar current from the castle wards.

I turned my attention toward it.

The cloth snapped against the wall.

We closed the door.

“The wards?” Aurelia asked.

“Someone changed the eastern supply.”

“The Castellan is working on the third branch.”

“I knew that.”

“And you followed it anyway,” Caldris said.

“I wanted to make sure it was him.”

“You could have asked.”

“The passage is too far from here.”

“A person can be sent.”

He was right.

I had felt a change and reached for it because I could.

The Castellan had told us he would be there.

We tried again.

This time, when the eastern branch shifted, I named it aloud and kept the air in the chamber steady.

At noon, the Castellan reported that he had replaced an old fitting.

“Was there a problem?” I asked.

“The metal had worn where the two strips met. I found it before the connection failed.”

“Did you know I could feel you working?”

“Yes.”

I looked at him.

“You might have warned me.”

“You knew I planned to repair the branch.”

“That is what Caldris said.”

“He was correct.”

I went to find something to eat.

Mary and the Castellan took the revised chapel plan to the three families in the afternoon.

Evelyn went with them.

I offered to carry the drawings.

Mary had a tube for them.

“I have a task for you,” she said.

I waited.

“Read the draft of the pantheon agreement before Maelin and Thesra change it again.”

“That sounds less like carrying.”

“It is.”

The first page began with Nathaniel’s amendment.

Any person may seek a place among us.

I read the rest in the council chamber while people crossed the courtyard below.

Several lines concerned consent.

No god could bind another to a duty by speaking for them.

No person would have to pray or take a divine name to receive ordinary care offered in Greykeep.

Someone wishing to leave the pantheon could do so without surrendering their home.

That last line had been revised three times.

I could tell where Thesra had pressed her pen too hard.

At the bottom of the page, Maelin had written a question.

Who hears a complaint against one of us?

There was no answer beneath it.

I thought of the people at the chapel and the guards at the gate.

Then I wrote, Ask them how they wish to be heard.

Mary found me still looking at the page.

“That will make the next meeting longer,” she said.

“I thought you liked complete records.”

“I do.”

She read my note again.

“We’ll ask.”

The families accepted the new placement of the chapel.

The daughter stood beside its marked boundary until she could see where her own house would begin. Then she gave Mary the signed agreement.

“She wants to watch when Eleanor lays the foundation,” Evelyn told me.

“She should.”

“Eleanor invited her.”

The proposed building occupied a broad piece of ground near the future well.

For now, it was only stakes.

Evelyn walked between them with me.

“Here would be the entrance,” she said. “The room for wet coats is there.”

“The one Veyra made wider.”

“Yes. I think she was right.”

She led me farther in.

“And here, people could wait without sitting among the students.”

“That will fill quickly.”

“Probably.”

She smiled.

“We’ll learn what we need when they come.”

In the evening, Dorian returned from the western beacon.

He had cleaned it with two guards and brought back the cracked cover.

Aldren examined the break.

“Can you make another?” Dorian asked.

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Ask me after Perrin has measured it.”

Perrin held out his hand for the cover.

“Try not to make the new one larger,” Aldren told him.

“I know.”

“Last time—”

“That was a different fitting.”

Dorian listened with growing interest.

When Perrin went to the workshop, Dorian followed him.

I suspected the beacon would be discussed well into the night.

Before bed, Aurelia asked me to walk the eastern wall with her.

The repaired branch felt steady beneath my feet.

“Can I make it stronger now?” I asked.

“After the Castellan and Evelyn finish measuring what it can take.”

“I know.”

“You wanted me to give you another answer?”

“I wanted you to tell me how long.”

“I can’t yet.”

We reached the corner overlooking the new road markers.

“When you ascend,” she said, “your power may be able to reach much farther through these walls. We need to decide where it should stop.”

“At the edge of Greykeep?”

“Perhaps. But the castle holds rooms as well as borders.”

I thought of the nursery.

“And people.”

“Yes.”

We stood beside the stair.

“I don’t want the wards deciding where the children can go.”

“Neither do I,” she said.

“Or anyone else who lives here.”

“Then that is part of what we build.”

I had thought of stronger wards as thicker walls.

The castle already had passages made by people who believed authority should open doors for them. We had spent months finding and severing those claims.

I rested a hand against the stone.

“Can we make it harder for someone outside to enter without making it harder for someone inside to leave?”

“The Castellan believes we can,” Aurelia said. “Evelyn has already begun tracing the ways out.”

“That sounds like her.”

“It does.”

In our room, Evelyn was writing in Carol’s book.

“What did she do today?” I asked.

“She called Garrick by name.”

“Clearly?”

“Clearly enough that he came.”

I sat beside her.

“She knows how to get his attention.”

“She has practiced.”

Across the nursery, Garrick made a sleepy sound.

Carol answered him without waking.

Evelyn waited for them to settle, then handed me the pen.

I wrote that Garrick had walked three steps in a row and that Carol had watched him the whole time.

“That happened yesterday,” Evelyn said.

“I missed writing it down.”

“You didn’t miss seeing it.”

She was right.

I added the date and put the pen away.

Long after the lamps were lowered, I felt the eastern branch beneath the castle.

The Castellan’s repair held.

Farther away, rain moved across the southern road.

Eliza and the others would have reached the old house by now if the weather had allowed it.

I could have reached for their voices.

I did not.

Eliza knew how to send word. Nathaniel and Ivara knew why they had gone. My listening would not make the road shorter.

Beside me, Evelyn turned in her sleep.

I drew the blanket up over her shoulder and closed my eyes.