Ch. 213 What They Offered

Chapter 213: What They Offered

The Castellan was beneath the southern wall when the gods came to find him.

I was there too, holding a lamp while he examined the branch leading toward the gate.

Maelin arrived first.

Caldris followed with Thesra, Nara, Dorian, Sel, Nathaniel, Veyra, and Ivara.

The passage became crowded.

The Castellan looked up from the open panel.

“Has something happened?”

“No,” Maelin said. “We have a question.”

I lowered the lamp.

“That many of you came to ask one question?”

“We disagreed about how to ask it,” Dorian said.

“Have you decided?”

“Maelin will ask,” Nara told him.

Maelin turned to the Castellan.

“May we contribute to Greykeep’s wards?”

He did not answer immediately.

“Which wards?” he asked.

“Whichever could use what we know,” Thesra said.

“That is a larger question.”

“We thought you might say that,” Maelin replied.

The Castellan closed the panel.

“We should speak where there is room to lay out the plans.”

The gods moved back toward the stair.

I remained beside him.

“Did you expect them to ask?” I said.

“No.”

“Will you let them?”

“I will listen.”

He took the lamp from me and led the way up.

Mary spread the ward plans across the council table.

Some belonged to the old castle. Others showed changes we had made since finding the authority passages.

The gods gathered around them.

“Tell me what you wish to give,” the Castellan said.

Nara pointed to the lines that kept the occupied rooms warm.

“I can help you notice when heat fails before people inside feel it.”

Dorian studied the branch toward the western gate.

“I know how a beacon ought to answer another. I could help its signal reach the watch without delay.”

Sel touched the drawing of the new road.

“I know the ground where you’re building. When water softens it, I can tell.”

The Castellan made no marks yet.

He listened to each of them.

Nathaniel waited until the others finished.

“I could feel when a crossing is made through a boundary.”

I looked at the old eastern passage.

“That sounds useful.”

“It could also make the wards recognize my authority over a crossing,” he said. “I don’t want to give them that.”

“Neither do I,” the Castellan replied.

Maelin nodded toward the copied inscription.

“We could test whether his sense can reach a separate signal without touching the part that admits anyone.”

“Possibly,” the Castellan said.

He looked at me.

“You see why I asked which wards.”

“I do.”

Veyra offered to warn us of weather that might damage a wall or strand people on the roads.

Caldris offered to steady a branch when another person’s power shifted suddenly.

Thesra said she could help the wards distinguish a call for help from a summons that expected obedience.

“That last part deserves testing,” Aurelia said.

Thesra nodded.

“I know.”

Ivara had brought no power she thought the castle needed.

“I can keep the account,” she said. “What is added. Who agrees to it. How it may be withdrawn.”

Mary looked at her.

“I was going to ask.”

“I thought you might.”

Aurelia spoke last.

“The wards already know me. I would like them to continue recognizing the help I choose to give.”

“And if you change your mind?” Nathaniel asked.

“They should allow me to stop.”

He looked at the Castellan.

“That is true for all of us.”

“Yes,” the Castellan said.

Mary began a new page.

“No contribution will give its maker authority to enter a room, open a gate, or command another part of the castle’s working,” she read aloud as she wrote.

“Put that at the top,” Evelyn said.

Mary did.

We chose one test.

Dorian would help the western beacon send a clearer signal to the gate. He would work with the Castellan and Eliza while everyone else observed.

“I thought Nara’s warning about warmth sounded simpler,” I said.

“It is,” the Castellan replied. “The beacon is separate from the castle wards. If Dorian dislikes how his contribution feels, we can end the test without disturbing a room.”

Dorian looked at Eliza.

“Will the guards know?”

“I’ll tell them before we begin.”

“And the person at the beacon?”

“She’ll be part of it.”

Mary noted the time.

Then she noted that Dorian had agreed to try.

He read the line before she closed her book.

On the way back to our rooms, Evelyn stopped beside the nursery.

Carol and Garrick sat with Helena, sorting Eleanor’s broad blocks into two piles.

“Whose is that one?” Helena asked.

“Mine,” Carol said.

She moved a block into her pile without touching it.

Garrick reached across the rug and took it back with his hand.

“No,” he said.

Carol looked at him.

“That is yours,” Helena told her. “He was holding it.”

Our daughter considered the block.

Then she pushed one from her own pile toward him.

Garrick accepted the exchange.

I glanced at Evelyn.

“We should put that in the pantheon agreement.”

“Mary would.”

After supper, Mary opened her calendar to the twins’ second birthday.

I saw cake at once.

There were now other notes beneath it.

Room for games.

Ask Helena about clothes.

Check what the children can safely reach.

“That last one will change by the time the day comes,” I said.

“Yes,” Mary replied.

“What games?”

“I hoped you and Evelyn might tell me.”

Garrick, on my knee, reached for the pen.

Mary moved it away.

“No.”

He leaned toward her book.

She closed it.

Carol, watching from beside Aurelia, said, “No pen.”

“Precisely,” Mary told her.

Evelyn wanted a gathering where the children could move about.

“They barely stayed in our laps at their first birthday,” she said. “By their second, they may not sit down at all.”

“We could use the lower hall,” Helena suggested.

“It has room,” I said. “Though Carol can reach the shelves now.”

“She can reach them from across a room,” Evelyn replied.

Aurelia smiled into her cup.

“Then we should think about what goes on the shelves.”

Garrick Valewood had another proposal for a boat.

I looked at him.

“Will it be larger than the one he already has?”

“Yes.”

“How much larger?”

“Small enough to carry.”

“That is the answer you gave last time.”

“And it was accurate.”

Perrin offered to make two low tables for the children.

“One for each?” I asked.

“One to set food on. One to build things on.”

Eleanor looked at him.

“Make the legs broad enough that Garrick can lean against it.”

“He won’t need to lean by then.”

“He will do it anyway.”

Perrin thought about that.

“Broad legs.”

Mary wrote it down.

I watched the list grow.

Their birthday was still months away.

At the pace they were learning, the children might give Mary their own plans before it arrived.

The beacon test took place the next morning.

Eliza set a guard at the western post and another at the lower gate. The Castellan stood beside Dorian beneath Perrin’s new cover.

I watched from the wall with Veyra and Maelin.

Dorian placed his hand near the beacon’s metal fitting.

“I can follow the answer from here,” he said.

“Follow it only as far as the gate,” the Castellan told him.

“I know.”

“Tell me if the working pulls toward you.”

Dorian nodded.

Eliza gave the signal.

The western bell sounded.

A breath later, the lower gate answered.

“That was its usual time,” Eliza said.

“Now Dorian,” the Castellan replied.

They tried again.

Dorian touched the fitting.

The western bell sounded.

The lower gate answered more promptly.

The young guard there raised a hand.

“It came clearly,” she called.

Dorian withdrew his hand.

The connection remained for a moment, then faded.

“Did the castle hold any of it?” the Castellan asked.

“No,” Dorian said. “I held the route between the bells.”

The Castellan checked the branch running beneath the wall.

“Unchanged.”

Eliza asked for a third test with a different signal.

Dorian agreed.

This time, the bells answered in the wrong order.

We stopped.

The guard at the western post called down an apology. She had struck the second signal before finishing the first.

“I thought Dorian changed it,” she said.

“I didn’t,” Dorian replied.

Eliza went up to the post.

She had the guard demonstrate the sequence without any divine help.

On the second attempt, it sounded correctly.

Then Dorian tried again.

The answer came quickly and in order.

“That is why we do this with people at both ends,” Eliza said when she returned.

The Castellan recorded the results.

Dorian looked relieved that the mistake had belonged to someone they could speak to.

Afterward, Dorian asked whether he could contribute that small working regularly.

“You can,” the Castellan said. “We will arrange when and how. The guards must still be able to send a message without you.”

“I agree.”

Mary wrote the terms.

I leaned over her shoulder.

“You’re making him a roster.”

“Eliza already has one.”

“I feel welcomed,” Dorian said.

Eliza took the page.

“You’ll have a day when someone else keeps the beacon. That is part of the roster too.”

Dorian read it before signing.

Later, Maelin joined me on the southern wall.

“You’re thinking about how many of them could help,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And what happens if one leaves.”

“That too.”

“The Castellan is thinking about the same thing.”

I looked over the courtyard.

“Do you want to contribute?”

“I do. But I want to know whether what I offer would make this place answer an office seal again.”

“We severed that part.”

“Then I want to help it remain severed without teaching the wards to answer me instead.”

She rested her hands on the parapet.

“I used to believe authority was safer when someone I trusted held it.”

“And now?”

“Now I would like the gate to ask the person standing before it.”

In the chapel, Liora continued her lessons.

She could sense a small working Aurelia placed against her hand and withdraw before she grew tired.

Thesra had her repeat it three times.

“Enough,” Liora said.

Thesra looked at the water clock.

“You could do another.”

“I could. I don’t want to.”

Thesra nodded.

“Then enough.”

Evelyn heard about it when she returned from visiting the new treatment room.

“That was part of what you wanted to learn,” she told Liora.

“Yes.”

“How to sense it?”

“How to stop.”

The Castellan brought the ward plans to our rooms that evening.

He had marked the places where a contribution from one of the gods might help.

There were far fewer marks than offers.

“I expected you to begin with every wall,” I said.

“I began with the places we can test.”

Nara’s warning would be tried in an unoccupied room.

Sel would examine the ground beneath the new road with Eleanor.

Thesra’s work would be tested against a call Aurelia made deliberately.

Nathaniel and Maelin would wait until we had found every remaining authority fitting.

Neither argued.

“Mine?” I asked.

The Castellan tapped the stronger branch beneath the eastern wall.

“Yours is already here. We continue measuring it.”

Carol climbed onto my knee while he spoke.

She pointed at the lines on his plan.

“Home.”

“Yes.”

She put her finger on the nursery.

I looked at the Castellan.

“She found it.”

“She saw me point it out to Evelyn yesterday,” he said.

“That seems less mysterious.”

“It is still a good memory.”

Carol moved her finger to the lower hall.

“Cake.”

Mary, standing by the door, looked offended.

“I have not put the birthday on that plan.”

“She heard us,” Evelyn said.

Carol nodded as if that settled the matter.

The Castellan set the plan beyond her reach.

Once they were asleep, Evelyn and I looked at the little books Mary had given them on their first birthday.

There were more pages filled than I remembered.

Garrick’s first steps.

Carol’s new words.

The day both had discovered they could move a toy without touching it.

Evelyn had left space after the latest entry.

“For their birthday?” I asked.

“For whatever happens next.”

I turned to the blank page.

“There’s still time before they’re two.”

“Yes.”

I thought of everything that had changed since their first birthday.

“There may not be enough pages.”

“Mary gave us another book each,” Evelyn said.

“Of course she did.”

Outside, the western beacon shone steadily.

Dorian had returned to his room. The guard on duty kept the light herself.

The castle’s wards held their usual shape around us.

They had more help offered than they could yet carry.

In the nursery, Garrick stirred and called for his boat.

I found it beneath his blanket and put it in his hand.

He went back to sleep.

For now, that was the help he wanted from me.