Chapter 449: Ten Days

Callan sat in Wenhild's kitchen for three hours without speaking.

He did not eat at first. Wenhild set a bowl of soup in front of him and a plate of bread and a cup of tea, and then she went back to the hearth and sat in her chair and hummed, and did not look at him.

Callan looked at the soup.

He looked at the bread.

He looked at the kitchen. At the copper pots hanging from the beams. At the herbs drying in bundles. At Helena's kettle, slightly dented, steaming on its hook.

At the window, where a lamp was burning in the middle of the morning.

After the first hour, he picked up the spoon.

After the second, the bowl was empty.

Wenhild got up and filled it again without asking.

Callan looked up at her.

“Why?” he said.

It was the first word he had spoken since the gate.

Wenhild considered the question.

“Because you were hungry,” she said.

“You don't know who I am.”

“You're Callan,” Wenhild said. “The king said so. You came in from the cold.” She set the bowl down in front of him. “That's usually enough, in a kitchen.”

We met in the map room at noon.

Everyone came.

Not just the council. Not just the gods. Everyone who had a reason to be there, and some who simply decided they had one.

Thor. Eliza. Mary, with Cael beside her and a ledger open on the table. Lexander and Io through the Concordia gate, with Loki behind them, his face still drawn from the night before. Brannoc and Corra. Kaedra. Ishkar.

Vaust, leaning on his staff. Halemar beside him, pale but upright.

Fenrir lay across the doorway, his great head resting on his paws.

Evelyn and Adriana sat together at the end of the table. Aurelia sat beside them.

I put the letter on the table.

Everyone read it.

Nobody spoke for a long time.

Thor spoke first.

“It's a trap,” she said.

“Probably,” I agreed.

“He doesn't come anywhere alone. He doesn't come anywhere unarmed. He sends officers and binding rods and nets.” Her hand was on Mjölnir. “He hasn't set foot outside the basin in years. Not once. Not for anyone.”

“Then why now?” Io asked.

Thor did not answer.

Cael did.

“Because he's never been refused,” he said quietly.

Everyone turned to look at him.

Cael had gone pale. His ink-stained hands were folded on the ledger in front of him.

“I kept his ledgers,” he said. “For six years. Every name. Every route. Every house.” He looked down at his hands. “I never once saw him ask permission for anything. He didn't need to. He decided. Other people carried it out.”

“And now?” Lexander asked.

“Now people are refusing,” Cael said. “Bakers. Masons. Giants. His own officers.” He looked at the letter. “Surtr broke with him. Jörmungandr fled. The courtyard became a shelter and the locks turned on their own.” His voice dropped. “He's never had to wonder whether a door would open for him. Not once. In his whole existence.”

He looked up.

“I think,” Cael said slowly, “he genuinely doesn't know.”

Vaust had been silent.

He sat at the far end of the table with his staff across his knees and his bandaged hands resting on it, looking down at the small bell hanging from its iron ring.

“He never knocked,” he said.

The room went quiet.

“Years,” Vaust said. “I told him. Every time he made me open a door. Every time he asked how to make a passage obey.” He did not look up. “You knock. You wait. You let the other side decide.” He touched the bell. “He thought I was being difficult.”

“And now he says he'll knock,” Thor said.

“Now he says he'll knock,” Vaust agreed.

He lifted his head.

His face was very tired.

“I don't know if he means it,” he said. “I don't know if he's capable of meaning it.” His voice was quiet. “But it's the first time in all the years I knew him that he's ever said the word.”

Halemar spoke next.

He did not look at anyone. He sat very straight beside Vaust with his hands folded in his lap.

“He kept me in a cage for three years,” he said. “Forced me to fold distances until I forgot which room I was in. Until I forgot my own name some days.” His voice was very steady. “He made me fold a house with someone inside it, and never told me.”

Nobody spoke.

“If he comes to this castle,” Halemar said, “I don't know if I can be in it.”

Vaust put his hand on Halemar's arm.

Halemar did not look at him.

“I'm not asking you to refuse him,” he said. “I'm telling you that I don't know if I can stand in the same building.” He swallowed. “I want that understood. Before anyone decides anything.”

Fenrir lifted his head from his paws.

“He chained me,” the great wolf said quietly. “In a cage. With silver. For years. He fed me just enough to keep me alive, and he came to look at me sometimes. Just to look.” His golden eyes were fixed on the letter. “He never said anything. He only looked.”

He was silent for a moment.

“I'd like to be in the castle,” Fenrir said. “When he comes.”

Everyone turned to look at him.

“Not to hurt him,” Fenrir said. “Not to threaten him.” His eyes moved to me. “I'd like him to see me. Out. In a garden with a pear tree. Lying on grass.” A pause. “I'd like him to look at me again. And this time, I'd like to look back.”

Corra spoke after that.

Then Brannoc. Then Kaedra, who said she would be on the wall with her bow and nobody would talk her out of it, and Thor said nobody would try. Then Ishkar, who said that Dun was still somewhere in that hall, and Faelan, and he did not care what Othellos wanted as long as he left with fewer prisoners than he came with.

Loki said nothing.

He sat at the end of the table with his eyes on the letter and his face very still.

When everyone else had spoken, Lexander turned to him.

“Loki?”

Loki did not look up.

“My son is lying in a field outside your gate,” he said quietly. “With his head on a road. Healing.” He looked at the letter. “Ten days ago, that man was going to put him in a cage and build roads out of him.” He lifted his eyes. “And now he wants to knock on your door and see if you'll let him in.”

“Yes,” I said.

Loki looked at me for a long time.

“If you open the gate,” he said, “I'll be standing beside it.”

“To stop him?”

“To watch,” Loki said. “I've been on the wrong side of a great many doors. I've knocked on a great many of them myself.” A faint, bitter smile. “I'd like to see what it looks like when someone like him does it.”

Anwen came that afternoon.

She had not been at the council. She had been in the nursery with Lirien, as she always was. But someone had told her, and she came to find me in the corridor outside the map room with Lirien holding her hand.

“He's coming here,” Anwen said.

“Yes.”

“Alone. As a guest.”

“So he says.”

Anwen looked down at Lirien.

Lirien was holding the corner of her flour-sack blanket in her free hand. She looked up at me with very serious eyes.

“The floor said,” Lirien told me. “Last night. It said the bad man was coming.”

I knelt so that my face was level with hers.

“Are you frightened?”

Lirien considered this.

“A little,” she said. “But the floor isn't.”

“No?”

“The floor said he's never knocked before.” Lirien frowned. “It said it wants to hear what it sounds like.”

Anwen did not leave when Lirien went back to the nursery with Helena.

She stood in the corridor for a long time, looking out the window toward the north.

“The wound,” she said finally.

I waited.

“The one I healed,” Anwen said. “In Merrow Ford. The one that bled light.” She looked at her own hands. “Something old in it. Something that wasn't his. Something I couldn't reach.”

“You think it's still there.”

“I think it's why he's coming,” Anwen said.

I stared at her.

“He was more afraid of someone finding out he was hurt than he was of the pain,” she said slowly. “He let me keep working all night, even though it hurt him the whole time. Because I was a healer in a small town who didn't know who he was.” She looked at me. “Then he had the town cleared. And me taken. So nobody would know.”

“And now?”

“Now there's a castle,” Anwen said, “where a saint healed the World Serpent in a field. Where a goddess of autumn came back from a burned forest. Where a soldier with a binding in his body walked four steps.” She was quiet for a moment. “Where nobody asks who you are or what you've done before they let you in.”

She looked out the window.

“I think he's still bleeding,” she said quietly. “I think he's been bleeding for years. And I think he's run out of places to go where nobody will ask.”

Aurelia found me in the garden that evening.

I was sitting on the bench beneath the pear tree. It was still in blossom. Nobody could explain it anymore and nobody tried. Corra's bed had been moved back inside, but the brazier was still there, and Wenhild still kept it lit.

Aurelia sat down beside me.

She did not speak for a long time.

“You're going to open the gate,” she said finally.

“I don't know yet.”

“Yes, you do.”

I looked at her.

She was looking up at the blossoms.

“When I built the shrines,” she said, “I asked the Keeper why she wanted them built so they could never be closed against someone trying to go home.”

“And she told you about being lost.”

“She told me about being lost,” Aurelia agreed. “And about someone opening a door without asking.” She was quiet for a moment. “But she told me something else too. Something I didn't understand until Hollis came out of that house.”

“What?”

Aurelia looked at me.

“She said that the hardest door to open isn't the one where you don't know who's on the other side,” Aurelia said. “It's the one where you do.”

I went to the fountain after she left.

I knelt on the cold stone.

“It's Uriah,” I said.

The warmth came at once.

“I know,” the Keeper said. “You've been sitting under the pear tree for two hours.”

“I've been thinking.”

“I know that too.”

I put both hands on the stone.

“He built his hall on top of your house,” I said. “He folded Hollis away. He took your oldest road and made it lead to cages.”

“Yes.”

“He took Lirien from her mother. He took Teren's voice. He kept Fenrir in silver for years. He made Vaust build doors and Halemar fold distances until they forgot who they were.”

“Yes.”

“And now he wants to knock on my gate.”

“Yes.”

I bowed my head.

“What do I do?” I asked.

The Keeper did not answer for a long time.

When she did, her voice was very gentle.

“What would you do,” she said, “if you were trying to get him out?”

I did not understand.

I lifted my head.

“Out of what?”

“The hall,” the Keeper said. “The basin. The cages. The courtyard. The houses. All of it.” A pause. “He built every one of them. He's been living inside them for a very long time. Deciding who comes and who goes. Never asking. Never knocking.”

“That's his choice.”

“Is it?” the Keeper said. “Hollis didn't choose to be folded. Lirien didn't choose to be taken. Dorran didn't choose to seal the marsh house. Bram didn't choose to be left in the forest.” Her voice was very quiet. “But they were all inside something. And someone came and asked what they would do if they were trying to get out.”

“He's not like them.”

“No,” the Keeper agreed. “He's not. He built the walls himself.” A long pause. “But I've watched him for a very long time, Uriah. From under his floors. Through his drains. In his courtyard.” Her voice dropped. “I don't think he knows how to leave. I don't think he's ever known.”

I did not say anything.

“He says he's curious whether you'll open the gate,” the Keeper said. “I believe him. I think he genuinely doesn't know.” A pause. “I think he's never once in his life stood outside a door and not known whether it would open.”

I stayed at the fountain until the stars came out.

Then I went to find Thor.

She was on the northern battlements, where she had been most of the afternoon. Looking north. Toward the road. Toward the Hall of Accord, three hundred miles away, where Othellos was presumably preparing to walk it.

She did not turn when I came up beside her.

“You've decided,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You're going to open it.”

“If he knocks,” I said. “Yes.”

Thor was quiet for a long time.

“If it's a trap,” she said, “if he walks in under a white pennant and then does something—”

“Then guest-right goes both ways,” I said. “The host doesn't strike the guest. The guest doesn't strike the host.” I looked at her. “The courtyard captain couldn't bring his sword down. Not on Odric. Not in a shelter.”

“That was a courtyard,” Thor said. “Kept by people who meant the welcome.”

“Then we'll have to mean it,” I said.

Thor turned to look at me.

“All of us,” I said. “Not just me. Not just you. Everyone in Greykeep. If he knocks, and we open the gate, we have to mean it.” I looked out at the city. At the lamps. “Or it won't hold.”

Thor stared at me.

“You're asking the whole city,” she said slowly, “to welcome Othellos.”

“I'm asking them to keep the lamps lit,” I said. “The way they've been keeping them. For whoever arrives at night.” I paused. “Without asking who he is or what he's done.”

“Everyone knows who he is.”

“Yes,” I said. “That's what makes it a choice.”

Thor did not answer for a very long time.

Then she said, “Halemar can't be in the castle.”

“I know.”

“And Fenrir wants to be.”

“I know.”

“And Loki wants to stand beside the gate. And Kaedra wants to be on the wall with her bow. And Lirien says the floor wants to hear what it sounds like when he knocks.” Thor shook her head. “And half the gods in this castle were in his cages less than a month ago.”

“Yes.”

“How do you ask them to mean it?”

I thought about that.

“I don't,” I said finally. “I ask them what they'd do. And then I let them decide.”

Thor looked at me.

Then, slowly, something in her face eased.

“Dunstan,” she said.

“Dunstan,” I agreed.

So I asked.

Not in council. Not in the map room. I went to each of them, one at a time, over the next five days, and I sat down with them, and I asked.

Halemar said he would go to the shelter below the western climb. To sit with Hollis. To have the soup she had promised him.

“Not to hide,” he said. “I want that understood. I'll be on a road. With a lamp. Keeping a shelter.” He looked at me. “If he walks past it on his way here, I'll be there.” He paused. “I might not be able to look at him. But I'll be there.”

Vaust said he would stay.

“I'll knock first,” he said. “When he arrives. Before you open the gate. From the inside.” He touched his bell. “So he knows what it sounds like.”

Fenrir said he would be in the garden. Under the pear tree. Lying on the grass.

Corra said she would be with him.

Brannoc said he would be wherever Corra was.

Kaedra said she would be on the wall with her bow, and that she would not draw it unless someone else drew first, and that she would like that written down so nobody could accuse her later.

Mary wrote it down.

Ishkar said he would be in the stables with Lantern. He said he could not promise to mean the welcome, but he could promise to stay out of the way.

“That's enough,” I told him.

“Is it?”

“It's honest,” I said. “That's more than enough.”

Lirien asked the floor.

She did it the third night, kneeling beside her bed in the nursery with Carol and Seraphina on either side of her and Anwen sitting on the cot behind them.

“Should we let him in?” she asked.

The floor was quiet for a long time.

Then the Keeper said, very gently, “What do you think, Lirien?”

Lirien considered this.

“He's the bad man,” she said. “He took Mama away from me. He kept me in a room. He cut my hair.” Her small hands tightened on her flour-sack blanket. “I don't want to see him.”

“You don't have to,” the Keeper said.

“But Marta let me out,” Lirien said slowly. “She brought bread. She didn't ask who I was.” She frowned. “She said I was a guest.”

“Yes.”

Lirien was quiet for a long time.

“Is he lost?” she asked.

The floor did not answer at once.

“I think so,” the Keeper said finally. “I think he's been lost for a very long time. Longer than anyone.”

Lirien looked down at the floor.

Then up at Carol. At Seraphina. At her mother.

“Then somebody should leave a lamp on,” she said. “Just in case.”

Callan stayed in the kitchen for four days.

He did not ask to leave. He did not ask to stay. He sat in the corner by Wenhild's hearth and ate what she gave him and watched the people come and go.

On the fifth day, he asked whether he could help.

Wenhild handed him a knife and a basket of onions.

He cut onions for two days.

On the seventh day, he came to find me.

He stood in the doorway of the map room, his eyes red from the onions, and he looked at me for a long time before he spoke.

“He'll ask me,” he said. “When I go back. What I saw.”

“Yes.”

“He'll want to know how many soldiers. How many gods. Where they're positioned. What the gate looks like from the inside.” Callan's hands were twisting together. “I've been counting. Without meaning to. It's what I was trained to do.”

“I know.”

Callan stared at me.

“You know?”

“You're an officer,” I said. “It's what you were trained to do.” I looked at him. “What will you tell him?”

Callan was quiet for a long time.

“I don't know,” he said. “That's why I came.” He looked down at his hands. “I've counted every soldier on the walls. Every gate. Every guard post.” His voice dropped. “But I keep counting other things too. The lamps in the windows. The loaves of bread Wenhild makes. How many people stop to talk to the goddess of hearths when they pass the kitchen.” He looked up at me. “How many times a day someone asks me if I've eaten.”

“How many?”

“Fourteen,” Callan said. “Yesterday. Fourteen people asked if I'd eaten.” His voice cracked. “Nobody's asked me that since my mother died.”

I did not tell him what to say.

I did not tell him to stay.

I only asked him what he would do, if he were trying to get out.

He did not answer.

He went back to the kitchen.

He cut onions until Wenhild took the knife away from him and told him to go to bed.

On the ninth day, Hollis spoke to me through the trough.

Not the Keeper. Hollis.

I had gone down to the relay station to bring Halemar to the western shelter, and I knelt at the trough while Hesketh and Dellan helped him down from the cart, and I said my name.

The warmth came up.

But it was not the Keeper's voice that answered.

“Uriah,” Hollis said.

I went still.

“She's very busy,” Hollis said. “Watching the road. She asked me to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

Hollis was quiet for a moment.

“He's left the hall,” she said. “This morning. At dawn. Alone. On foot.” A pause. “He's walking the western road.”

“Toward here?”

“Toward here,” Hollis agreed. “Toward you. Toward Greykeep.” Her voice was very soft. “He's not hurrying. He's stopping at every shelter.”

“Stopping?”

“Stopping,” Hollis said. “Looking at them. At the lamps. At the carved lanterns above the doors.” A long pause. “He hasn't gone inside any of them. He hasn't touched anything. He only stands outside and looks.”

I closed my eyes.

“He'll reach your shelter tonight,” I said.

“Yes,” Hollis said. “Around midnight. If he keeps the same pace.”

“Halemar will be there.”

“I know,” Hollis said. “So will I.” A pause. “And Hesketh. And Oren. And Dellan, who used to ride for him.”

“Are you afraid?”

Hollis laughed softly.

“Child,” she said, “I've been folded away for longer than you can imagine. I've been waiting at a window for someone to knock for a very long time.” Her voice was gentle. “I'm not afraid of a man walking up a road.”

I stayed at the shelter that night.

I had not planned to. I had meant to bring Halemar and go back to Greykeep before dark. But when I tried to leave, Hesketh looked at me from his place on the wall with his pipe in his mouth and said:

“You'll want to see it.”

So I stayed.

We sat by the trough. Hesketh and Oren and Dellan. Halemar on a blanket by the fire, wrapped in Hollis's shawl, very pale. Hollis on the low wall beside the shelter door, with her lamp in her lap.

Two lamps hung on the hook above the doorway. Hesketh's blue one. Hollis's brass one.

Both lit.

The road ran north into the dark.

Nobody spoke.

Near midnight, the water in the trough went still.

Not cold. Not warm.

Still.

Halemar sat up very straight.

Dellan's hands had gone white on his knees.

Hesketh took his pipe out of his mouth.

And out of the dark, from the north, down the switchbacks of the western climb, came a man.

He was not tall.

That surprised me. I had imagined him tall. Vast. A presence like Surtr's, filling the horizon.

He was an ordinary height. Slender. Dressed in a plain gray traveling cloak with the hood pushed back. His hair was dark and cut short. His face was pale and fine-boned and very still.

He was not carrying anything. No weapon. No staff. No lamp.

He walked down the last switchback onto the flat road in front of the shelter, and stopped.

He looked at the shelter.

At the carved lantern above the doorway, chiseled away once, painted back blue.

At the two lamps on the hook.

At the trough.

At the people sitting around it.

He did not look at me.

He looked at Hollis.

For a long time.

Hollis looked back at him.

Neither of them spoke.

Then Othellos looked at Halemar.

Halemar did not look away.

He was shaking. His whole body. Wrapped in Hollis's shawl, gray-faced, his hands clenched in his lap.

But he did not look away.

Othellos took one step toward the trough.

Then stopped.

He looked down at the water.

He did not kneel. He did not touch it.

He only looked.

Then Hollis spoke.

Her voice was very gentle. The way she had spoken to Halemar. The way she had spoken to Ada. The way, I imagined, she had spoken to a lost woman knocking on her door a very long time ago.

“You've walked a long way,” she said. “Would you like some water?”

Othellos looked at her.

His face did not change.

But something moved behind his eyes.

“Yes,” he said.

His voice was quiet. Ordinary. Not the voice I had heard through the drain. Not the voice from the receiving hall at the White Measure, saying my name in the middle of a sentence.

Just a man's voice.

Tired.

Hollis picked up a cup from beside the trough.

She filled it.

She held it out.

Othellos looked at the cup for a very long time.

Then he reached out and took it.

He drank.

When he lowered the cup, Hollis was still looking at him.

“What's your name?” she asked.

It was the question Hesketh's grandmother had asked Dellan Marsh, when he came up this road at sixteen looking for work. The question every keeper of every shelter had asked every traveler for thousands of years.

Othellos stood very still.

The cup was in his hand.

The two lamps burned on the hook above the shelter door.

He opened his mouth.

He closed it.

He looked down at the water in the trough.

When he finally answered, his voice was barely more than a whisper.

“I don't remember,” he said.