Chapter 114. For Ten Days She Watched My Hands Shake and Steady, and Then She Chose Them

Chapter 114: 114. For Ten Days She Watched My Hands Shake and Steady, and Then She Chose Them

I went to the altar alone, after midnight.

It was a small place, tucked into a quiet corner of the city behind the Hall of Mending, where the dead of the Chain’s wars were remembered.

Someone had built a low wall of white stone and set a ring of candles in tin cups along the top. There were hundreds of them.

Most had burned down to stubs.

A few were freshly lit, flickering in the dark, throwing little pools of gold across the paving.

Folded paper cranes, wilted flowers, and small carved wooden animals lay scattered at the foot of the wall.

I’d brought a candle. Pip had given it to me, in the street, that afternoon, without a word, pressing it into my palm with a solemn nod.

It was a stubby thing, lopsided, made of yellow tallow.

I knelt on the cold stones.

I meant to say something. I’d practiced it.

But when I opened my mouth, nothing came, and I stayed there kneeling, looking at the little row of lights, with the candle in my hands.

"Leon?"

A very small voice came from the shadows. I turned my head.

Pip was standing at the corner of the wall, wrapped in a blanket three sizes too big, with her russet ears poking out of the top and her bare toes curled against the cold.

She’d come out of nowhere. And she was holding a sheet of rough brown paper in both hands.

"What are you doing out here, Pip?" I said. "It’s the middle of the night."

"I couldn’t sleep." She shuffled closer, scuffing her feet. "I made you something... For Millie."

She held out the paper.

I took it. It was a drawing, done in charcoal, with thick, wobbly strokes.

I turned it toward the candle. It showed a big round circle, shaded in gray, with two long ears sticking up from the top and a smiling face in the middle.

There were little whiskers... There was a tiny pink nose, colored in with a bit of crushed berry.

It was a moon with a rabbit’s face.

"So she remembers you," said Pip. "When she’s up there... in case she forgets."

I couldn’t say anything.

My throat had closed completely. I folded the paper very carefully and tucked it inside my cloak, against my chest, next to the little wooden fox on its red cord.

"Thank you," I managed.

"You’re crying."

"No... I’m not."

"You are." She stepped closer and put her small hand flat on my shoulder, like a doctor. "It’s okay... Mama says it’s good to cry."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

I wiped my face with my sleeve. She patted my arm twice and stood solemnly beside me, a tiny sentinel in a huge blanket, and watched me light the candle.

I had nothing else to leave.

Bonette’s silver knife was in the ground at Hearthfang, buried beside her in the shadow of a pillar.

I fumbled in the pocket of my mended cloak and found what I’d been looking for: a bent needle and a little spool of blue thread, left behind in the lining, the last of what she’d used to sew up the tear in my shoulder.

I set them on the stones.

"I’ll hold her hand," I said quietly. "I promise."

I stayed there for a long time, until the candle had burned down to a tiny, trembling flame.

Behind me, I heard the soft tap of a cane on the pavement.

I didn’t turn around.

"Eat something, boy," said Marrow gruffly.

She had come up silently, with a basket on her arm, and she stood a pace behind my shoulder without looking at me.

She pulled out a round of warm brown bread, still steaming, and shoved it at me.

"I’m not hungry."

"I did not ask if you were."

I took it. It was soft and sweet and smelled of cinnamon.

I tore off a piece and chewed it. A tear dripped onto the crust.

I ate it anyway, and Marrow stood there, leaning on her cane, and pretended not to see.

"The girl would have yelled at you," she muttered, at last. "For not eating."

"I know."

"She was a good one."

"I know."

"Hmph." She turned and shuffled off into the dark, with Pip trotting at her heels.

I heard her say, in a rough, grumbling undertone, "Come, child... to bed."

"Or you will catch your death."

I sat there with the bread in my hands and wept quietly until the last of the candles went out.

...

Sylvara found me in the garden of the Moonveil seat.

I’d gone there afterward, not for any reason. It was just the nearest place where nobody was.

I’d walked in through the ivy gate, past the broken stone deer, and sat down on a mossy bench beside the pond.

The water was perfectly still... Two moons floated in it, side by side, one pale and thin, one round and white.

I stared at them without really seeing.

I heard the faint chime of her lights before I saw her.

She came walking along the path in the dark, without her hat, with her long lavender hair loose around her shoulders and a handful of glowing motes drifting after her like a trail of tiny stars.

She had changed out of her robes into a simple gown of pale gray. She looked younger like that.

She looked, I thought... like someone who’d stepped out of a very old photograph.

She stopped at the edge of the pond and looked at the water.

"I have not been in this place for a thousand years," she said, softly. "Not truly... I have come, and gone, but I have never sat."

I didn’t say anything.

She walked slowly along the bank, trailing her fingers over the moss-covered backs of the stone stags. She stopped at each one and spoke a name under her breath.

Some of them were lovely names, soft and long. Others were just a single syllable.

I understood that these were her brothers and sisters, the ones who’d sat in the other seats, long ago, and she was greeting them the way you greet old friends at a family gathering when you’re the only one who’s come.

"I have been a question for a very long time," Sylvara said.

She had stopped at the last statue, a tall stag with a broken antler, and she stood with her hand resting on its flank.

"For a thousand years, I have been waiting... waiting for the bright moon to rise."

"And also waiting for an answer."

"I was the elder sister, the one who stayed behind... I did not do anything."

"I only waited." She turned around.

Her eyes were very bright. "I think I would like, for once, to be an answer."

My heart began to beat a little faster.

"I did not wish to be a means to something," she said. "I told you that on the stair, in the keep... I meant it."

"I have spent far too long being a part of other people’s plans." She drew a breath. "So I came to tell you... plainly, with no tricks."

"I have chosen... And I choose you."

"You probably catch it when the four of us are there with you..."

I opened my mouth. And now I remembered...

Did she... did she plan this?!

"I know what you will say," she said, with the ghost of a smile. "You will ask me whether I am sure."

"I wasn’t going to," I said, rather weakly.

"You were."

"Okay... I was."

"Ask."

I swallowed. I stood up and walked to her and took a careful breath.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Are you really, completely sure?"

"Leon."

"I just need to know you’re not doing it because of the... because of Bonette, or because you feel guilty, or..."

"I am doing it," said Sylvara, "because for ten days I have been unable to stop thinking about how your hands shake when you are afraid and how steady they are when you hold them out."

She smiled softly. "I said that we would not hurry... It has been ten days."

"For one who has lived a thousand years, that is both a blink and an age." She lifted her chin. "I find that I am nearly impatient."

I started to laugh.

I couldn’t help it. It rose in me out of nowhere, a helpless, delighted, breathless sound, and Sylvara’s eyes crinkled, and she let her own laugh out, a low, bright thing like a silver bell.

"I have another fear," she said when we’d both stopped. She’d gone quiet. "The Veil Bell rings for me still..."

"If I am the thread by which he reaches you... I do not wish to be your weakness."

"And I do not wish to be the door."

"You’re not," I said.

"You cannot know about that."

"I can’t," I said. "But I know I’d rather have you standing next to me than not."

I held out my hand, palm up. "And if it comes to it, we’ll handle it..."

"Together... Like we said."

She looked at my open palm for a long moment. A tear slid down her cheek.

She didn’t wipe it away.

I asked her again. I asked it two more times, in two more ways, quietly.

She answered the same way each time, with the same gentle patience, until at last she reached out and laid her cool fingers across my wrist and said, very softly, "You have learned, Leon."

Then she put her hand in mine.

"Do anything to me, okay...? Do not look back."