Chapter 200: Bread & Salt

The nine sat at the Table and looked at the empty chairs Oswin had turned toward them.

It was not easy for them. Logan could see that. They had sat side by side at that Table through more sleeps than they could count, with an empty chair between each of them, eating and smiling at nothing.

Now every empty chair faced one of them, and they did not seem to know what it was asking.

The young woman with the cropped hair understood first. She got up and sat down in the chair that had been turned toward the old man, so close that her knees nearly touched his. He looked down at his hands.

Then she reached over and brushed the ash off his sleeve.

He looked up. He did not say anything, but he did not look down again.

They slept in the yard.

Nobody from Plenty came out to them. The last street still turned its back on the yard, and the shutters on that side stayed closed.

Logan lay on the stone with Alice and listened to the falls. Across the yard, Oswin sat at the head of the Table where the keeper had stood. He did not lie down. Bread lay across his feet with his grey muzzle on his paws.

Whenever Logan opened his eyes, Oswin was still awake in his chair and watching the nine sleep.

[ Time remaining: 338 days ]

Oswin told them when they woke.

He said it while the family fed each other at the end of the Table, with Martha’s pot steaming on the stone.

He said it simply, the way a man says a thing he decided while everyone else slept and has only just found the words for.

"I am staying."

Logan had known he would say it. He saw from Alice’s face that she had known too.

"The crust keeps me fed until I leave this layer," Oswin went on. "So I will not leave it. And the line will not let me go back up to the Foot, where she is."

He looked down the Table at the nine.

"In Plenty, they lose each other every waking. Somebody always goes first. And when they are left alone, there is nothing here that will give them anything except a door they cannot pay."

He laid his hand on Bread’s grey head. "I can pay. Not forever, but I can pay. Somebody ought to be sitting here when the next one comes."

"There will be another one," said Rishin.

He said it from his seat, where Vina was feeding him. It was the first thing he had said since he woke.

"Another keeper?" asked Garen.

"Another will stand at the head of this Table. It always does. Not soon, and not in the same shape." Rishin looked at Oswin. "It will call them in the voices they want to hear. That is what this layer does with the alone."

"Then it will have to call past me," said Oswin.

Rishin looked at him for a beat. Then he nodded, very slightly, and went back to the spoon that Vina was holding.

Isolde had not spoken. Now she put down the bowl she had been holding for Garen.

"That is not what I gave it to you for," she said.

Oswin met her eyes. "I know, my lady."

"I said it was for the next time you were lying under a tree."

"I am not lying under a tree." He glanced at the nine. "They were."

Isolde was quiet. Logan saw her look along the turned chairs and the nine faces, and at the grey cloth drawn up at the far end over the one who had been a sleep too late.

"It is better," she said at last. Her voice was rough. "What you did with it is better than what I meant."

Garen took her hand under the Table. She let him.

Logan had been thinking since he woke.

He had lain on the stone listening to the falls and doing sums, because sums were easier than watching Oswin keep his watch.

’A Normal sells at one a day. Unmerged, eight ordinary pulls would buy him about two crusts. Merged into one, the same eight are worth fourteen.’

"You have eight hundred points," he said to Oswin. "From the keeper."

Oswin looked at him blankly. Then he remembered. "I had forgotten them."

"There is a circle beside the door. Pull with them. Then let me do what I did under the willows, before we go." Logan held his eyes. "Bread should not have to carry all of this by himself."

Oswin looked down at the old dog leaning on his knee. Then he got up.

It went more quickly this time. Nobody needed to be told what to do.

[ Summon: Combat Unit x8 ] [ Cost: 800 Tower Points ] [ Remaining Tower Points: 0 ]

Eight lights rose beside the stair, in the spray of the falls. A boy with a crook and a girl with a clay jug on her hip came first.

They were followed by a lean brown lurcher, a woman with a willow spear and a stocky little boar with flint along its back.

A grey goat with long legs came next. Then came a broad woman in a stone-grey cloak with a staff, and last of all a great grey-white ram with curling horns.

[ Pull result: 2x Normal | 4x Uncommon | 2x Rare ]

Rishin did not have to remind them. Vina named all eight while Logan was still doing the sum.

The boy was Crook, and the girl with the jug was Jug. The lurcher was Whin and the spearwoman was Nettle. The boar was Tusk and the goat was Burdock.

The woman in the stone cloak was Flint, because Vina said she looked as if she would strike sparks.

She came to the ram last. It stood with its head lowered, looking at her through its white fleece.

"Salt," she said.

Oswin laughed. It was the first time Logan had heard him laugh without coughing after it.

"Bread and salt," he said. "In my world, you give those at the door to somebody you want to come in."

"I know," said Vina. "Mom told me."

Oswin chose the ram. Logan told the eight what he had told all the others, and he began.

Jug went into Crook, and the boy came out of the light an Uncommon with a jug at his belt.

Crook went into Burdock, and the goat rose a Rare. Tusk went into Whin, and the lurcher came out a Rare with a ridge of flint along its spine.

Burdock went into Salt, and the ram came out an Epic. Whin went into Flint, and the stone woman rose an Epic too.

Flint went into Salt. Nettle went in last.

[ Merge Complete ] [ Greyfleece Ram (Rare) + Clay Carrier (Normal) + Hedge Shepherd (Normal) + Longleg Goat (Uncommon) + Flintback Boar (Uncommon) + Fen Lurcher (Uncommon) + Stonecloak Warden (Rare) + Willow Spearwoman (Uncommon) ] [ Ironhorn Ram (Legendary) Created. ]

The ram that stood in the spray when the light faded was as tall at the shoulder as Bread. His fleece had gone the color of stone, and it lay over a coat of grey scale like the dog’s.

His horns had grown heavy and dark, and a long willow spear was bound along one of them with leather. A clay jug hung at his throat where Bread wore his bell.

He walked to Bread and put his great head down. The old dog sniffed his nose. Then Bread lay down again across Oswin’s feet, and the ram lay down beside him.

[ Ironhorn Ram ] [ Rank: Legendary ] [ Lifespan: 2,920 days ] [ Lifespan may be exchanged for Abyss Points at any Relic Shop. ]

"Fourteen more," said Oswin.

He kept his hand on the ram’s head and watched the Table.

Vina said goodbye to the dog first.

She crouched in front of Bread and held his grey face in both her hands. She looked at the white on his muzzle and did not speak.

"You went old," she said.

Bread licked her chin, gently this time.

"You have to make him eat," said Vina. "And Salt has to help you. And you are not allowed to spend all of yourselves. Not all of it."

Then she stood up and faced Oswin. Her chin was trembling, but her voice held.

"I meant it kindly," she said. "By the river. I am sorry it was not the other one."

Oswin knelt down so that his face was level with hers.

"It was the other one," he said. "By the end. I could not eat it, but it was."

Vina put her arms round his neck. He held her very carefully, the way he had held the crusts.

Rishin was the last to go to him.

The old man stood beside the Table with Stay on his hip and studied Oswin’s face. Then he said one thing.

"The benches on the last street. Turn them round."

Oswin looked over at the white houses with their shuttered windows and their backs to the yard.

"I will," he said.

Rishin nodded. He held his hand out to Vina, and she took it.

They went down the stair beside the falls.

It was as wide as four men walking abreast, and it was cut deep into the wet rock. The roar of the water filled it from wall to wall.

Spray drifted across the steps and lay cold on Logan’s face, and the gold light of the Fourth Layer came down after them, growing thinner with every turn.

At the first turn, Logan looked back.

Oswin was standing by the Table with the dog and the ram at his feet. Three more of the nine had moved into the turned chairs. The young woman was holding a cup to the old man’s lips.

Logan could not tell from so far away whether it was going to ash.

Oswin lifted his hand. Logan lifted his.

Then the rock turned, and the stair went on down without them in sight, and there was only the falls.