Chapter 667: Another Day

Mara had said spring, so it was spring.

She did not tell anyone she was going to do it. She did not think she needed to. She had said it on the terrace at Aelstrom on the longest night, out loud, with the astronomer standing right there, and a thing said out loud was the same as a thing written down. Vane knew that. She had learned it from him.

But when the Lark came down through the clouds onto the high plateau of the Meridian, on the fourth day out from the Palace of the wind, Vane looked at her, and she looked back, and he did not ask. He just nodded. So she knew he had remembered too.

The domes were the same. The stars were the same. There were still too many of them. She did not count them this time. She had already written that down.

Ilario Thane met them at the door of the great dome. He was wearing the same shabby robe. His hourglass was running.

"Spring," he said.

"Yes," said Mara.

He smiled the small smile, the one that looked like something had surprised him in a good way. Then he looked past her, with his cloudy eyes, at Vane.

"You’ll want to stay," he said. "That’s fine. Stand where she can see you."

"Will it hurt?" Vane asked.

"No." The astronomer considered. "It might be strange. Nothing I do hurts. I only look."

Mara walked into the dome. The long brass telescope pointed up through the hole in the roof at the dark. The shelves were all still there. There was a chair in the middle of the floor, where the reading stand had been. A plain one, like the one Vane had sat in at the Accord.

She sat in it. She put her ledger on her knees. The ice falcon was not on her shoulder. It had gone north with Isaac, which was correct, because it belonged to his mother. She had found that she missed it. She had not written that down.

Vane stood by the shelves, where she could see him. Valerica stood beside him with her hands in her pockets. The others were outside. Mara had asked them to wait outside. She did not mind them. But there were a lot of them, and they all had faces that did things, and she wanted to be able to think.

"I’m going to look at you against the sky," Ilario Thane said. "That’s what my Authority does. Everything that’s blessed has a place. A position. Like a star. I find where it hangs, and I measure it." He stood in front of her chair. "Sit still. Breathe normally. You can count, if it helps."

"It always helps," said Mara.

She counted.

She counted her breaths first, in and out, the way she had counted them for Corin on the ledge. Then she counted the brass rings on the telescope, which was eleven. Then the shelves on the nearest wall, which was nineteen. Then she stopped counting, because something was happening.

The air in the dome had gone very still and very clear, the way it went at the top of the plateau after midnight. The stars through the hole in the roof seemed to come closer. Not bigger. Closer. As if they were leaning down. And she could feel them, a little, the way you can feel someone looking at the back of your neck. All of them, looking at her.

Then they stopped.

Not because they had finished. Because they had not found anything to look at.

Ilario Thane stood in front of her chair with his cloudy eyes wide open, and his hourglass had stopped running. The sand hung in the middle of the glass. He did not move for a long time.

Mara waited. She was good at waiting. She counted to sixty, twice.

"Well?" she said.

The astronomer let out a breath.

"It’s there," he said slowly. "Your Authority. I want to tell you that first, because I think you’ve been wondering. It’s there, and it’s strong, and I can see its edges." He paused. "It’s crystalline. Something that sets things in order, and holds them."

"Crystalline Lattice," said Mara. "I know. They told me when I was eleven. In the Council. Before they gave me a name."

"Yes. That’s what it would be called." He was quiet again. "But it isn’t hanging from the sky."

Mara did not understand. She said so.

"Everyone blessed," Ilario Thane said, "has a place in the blessing. That’s what the blessing is. It’s the sky that every Authority hangs from, like stars hang from the dark. Your brother’s five hang there. Your friends’ do. Mine does. The Emperor’s hangs there so brightly it hurts to look at." He lifted one ink-stained hand, slowly, toward the open roof. "Yours doesn’t hang from anything. It’s there. It’s whole. It works. But it’s not attached to the same sky as the rest of us."

Mara thought about this. She thought about it carefully, from the beginning, the way she thought about a column that didn’t add up.

"That’s why the rod went blank," she said. "In Holloway. And the glass at the gate. They were looking at the sky. And I’m not in it."

"Yes."

"Is anything else not in it?"

Ilario Thane hesitated. It was the second time she had seen him hesitate.

"The sea," he said.

Over by the shelves, Vane had gone very still. Mara could see him. She had asked to be able to see him.

She looked down at her ledger for a moment. Then she looked back up.

"Am I like the sea?"

"No," said the astronomer at once, and then, more slowly, "I don’t think so. The sea is unblessed because it never had a blessing. You have an Authority. Yours is simply..." He stopped. "I don’t know. I promised you the truth, and I don’t know it yet. I’ve seen this once before, a very long time ago, in an old record, and I didn’t understand it then either. Thessaly said the same." His hourglass started running again. "I’ll keep looking. If you’ll let me. Not today. Another day."

Mara considered this.

"That’s fair," she said.

She went outside afterward and sat on the low wall in front of the dome, in the cold thin air, with her ledger open on her knees. The others were there. They did not ask her anything. Ashe sat on one side of her and Isole on the other, and Nyx lay on the ground at their feet, looking up at all the stars, and Valerica stood a little way off with Vane, talking very quietly.

Mara found a clean page. She wrote the date at the top, and Meridian, and then she sat for a long time with the pen not touching the paper.

Then she wrote:

It is there. It is mine. It is not hanging from anything.

She looked at it. Then she added one more line underneath, because it was true, and she had learned that the true things were the ones worth keeping.

I don’t mind.