Chapter 183: The White Flag

Ryuji knew the rider from a quarter mile away, by the way he sat his horse like a man bolted to a wall.

Commander Voss came up the garden road alone. He had no escort and no banner except the white one, a bedsheet knotted to the shaft of a spear. His iron-gray hair was gray with dust, and the scar along his cheek stood out pale against skin that had not seen a bed in days. He reined in at the gate and looked past them at the open green of the March, at the thinning fog and the two long lines of banners on the horizon, and something moved behind his eyes that Ryuji had never seen there.

"Lord Volkris," he said. "Princess. Your Majesty." That last for Voldranis, who stood gray and steady at Selene’s elbow. "I want it understood that I did not choose this duty."

"Understood," Ryuji said.

"I am here to deliver a message, and I am hoping you will refuse it." Voss dismounted stiffly and unrolled a sheet of heavy cream paper. It bore the sun-and-sword seal of Theron, pressed so hard the wax had split. "From King Berrin."

[System Log: Day 174, continued]

[COMMANDER VOSS, BLADE MARSHAL, LEVEL 76, HAS ARRIVED CARRYING A BEDSHEET]

[I HAVE ALWAYS CONSIDERED HIM THE MOST STABLE MAN IN THE KINGDOM OF THERON. HE IS READING THE LETTER LIKE A MAN HANDING OVER A CHILD]

"The Kingdom of Theron," Voss read, "having learned that the Void King has concealed for four hundred years a door to the Architects, demands a parley at the center of the Grey March at noon. The Void King will attend. His heir will attend. The keeper and his wife will attend. All will come unarmed, to answer for the lock."

Nobody said anything.

Voldranis did not look surprised. He looked like a man who has been waiting a long time for a bill.

"It is true," he said. "Every word."

"I know it is," said Voss. His voice was rough. "That is what troubles me. Nobody told Berrin. He found it out six days ago, from a scholar nobody can place. A gray man in a brown coat, with ink on his cuffs. Very polite." He folded the letter with great care. "The boy has stopped eating. He has stopped sleeping. He sits in the council chamber with that man at his elbow, and the man says the right thing before Berrin has finished thinking it."

"Right," said Selene, softly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"It is a name."

Voss looked at her for a long moment. "I have been a soldier for thirty years," he said. "I know the sound of a man who has been told what to want. I would like to be wrong about it. I am not."

He lowered his voice, though there was no one near.

"I commanded the army that stood beside you at the Hollow Door. I apologized to you, Lord Volkris, in front of my own officers, because it was the right thing. I do not intend to march on that gate. But if my king gives me an order, I will have to choose between the oath and the man, and I do not wish to find out which is stronger." His jaw tightened. "I am asking you, as a friend, to find a third thing."

"I’m working on it," Ryuji said.

"Work faster."

[They gave him tea. It was Marro’s idea. He drank it standing, in two swallows, and thanked them in a voice like a man swallowing gravel, and rode back out through the fog with the white sheet snapping behind him.]

"We have four hours," Alexei said.

"We have three and a half," said Voldranis. "I will need to sit down."

Selene had not spoken since the rider left. She stood with her arms folded at the garden wall, looking at the far banners, and Ryuji did what he had learned to do. He told her what he was about to do before he did it.

"I want to talk to you," he said. "Privately. If you want."

"Yes."

They went up to the old watchtower, which still smelled of stone and damp and the stew Marro had left on the sill in the winter. Selene stood at the narrow window with the sunlight on her face. He stood a pace behind her and waited.

"I am going to say something that will sound like I am angry with you," she said at last. "I am not. I am only tired."

"Go ahead."

"You told Safe no." Her voice was very level. "At the table. You said it was a good offer, and you could not take it, because you had a second chair in another world. I thought it was a good answer. It was a very good answer."

"But."

"But you said no for yourself." She turned. Her eyes were bright and dry. "You did not ask for me. You looked at that girl, and at the wall, and you decided what was best for the household, and you said it in my voice. We. Us. I would like to point out that I am not a we, in that sentence. I would like you to ask."

He felt it land. It was fair, and it hurt, and it was exactly what she had asked of him on a pier a week ago.

"I’m sorry," he said. "Ask what?"

"Whether I want a wall." Her mouth trembled. "My mother has been on the grass for one day. My father cannot stand without a hand. I have four hundred years of grief in my chest and no time to put any of it down. And in four hours, I am to walk out into the open and defend a man I am still furious at in front of an army that thinks he is a monster." A breath. "I would like a week of a wall."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay." He stepped closer. "A week. What do you need?"

She stared at him. She had braced for something, and it had not come. The edges of her expression softened slowly, like a knot easing.

"A small circle," she said. "Around the house and garden. Not the whole March. A door that opens from the inside. So that I can leave when I choose, and no one else can enter unless I say. For seven days." She drew a shaky breath. "And I would like to be the one who decides when it comes down."

"That’s yours."

"You are certain?"

"I’m not certain of anything." The corner of his mouth lifted. "But I’d like you to have it."

She laughed, a little wet and a little furious, and put her forehead against his chest. "You are very annoying when you agree."

"It’s a new skill."

"It will take some getting used to."

"I’ll count to fifty-three."

"Do not."

They went down together and asked Safe.

She was sitting on the kitchen steps in the sun, with her bare feet drawn up and a half-finished rice ball in her hands. She looked up at Selene with her pale eyes wide.

"I would very much like to," she said, when Selene had finished. She said it quickly, as if afraid it would be taken back. "A small one. With a door from inside. I have never been asked." She swallowed. "I have only ever done it for everyone, forever, because no one told me I could do less."

"You can do less," said Selene. "It is allowed."

"For seven days?"

"For seven days."

"And then it comes down?"

"When I say," said Selene. "And it is not a wall. It is a blanket. I wish you to understand the difference."

Safe held the lantern out, shyly, and its wick caught.

It was a small flame. It was the color of weak honey. A ring of pale fog rose slowly from the foot of the garden wall and curled in on itself, thin and soft and warm, and when it settled over the estate like a quilt, the noise of the March went quiet. Even the horns stopped. There was only the sound of the lilies and the bird that had begun to sing.

"There," said Safe. Her hands were shaking. "It is not very strong."

"It is perfect," said Selene.

"It has a door." Safe pointed. At the garden gate, where the fog drew back, a narrow arch stood open, framed in white. "It only opens outward. From you."

"Thank you."

"May I sit in it?"

"You may sit anywhere you like."

The girl smiled, small and astonished, and curled up on the step with the lantern in her lap like a cat in a warm window.

They did not go out to the parley.

That was the third thing, and Ryuji did not find it. Tabun did.

He sat on his stack of cushions at the head of the table with his chin on his fists and looked at nothing for twenty minutes, and then said, very quietly, "Why would he come out at noon?"

"Who?" said Tetsu.

"Right." The boy’s small face was serious. "Right wants a war. He doesn’t want a conversation. If he wanted to talk, he’d have written it in a letter, and he’d have sent it with a nicer messenger." He glanced around the table. "He doesn’t want us at the center of the March at noon because he thinks we’ll talk. He wants us there so that the armies can see us. So that everyone can see exactly who we are, standing in a field, in the open, with our hands empty."

"Why?" said Yui.

"Because he’s never wrong about people at their worst." Tabun swung his feet. "And he knows what we’ll look like."

Nobody breathed.

"He wants to see us afraid," said Selene, slowly.

"Yes."

"And we are going to show him."

"No." Tabun looked up. "We’re going to show him that we’re afraid, and still do it."

Ryuji looked at the boy for a long moment.

"That’s a plan," he said, hoarsely.

"It’s not a plan. It’s a guess."

"It’s the best guess I’ve heard all week."

Tabun smiled, small and crooked, the first one that was entirely his own. "I’m not sure," he said. "But I think it’s right."

Voldranis stood. It took him a moment. He leaned on Alexei’s arm.

"Then we go," he said. "Before the hour. Not to the center. To the edge. Where they can see us, and hear us, and where Safe’s door will stand behind us." He looked at his daughter. "If she will allow it."

"I will allow it," said Selene, and her voice cracked in the middle. "On one condition. You tell them the truth. All of it. Not the arrangement. The truth. Every day of the four hundred years."

"All of it."

"In your own words."

"Yes."

"And I will stand beside you." She drew a breath. "I am still angry. I will be angry on the field, in front of your army and theirs. I do not wish you to mistake it for betrayal."

Voldranis looked at his daughter. For a long moment he did not speak. When he did, his voice was thin and very quiet.

"I would not mistake it for anything else," he said. "It is the best thing anyone has ever offered me."

She turned her face away. Ryuji did not look. He found her hand, and she let him have it, and he counted. Fifty-three.

They were still standing at the garden gate when the fog moved.

It did not part for the horns. It parted for a walker. A single figure came up the road through the pale, thick air, unhurried, in a plain brown coat with ink on the cuffs and a worn leather book tucked under one arm. His hair was gray. His face was kind. He had the tired, gentle look of a village schoolmaster at the end of a very long term.

Ash, on the wall, went rigid.

Safe made a small sound, and the flame in her lantern flickered and almost went out.

"Hello, Safe," said the scholar. His voice was warm and a little hoarse. "You look well. You look like you are sleeping."

"I am not," said Safe, faintly.

"No. But you look as though you would like to."

He stopped at the gate. He did not try to enter. He stood with his hands folded over his book, looking at them one at a time, with a gentle, attentive, deeply sympathetic expression, as though they were old friends he had not seen in a long time.

"I came early," he said. "I thought it was kinder. You will all be very frightened at noon. I wished to spare you the audience."

"You’re Right," said Ryuji.

"I am." The kind eyes turned to him, and settled, and did not look away. "You counted your father’s funeral, Mr. Volkris. A boy of seventeen, standing at a grave, adding up the price of a plot and deciding it would be cheaper to stay dry-eyed. You found that you could not afford to cry. I want you to know I do not think less of you for it. I only know it."

Ryuji’s blood went cold.

"And you, Princess." Right’s gaze moved. "A dagger every morning, for months. You knew very well it was not his heart you were avoiding. It was his wrists. You could not look at them. They were bandaged."

Selene made a sound. Her hand clamped on Ryuji’s.

"And Alexei, who wrote down his mother’s death each night, so that he would never have to feel it. And Commander Voss, who sleeps very well, thank you, after sending a thousand boys across a river. And Marro, who polished a spoon for three years. And the girl." He glanced at Yui, gently. "Who ran toward a fake door because she was too lonely to check."

It was a litany. It was entirely gentle. And every sentence landed like a thrown stone, in the exact place it would hurt most, and the household stood in the garden and bled it out in silence.

Tabun had slid off his cushion. He stood at the front of the group in his plain small face with his hands knotted in his shirt.

"Are you sure?" he said.

Right looked down at him.

"I’m always sure," he said, quite kindly. "It is the one thing I am. You were sure too, little one. You were the best of us."

"I know." Tabun’s voice shook. "That’s why I’m not."

Right smiled. It was a beautiful, patient, rueful smile. And Ryuji felt something turn over in the pit of his stomach, because it was not the smile of an enemy. It was the smile of a man who had come a very long way to say something kind and was about to be disappointed.

"I did not come to start a war," he said. "I came to warn you."

"Of what?" said Voldranis.

"There were seven of us," said Right. "Sure, and Safe, and Kind, and I. You have met us. And three who went too deep to be reached, because the Architects were most ashamed of them." His gentle eyes moved down the line, one face after another. "They are not asleep. They have been waiting for the floor to soften. And I would like you to know, before you walk out onto that field, that one of them has been standing in this house since the day of the wedding."

The garden went absolutely silent.

"One of you," said Right, softly, "is not who you have told yourselves you are."

Yui had her nose lifted. She looked to the left, and to the right, and her face went from alarm to dawning, helpless horror. "I can’t smell anything," she whispered. "He’s not lying. I can’t tell."

Right inclined his head. He looked, in the thin gold light, almost sad.

"Neither can I," he said. "That is what frightens me."