Chapter 79: WHICH WAY THE TAIL CURLS

Lira was sitting on a crate in the middle of the yard with the great gray ledger open across her knees and Sera Val reading over her shoulder, and she looked up with the expression of someone who had been interrupted at the exact moment she had stopped being able to bear her own happiness.

"Kael," said Lira. "I’ve been cataloguing the first stone. The first stone has a two-page entry. It has dimensions. I could weep."

"You may want to weep about something else," said Kael.

He held out the cloak.

It wasn’t a gesture he had planned. He simply found it in his hands and then in hers, and Lira, who had spent her whole life learning to look at things the way other people looked at faces, turned it over once without a word and found the hem. She went very still. Then she opened the ledger to a page near the middle, took out a folded envelope, laid it on the open book, and set the stitched fox beside the black wax seal.

Two foxes. One in wax, one in thread. Long neat faces, tails curled round their bodies like ribbons.

Both curled to the right.

"Oh," said Lira, in a very small voice.

"What?" said Sera Val. "What is it? It’s a fox. We’ve had a great many foxes. Is this a special one?"

"The seal on the card curled the wrong way," said Lira. "I told you that. I said whoever made it learned it from the stones and got it slightly wrong. Or did it on purpose." She laid one finger on each fox. "This isn’t a mistake. A mistake is random. This is the same mistake, twice, in wax and in thread. That’s not a mistake. That’s a signature."

"A signature that’s wrong," said Sable, who had materialized at Kael’s elbow.

"A signature is a thing nobody else gets right," said Lira. "That’s what makes it one."

"Funnel," Sable said, to the cloak.

"Eight," said Lira, not looking up.

"It was my mother’s," said Kael.

Nobody said anything. Sera Val’s hand went to her mouth. Torven, who had been leaning on the wall with his arms crossed, uncrossed them. Eiran, who had been standing quietly beside Mira, looked at the cloak, and at Kael, and then at the ground, with the kind of careful kindness that was his version of putting a hand on a shoulder.

"I’m so sorry," said Lira, very fast. "I’m being clinical, I didn’t mean to be clinical, I didn’t — "

"Don’t be sorry," said Kael. "I need clinical. I don’t think I can do it myself."

"I’m standing right here," said Sable, flat as a table. "That’s all I’m going to say, because anything else would be sentimental."

"Thank you," said Kael.

"It wasn’t sentimental," said Sable.

Lira looked at him for a moment. Then she took a breath and sat up straighter, and something steadied in her face, the way a scholar steadies when she has been handed a job she can do for a friend. "Clinically," Lira said, "whoever made the card’s seal and whoever stitched this fox learned from the same teacher, or they’re the same person. Elowen said she wrote the card. She said she wrote ’if it has arrived.’ So either Elowen made the seal, and your mother learned the fox from Elowen. Or your mother made it, and Elowen learned it from your mother."

"Or someone sat at a kettle once and learned it from both," said Kael.

"I’d rather not consider that one," said Lira.

"Lira Dawnkeep," said a deep voice behind them.

Destan had come up quietly, as large men sometimes could. He stood with his hands behind his back, studying Lira with an expression of grave, ducal interest. "Your grandfather owed my father a horse," Destan said.

"I’m aware," said Lira. "It’s in the ledger. It’s been in the ledger for a very long time."

"Has he paid?"

"Not yet."

"Tell him I’m not in a hurry," said Destan, and for the second time since the yard the corner of his mouth moved. Kael decided that he would have to start counting.

"We ask her," said Kael. "Elowen. Now."

"Down the funnel again," said Sable.

Aldris had followed them across the yard at a distance, hands behind his back, and now he came forward and said, without being asked, "Go. The yard is mine." He looked at the cloak, and at Kael’s face, and did not ask. "Tell her the lamps are lit."

"She knows," said Kael.

"Tell her anyway," said Aldris.

"Dessa and I will keep the Committee occupied," said Mira, from where she stood beside Kallow and the corporal, who was still holding Marigold’s rein and visibly trembling. "Take as long as you need. I find I have a great many forms to be disappointed in."

"Five," said Torven, and pushed off the wall.

"I’ll hold your coat," said Destan.

"Father," said Kael, "you can’t just — "

"I’m the Duke of the north," said Destan. "I can do anything I like. I would like to hold your coat."

So they went down in a chain.

It was the most absurd procession Kael had ever been part of, and he had been part of one only a short while ago. They went through the gallery in the thin gray light with Kael at the front, Lumis on his shoulder, and Destan Ardenvast directly behind him holding the tail of his coat in one scarred fist like a man holding a rope in a flood. Torven held Destan’s cloak. Lira held Torven’s belt, the ledger under her arm like a shield. Sera Val held Lira, Sable held Sera Val, and Eiran brought up the rear, holding Sable’s sleeve with the air of a man who had been outvoted on principle.

"I’ve never been at the back of anything," said Destan, to the dark, in a thoughtful voice.

"You’re at the front of the back," said Torven.

Destan considered this. "That is a very good thing to be," he said.

"It’s a good coat," Torven added, which Kael understood, with some astonishment, to be the highest compliment Torven had ever paid a Duke.

"What is your family?" Destan asked him, politely, over his shoulder.

"Kast," said Torven.

"The border barony. Your brother holds the pass."

"He holds the pass. I hold doors."

"Good man," said Destan, with great sincerity.

The stair was long, and it didn’t get shorter, and the carved relief unrolled beside them in the gold light, the scholars and the masons and the foxes sharing a loaf, then the thinning, then the stone cut away. Destan looked at the destroyed panel as they passed. He looked at the small curled fox in the corner, and the hand lying on its back. He did not say a word. But his hand, on Kael’s coat, tightened, and then tightened again, and the whole line slowed to a stop behind them.

"Father?" said Kael.

"That hand," said Destan.

Kael looked. It was the little corner that had survived, the curled fox, and across its back, resting lightly, the carved hand. It was a slim hand, long-fingered, and it was only now, with the Duke’s shaking breath in his ear, that Kael saw what he had missed: the smallest finger didn’t lie straight. It bent, very slightly, at the second joint, in a way no mason would have chosen to carve unless he had been copying.

"The little finger," said Destan, very quietly. "It doesn’t straighten. She broke it as a girl and never had it set." He swallowed. "She used to hide it in her sleeve."

Elowen carved that, Kael thought, and the stair seemed to narrow around him.

Elowen, or someone who watched her. A hand on a fox. And then somebody took a chisel to everything else.

Elowen was at the table with the kettle, as if she had been waiting for them for a very long time.

She looked up when they came out of the archway, and Kael saw her take in the line, the coats, the Duke, and then the gray cloak over his arm. Her face went white. The cup in her hand tipped, quite gently, and spilled cold tea down her apron, and she did not seem to notice.

"Where did you get that?" said Elowen.

"Madam," said Destan, and stopped.

She came across the floor in a rush, stepping between the rivers of light without looking, and halted an arm’s length from Kael as if the cloak might vanish if she came any closer. Her stained fingers hung in the air.

"May I?" Elowen asked.

Kael held out the hem. Elowen touched the stitched fox with one fingertip, very lightly, and made a sound.

"I taught her that," she said. "I taught her to curl the tail the wrong way. On purpose. I told her a signature is the one thing nobody else will ever get right. She said that was the most irritating thing she had ever been told, and she did it for the rest of her life." Her eyes were enormous. "Nerys."

Destan made a sound as though he had been struck. "You knew my wife."

"She was my student, Your Grace." Elowen turned to him, and her whole face was shaking. "My last. My best. She came to me as a girl, at the relay house in the Aldeberon, before the Academy had a gallery or I had a kettle. She walked in alone with her hand bandaged and asked if I needed someone who could read an old map."

"She said she’d learned maps from an old woman in the foothills," said Destan, in a rough voice.

"I am an old woman," said Elowen, "and I did live in the foothills. I’d like to think the description was kind."

"You never wrote," said Destan. It came out raw. "Not once. Forty men and a note and a cloak, and you — you knew. You were alive. You were a short ride away — " He stopped himself. He closed his eyes. "I’m sorry. That isn’t fair."

"It’s perfectly fair," said Elowen. "I’d say it too. She asked me not to write. She made me promise. She sat in that chair, the last time, and she said, ’Elowen, promise me you’ll wait for him.’" She looked at Kael. "She didn’t mean you, Your Grace. She meant the boy."

She filled a cup from the kettle with a hand that shook slightly, and held it out to Destan. "It’s cold. It’s how I like it. I’m told I’m wrong."

Destan took it. He drank. His face did something complicated. "She told me to drink it hot," he said.

"She was always wrong about that," said Elowen. A small, wondering laugh escaped her. "She named half the foxes, you know. She named them for what they stole. There was one called Wick, and one called Button, and one called Spoon. Spoon was an excellent fox."

Kael closed his eyes. The dented spoon, in my pocket. Lumis took it off a kitchen table without anybody seeing. "Lumis stole a soup spoon," Kael said, faintly, "before we ever came down."

"Then he comes from a line of thieves," said Elowen, with enormous satisfaction. "Good."

"Spoon," Sera Val breathed. "I love that. I’d like a fox called Idiom."

"It would steal your sentences," said Sable.

"It would improve them," said Sera Val.

"You kept the lamps lit for her," said Destan, quietly.

"I kept them lit for everyone who might come back," said Elowen. "I’ll admit she had the biggest one."

"What did she say about the boy?" Kael asked. His voice came out smaller than he wanted. "About me."

Elowen’s whole face changed. The shaking eased, and something warm and tearful and astonished moved through her expression, like sunlight coming through a closed shutter.

"She said," said Elowen, "’If a boy ever comes down your stair with my eyes, give him tea. Don’t tell him anything. Watch whether he asks who poured it.’"

For a moment nobody spoke.

"I thought she was being sentimental," Elowen said. "He was three. She said you’d once asked a baker his name before you’d eat his biscuit."

"I don’t remember that," said Kael.

"He did," said Destan.

Everyone turned.

Destan had taken his hand off Kael’s coat. He had one palm pressed flat against his mouth, and above it his amber eyes were shining. "He did," he said again, through his fingers. "In the market. He asked the baker his name, and what he’d put in it. The baker was so flustered he gave him two." A sound came out of him that was half a laugh and half something else. "It was a very good biscuit."

Kael didn’t know what to do with his face. He stood in the middle of a vast glowing map of a world that was about to change, with a fox on his shoulder and a clutch of friends behind him, and discovered that he was laughing, helplessly, with his eyes burning.

"I wrote the card," said Elowen. "She told me the shape of it. Not the words, the shape. She said the first time you would ask honestly because you couldn’t help it, and the second time would tell her who you had become." She wiped her face with the back of one hand and made it worse. "I told her it was a great deal to ask of a card. She said, ’Then give him the cup first.’"

"That’s why the tea," said Sera Val, in an awed whisper. "It was never only a test of you. It was a message."

"It was both," said Elowen. "She was very efficient."

*She knew. She left before I was five, and she knew what I’d do with a cup of tea. She planned for me. She planned the whole stair. She didn’t go to hear something. She went to make something ready for the one who would come.

His chest hurt in a way that was almost joy. Every time I asked who I was thanking, I was answering her.

Lira had her pencil out. She looked at it, and at Kael, and put it back behind her ear. "I’m not writing this down," Lira said, in a small voice.

"You’re allowed to," said Kael.

"I know. I’m choosing not to."

"I’d like to say something profound," Sera Val whispered, "but I’ve used up all my proverbs."

"Save one," said Eiran.

"And the others?" said Sable, very quietly. "The foxes. The doors."

"That’s the end of the tea," said Elowen. "I told you. I will tell you, I promise." Her eyes went to Kael, and something in them sharpened. "There is one more thing. She made me swear I wouldn’t tell you until you’d asked who had poured. You’ve asked." She drew a breath. "Look in the hem."

Kael lifted the cloak to his face before he knew he was going to. Woodsmoke. Cold stone. And under it the sweet thing he had noticed in the yard, which he could place now: orange peel, dry and faint, the same smoky edge that had been at the back of the cup.

"The tea," Kael said, muffled. "It tastes like her cloak."

"It’s her blend," said Elowen, and her voice cracked. "I never drank anything else after she left, and I never knew why I couldn’t stop."

"I’ve held that cloak," said Destan, in a strange voice, "all the time since I found it. I’ve never — "

"Nobody looks at a fox’s belly," said Elowen.

Kael sat down on the nearest crate. He laid the cloak across his knees and turned the hem to the light, and with the pad of his thumb he followed the stitched line of the fox: ears, back, the ribbon of the tail. And under the small curve of its belly, where the lining met the wool, his thumb found something that was not fabric. It was a small flat square, stiff, with the faint dry crackle of folded paper, sewn flat into the seam by a very patient hand.

His thumb stopped.

On the corner, where the thread had been picked loose by the width of a hair, a single word showed in a neat, quick hand. It was his name. And beside it, no bigger than a grain of rice, was a fox whose tail curled to the right.

— ◆ —

— End of Chapter 79 —