Chapter 183: Who Took the Gold

My father didn't tell anyone about the gold.

That was the first thing he decided, on Thursday night, in the little kitchen after everyone else had gone to bed, with the six of us who knew sitting around the end of the table: my father and my mother, Mary, Eleanor, Seraphina and me. Aldren had gone back to his room above the stables. Faelan had been sent to bed and, for once, had gone.

"Nobody else," said my father. "Not Helena. Not the guards. Not the girls in the kitchen. Not Roderic or Iselle or Carol, not yet. If we tell the house there's Kethran gold in the walls, by tomorrow noon every person in Greykeep will be looking at every other person and wondering. And by the day after, someone will have said a name out loud. And it'll be the wrong name. It's always the wrong name."

"Then how do we ask?" said Mary. "If we can't say what we're asking about?"

My father turned his cup around slowly between his hands.

"Edric told us," he said. "In the autumn. At Westmere. How you turn a bought man." He held up one finger. "A choice he didn't buy." A second. "The truth about what he's been doing, without hating him for it." A third. "And before the worst of the asking. Because after, he's too ashamed to turn." He put his hand down flat on the table. "And then he said the thing I've thought about every day since. You can't make a man who can't be bought. Only a place where it's harder. And where somebody asks him whether he's all right."

Nobody said anything.

"So that's what we do," said my father. "Tomorrow. All of us. We go around the house, every corner of it, and we ask every single person in it whether they're all right. Whether there's anything they need. And we mean it, and we listen to the answer." He looked around the table. "Not the gold. Not did you. Just are you. And whoever it is, somewhere in all that asking, they'll hear it. And maybe it'll be enough."

* * *

It was the strangest day I've ever spent at Greykeep.

I'd lived there my whole life. I knew every stair and every door and most of the faces. I'd have told you, if you'd asked me on Wednesday, that I knew the house.

I didn't. Not really. I knew the family. I knew Helena and the Castellan and Grandpa and the horses. But Greykeep is two hundred and eleven people, Mary says, not counting the family or the dragons or Fenrir, and on Friday I found out that I'd been walking past most of them for twenty years and saying good morning and never once asking.

* * *

I started in the stables, because that's where I'd been told to start.

Hob was there, the stablehand, the one who used to hold the horses at the gate when I was small and Ignatius and I swapped spoons before he went home to Concordia. He was mucking out the bay mare's stall with his sleeves rolled up and his breath steaming. He's sixty now. I've known him all my life.

"Hob," I said. "Are you all right?"

He straightened up with the fork in his hand and looked at me as though I'd asked him whether he had two heads.

"Course I'm all right," he said. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"I don't know," I said. "I've never asked. I'm asking now. Is there anything you need?"

He looked at me for a long time. Then he leaned the fork against the stall and wiped his hands on his breeches.

"My knees," said Hob. "Since you're asking. Both of them. Every morning on these cobbles. I've been meaning to say to your father for two winters that I can't do the early mucking-out much longer, and I haven't, because I didn't want him thinking I couldn't do my work." He looked at the floor. "I can do my work. Just not at five in the morning on wet stone anymore."

"Then don't," I said. "I'll tell him. We'll find a lad for the early mucking. You do the horses. You're better with the horses than anyone."

Hob looked at me. His face did something I'd never seen it do.

"Thank you," he said. "That's— Thank you, Garrick."

That was the first one. There were two hundred and ten more.

* * *

I won't write them all down. Mary did. It took her four pages in her smallest hand, and she says it's the most important thing she's ever put in the book, more important than the war, because it's the only list in the book of what people actually needed instead of what they were owed or what they'd lost.

But I'll put down some.

A laundry woman called Ellen whose daughter in the lower town had a husband who drank, and who'd been sending her wages there for a year to keep the children fed, and was ashamed of it. My mother went down to the lower town that afternoon.

Two of the guards, brothers, whose father's farm at Ash Bottom, three down from Jos Varley's, had lost its roof in the autumn gales, and who'd been patching it on their days off with whatever they could find. Eleanor sent Aldren down with slates before dark.

A kitchen boy who wanted to learn letters and was too embarrassed to ask, because he was fourteen and thought it was too late. Mary took him on that evening. He came to her office with his hair wet and combed flat and sat on the window seat with a slate.

One of the girls in the dairy whose young man had gone for a sailor on the grain ships out of Westmere in the summer and hadn't written. She didn't need anything, she said, crying. She just hadn't been able to tell anyone, because then it would be true.

On and on. All day. In every corner of the house.

* * *

And not one of them said gold.

Not one of them went pale, or looked away, or changed the subject too fast. Seraphina walked the kitchens and the laundry and the dairy all morning with Corvin's coin in a pocket against her heart, and it never once stirred. My father sat in the guardroom for two hours and asked forty men their names and their mothers' names and whether they slept well, and came out with a list of nine things to mend and no idea at all who'd cut a hole behind Eleanor's plate.

But something else happened. I didn't see it until the afternoon.

* * *

The house got warmer.

I don't know how else to say it. By noon the kitchen was louder than I'd ever heard it. People were talking to each other at the long table in the servants' hall who'd sat at opposite ends of it for years. Hob was showing the new early lad, a boy from the lower town, how to lift a hoof without getting kicked, and laughing. Ellen from the laundry was sitting with my mother in the infirmary drinking tea. The dairy girl had told her friend, and her friend had told the cook, and the cook had told Helena, and Helena had made the girl a honey biscuit and told her that sailors were very bad at letters and it didn't mean a thing.

"It's working," said Mary, coming past me on the main stair at two with her book under her arm and ink on her fingers. "Not the way he meant. But it's working."

"How?"

"Nobody's been asked in years," said Mary. "Not properly. They've been thanked, and paid, and fed, and told good morning. But nobody's asked them what's wrong." She shifted the book. "And now they have. And they've told somebody. And it turns out they're not the only one with something wrong, and nobody minds." She looked at me. "That's what the gold does, Garrick. It goes where nobody's asked. That's the only door it knows."

* * *

The trouble came at four.

I heard it before I saw it. Raised voices in the servants' hall, which never happens; Helena doesn't allow it. A woman's voice, high and angry. A girl's voice, crying.

I went down the back stair two at a time.

There was a knot of people at the end of the long table. Kitchen girls, two laundry women, one of the guards. In the middle of them a girl of about sixteen, one of the newer kitchen girls, was standing with her back against the wall and her face blotched red and her arms wrapped around herself. And in front of her, very close, an older woman from the scullery with her finger out.

"—new boots," the older woman was saying. "New boots, on a kitchen girl's wage, two weeks ago. And a new shawl. Where'd you get the money for that, Nettie? Eh? And now there's masons saying there's been something found in the walls downstairs, and the king going around asking everyone if they're all right—"

"Stop," I said.

* * *

Everyone turned.

I don't often use the voice. My father has it and I have it from him, and we both try very hard not to. It's the voice that comes from somewhere under your ribs and goes out flat across a room and stops things. I used it on the north pier once with sixty Hushed coming up the steps. I hadn't used it in my own house in my life.

I used it now.

"Stop," I said again, more quietly. "All of you. Step back from her."

They stepped back. The older woman's finger came down.

"Nettie," I said. "Are you all right?"

The girl stared at me. She was shaking.

"I bought the boots," she said. "With my wages. I saved since summer. My old ones had a hole and my feet were wet every day and Helena said I'd get chilblains. And the shawl was my gran's, she sent it from Orselle, she's knitting me another for spring—" She broke off, crying too hard to go on.

* * *

I turned around and looked at the people in that room. Kitchen girls. Laundry women. A guard. The older woman from the scullery, whose face had gone from red to white.

"Listen to me," I said. "All of you. I'm going to say this once, and I want you to tell everyone in the house who isn't here."

Nobody moved.

"Something was found downstairs," I said. "Yes. That's true. I won't tell you what, because it doesn't matter. What matters is this. Nobody in this house is going to be looked at sideways for it. Not for new boots. Not for a new shawl. Not for having a mother in Orselle or a brother on the grain ships or a coin in their pocket they can't account for. Nobody's room is going to be searched. Nobody's going to be asked to turn out their pockets in front of the kitchen. My father said so, and I'm saying so, and if I hear of anyone pointing a finger at anyone else in this house over it, I'll come and find you myself and ask you whether you're all right, and I'll keep asking until you are."

I looked at the older woman from the scullery.

"What's your name?"

She swallowed. "Agathe."

"Are you all right, Agathe?"

She stared at me. Then, very slowly, her face crumpled.

"No," she said. "No, I'm not. My son's in the guard at Westmere. He was on the north pier. He's not been right since. He doesn't sleep." She put her hands over her face. "I'm frightened all the time. I'm frightened of everything. And I heard about the walls, and I thought, here's something I can do, here's something I can find—"

"I know," I said. "I know. Come here."

* * *

Helena came down at that point.

She'd heard the raised voices from the little kitchen at the top of the stair and come down with a wooden spoon in her hand, the way she does, ready to use it. She stood in the doorway of the servants' hall and took it all in. Nettie against the wall, crying. Agathe with her hands over her face. Me in the middle. The others standing back.

She didn't ask what had happened. She never does. She just walked across the hall and put one arm around Nettie and the other around Agathe and steered them both, not gently, toward the bench by the stove.

"Sit," she said. "Both of you. There's tea. And then Agathe's going to say sorry, and Nettie's going to say it's all right, and then you're both going to help me with the bread, because I've got two hundred and eleven people to feed and half of them have been crying on my staff all day." She looked at me over her shoulder. "Go on, Garrick. I've got this."

I went.

* * *

Loki came through the Concordia arch at six.

He'd heard. Of course he'd heard. Seraphina had sent her mother a note at noon, two lines, because Io would have known something was wrong from the next letter anyway, and Io had told Lexander, and Lexander had told nobody, but Loki had been in the room.

He came up the main stair from the lower hall in his long coat, with his hair untidy and his hands in his pockets, and found my father and me in the south solar with the plan of the lower hall, and leaned in the doorway the way he leans in every doorway, as though doorways were invented to be leaned in.

"Gold in the walls," he said. "And you went around the whole house today asking people if they were all right." He shook his head slowly. "I've been alive longer than this house has had walls, Uriah, and I have never in my life heard of anyone trying to catch a thief by being kind to him."

"It's not catching," said my father. "It's turning."

"I know. I heard." Loki came in and sat down on the edge of the table, uninvited, on top of Eleanor's plan. "I came to help."

* * *

I want to put down what he said next exactly, because I've thought about it a great deal, and because it was the thing that turned the whole day.

"I know what it's like," said Loki, "to hide a thing you're ashamed of in a place nobody will look. I've done it more times than any of you have had breakfasts." He picked up the little leather bag of chalk Eleanor uses on her plans and turned it over in his long fingers. "So let me tell you something about your thief. From the inside."

My father looked at him.

"Go on," he said.

"They didn't spend it," said Loki. "Did they? It was all there. Twenty coins, Seraphina said. A merchant's day-purse, and not one coin out of it." He put the chalk bag down. "You don't hide gold you mean to spend. You spend it. You buy boots. You buy a shawl." He looked at me. "I heard about the boots, by the way. Good. Well done. Somebody had to."

"And?" said my father.

"And you don't hide gold you mean to keep, either. Not behind a plate in the lower hall, in a wall a builder is about to take apart. You keep it under your mattress. Or in your boot. Somewhere you can touch it at night." Loki leaned forward. "Your thief put it somewhere they knew it would be found. Somewhere they knew Eleanor would take that plate off herself, this week, with her own hands, because they knew the arch was moving." He spread his hands. "That's not hiding, Uriah. That's leaving it on the step and running away before anybody opens the door."

* * *

Nobody said anything for a long moment.

"You mean they want it found," I said.

"I mean they can't bear to have it," said Loki. "And they can't bear to give it back, because then they'd have to say why. So they put it where Eleanor would find it, and they're waiting." He looked out the window, toward the dark, toward the lower town and the river and whatever was beyond. "Somebody in this house was given gold for their little ones, and couldn't spend it, and couldn't keep it, and couldn't say. And they hid it behind the one person in Greykeep they trusted most, and they're lying awake tonight waiting for her to find it."

My father was very still.

"Behind the one person they trusted most," he said slowly.

"It's her plate," said Loki. "Her name's on it. You could have put it behind a hundred other stones down there. They put it behind hers." He shrugged. "I'd have done the same, once. You hide the thing you're ashamed of behind the person whose face you most want to see when it's found. So you'll know what it looks like."

* * *

My father looked at Loki for a long time.

Then he said, quietly, "Thank you."

"Don't thank me," said Loki. "Just— I'd like to be here. When you find them. If that's all right. I'd like to be in the room." He looked down at his hands. "Somebody should be in the room who knows what it's like from the other side. Who isn't going to be angry. Who's done worse."

"You can be in the room," said my father.

Loki nodded. He didn't look up.

"You know," he said, after a moment, "I was half expecting you to ask me."

"Ask you what?"

"Whether it was me." He laughed, a short odd sound. "Gold in the walls. Something hidden where it shouldn't be. Somebody being clever and quiet. If I'd been you, I'd have asked me first. Everyone always does." He turned the chalk bag over again. "I came through that arch tonight ready for it. I had a whole speech."

My father looked at him as though he'd said something in a language my father didn't speak.

"It didn't cross my mind," he said. "Not once." He frowned. "Why would it? You're family. You lied for us at Blackstack because I asked you to. You've never once lied to us."

Loki didn't answer. He sat on the edge of the table on top of Eleanor's plan, very still, looking at the chalk bag in his hands.

After a while he put it down very carefully, and got up, and went and stood at the window with his back to us.

My father let him.

* * *

The coin leaned at a quarter to midnight.

I was asleep. Seraphina wasn't; she says she'd been lying awake with her hand over the pocket of her nightgown where she'd put it, feeling it lie flat and still against her, the way you lie awake with your hand on a sleeping baby. And at a quarter to midnight it moved. Not much. It turned in her hand, slowly, and leaned. Down. Toward the lower hall.

She had me awake and on my feet before I knew what was happening.

* * *

We went down the back stair in our nightclothes, barefoot, with no lamp, because a lamp would have shown on the stair. Seraphina in front with the coin on her open palm, leaning harder and harder as we went down. Me behind her. At the bottom of the stair, by the old cellars, my father was already waiting in the dark in his shirt; the Castellan had woken him, very quietly, the moment the coin moved. And Loki behind him, fully dressed, as though he'd never been to bed at all.

Nobody said anything. We went along the passage to the lower hall in the dark, as quietly as four people can.

The lower hall was empty.

* * *

The lamps at each end were burning low, the way they always are at night. The scaffolding stood against the Greymere and Orselle arch. Aldren's tools lay in their row on the canvas. The block of new stone sat on its rollers at the far end.

And the coin on Seraphina's palm, which had been leaning so hard on the stair that it was nearly lying flat, was standing upright again, and wavering.

"They were here," said Seraphina, very low. "Just now. Right up against it. Close enough that the gold felt them." She closed her hand over the coin. "It's still there. They didn't take it. I don't think they tried."

My father went to the plate.

It was in its place, exactly as Eleanor had put it back on Thursday. Nobody had taken it off; you couldn't take it off without Eleanor. But on the brass, in the low light from the lamp, there was a mark. A smudge. The print of a hand, laid flat against the plate, in a faint bloom of breath-damp that was already fading.

As though someone had stood here in the dark with their palm flat on Eleanor's name, the way you'd put your hand on a door you couldn't make yourself knock on.

* * *

Eleanor came down ten minutes later, in her dressing gown, with her spectacles on and her iron-gray hair in a plait down her back. My father had sent the Castellan for her.

She looked at the fading handprint on her plate for a long time. Then she put her own hand flat on the brass beside it, and closed her eyes, and said something to the plate under her breath, in the grammar she uses for stone. A ward that knows its author will only take an answer from her.

The knot of letters that is her name, under the closing mark, went bright.

And then it went dim again, slowly, the way a face does when someone's told it something it didn't want to hear.

Eleanor opened her eyes.

She didn't say anything for a very long time. She stood there with her hand on her plate and her eyes on her own name, and in the low light from the lamp I saw her face, and I have never seen Eleanor Stonehand look like that, and I hope I never do again.

"Eleanor," said my father gently. "Did it tell you?"

"It told me," said Eleanor.

"Who?"

She took her hand off the plate. She looked at it, at her own palm, ink-stained, mortar-rough, the hand that has cut every ward in Greykeep and written her name under every one.

"It doesn't know names," she said. "A ward doesn't know names. It only knows hands. Whether it's felt them before." Her voice was perfectly level. "It says it's a hand it knows. A hand that's touched it before. A hand that learned the grammar from mine." She closed her fingers. "It says it's someone I taught."

* * *

Nobody spoke.

"I've taught a great many people," said Eleanor, to no one. "Forty years. Masons. Ward-keepers. Apprentices. Golem-wrights. Half the stoneworkers in the north." She looked at the plate. "A great many people."

"Yes," said my father.

"It doesn't narrow it much."

"No."

Eleanor stood there a moment longer. Then she took off her spectacles and cleaned them on the sleeve of her dressing gown, very carefully, the way I've seen her do a thousand times when she's thinking. And put them back on.

"I'm going to bed," she said. "I've a crack to look at in the south solar chimney in the morning. The Orselle brothers will want to tell me about it."

She went past us, up the back stair, in her dressing gown and her plait, and didn't look back.

Loki watched her go.

"That," he said very quietly, "is the face I meant."

* * *

From Mary's book, Friday. Four pages, the first three crowded edge to edge in Mary's smallest hand with names and needs, and the fourth much shorter:

Uriah said: Not did you. Just are you. We asked everyone in the house.

Two hundred and eleven. Hob's knees. Ellen's daughter. The Ash Bottom brothers' roof. Perkin from the kitchen wants his letters; he came to my office with his hair combed flat. The dairy girl's sailor hasn't written. Helena says sailors are very bad at letters.

Nobody said gold. The house got warmer.

Four o'clock. Agathe said Nettie's new boots were bought with something. Garrick said Stop. Nettie saved since summer. Agathe's son was on the north pier and doesn't sleep. Helena took them both to the stove.

Loki came at six. He said: They didn't spend it. They couldn't keep it. They put it behind the one person they trusted most so they'd see her face when it was found.

Loki said he'd been half expecting to be asked if it was him. Uriah said: It didn't cross my mind. Not once. You're family. Loki went and stood at the window.

Quarter to midnight. The coin leaned. A handprint on Eleanor's plate, fading. Eleanor asked her ward. It said: someone I taught.

Eleanor went to bed.

And under that, in a long, slanting, extravagantly looped hand that has clearly been practicing beautiful letters for a very long time, and that for once has made them plain:

Loki of Concordia, at Greykeep, late. I'd like it noted that I came through the arch tonight with a speech ready. That nobody asked me for it. That the king of this house said it didn't cross his mind, not once, and I've been alive longer than this house has stood, and been the first name on every list of every theft and lie and hidden thing in every house I ever walked into, and I didn't know until tonight that I'd been waiting all that time for somebody not to say it. I'd like that noted. I'd like it noted twice.