Chapter 50: Roderic's Choice

Roderic was in the little kitchen at half past five in the morning, which had never happened before in the history of the world.

I know, because Helena told me so. She was standing at the stove in her apron with the kettle not yet on, which had also never happened before, looking at him the way she looks at a loaf that's risen in a shape she didn't expect.

"Since five," she said to me, very quietly, when I came down. "He was sitting on the step when I unlocked the garden door. In his good coat." She paused. "He hasn't eaten anything."

My brother was at the scrubbed table with three sheets of paper in front of him, and a pen, and an inkwell, and the expression of a man who has been trying to write the same sentence for half an hour and has finally understood that he never will. All three sheets had a name at the top. All three had a great many lines crossed out underneath.

I sat down opposite him and turned the nearest one around with one finger.

Talia.

I turned the second.

Imogen.

I didn't need to turn the third. I could see it upside down. Wren.

"Oh," I said. "Oh, Rod."

"Don't," said Roderic.

"I haven't said anything."

"You were going to. You've got the face. You've had the face since you came in." He put his head in his hands. "Go on. Get it over with."

So I did. I'd like to say I didn't, but I did. I'm his brother. It's practically a duty.

I asked if he'd be giving roses again, and whose lecture notes he'd be wrapping them in this time. I asked if Talia's mare would be invited, and whether he'd remembered to bring it biscuits. I asked whether he wanted me to borrow a lute from an Orselle second-year so he could serenade all three of them in turn, from under the right windows this time, if he could count to the right one. I asked if I should ask Thor to stand by with a bucket in case of cider.

Roderic sat with his head in his hands and took it, every word, going slowly pinker from the collar up.

Helena put the kettle on.

"Garrick," she said, without turning around. Mildly.

"I'm nearly finished."

"I know you are," said Helena. "That's why I said it now."

* * *

"I'm not sending them," said Roderic, when I'd stopped.

He lifted his head. He was very pink, but his eyes were steady.

"The letters. I tried. I've been trying since four." He pushed the three sheets together into a pile and put his hand flat on top of them. "But a letter's what you write when you don't want to see someone's face when they read it. And I've done that. I've done that my whole life. I've said yes to people so I wouldn't have to see their faces if I said no." He swallowed. "The last time I told them the truth, at the name day, it was only because I got caught. All three of them, in the same corridor, with roses. That doesn't count. That was just being found out."

"So what are you going to do?" I said.

"Go and say it. To each of them. Properly. Today. Before anybody catches me at anything." He looked at me. "Name. Want. Permission. And then, if they ask me to stop talking and go away, stop. And go away."

I looked at him across the table. My little brother, who couldn't refuse a second helping or a third admirer or a fourth request to carry somebody's books up the college stairs. Who'd said yes to everything all his life because it was easier than finding out what he wanted.

"Why now?" I said.

He didn't answer for a moment. Then he looked down at the pile of crossed-out letters under his hand.

"Because I know what I want," he said. "Now. I didn't before. And it isn't fair to anyone to let them keep wondering when I already know." He looked up. "That's all. It isn't for anybody. It's not so anybody owes me anything. It's just... true."

He didn't say her name. He didn't need to. Helena, at the stove, didn't turn around, but I saw her shoulders change.

"Will you come?" said Roderic. "Not to help. You can't help. Just..." He stopped. "Just stand a long way off. So I know there's someone on my side of the gate."

"I'll come," I said.

"And you'll stop teasing?"

I thought about it.

"Probably not," I said honestly.

"That's fair," said Roderic, and almost smiled, and went to get his good coat brushed.

* * *

Talia was first, because Talia is always first. She's out in the riding yard behind the old Concordia barracks every morning at seven, rain or shine, with her gray mare, the one that ate Roderic's roses and his ribbon and his honey biscuits and then went and stood in the fountain.

I stood by the yard gate. A long way off. As promised.

I watched Roderic cross the yard in his good brushed coat with his hands behind his back, the way Father walks when he's about to tell somebody something difficult. I watched Talia see him coming, and pull the mare up, and look down at him from the saddle with one eyebrow up. I couldn't hear what he said. I saw him say it. I saw him stand there, very straight, while she looked at him.

And then Talia threw back her head and laughed.

Not unkindly. Not at all. She laughed the way you laugh when someone's told you something you've known for a month and been waiting very patiently for them to notice. She leaned down from the saddle and patted him on the head, like a dog, and said something, and laughed again, and then she leaned down further and said something else, more quietly. And Roderic went pinker than I've ever seen him, and nodded, and she straightened up and turned the mare and trotted away around the yard.

He came back to the gate looking dazed.

"Well?" I said.

"She said she was fond of me," said Roderic. "She said I was very sweet and very tiring and she'd been waiting for me to work it out." He blinked. "She said her mare liked me more than she did, and the mare would miss the biscuits."

"And the other thing? The quiet thing?"

Roderic looked over his shoulder at Talia, cantering on the far side of the yard with her braid flying.

"She said, Good for you, Rod. Go and say it to the one who matters." He swallowed. "And then she said, And for pity's sake, don't take her roses."

I opened my mouth.

"Don't," said Roderic.

I took a deep breath. I let it out.

"Imogen," I said.

* * *

Imogen was in the library. Imogen is always in the library. The college library is the old armory, with books on the pike racks and study tables where the soldiers used to clean their swords, and she has her own table in the corner by the tall window that everyone knows not to sit at.

She was there, with eleven books stacked in front of her and three open, and a pencil behind her ear, and ink on her chin. She saw Roderic coming down the long room between the pike racks, and she put her pencil down, very slowly, and looked at him over the top of her books with her eyes narrowed.

I stayed by the door. A long way off. I could hear this one, because the library is very quiet, and Imogen has a carrying voice.

"If you're about to drop something on my foot," she said, "I'd like to point out that I did it to you first and we're even."

"I'm not," said Roderic. "May I sit down? You can say no."

Imogen looked at him for a long moment.

"You've been talking to Caitlin," she said.

"I've been talking to everyone. It's very tiring." He sat down across from her, carefully, so as not to touch any of the stacks. "Imogen, I need to tell you something properly. I told you once before, at the name day, but I only told you because I got caught, and I don't think that counts."

And he told her.

I won't write it all down. It was hers and his. But I'll say that he did it properly. He said her name first, and then his. He told her what he wanted, plainly, without making it pretty. He told her he was sorry for the months of not saying it. And then he stopped, and waited, and let her answer.

Imogen listened to the whole thing without moving. When he'd finished, she took the pencil out from behind her ear and turned it over in her fingers for a long time.

"Do you know what I actually liked?" she said at last.

Roderic shook his head.

"Being asked to carry books," said Imogen. "Not being given roses. Not poems in high Lyradon meter, though I'll admit the river part was nice. Just someone coming into the library and saying, Can I help you with those? And meaning it." She put the pencil down. "You did that four times, in the first term. Before you got silly. It was the best part."

Roderic stared at her.

"Caitlin said that," he said. "She said you just liked being asked to carry books. I thought she was joking."

"Caitlin never jokes about anything she's written down," said Imogen. She stood up. She picked up the top five books from her stack, and held them out across the table. "I'm going to the reading room on the third floor. Those are heavy. You can say no."

Roderic looked at the books.

Then he stood up, and took them, and said, "Yes. As a friend."

"As a friend," agreed Imogen. "That's exactly what I meant." She paused. "And Rod? The one who matters sits on the bench in the sun at four, the same as every day, and she'd very much like someone to ask her what she's reading. Just to ask. Not to give her anything." She picked up her pencil. "That's all. Go on. The third floor."

I held the library door open for them as they went past. Roderic, carrying five books. Imogen, behind him, with her pencil behind her ear.

I didn't say a word. I was saving it.

* * *

On the way to the Lyradon gate, I said all of it.

I'd been saving it up since the riding yard, and it came out in a rush, all the way across the college square and down the hill and through the gate square and into the shimmer. As a friend. The five books. Talia patting him on the head like a spaniel. The mare missing the biscuits. I asked if he'd like me to write it all up for Caitlin's gate report, For the family, not urgent, very funny, and whether he wanted it in high Lyradon meter.

Roderic walked beside me with his hands behind his back and said nothing at all.

It wasn't until we came out of the gate into the Lyradon orchards, into the cold bright smell of apples and frost and woodsmoke, that I noticed he hadn't said anything for a long time. Not don't. Not that's fair. Nothing.

I looked at him.

He was very pale. Not pink. Pale. And his hands, behind his back, were holding on to each other so hard the knuckles had gone white.

"Rod?"

"Wren's different," he said.

He didn't look at me. He was looking up the valley, at the Fennick house on the terrace above the old queen's orchard, with its white walls and blue shutters and the smoke going straight up from its chimney into the still air.

"Talia never meant it," he said. "Not really. Imogen meant it a little, but she meant the books more. Wren..." He stopped. "Wren meant it. All of it. From the beginning. Her family's wanted it since we were children. Her mother talks to my grandmother about it every summer. And she threw cider at me at the name day because she was the only one of the three who was actually hurt." He swallowed. "And I let it go on. For months. Because saying no to Wren meant seeing her face when I said it."

I didn't say anything.

I'd run out of things to say somewhere around the gate, and I hadn't noticed.

* * *

Wren Fennick was in the orchard below her house, on a ladder, picking the very last of the late apples into a basket on her arm. She was wearing an old green dress with the sleeves rolled up and a shawl over her shoulders, and her dark hair was tied back with a bit of string. She saw us coming up the grass between the trees, and she stopped picking, and stood very still on the ladder, looking down.

I stopped at the end of the row. A long way off.

Roderic went on alone.

He stopped at the foot of the ladder, and looked up at her, and I saw him take a breath.

"Wren," he said. "It's Roderic. May I talk to you? You can say no. If you'd rather I went, I'll go."

Wren looked down at him for a long time.

Then she came down the ladder. Slowly. One rung at a time. She set the basket down on the grass. She stood in front of him with her arms folded over her shawl, and her chin up, and her face very still.

"Go on, then," she said.

So he told her.

I could hear it. The orchard was very quiet, and the air was cold and still, and voices carry in Lyradon the way they carry over water. I won't write down everything he said. But I'll write this much, because it was the part that mattered.

He didn't tell her it wasn't her fault. He didn't tell her she'd find someone better. He didn't say any of the things people say when they're trying to make you feel better about something so that they can feel better about it. He told her the truth. That he'd known for a long time that he didn't feel what she felt. That he'd let it go on anyway, because he was a coward about faces. That it was his fault and nobody else's. That he was sorry.

And then he said, "Wren. What do you want? Now. From me. You can say anything."

Wren didn't answer for a long time.

When she did, her voice was very steady.

"I want to throw this basket at you," she said.

"That's fair," said Roderic.

He didn't step back. He didn't put his hands up. He just stood there, in the cold, in his good brushed coat, at the foot of the ladder, with his hands at his sides, and waited.

And I stood at the end of the row, and watched my little brother stand still to be hit, because he thought he'd earned it. Because she'd asked for something, and it was hers to have.

And I stopped teasing him.

Not because I decided to. It just went out of me. All of it. Every joke I'd been saving since five o'clock that morning. I stood under the apple trees and looked at Roderic waiting for a basket of apples in the face, and I thought: I've known him his whole life, and I've never seen him before.

Wren didn't throw the basket.

She looked at him for a long, long time, with her arms folded and her chin up. And then her chin came down, slowly, and her face did something complicated, and she looked away up the valley.

"I want you to tell me something true," she said. "One thing. And then you can go."

"Yes," said Roderic.

"Is it the Kethran girl?"

Roderic didn't look away.

"Yes," he said.

"Does she know?"

"No." He paused. "I haven't said anything. I'm not doing this so she'll owe me anything. I'm doing it because it's true, and you should have it. All three of you. Before anybody else."

Wren looked at him.

"You look at her," she said slowly, "when she isn't looking at you. At the name day. At the harvest feast. On the bridge, when Surtr picked up the babies. I saw you. You look at her the way my father looks at the first blossom on the terraces in spring. Like you can't believe you're allowed to." She swallowed. "You never once looked at me like that."

"No," said Roderic. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Just..." She stopped. Then she unfolded her arms, and bent down, and picked an apple out of the basket at her feet. A red one. The last good one. And held it out to him.

"Here," she said. "For the girl. Not a rose. Roses are stupid. Give her an apple, and ask her what she's reading, and then shut up and listen." Her voice cracked, very slightly, on the last word. "You're terrible at it. You'll have to practice."

Roderic took the apple.

"Thank you," he said.

"Go away now," said Wren. "Please."

And he went. He turned and walked back down the row between the apple trees toward me, holding the apple in both hands, and he didn't look back, because she'd asked him not to stay. And behind him, Wren Fennick picked up her basket, and climbed back up her ladder, and went on picking the last of the late apples, very slowly, one at a time, with her back to us.

I didn't say anything all the way back to the gate.

Neither did Roderic.

At the gate, he stopped and looked at the apple in his hands.

"Was that all right?" he said. "Garrick. Did I do it right?"

"Yes," I said. My voice didn't sound like mine. "Rod. Yes. You did it exactly right."

* * *

He didn't go to the bench at four.

I want to write that down, because I didn't understand it at the time, and I do now. He'd done the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life, three times in one day. He had an apple in his pocket that a girl had given him with tears in her eyes and told him to give to someone else. He knew exactly where Iselle would be at four o'clock, on the bench that gets the sun, the same as every day.

And he didn't go.

"Not today," he said, when I asked. We were sitting on the steps of the college library, at a quarter to four, in the cold slanting light. "If I go today, it'll be because of today. It'll be like I'm bringing her the three of them on a plate. Look what I did for you." He turned the apple over in his hands. "She's had enough of people doing things for her. Her brother. Severin. All of it. I'm not going to be one more person who arrives with something she's supposed to be grateful for."

"So when?"

"Tomorrow," said Roderic. "Or the next day. When it's just an ordinary day, and I'm just someone who'd like to know what she's reading." He put the apple in his coat pocket. "Wren's right. I'll have to practice."

I sat beside him on the cold step and didn't say anything for a long time.

I was thinking about the morning, in the little kitchen. All those jokes. The roses and the lute and the cider.

"Rod," I said.

"Mm."

"I'm sorry. About this morning."

He looked at me, surprised.

"What for? You always tease me. You're my brother. It's practically a duty." He nearly smiled. "You said so yourself."

"I know," I said. "I'm still sorry."

He looked at me for a moment longer. Then he nodded, and looked away across the square.

And that was when Iselle came around the corner of the library.

She was walking quickly, with her books under her arm and her new blue scarf wound twice around her neck, and Caitlin's terrible orange one, which she'd been given back and refused to give up again, over the top of it. She saw us on the steps, and stopped. And her face did the thing it does, very quietly, so that you have to watch closely to see.

I watched.

She'd heard. Of course she had. This is Concordia, and Caitlin keeps a list of everything, and Imogen has a carrying voice.

She stood at the foot of the library steps and looked up at Roderic, and Roderic looked at her, and went slowly pink from the collar up, and didn't say a single word. Didn't explain. Didn't apologize. Didn't arrive with anything.

Iselle looked at him for a long time.

Then she came up the steps, one at a time, and held out the top book from the stack under her arm.

"I'm going to the bench," she said. "It's nearly four. This one's heavy." She paused. "You can say no."

Roderic looked at the book.

He didn't take the apple out of his pocket. He didn't say anything about Talia, or Imogen, or Wren, or the orchard, or the hardest day of his life. He just stood up, and took the book from her hands, very carefully, and looked at the cover.

"What are you reading?" he said.

And then he shut up, and listened.

I sat on the library steps and watched them walk away across the square together in the slanting gold light, toward the bench that gets the sun at four. She was talking. He was carrying the book. He didn't say a word the whole way. He just walked beside her with his head bent toward her, listening, the way Brannoc listens to a gate.

* * *

At supper, Helena put an extra slice of bread on Roderic's plate without being asked.

Then she looked down the table at me, for a long moment, over the teapot.

"You didn't tease him," she said.

"No," I said.

Helena nodded, once, very slightly. The way Eleanor nods. The way that's worth a parade from anyone else.

And she put an extra slice of bread on my plate too.