Chapter 51: Letters Home

Iselle asked us both on the same evening, in the same words, one after the other.

She found Roderic on the bench at four, which by then was simply where Roderic was at four, with a book open on his knee that he wasn't reading and a red apple in his coat pocket that he still hadn't given anyone. And she found me ten minutes later on the library steps, waiting for Ignatius, who is always late because he stops to talk to every porter in the college.

"Garrick," she said. "It's Iselle. I'd like to show you something. In my room. Roderic is coming too." She paused. "It's a letter. You can say no."

I'd never heard her voice sound like that. Not frightened, exactly. Iselle's voice doesn't do frightened. It goes very level and very quiet and very careful, the way you walk across ice.

"I'll come," I said.

* * *

Her room at the college is at the top of the east range, small and plain, with one tall window over the orchard toward the sunrise. It has almost nothing in it that belongs to her. A comb. The blue scarf on its hook. And on the windowsill, in a row, the things people have given her since she came: a paper twist of Helena's honey biscuits, unopened, because she likes to know they're there, and a small gray horse with a white blaze that Grandpa Garrick made for her without being asked.

Roderic was already there when I came up, standing by the door with his hands behind his back, very carefully not looking at anything in particular.

Iselle closed the door. Not locked. Just closed. She went to the desk and sat down, and Roderic and I stood, because there were no other chairs, and she took a sheet of paper out of the drawer and laid it on the desk and put both her hands flat on either side of it.

"I have to tell you what this is first," she said. "Or it won't make any sense."

* * *

"Since I was twelve," said Iselle, "I've written to my brother four times a year. At midwinter and midsummer, and at the two days in spring and autumn when the light and dark are even. Every year. Without missing one." She looked at the paper. "It isn't a letter. Not really. It's a report. He sends me a page, and at the top of the page, in his own hand, there are three questions. Always the same three. And I write the answers underneath, and seal it, and it goes back to him."

"Through Severin," said Roderic.

"Through Severin. Exactly as given." She almost smiled. "He's never once opened one. He told me that, when I was thirteen. He said it was the only thing he could give me. A door that only I could open."

"What are the questions?" I said.

Iselle put her finger on the top of the page.

The paper was black. The ink was silver. Small, heavy, upright letters, pressed hard into the paper, as though whoever wrote them had wanted to make very sure they couldn't be rubbed out. The Kethran script ran across the top in three short lines, and underneath, in a smaller hand, Iselle had written the common tongue for us in pencil.

What have you learned?

Whom have you met?

What do they want?

I read them twice.

I didn't say anything. I didn't need to. Roderic, beside me, made a small sound in his throat, and I knew he'd seen it too.

"It's Rysa's rules," he said quietly. "Almost. Name. Want."

"I know," said Iselle. "I didn't, before I came here. I'd been answering them since I was twelve and I never knew they were anything but questions. Then Carol told me about Rysa, the first week, and I went back to my room and was sick." She looked down at the page. "He asks. He always asks. He just doesn't ask me. He asks me about other people. Four times a year, for eight years, I've been telling him what everyone around me wanted."

The window was going dark. Down in the orchard, someone was lighting the lamps along the fountain, one after another.

"What did you write?" said Roderic. "Before. In the golden city."

"The truth," said Iselle. "Always. I didn't know there was anything else. I learned languages. I met tutors. They wanted to please him." She swallowed. "I wrote the truth at the river mill, too, when I was twelve and he hadn't sent for me yet. I wrote what my mother wanted. That she wanted the river to come back. That she wanted the mill to turn." Her hands tightened on the desk. "And three weeks later, Severin came back, and offered her the river."

Nobody said anything.

* * *

"This one came in the black tube," said Iselle. "With the letter Mary read aloud. It was rolled up inside the big sheet, with my name on the outside. Mary saw it when she unrolled the letter that morning, before anybody came in, and she took it out and put it in her pocket and gave it to me afterward, on the stairs, without opening it." Her voice wavered for the first time. "She said, A letter with your name on it is yours. Nobody in this house reads it unless you say so."

"That's Mary," I said.

"I didn't know what to do with that. Nobody's ever not read my letters before. Except Severin." She took a breath. "I've had it for nearly three weeks. It's due at midwinter. Benjamin says he can call Selvane with the shell at the next dark of the moon, if I want it carried. Severin is in the golden city, and she knows how to find him now. So it can go the way they always go." She looked up at us. "I've written it. I wrote it last night. I sat here until four in the morning."

She turned the page around on the desk so that it faced us.

Under the three silver questions, in Iselle's small, careful, even hand, in Kethran, with the common tongue in pencil beside every line, were her answers.

What have you learned?

I have learned the history of the Varrick War, which is taught very badly by a man named Ashby. I have learned to make fish soup without stirring it. I have learned that the cook in the refectory gives second helpings if you ask about her grandson.

Whom have you met?

Students. A cook. A great many people who are kind to strangers.

What do they want?

To be left alone. To eat their breakfast. To go home at night and find the door still there.

I read it twice. It was very good. It was all true, every word, and none of it was anything Malachar could use. It was a door with nothing behind it.

"That's clever," said Roderic softly. "Iselle, that's very clever."

"That isn't the part I wanted to show you," said Iselle.

She turned the paper over.

* * *

On the back, at the very top, in the same silver ink, the same small heavy upright letters pressed hard into the black paper, there was a fourth question.

There had never been a fourth question. Not in eight years. I knew it from her face before she said it.

She'd written the common tongue underneath in pencil. Her hand had shaken doing it. You could see where the pencil had skipped.

Which of them held my hand?

"It wasn't there," said Iselle. "When Mary gave it to me. I looked at the back. Of course I looked. I always look. It was blank." She was holding the edge of the desk. "I put it in the drawer. And three weeks ago, in the morning, after the night Carol came down the tower, I took it out to start writing. And I turned it over. And it was there." She swallowed. "The ink was still wet."

Roderic had gone very white.

I was thinking of a man in a room with no doors, looking at his own hand the way you'd look at a dog that had just spoken to you, and then dipping his pen in silver ink and writing a question on a page that was sitting in a drawer in a girl's room on the other side of the world.

Which of them held my hand?

"He's never added a question," said Iselle. "Never. Not once. Not in eight years." She took her hands off the desk and folded them in her lap, very tightly. "He's never needed to. Three questions was always enough. He always knew everything he wanted to know." She looked at the page. "He doesn't know this. It's the first thing I've ever seen him not know."

Under the question, in her careful hand, there was an answer. Two lines of Kethran. And beside them, very faint, in pencil, the common tongue.

None of them. No one here can hold anything.

I think you dreamed it.

I read it. Then I looked at her.

She was sitting very straight at the desk, with her hands folded so tightly in her lap that the knuckles had gone white, and her face doing the thing it does, very quietly. And I watched it. And I saw, for the first time since I'd known her, exactly what it was doing.

She was ashamed.

"It's a lie," she said.

Her voice was perfectly level.

"It's the first lie I've ever told him. In my whole life. The first lie I've ever written down." She looked at the two lines of Kethran on the black paper as if they'd been written by somebody else. "In the golden city you can't lie. Not because it's forbidden. Because there's nothing to lie about. Everything already belongs to him. There's no little room inside you where you can keep something he doesn't have." She swallowed. "I sat here until four in the morning trying to write the truth. That it was Carol. That she's stronger than him. That she held him with his own power, in his own dream, and let him go. And every time I wrote her name, I saw my mother's mill. And the river. And Severin coming back up the road three weeks later, being kind."

Roderic made a small, involuntary movement toward her. Then he stopped himself, and put his hands behind his back again, and stood very still.

"So I wrote that," said Iselle. "None of them. And then I sat and looked at it until the sun came up." She looked up at us. "That's why I asked you here. Both of you. Because you don't lie in your house. Nobody does. Carol doesn't. Your father doesn't. Helena would know in a heartbeat if you so much as thought about it." Her voice cracked, very slightly, for the first time. "And I don't know if I've just done something terrible. I don't know if I've just become the kind of person you don't let in."

* * *

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Then Roderic said, "May I sit down?"

Iselle looked at him. Then she nodded at the end of the narrow bed.

He sat on it. Carefully, at the very end, as far from her as the little room allowed. He didn't touch her. He didn't touch the paper. He leaned his elbows on his knees and looked at the floor, the way Brannoc had looked at the floor in the gatehouse, and when he spoke, it was in his ordinary voice. Not the voice he uses on admirers. The other one. The one I'd only heard for the first time in an orchard in Lyradon, a few days before.

"When I was small," he said, "about six, I think, Rysa taught us the rules. You've heard them. Name. Want. Permission. Stop. Friend." He paused. "But there's one she taught us that isn't on the list. Carol's the one who remembers it best. She said it to Garrick, the morning after the singing started." He looked at me.

I knew which one he meant. I'd never forgotten it.

"The rules work the other way too," I said. "If someone won't ask you properly, you don't have to answer."

Iselle went very still.

"He didn't ask you," said Roderic. "Not properly. Not once. Not in eight years. He's never said your name at the top of that page. He's never asked what you want. He asks you about everyone else, so he can go and ask them, small, when they're tired, with something they can't say no to." He lifted his head and looked at her. "That isn't a question. That's a hand in your pocket. You don't owe a hand in your pocket the truth."

"But it's still a lie," said Iselle.

"Yes," said Roderic. "It is." He didn't look away. "And you told it to keep Carol safe. And your mother. And you sat up until four in the morning because it hurt. And then you came and showed it to the two people in the world most likely to tell you off for it." He paused. "Iselle. That's not someone we don't let in. That's someone who's finally got a little room inside her he doesn't have."

Iselle stared at him.

I'd never heard my brother say anything like that before. I don't think he had either. He'd gone pink from the collar up, the way he does, but he didn't look away, and he didn't take any of it back.

The lamps along the fountain in the orchard were all lit now. Their light came up through the tall window and lay across the black paper on the desk, across the silver questions and the careful answers and the two lines of Kethran at the bottom of the back of the page.

"I'm still frightened," said Iselle at last. Very quietly. "Not of the lie. Of what happens when he finds out it's a lie. Because he will. One day. And when he does, he won't ask me." She looked at the window. "He'll ask the river."

* * *

"Then ask my father," I said.

They both looked at me.

I hadn't known I was going to say it. But I'd been thinking about the morning Iselle first sat in Carol's round room and told us what she was frightened of, and what my father said to her at the end of it. I remembered it word for word.

"You told him not to do anything," I said. "That first week. Not to send anyone to the valley. Not to write to your mother. Not to try to take the river back, because Malachar would know, and he'd ask." I took a breath. "And my father said, If you want my help with the river, you'll ask, and I'll come. And if you never ask, I'll never come."

Iselle's hands came apart in her lap.

"I remember," she said.

"You've never asked him."

"No."

"Ask him," I said. "Not for anything now. Not to go to the valley tomorrow. Just..." I looked at the page. "Just so that if Malachar ever finds out it's a lie, and he goes to the river, there's already somebody who's been asked. Somebody who'll come."

Iselle looked at me for a long time.

Then she looked at Roderic, at the end of her bed, with his elbows on his knees and his face very pink and his eyes very steady.

"I've never asked anyone for anything," she said slowly. "Not for myself. Not since I was twelve. Not once." She looked down at her hands. "I don't know how."

"Yes, you do," said Roderic. "You asked us to come up here. Both of us. You said our names, and what you wanted, and that we could say no." He almost smiled. "That's the whole thing. That's all it is. You've been doing it all evening."

Iselle didn't say anything.

But she stood up. She folded the black page in half, and then in half again, with the silver questions on the inside, and put it in the pocket of her dress, next to her mother's letter. Then she took the blue scarf down off its hook and wound it twice around her neck.

"Now," she said. "Before I lose my nerve."

* * *

My father was in the little kitchen. Of course he was. It was nearly nine, and Helena had gone up, and he was sitting at the scrubbed table in his socks with a cup of tea going cold and Mary's black Council book open in front of him, reading the last three weeks over again, the way he does in the evenings when there's nothing to do but wait.

Carol was there too, at the end of the bench, with her feet tucked up under her and her chin on her knees, the way she's sat at that table since she was four. And Ignatius beside her, reading. And Moth, very small and very gray, sitting on the rim of the heavy blue teapot as if it owned it, which by then it more or less did.

They all looked up when we came in through the garden door. Iselle first. Then Roderic. Then me.

My father looked at Iselle's face, and closed the black book.

She didn't sit down. She stood just inside the door, with the cold coming in around her, and the blue scarf wound twice around her neck, and her hands folded in front of her. Roderic stood a step behind her, to the left. Not touching. Just there.

"Uriah," she said.

I'd never heard her call him that. She'd called him Majesty, and King Uriah, and once, when she was very tired, sir. Never his name.

My father didn't say anything. He just waited.

"My name is Iselle," she said. "Daughter of Saba, who weaves. Of the Ilvane valley, where the mill is." Her voice was very level. "You told me, in the autumn, in Carol's room, that if I wanted your help with the river, I'd ask, and you'd come. And if I never asked, you'd never come." She swallowed. "I'm asking."

My father put down his cold tea.

"Tell me," he said.

So she told him. All of it. And then she took the black page out of her pocket, and unfolded it, and laid it on the scrubbed table in front of him, face down, so that the fourth question was looking up at the ceiling.

Which of them held my hand?

Carol, at the end of the bench, went perfectly still.

And under it, the two lines of Kethran, with the pencil beside them.

None of them. No one here can hold anything. I think you dreamed it.

"I lied," said Iselle. "For the first time. To keep Carol safe. And my mother." She lifted her chin. "I'm not sorry. I thought I would be. I'm not." She looked at Roderic, very briefly, and then back at my father. "But one day he'll know it was a lie. And when he does, he won't ask me. He'll go to the river. He'll ask my mother, small, when she's tired, with something she can't say no to." Her hands tightened. "So I'm asking you. Not to do anything now. Not to send anyone. Just..." She stopped. "Just that if he ever goes to the river, you'll already have been asked. And you'll come."

My father looked at the black page for a long time.

Then he looked up at her.

"Yes," he said.

That was all. He didn't say of course, or don't worry, or that she was brave. He just said yes, the way you'd answer someone who'd asked you to pass the bread. As if it were the simplest thing in the world. As if he'd been waiting since the autumn to be asked, and had always known exactly what he'd say.

Iselle's face did the thing it does.

I watched it. And this time I couldn't tell what it was doing at all, because she'd put both her hands over it.

* * *

It was Carol who spoke next.

She'd unfolded herself from the bench while Iselle was talking. Now she came around the end of the table, slowly, in her stocking feet, and stood in front of Iselle, and looked at the black page on the table and the question at the top of it for a long moment.

Then she held out her hand. Palm up. The way my father had held his out across the solar table.

"May I?" she said.

Iselle took her hands away from her face. Her eyes were wet. She looked at Carol's open hand.

"Yes," she said.

Carol took her hand. Very gently.

"I can hold a river," said Carol.

Iselle stared at her.

"I didn't know that, until a few days ago," said Carol. "I knew I'd kept something, this autumn. On the Ilvane. When his hand came down the water and closed on mine, and I couldn't make it let go. I kept his holding. I've been so frightened of it." She glanced at me. "Garrick told me a story. About a river god who stood on a bridge and held a whole river up in his two hands. Not to keep anybody. To hold it open. So everyone else could get across." She looked back at Iselle. "Brannoc says there are two kinds of holding. The kind that keeps, and the kind that holds a door open. I've only ever been afraid of the first kind. I didn't know I was allowed the second."

Iselle didn't say anything. She was holding on to Carol's hand very tightly.

"If he ever goes to your mother's river," said Carol, "and tries to take it back, or close his hand on it, or ask her for something she can't say no to..." She paused. "I'll go too. With Father. And I'll hold the river. Not for him. Not for me. For her. I'll hold it open, so that it goes on running past her window, and turning her mill, and keeping time for her loom, no matter what he does at the other end." Her voice was very steady. "That's the kind I'm going to be. I decided. Last week. On the end of my bed, when Garrick told me about the bridge."

Iselle looked at her for a long time.

"You'd do that," she said. "For my mother. Who you've never met."

"I've heard her sing," said Carol simply. "Through the seeds. In the autumn. She was at her loom, with the shutter open, singing about a girl who married the wrong boy." She smiled a little. "She sounded like someone worth holding a river open for."

* * *

Iselle sealed the report that night, at the scrubbed table in the little kitchen, with all of us there.

She used plain gray wax from Mary's drawer, and pressed it with her thumb, the way she always does, the small whorls of her own skin. No Who Holds mark. No closed hand. She'd stopped writing that before her name the night Teo was buried, and she didn't start again now.

But before she sealed it, she took the pen from my father's hand, and turned the page over to the front, where the three silver questions were. And at the very bottom, underneath her careful, empty, truthful answers about fish soup and Master Ashby and people who wanted to go home and find the door still there, she wrote one more line. In Kethran. Very small.

She didn't translate it. She didn't show it to us. She blotted it, and folded the page, and sealed it, and gave it to my father to keep until the dark of the moon, when Benjamin would blow the shell and Selvane would come.

It was Roderic who asked. Later. On the stairs, when she was going up to bed, and he was standing at the bottom.

"What did you write?" he said. "At the end. You don't have to tell me. You can say no."

Iselle stopped on the stair, three steps above him, with her hand on the wall and the blue scarf still wound around her neck. She looked down at him for a long moment.

"I wrote, I am well," she said.

Roderic looked up at her.

"Is it true?" he said.

Iselle thought about it. I watched her think about it. I watched her stand on the stair with her hand on the wall and actually think, the way you think about a question nobody has ever asked you before, and you have to go and look for the answer somewhere you've never looked.

"Yes," she said, sounding surprised. "Yes. It's true."

And she went on up the stairs.

Roderic stood at the bottom for a long time after she'd gone. Then he took the red apple out of his coat pocket, the one Wren Fennick had given him in the orchard, and looked at it, and put it carefully back.

"Not yet," he said, to nobody. "Not yet."