Chapter 76: Iselle's Confession

I wasn't there for this.

I want to say that first, because everything else in these pages I saw with my own eyes, or heard from my father's mouth, or read in Mary's black book. This I didn't. I know it because, a long time afterward, Roderic told me, and then Iselle told me again, more slowly, and corrected him in three places. And then she said, "You can write it down, Garrick. If you put it in properly. If you don't make me sound braver than I was."

So I've tried. I don't think I've managed the last part. I don't think it's possible.

* * *

The page came on a Tuesday, eleven days after Edric sat on the harbor wall with Bram Halloran.

It came the ordinary way. That was the first wrong thing about it. The season reports had always come through Severin, and then through Selvane, at the dark of the moon, inside Malachar's own black letters. They came four times a year, at midwinter and midsummer and the two equinoxes, and never once at any other time. Iselle could have told you, to the day, when the next one was due. The spring equinox. Five weeks off.

This came in the college post. On a Tuesday. In a plain brown wrapper with a Westmere grain-ship stamp on it, that the porter at the east range handed her at breakfast along with a bill from the bookbinder and a note from Caitlin about a lecture.

She knew what it was before she'd opened it. She said her hand knew. It closed on the wrapper by itself, so hard the paper tore.

She didn't open it in the refectory. She took it up to her room at the top of the east range, and shut the door, and sat on her bed with her back to the wall, facing the tall east window, the one she'd asked for so she could see the weather coming. And she opened her right hand on purpose, one finger at a time, the way she practices, and unwrapped it.

A black page. Heavy. Cold to the touch, the way they always are.

But no questions on it.

Just one line, in silver. In his own small, heavy, pressed hand, the hand that writes as if it means the words to go all the way through the paper and into the table underneath.

It is time, little sister. This is what you are for.

* * *

She sat with it for an hour, she said. Just looking at it.

She'd been waiting for that line for nine years. Since the day she was twelve, and Severin took her away from her mother's loom, and her brother leaned down to her in a room with a painted ceiling and no windows and said, Go with Severin, little sister. Learn what they'll teach you. I'll tell you the rest when it's time.

She'd thought about it every day. What she was for. She'd lain awake in the golden city wondering. She'd lain awake in the guest room in the east wing at Greykeep, the first week, with Carol's frosted window across the court, wondering. She'd thought, at first, that it would be something terrible. Then, as the months went by, and the season reports came and went with their three questions and nothing else, she'd started to hope it might be nothing. That he'd forgotten. That she was one of the things on his shelf he'd put there and never taken down again.

It is time.

And then, she said, while she was looking at it, the ink moved.

Not the silver line. That stayed where it was. But under it, in the blank black space, very slowly, a second line came up out of the paper. Wet. Shining. As if someone very far away was writing it right now, and she was watching it arrive.

Where is she tonight?

* * *

Iselle knew who she was. She didn't need a name. Nobody in the world needed a name for that.

She sat on her bed and watched the wet line dry.

She didn't write anything. She said she didn't even think about writing anything. She just sat there, with the page on her knees and her hand closed again, so hard her nails left marks, and watched the light come and go across the orchard in her tall window until it was dark.

At nine o'clock, the ink moved again.

You need only write where. Each night. That is all. It is very small.

At midnight:

You lied to me once. I forgave it. I know it was hard for you there.

At four in the morning, when she still hadn't slept, and the page was still on her knees because she couldn't make herself put it down:

The Ilvane is low this week. Your mother will have noticed. She sings slower when the mill is slow.

That was the one that broke something, she said.

Not because it was a threat. Because it was true. She'd forgotten it. Her mother sings at the loom, always, the old valley songs with too many verses, and she keeps time to the mill wheel through the floor. When the river's full and the wheel turns fast, the songs go quick and bright, and the shuttle flies. When the river's low, the wheel drags, and the songs slow down to match, and her mother never notices she's doing it. Iselle used to sit under the loom when she was small and tell the weather by the singing.

She'd never told anyone that. Not Roderic. Not Carol. Not Severin.

She'd never written it on a black page in her life.

Which meant he'd been listening to her mother sing.

* * *

She didn't go to breakfast.

She didn't go to lectures. Master Ashby marked her absent and wrote again beside it, which he had no right to do, because she'd never once missed a lecture before. Caitlin came up at noon and knocked and called through the door, and Iselle said she had a headache, which was true, and Caitlin went away, which was kind. Caitlin has learned a great deal this winter.

At four o'clock, Roderic came to the bench.

He comes every day. He has for months. The bench under the old armory wall that gets the sun at four, where she sits with a book, and he sits at the other end, and sometimes they talk and sometimes they don't. He brings nothing. That's the rule he made for himself, after the poem and the lute and the horse in the fountain. Nothing in his hands. Nothing she's supposed to be grateful for.

She wasn't on the bench.

He waited until five. Then he went up the east range stairs, all of them, to the top, and stood outside her door.

He didn't knock straight away. He told me that. He stood outside it for a long time, with his hand up, not knocking. Because he could hear her. Not crying. Just breathing. The careful, too-even breathing of somebody who's holding very still.

He knocked three times. The way I'd taught him. The way Loki does. So the person inside knows it's someone who'll wait.

"It's Roderic," he said through the door. "I'm not going to come in. I just want to know if you're all right. You can say no. You can say go away. I'll go."

There was a very long silence.

Then Iselle said, through the door, "I'm not all right."

"All right," said Roderic.

"Will you stay?"

"Yes."

"Out there," said Iselle. "Not in here. I can't... I don't want you to see it yet. But will you sit outside? Just there. Where I can hear you."

So Roderic sat down on the floor of the corridor at the top of the east range, with his back against her door, and stayed.

* * *

He sat there for three hours.

He didn't talk much. He told her about his day, which had been boring. He told her the refectory had fish soup again and somebody had stirred it. He told her Faelan had asked him his favorite thing that morning, for the ledger, and he'd said the bench at four without thinking, and then gone red, and Faelan had written it down very seriously and said, "Is that a place or a time?" and Roderic had said, "Both."

On the other side of the door, Iselle laughed. Once. Small and cracked.

Then she was quiet again.

At eight o'clock, she said, very low, so he had to put his ear against the wood:

"Roderic. Can I tell you something? And can you not tell anybody? Not yet?"

He told me he thought about that for a long time. Longer than he'd ever thought about anything. Because he knew, sitting there, that whatever she said next, he might not be able to keep it. And he knew that if he said yes and then didn't keep it, he'd be one more person who'd made her a promise to get something out of her.

So he told her that.

"I don't know," he said. "I want to say yes. But I don't know what it is. And if it's something that hurts you, or hurts Carol, I don't know if I can sit on it." He put his hand flat on the door. "I'm sorry. That's the true answer. I'd rather give you the true one than the one you want."

Another very long silence.

Then the door opened.

* * *

She showed him the page.

She didn't let him touch it. She held it up, with both hands, at the edges, so he could read it from where he stood in the doorway. The silver line at the top. And the wet lines under it, all of them, all the ones that had come up out of the paper in the night. And three more that had come that day, while she'd sat on her bed not answering.

Only where. Not why. Not with whom.

You were made for this. You need not be ashamed.

She would go to the river, you know, if she heard. She promised you. Has she told you that? She would come all that way to hold it open. Alone. For you.

Roderic read the last one twice.

Then he looked at Iselle, and said, very slowly, "He wants Carol at the river."

"Yes."

"It's not the river he wants. It's never been the river." He looked at the page again. "He's going to let the river go low. A little lower every week. And he's going to make sure Carol hears about it. And Carol promised, in the little kitchen, in front of all of us. If he goes to Saba's river, I'll go with Uriah and hold it open." His voice had gone very quiet. "And he wants to know where she is every night so he'll know the moment she leaves Greykeep."

Iselle nodded. Her hand was closed so tightly around the edge of the page that it had bent.

"That's what I'm for," she said. "That's what I've been for since I was twelve. The season reports were only practice. Teaching me to write to him. Teaching me it was safe." She laughed again, the cracked laugh. "Whom have you met. What do they want. So that one day I'd be here, in this room, with someone I..." She stopped. "With people I care about. And he'd say it's time, and I'd already know how."

* * *

Roderic said he wanted, very badly, to do something.

Run down the stairs. Fold to Greykeep. Get my father. Get Carol. Get Seraphina to burn the page to ash in her hand. Get Thor. Get anybody. He said every part of him wanted to go and do something, because that's what he's always done when somebody he loves is frightened. He fixes it. He brings a poem or a lute or a horse with biscuits. He fixes it whether they've asked him to or not.

He didn't.

He stood in the doorway, and he put his hands in his coat pockets so he wouldn't reach for her or for the page, and he asked the only question that mattered.

"What do you want to do?"

Iselle looked at him.

And then she put the page down. On the bed. Face down. And she sat down beside it, and she started to cry. Not the careful kind. The real kind. The kind she told me afterward she hadn't let herself do since she was twelve, in a room with a painted ceiling, the night she understood she wasn't going home.

Roderic didn't move from the doorway.

"Can I come in?" he said.

"Yes."

He came in, and sat on the floor by the bed, lower than her, the way my father does. He didn't touch her. After a while, she put her hand down. Her right hand. Closed. And held it out to him.

He didn't take it. He waited.

And Iselle opened it. On purpose. Slowly. One finger at a time.

And then he took it.

* * *

It was nearly midnight before she could say what she wanted.

"I want to tell Uriah," she said. "I promised him I would. In the little kitchen. Somewhere to go. Someone to tell. Before I answer him. I meant it." She wiped her face with her other hand. "But I can't. Not yet. Not tonight."

"Why not?"

"Because Carol will be there." Iselle looked at him. "She's always there. In the little kitchen, at night, with her chin on her knees. Or Garrick will be, and Garrick can't keep anything from her, they're..." She made a shape with her hands, two halves of one thing. "And the moment Carol hears that my mother's river is going low, she'll go. You know she will. She promised. She doesn't break promises. She'll go to the Ilvane, and she'll stand in it, and she'll hold it open with her own two hands, and he'll be waiting." Her hand tightened on Roderic's. "And it'll be because of me. Because I told."

"It won't be because of you."

"It'll feel like it."

Roderic didn't argue with that. He told me he couldn't. It was true.

"So what do you want?" he said again. Gently.

"Three days," said Iselle. "Give me three days. Don't tell anyone for three days. Not Garrick. Not your mother. Not anyone." She looked at the page on the bed, face down. "I need to think how to tell them so that Carol doesn't go. There has to be a way. I just need to think. And I can't think when I'm frightened, and I can't stop being frightened until I know he can't..." She stopped. "Three days. Please."

Roderic looked at her for a long time.

"And the page?" he said. "What are you going to do when it asks again tonight?"

"Nothing," said Iselle. "I'm not going to answer it. Not one word. Not the truth and not a lie." She lifted her chin. "He can ask all night. A door nobody answers stays shut. Uriah said that."

"He did."

"And you'll stay? Tonight?" Her face went pink. "Not... I mean. In the chair. By the window. So I can sleep. I haven't slept."

"Yes," said Roderic. "I'll stay in the chair."

"And the three days?"

He was quiet for a very long time.

"I'll try," he said at last. "That's all I can promise. I'll try. And if I can't, I'll tell you first. Before I tell anyone else. To your face. I won't go behind you."

Iselle looked at him.

"That's the true answer, isn't it," she said. "Not the one I want."

"Yes."

"Thank you," said Iselle. "For giving me that one."

* * *

She slept. He said she was asleep in about four minutes, curled up on top of the blankets with her shoes still on and her right hand open on the pillow. He sat in the chair by the tall east window and watched the orchard go silver under the moon.

The page lay face down on the end of the bed.

At two in the morning, he said, he heard it. A very small sound. Like a pen moving on paper, in a room very far away.

He didn't turn it over. He didn't want to know.

But in the morning, when she woke up and turned it over herself, there was only one new line. Not wet anymore. Dry, and a little smaller than the others, as if the hand that wrote it had been tired.

I can wait, little sister. I have always been able to wait.

Iselle read it. Then she folded the page in half, and in half again, very small, the way Faelan folded the page he tore out of his ledger. And she put it in the drawer of her desk, under the gray horse with the white blaze that Grandpa had carved for her, and shut the drawer.

"He can wait in there," she said.

* * *

Roderic walked her to breakfast. The refectory. Fish soup, which someone had stirred. He sat across from her and didn't talk, and she ate all of it, which she hadn't done in two days.

Then he went to his lecture, and she went to hers, and Master Ashby crossed out again in his register without being asked.

And Roderic carried it.

All that day. And the next. He told me it was the heaviest thing he'd ever carried, and he'd once carried Grandpa's whole basket of wooden horses up all hundred and forty steps of the north tower for a bet. He came home through the Concordia gate in the evenings and ate his supper in the little kitchen across the table from Carol, who was shelling peas, and laughing at something Ignatius said, and asking Helena whether the blackbird had come back to the pear tree yet. And he didn't say anything. And it sat in his chest like a stone.

On the second night, he couldn't eat.

Helena noticed. Of course she did. She put a fifth piece of toast on his plate anyway, and stood beside him for a moment, with her hand on the back of his chair, and didn't ask. And then she went back to the stove.

On the third night, a little after midnight, he came up the east stair to my rooms.