The Greykeep Chronicles

Marra was sitting in one of the four chairs with her back to the open window and her hands in her lap. She’d changed out of Caitlin’s blue dress into something plain and gray of Helena’s, too big for her, with the sleeves turned back twice. She looked very small. She looked up as we came in, and her eyes went straight to me.

There were only four chairs. My father didn’t take one. He never does. Carol and Seraphina sat. I sat beside Marra, where she could see my face and I could see her hands. My father stood behind Seraphina’s chair, with one hand on its back.

”Before you tell us,” he said to Marra. Gently. ”There’s something in this house. Something some of us know, and some of us chose not to. Iselle chose not to. So did others.” He paused. ”If you tell us the end of the saying, you’ll see our faces when you do. And you’re not a fool. You’ll work it out. So you should get to choose first. Whether you want to know. You can say no.”

I signed it for her. Slowly. Every word.

Marra looked at my father for a long time.

Then her hands moved. And I said it out loud, the way she’d asked me to in the gate square, so that she could hear her own words in someone’s voice.

”She says: I kept seven names for eight years, with my fingers inside my sleeve, in a palace where nobody says anything. I can keep one more.”

Her hands went on.

”She says: And I can’t tell anybody anything anyway. I swore my voice to him. All I can ever say out loud is Kessavel’s name.” I swallowed. ”She says: That makes me the safest place in the world to keep a secret.”

My father’s mouth moved, very slightly, at one corner.

”That,” he said, ”is very sensible.”

”I hate it,” said Seraphina. And then she leaned forward in her chair and took both of Marra’s hands in hers.

* * *

I don’t remember who told her. I think it was Seraphina. I think she just said it, plainly, the way she says everything that matters: that she carries the First Flame, and that I hold a gift of the gods, and that we were joined, and that there’s a little boy asleep downstairs with a flame on his blanket that doesn’t want anything and isn’t half of anything at all.

I signed it. My hands were shaking.

Marra didn’t move for a long time.

Then her eyes filled. And she pulled her hands out of Seraphina’s, very gently, and turned them over, palm up, open, in her lap. And looked down at them. And her hands said, so small I almost missed it:

Oh. Oh, the poor little thing.

And then:

It’s worse than you think.

* * *

She told it the way she’d seen it. That’s what Marra does. She doesn’t summarize; she tells it in order, so you can see what she saw. And I said it out loud, after her, line by line, so the others could follow.

The Temple of Oaths is at the bottom of the city. Under it. You go down a long way. There’s no light except the brazier. There’s a black stone in the floor in front of the first link, flat, about as big as a door lying down. You kneel on it. You put your face down on it. Your forehead on the cold. And you say the oath into the stone.

The words are carved all over the stone. Around and around, from the outside in. Like a snail shell. Very old letters. The scribe’s hand. Most of us couldn’t read the old hand. I could, a bit, because Corrick made me learn it for the mill ledgers. And my face was down on it. And I was twelve, and I was crying, and I didn’t want to think about what I was saying. So I read it.

I started at the outside edge, where my left hand was. And I went around. And the beginning was the saying. The one my mother’s friends sang at the looms. The one Saba sang today.

And then it went on.

* * *

She stopped. Her hands lay still in her lap.

Then she lifted them, and made the shapes very slowly and very clearly, one at a time, so I could not possibly get a single one wrong.

And I said it.

* * *

When the one who holds a gift of the gods

is joined to the flame that was first,

the half shall be made whole.

And the hand that holds it shall open;

and the one who will not knock

shall find no door.

* * *

Nobody said anything.

The wind came in through the open east window and moved the lamp flame, and the shadows of the four chairs went around the walls and came back.

And the one who will not knock shall find no door.

* * *

”Say it again,” said my father.

I said it again. All six lines. Marra’s hands moved with my voice, a half beat ahead, like someone singing along to make sure you’ve got the tune.

My father let go of the back of Seraphina’s chair.