Ch. 218 The Name in the Record

Chapter 218: The Name in the Record

The road stayed closed to carts for two days.

Eleanor shored the bank with stone and timber. Aldren made the new channel deeper. Perrin built a railing along the narrowest part, then stood beside it while a wagon crossed at walking pace.

I watched from the watch post.

“How did it do?” I asked when he came back.

“The railing?”

“The road.”

“Both held.”

He sounded disappointed that neither had given him a reason to change his design.

Eliza reopened the bend before noon.

Mary wrote down the time.

We ate lunch with the western watch.

The driver and her son had left that morning. The boy had waved to the Castellan until their cart was out of sight.

Eliza gave me the first report from the reopened road.

“One wagon. Two riders. No trouble.”

“An excellent report.”

“I thought you would like it.”

Melody came in carrying a damp cloak.

“You forgot this.”

“It was hanging to dry.”

“It was hanging outside in the rain.”

Eliza took it.

I looked at the report again.

“One wagon,” I said. “Two riders.”

“If you read it a third time,” Melody told me, “there may be three.”

On our way back, we passed the archive.

Ivara stood just inside its open door with Miren.

Neither had noticed us.

“I can give you the name,” Miren said.

Ivara held a sheet of paper without looking at it.

“You can also decide tomorrow.”

“I have decided.”

Mary came around the corner behind us.

She stopped when she saw their faces.

“Should we come back?” she asked.

Miren turned.

“No. I came to find you.”

We used Mary’s office.

It was too small for five people, but Miren preferred a room with a door she could close.

She sat across from Mary.

Ivara laid the paper on the table.

It was a copy of the old petition.

A woman had asked to leave Othellos’s keeping through Greykeep. Nathaniel had been told she withdrew her request. At the abandoned crossroads house, we had found signs that she had reached the road afterward.

The lines concerning her departure had been altered.

Her name had remained hidden beneath a damaged fold in the surviving copy.

Miren placed a finger beside it.

“Her name was Adela.”

I felt Aurelia go still beside me.

“You knew her?” Aurelia asked.

“I was asked to help her sleep.”

Miren kept her eyes on the paper.

“She had been ill. I remember because the first time I came, she refused my working. She said she needed to stay awake until someone answered her petition.”

“Did you leave her awake?” Evelyn asked.

“Yes.”

Miren glanced at her.

“The next day, I was told she had changed her mind about leaving. I went to see whether she wanted help resting.”

“And?”

“Her room was empty.”

Mary set down her pen.

“Who told you she had changed her mind?”

“A clerk assigned to the hall. His name was Darven.”

Ivara looked up.

“That is the name on the amended record.”

“Do you know where Adela went?” I asked.

“No.”

“Did she have family?”

“A younger brother. I heard her speak of him. She wanted to reach him.”

Miren pressed her hands together.

“I should have asked more. At the time, an empty room meant she had been moved somewhere else. People were moved often.”

“You did ask her what she wanted,” Aurelia said.

“Once.”

Miren looked at her.

“I am telling you what I know. Please don’t make that one good morning stand in for everything that came after.”

Aurelia nodded.

“I won’t.”

Ivara turned the petition so Mary could see it.

“The altered line states that Adela withdrew her request in the presence of the clerk.”

“Only him?” Mary asked.

“Only him.”

“And Nathaniel was told afterward.”

“Yes.”

Mary wrote that down.

Miren watched the pen.

“Will my name go in the account?”

“If you agree to give a statement,” Mary said. “You can read it before you sign. You can also tell us what you remember without signing today.”

“I’ll sign.”

“After you read it.”

Miren gave a tired smile.

“I see why people told me to come here.”

We spent the afternoon with the records.

Miren could describe Adela’s room, the season she had fallen ill, and the words she had used when refusing sleep.

She could not give the date.

Ivara found it in an older schedule of the court’s healers.

Mary copied the line.

Then she asked Miren whether Adela had said why she wanted to leave.

“She wanted to see her brother,” Miren said. “And she wanted no one else to decide when she slept.”

Evelyn looked down at her hands.

I thought of the empty bed in our training room.

Miren had come there to learn how to stop when someone asked.

Adela had asked years ago.

Nathaniel joined us before supper.

He read Miren’s statement slowly.

“I remember the petition,” he said. “I don’t remember her name.”

“It was kept from you,” Ivara replied.

“I still carried the clerk’s answer.”

“You were given a false one,” Mary said.

“We have evidence it was changed. We don’t yet know when he knew.”

Nathaniel placed the paper down.

“Then let us find him.”

Eliza, who had been standing by the door, spoke at once.

“By asking where he is. No one travels alone after a man from the high court.”

“I know,” Nathaniel said.

“I needed to hear you say it.”

“I won’t go without telling you.”

“Good.”

She stepped aside to let a servant bring in lamps.

We did not know whether Darven still served Othellos.

Ivara had seen his name on records from several years later. After that, the copies available to her ended.

“He may be dead,” she said.

“Or gone,” Miren added.

“Or still there,” Mary said.

She listed the places a clerk’s name might have traveled: supply ledgers, letters to other halls, the accounts kept at road stations.

Halen would return before winter. He had offered to carry ordinary letters between trade offices.

“We should ask whether he knows the southern clerks,” Mary said.

I looked at her.

“You’ve already put him to work?”

“I’m considering whether to ask.”

“That sounded very similar to putting him to work.”

“Then you understand how I feel when you pick up Eleanor’s stones.”

I went to find Miren when the account was finished.

She stood in the chapel’s temporary treatment room, folding linen with Liora.

“You don’t have to tell me anything else tonight,” I said.

“I know.”

“Mary will keep the statement safe.”

“I know that too.”

She set a folded cloth on the shelf.

“I had forgotten Adela’s brother until I saw her name.”

“Do you remember where he lived?”

“Only that she called it home. I’m trying to remember the rest.”

Liora put down her own cloth.

“Then take a break.”

Miren looked at the shelves.

“There are six left.”

“They will still be here.”

After a moment, Miren followed her out.

Aurelia was in the adjoining room with Evelyn.

They were speaking to a young woman whose hand had been burned while cooking.

Evelyn had already cleaned and dressed it.

Aurelia waited while the woman flexed her fingers.

“Does that hurt?”

“Less.”

“Would you like me to ease what remains?”

The woman nodded.

Aurelia placed her fingers gently over the bandage.

The working was small.

When it ended, the woman thanked them both and left with instructions to return if the skin grew hot or swollen.

Evelyn caught me watching.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You have an expression.”

“I’ve been told that before.”

Aurelia smiled.

At supper, Mary told the others that we had found Adela’s name.

She did not read Miren’s statement aloud.

Nathaniel had asked for that.

Miren was present and could decide for herself what she wished to say.

She said only that Adela had wanted to reach her brother.

Thesra listened without touching her food.

Maelin sat beside her.

“Did Othellos deny the petition?” Thesra asked.

“We don’t know,” Ivara said.

“Or did someone make certain he never had to?”

“We don’t know that either.”

Thesra nodded.

“I dislike how often that is the answer.”

“So does Mary,” I said.

Mary looked up from her book.

“I write it down so we can change it.”

Later, the twins found the old market weight on Mary’s shelf.

Carol pointed.

“Stone.”

“Yes,” Mary said.

“Mine?”

“No.”

Carol looked to me for a second opinion.

“Mary’s,” I told her.

Garrick held up one of his blocks.

“Trade?”

Mary considered the offer.

“It is a good block.”

He set it on the table beside the stone.

Mary moved the stone farther back on the shelf.

“I cannot trade that one.”

Our son took his block back with good grace.

Carol required more explanation.

Evelyn put the children to bed while I helped Mary carry the day’s papers to the archive.

Ivara waited there.

She placed Miren’s signed statement beside the petition copy.

“Are you sending word to the other gods?” I asked.

“Some already know we are looking into the petition. I will tell them we have found a witness.”

“And Adela’s name?”

“Only when we know how to reach her family without placing them in danger.”

She closed the folder.

For years, a line in a record had claimed Adela had withdrawn her request.

Miren had heard her say what she wanted.

Neither told us where she had gone.

Together, they gave us a place to keep looking.

When I returned to our rooms, Evelyn sat beside the twins’ beds.

Carol held the cloth book open to the little house. Garrick slept with one hand against his boat.

My wife looked up.

“Anything more?”

“Not tonight.”

I sat on the floor beside her.

Carol turned a page.

“Coming home,” she said.

I looked at the stitched doorway.

“Yes,” I told her.

She pressed her palm against it, then settled against Evelyn’s knee.

We stayed until she fell asleep.