Chapter 319: Her Masking Is Failing

Kael looked at the bowl.

Carrick’s face looked back at him, smiling, waiting. Beyond it, in the dark water, he thought he saw a shape like a girl in a red gown, standing very straight in a vast white hall, with her chin lifted.

"Then she’ll hate me," he said, in a small voice.

"She may," said Ormund, gently. "At first. And then she’ll understand."

Kael said nothing.

He thought of a woman’s hands, long ago, folding a letter he had written and never sent. He thought of a block of pearwood on a windowsill. He thought of a voice in the dark saying, what is it for? and his own, absurdly sure of itself, answering, she’ll have it when she’s older.

He bowed his head.

"Yes, Your Grace," he said.

It was Ormund who turned the conversation back.

"The mask," he said.

"It’s failing," said Carrick, at once. "I felt it myself. I was standing no more than ten paces from her when the high windows cracked. A single pane. There was frost. Nobody remarked on it, but I did."

"How badly?"

"Badly enough to notice. Not enough to worry." Carrick tilted his head. "The old thing did good work. I’ll say that. Even after years, it has barely frayed. But it’s failing now, and quickly. The kings’ dragons are doing it. She’s been used. Bonded. At least two of them, perhaps all three."

A stir went round the table.

"All three?" said one of the grey men, sharply.

"I can’t be certain."

"If all three have bonded...."

"Then the claiming will be soon," said Ormund. "Yes. They said as much in the hall, did they not?"

"The first king said soon. He wouldn’t give a date."

"He won’t." The High Priest’s eyes were thoughtful. "He is clever, that one. Careful. He will make us guess." He tapped one long finger against the table. "But there is a limit to how long he can wait. The mask is failing. When it falls, every creature in the world that has an interest in her will know where she is."

"Including us," said Tavish.

"Including us. Which is why we must be the first to move."

"Move how?" said Kael.

He had not meant to ask. It came out hoarse, and every face turned toward him.

Ormund smiled.

"Gently," he said. "As you wanted."

"And the mother?"

The question came lightly, almost as an afterthought.

Ormund had turned back to the bowl. He asked it with his eyes on the dark water, in the tone a man uses to ask after the weather. But Kael, who had known him for thirty years, felt something in the room shift.

On the other side of the water, Carrick’s smile changed.

"Declining," he said. "On schedule."

Kael’s head came up.

"I’m sorry?"

"The weaver. Elara." Carrick’s voice was perfectly smooth. "She’s been ill for some time. The cough’s worsening. I have it from a man in the village that she hasn’t left her bed in three days."

"Ill," said Kael.

"A weakness of the chest. It happens."

"She was healthy." His voice cracked. "She was always healthy. She was the strongest woman I ever knew. She walked across half the kingdom, pregnant, in winter...."

"Years take their toll, Master Kael."

"Not like that."

"Hard living. Poor food. A cold cottage." Carrick shrugged, lightly. "You can’t expect a woman to stay well, eighteen years in a hovel."

"I don’t...."

"Kael."

Ormund hadn’t turned. He said the name quietly, almost tenderly, and Kael stopped.

"It is a great sorrow," said the High Priest. "To hear that she suffers. I know how you loved her. But you must not reproach yourself. It is the will of heaven, and no one’s fault."

"Is she in pain?" Kael asked.

He hadn’t meant to say it. It came out raw.

Carrick looked at him through the bowl.

"Not yet," he said.

A cold hand closed around Kael’s heart.

It was the way he said it. Smooth. Pleasant. Perfectly reasonable. Not yet. As though pain were a thing that might be put off, or hurried, or brought on at a convenient hour. As though he had said, the roast isn’t quite done.

He looked around the table.

Every other face was blank. Tavish was staring at the water. The two old teachers had their eyes lowered. No one met his gaze. No one asked what it meant. Only Ormund was looking at him, with those pale clear blue eyes, calm and kind and patient as the sky.

"You’re tired," said the High Priest. "You’ve had a long night. Go and rest, Kael. We will speak again in the morning."

"Your Grace...."

"Go."

It was gentle.

It was an order.

Kael bowed. His legs felt strange, as if they didn’t belong to him. He turned, and walked across the white floor, and didn’t look back. Behind him he heard the murmur of low voices, the scrape of a chair, the soft dry sound of Ormund’s robe against the stone. The heavy door swung shut.

He stood on the landing, alone, in the cold.

He did not go to bed.

He climbed the stairs, instead, past the third gallery and the fourth, up to a small round room at the very top of the library. Nobody else used it. It had a narrow window, a narrow cot, and a battered desk, and on the desk, beneath a square of cloth, lay a small thing he had not looked at in years.

He lit a candle.

He drew back the cloth.

It was a block of pearwood, as long as his hand. One end of it had been carved into the beginning of a head: the line of a brow, the curve of a muzzle, one wide horn. The rest was still rough, with the pale marks of the knife in it. Beside it lay a little blade, rusted brown, and a curl of shaving so old it had gone grey.

He had started it the winter before she ran.