Chapter 35: Who Opened the Archive

Captain Hesk found us on the bench outside the Ember Room at eight.

Merrit Hesk has been captain of the palace guard in Concordia since before Seraphina was born. He's a short, square, gray-whiskered man with a voice like a door being kicked shut, and he is the only person I know who calls Lexander Your Majesty and makes it sound like a complaint. When we were children, he used to chase the four of us out of the palace kitchens with a wooden spoon. He never caught us. I've always suspected he never tried very hard.

He wasn't holding a spoon that morning. He was holding a slate, with chalk marks on it, and he looked as if he'd been up all night too.

"Prince Ignatius. Prince Garrick." He nodded to us both. "His Majesty wants you. Upstairs. We've got a witness."

Ignatius stood up. "Who?"

"Kitchen boy. Tam. Eleven years old. Runs the slops down to the cellar drains every night at half past eight, down the old stair past this door." Hesk looked at his slate. "He says he passed someone on the stair last night. Coming up from here. Half past eight, give or take. About a quarter of an hour before the bell."

"Someone," I said.

Hesk looked at me for a moment. Then he looked back at the slate, the way a man does when he'd rather not be the one to say a thing.

"A young woman," he said. "Not palace. He didn't know her face. Gray dress. Dark hair, pinned up." He paused. "And an orange scarf. A very bright one, he says. Knitted. Uneven. The kind of orange you'd notice in the dark."

Neither of us said anything.

There is exactly one orange scarf like that in Concordia. Everyone at the college knows it. Caitlin knitted it the winter she was fourteen, out of the cheapest wool in the lower market, with a pattern she'd made up herself and got wrong three times, and it's been trying to find a home ever since. Since the first week of term, it's had one.

"Did he speak to her?" said Ignatius. His voice was very quiet.

"She spoke to him." Hesk turned the slate over. "Said excuse me, and stood aside so he could pass with the bucket. Polite. Foreign, he thinks. Long vowels." He looked up. "He remembered because nobody ever stands aside for the slops boy."

* * *

Lexander was in the small council room off the throne hall, with Io and my father, and the gray wax on its handkerchief in the middle of the table between them. Father had found his boots. Somebody had found him a shirt. He still had the frost hammer, leaning against his chair, and the windows of the small council room were white at the edges.

They'd heard about the scarf already. I could see it in their faces.

"It's not her," I said, before anyone could speak.

Lexander looked at me with his one eye for a long moment.

"I'd like that to be true," he said. "I'd like it very much. I like the girl. Io likes the girl. She's the first student from across the sea in four hundred years and she asked for a window that faces the sunrise." He put one finger on the handkerchief and slid it a little way toward me. "But she seals her letters home with gray wax, Garrick. Plain gray wax, with her thumb. Severin taught her. It's what common people do in Kethra, apparently, people who aren't allowed seals. The college porter's seen her do it at his desk twice a week since term started." He took his finger away. "And she was seen on the stair to the Ember Room fifteen minutes before it burned, wearing the only orange scarf in the city."

"Someone could have taken the scarf."

"Someone could." Lexander nodded. "And someone could have taken her wax. And someone could have learned to say excuse me with long vowels. All of that could be true." He leaned back. "And I'd still have to ask her where she was last night. I'm a king, Garrick. I can't not ask."

"Then let me ask her," I said.

He raised his eyebrow.

"Before Captain Hesk does. Before anyone puts a guard on her door." I could hear my own voice getting faster. "She's been asked for her whole life. By him. By Severin. By people who already knew what answer they wanted. She came here because Father told her that in this house, people ask properly. If the first thing that happens after a fire is six men in red coats coming up her stair..."

"Garrick," said my father quietly.

I stopped.

He was looking at me across the table, with his hands folded on it and the frost on the window behind him. He didn't look angry. He looked the way he looks when he's about to say a thing that's been true for a long time.

"Name," he said. "Want. Permission." He held my eyes. "Rysa didn't put trust in there. Did you ever notice that? She didn't put believe. She put ask. Asking isn't the same as deciding someone's innocent before you've heard them. Asking means you're ready to hear whatever they say." He paused. "Even the things you don't want to hear."

I didn't answer.

"Go," said Father. "Ask her. Properly. Take Ignatius." He looked at Lexander, and something passed between them, the way it does between people who've sat in the same small boat for twenty years. "And then come back and tell us exactly what she said. Every word. Not what you hoped she'd say."

Lexander nodded slowly.

"One hour," he said. "Then Hesk goes up the stair."

* * *

Iselle was in her room under the eaves of the east range, with the window open on the orchard and the morning sun coming straight in, and Caitlin sitting on the end of her bed with the blue book in her lap.

They'd both been crying. I could see it. Not recently. Earlier, and then stopped, the way you stop when you've decided crying isn't going to help. The whole college knew about the fire. Concordia's bell had woken every student in the square. And by breakfast, Caitlin told me later, the whole refectory had known whose scarf the kitchen boy had seen on the stair. News goes through a college like water through sand.

Iselle stood up when we came in. She was very pale, and very straight, and her hands were folded in front of her.

"You've come to ask me," she said.

"Yes," I said. "If you'll let me."

She looked at me for a long moment. Then at Ignatius, in the doorway behind me, with his gray-streaked sleeves. Then back at me.

"Ask," she said.

So I did. I sat down on the chair by her desk, so I wouldn't be standing over her, and I asked. Properly. The way Rysa taught me. Not did you. Not why did you. Just where.

"Where were you last night, Iselle? Between eight and nine?"

"At the harbor," she said. "At the Kethran house."

Ignatius made a small sound in the doorway.

"The merchants' house," said Iselle. Her voice was very steady. "The one by the salt steps, with the green-and-white pennant. Where Severin's factor lives, for the council. Master Ostel. I go there twice a week, after supper." She swallowed. "It's where I send my letters. To my mother. They go on the grain ships. It's the only way they can go."

"Did anyone see you there?"

"Master Ostel. His two clerks. The man who keeps the door." She looked down at her hands. "I wrote my letter at their table, the way I always do, and I sealed it, and I signed their book. They keep a book. Every letter that goes, who sent it, and where. And then I walked back. Up the hill. Alone." She paused. "I got back to the porter's gate just after the bell started. He'll tell you. He wrote me in. He always writes me in."

"What time did you leave the harbor?"

"Half past eight." She lifted her chin. "I know what you're thinking. Half past eight. That's when the boy says he saw me. On the stair." She shook her head. "I wasn't on any stair. I was on the hill. The harbor road comes up past the palace, on the east side. Under the old wall. It goes right past the kitchen gate." She looked at me. "I could have been there. I know. I walked right past it. That's what makes it so easy."

Nobody said anything.

"Your wax," said Ignatius quietly, from the door. "The gray wax. Do you still have it?"

Iselle turned and went to her desk and opened the drawer and took it out. A short stick of plain gray wax, worn down at one end, wrapped in a twist of paper. She held it out on her palm.

"Severin gave me three sticks," she said. "When I came. He said a girl from the Ilvane shouldn't use a seal, because people in the valley would think she was putting on airs. He said use your thumb, the way your mother does." Her mouth twisted. "I've used one and a half. This is the second. The third..." She stopped.

"The third?"

"I don't know where it is." Her voice had gone very quiet. "It was in the drawer. With this one. Last week. I noticed it was gone four days ago. I thought I'd dropped it. I thought Caitlin had borrowed it to seal something."

"I didn't," said Caitlin, from the bed. Very low.

"I know you didn't." Iselle closed her hand around the wax. "I know."

* * *

"And the scarf," I said.

Iselle looked at Caitlin. Caitlin looked at the floor.

"I lost it," said Iselle. "Two days ago. At the bench. The one that gets the sun." Something moved across her face. "The afternoon Roderic came and sat down. I had it on when he came, and I must have taken it off while we talked, because it was warm, and I put it on the bench beside me. And then the porter rang the bell and we got up and I forgot it." She closed her eyes. "I went back for it in the morning. It was gone. I thought somebody had picked it up. I thought somebody would hand it in. Nobody did."

"She told me," said Caitlin. "The next day. She was so upset about it. She thought I'd be angry." Caitlin's voice cracked. "It's a terrible scarf, Iselle. I'm not angry. I'd have been glad. I'd have knitted you a better one."

"I liked that one," said Iselle.

I looked at Ignatius. He was looking at me.

Two days ago. A scarf left on a bench, in the corner of the square, while a prince and an emperor's sister sat beside it in the sun and talked about fish soup for three hours, and the whole college watched them do it.

A wax stick gone from a drawer.

A road that goes right past the kitchen gate.

"Iselle," I said. "Who knew? About the letters. About the harbor, and the merchants' house, twice a week after supper. Who knew you'd be walking up that hill alone at half past eight?"

She looked at me for a long time.

"Everyone," she said. "Everyone at the Kethran house. Everyone at the college. Everyone who's ever watched me walk out of the porter's gate with a letter in my hand." She shook her head slowly. "I'm the easiest door there is, Garrick. Aurelia said so. You said so. I said so myself. He sent me here because I'm the easiest door." Her voice didn't waver at all. "So of course it's me. Who else would it be?"

* * *

Caitlin hadn't said anything for a while. She was sitting very still on the end of the bed, with her blue book closed in her lap and both hands flat on the cover, and she wasn't looking at Iselle.

I knew that look. I've known it since she was six. It's the look she gets in Mary's office, at her little desk, when a ledger doesn't add up. When she's found a mistake, and she doesn't know yet whether it's a mistake in the book or a mistake in her.

"Cait?" I said.

She didn't look up.

"I believe you," she said to Iselle. Very quietly. "I want you to know that. I believe you."

"But," said Iselle.

Caitlin closed her eyes.

"But I haven't got any sources," she said. "I've got your word. And I've got the porter's book. And I've got a kitchen boy who saw an orange scarf. And they don't agree." She opened her eyes and looked at Iselle, and her face was miserable. "I believe you. But believing isn't the same as knowing. And I don't know yet. And I won't say I know when I don't. Not even for you." Her voice dropped to almost nothing. "Especially not for you. Because if I say it and I'm wrong, then nobody will ever believe me again when I say it and I'm right."

Iselle looked at her for a long moment.

Then, to my astonishment, she smiled. Just a little.

"Good," she said. "That's why Io picked you."

* * *

We had forty minutes left of Lexander's hour. Ignatius and I spent them going down the hill.

The Kethran merchants' house stands at the bottom of the salt steps in Concordia's harbor quarter, on a narrow lane between a rope-walk and a chandler's. It's a plain, narrow, three-storied house of gray stone, with a green door and a green-and-white pennant hanging limp from a pole over the step. Before the trade agreement it was a sailmaker's. Now it's where Severin's factor lives, for the joint merchants' council, with two clerks and a servant and a great many ledgers.

The servant opened the door.

He was a man of perhaps forty, thin, quiet, very neat, in a plain gray coat buttoned to the throat and long gray sleeves that came down over his hands. He had the sort of face you forget while you're still looking at it. Not handsome. Not plain. Just there. He looked at the two of us on the step, a prince of Concordia with ash on his sleeves and a prince of Greykeep with frost-burned hands, and his face didn't change at all.

"Master Ostel is at his breakfast," he said. Long vowels. Soft consonants. "Will you come in?"

"Thank you," I said. "What's your name?"

He looked at me. A very short look.

"Odo," he said. "I keep the door."

He stood aside to let us pass. He didn't touch us. He didn't offer to take our coats. He just stood very still against the wall of the narrow hall, the way a coat-stand stands, and when we were past him he closed the door without a sound and went somewhere I didn't see him go.

* * *

Master Tellan Ostel was old and round and kind, with spectacles on a ribbon and crumbs on his waistcoat, and he was so horrified by the news of the fire that he knocked over his tea.

"The Ember Room?" he said. "Burned? But that's... oh, Your Highness, that's the Dinar collection. Four hundred years. Scholars in Kethra used to dream about that room." He pressed his napkin to the spilled tea with shaking hands. "Who would do such a thing? Who would dare?"

I told him who had been seen on the stair.

He went very still.

"Iselle," he said. "Little Iselle? Saba's girl?" He shook his head. "No. No, Your Highness, she was here. She was here last night. At this table." He put his hand flat on the polished wood. "She sat just there, where you're sitting, and wrote to her mother, the way she always does. Sabin. Sabin! Bring the letter-book."

One of the clerks came out of the back room with a long narrow ledger bound in green cloth and laid it on the table. Master Ostel turned the pages with trembling fingers and found the place and turned it around for me to see.

It was all in Kethran. Columns of it. Neat, careful, clerkly script, running the right way around, the way Caitlin's primer runs. I took out the folded sheet from my coat pocket, Caitlin's fair-copy alphabet, which I'd carried every day since the morning after the Castellan, and laid it beside the page, and found my way down the columns one letter at a time.

Dates. Names. Destinations. Clerk Callo, to the golden city, three letters, sealed.Factor Ostel, to the Ministry of Granaries, one, sealed.

And, near the bottom of last night's page:

Iselle, daughter of Saba. To the Ilvane, by the mill. One letter. Sealed by hand.

And beside it, in a different hand, smaller and a little uneven, her own signature, the way they made her sign it every time. Her name, in Kethran letters.

Before her name, there was a mark. A long hook, a double kink, a short hard stroke.

Who Holds.

I looked at it for a long moment. Every child in Kethra writes it before their own name. Fifty times at the kitchen table. Before anyone will let them write Iselle. She'd written it here without thinking, the way you'd write the date.

"She left at half past eight," said Master Ostel. "I remember because the clock on the rope-walk struck the half as she went out. Odo saw her to the step. Didn't you, Odo?"

I hadn't heard him come back in. He was standing in the doorway of the back room, against the frame, with his long gray sleeves over his hands.

"Half past eight," he said. "To the step. She went up the hill. Alone." His voice had no color in it at all. "I watched her as far as the turn."

"There, you see?" said Master Ostel. "Half past eight. On the hill." His face fell as he heard himself. "Oh. Oh, dear. That's... that isn't..."

"No," said Ignatius quietly. "It isn't."

* * *

"Her letter," I said. "Last night's. Has it gone?"

Master Ostel shook his head. "The grain ship sails on the evening tide. All of last night's letters are in the basket, waiting." He gestured at a flat wicker basket on the sideboard, with five or six folded letters in it, each sealed. On top, a small square letter, sealed with a blot of plain gray wax and the whorls of a small bare thumb.

He followed my eyes.

"You may open it, Your Highness," he said unhappily. "If it would help her. I wouldn't stop you. Not in a matter like this."

I looked at the letter for a long time. A girl's letter to her mother. Written at this table last night, about fish soup, probably, and the refectory, and a prince who sat down on her bench with nothing in his hands. Sealed with her thumb, so it would go across the sea and up a river to a back window over a mill race, and a woman at a loom would know nobody else had read it.

"No," I said. "It isn't mine. She didn't give it to me."

Master Ostel looked at me over his spectacles for a long moment. Then he smiled. It was a sad smile.

"They told me," he said, "that in Greykeep they ask first. I didn't believe it. Nobody in Kethra believes it." He put the green ledger under his arm. "May I keep the book, Your Highness? Or will His Majesty want it?"

"He'll want it," said Ignatius. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Master Ostel handed it over. "It's a true book. It'll tell the truth to anyone who reads it."

* * *

Odo saw us out.

He stood against the wall of the narrow hall while we passed, the way he'd stood when we came in, with his hands inside his long gray sleeves. He didn't say anything. At the door I stopped, and turned, and held out my hand to him, the way Father taught me to do with anyone who has kept a door for me.

"Thank you, Odo," I said.

He looked at my hand. For a moment I didn't think he'd take it.

Then he did. Very briefly. One cold, dry, careful touch, and gone, back into his sleeve.

His fingers were like ice. Not Carol's ice. Not Father's. The other kind. The kind that had come down the Ilvane and touched my sister's hand without asking.

I didn't let my face do anything. I don't think it did. Odo closed the green door behind us without a sound.

* * *

We were halfway up the hill, with the green ledger under Ignatius's arm and the salt steps behind us, when we heard the bell.

Not the fire bell. The small one. The bell over the college gate, that the porter rings for the start of lectures and the end of the day, and for nothing else.

It was ringing out of time.

Ignatius stopped. I stopped. We looked up the hill, past the palace and the old wall and the kitchen gate, to where the long low ranges of the college stood at the far side of the parade ground with the fruit trees showing over the walls.

Six men in red coats were going in under the arch with the worn-away swords.

"That's not an hour," said Ignatius.

"No," I said. "Someone else talked to Lexander."

And we ran.