The Greykeep Chronicles

My brother Faelan’s ledger always balances.

It’s a green laundry ledger, the kind Helena uses for counting sheets, with two columns on every page and a ruled line down the middle. He took it off her shelf when he was six and never gave it back, and she never asked, which in Helena’s language means it was a present.

On the left of every page, he writes a god’s name, and what they do. On the right, he writes their favorite thing. That’s all. Three questions. What’s your name. What do you do. What’s your favorite thing. There are four hundred and some gods in it now, and a few people who aren’t gods but asked to be put in anyway, like Edric, and Mary, and Grandpa, whose favorite thing is ”the goat song, all the verses, especially the ones I haven’t made up yet.”

And it balances. Every page. Nobody really knows what that means, Faelan included. Aurelia says it’s the half of him that came from my father. Caitlin counts things that can’t be counted. Elenos hears what things are. Faelan keeps accounts that come out even. You can put a god down on one side of his book, and whatever’s true about them on the other, and the two sides will always weigh the same.

Until, on the morning of the third day, Ansel’s page didn’t.

* * *

He brought it to me at breakfast.

He came into the small hall at a quarter past seven, in his nightshirt with a sweater over it, with his hair standing up on one side and the green ledger held flat in both hands the way you’d carry a tray with something hot on it. He put it down next to my porridge, open, and stood beside my chair, and waited.

I looked at it.

Ansel, on the left, in Faelan’s round careful hand from four years ago. He knocks.

And on the right: The moment the third lamp catches.

Except the ink had gone gray.

Not faded. Gray. Gray-blue, like a lamp seen through fog. Every other word on the page was black. Those six were the color of Ansel’s lamp on the first night, when the hollow thing stood in the trough.

”It doesn’t balance,” said Faelan.

I put my spoon down.

”It’s never not balanced,” he said. ”Not once. Not even Loki’s, and Loki’s favorite thing changes every time I ask.” He put one finger on the gray words. ”There’s something on his side. And there’s nothing on the other side. Something heavy.” He looked at me with those enormous serious gray eyes he got from nobody, and the chin he got from our grandfather Roderic. ”You know what it is.”

”Why do you think that?”

”You’ve got your listening face on,” said Faelan. ”Carol says it’s the one where you’re holding something so it doesn’t spill.”

* * *

I sat there with my porridge going cold and thought very hard.

I’d promised. On the stone, at the bottom of the meadow. Don’t tell Faelan. Not yet. And Ansel had asked me to be the one who knew which way he was walking. Not the one who told.

”I know some of it,” I said at last. ”But it isn’t mine to tell. It’s his.”

Faelan considered that. He’s ten. He’s been raised in a house where it isn’t mine to tell is a real answer, and he took it like one. He didn’t argue. He didn’t sulk. He just nodded, slowly, and closed the ledger, and held it against his chest.

”Then I’ll ask him,” he said.

”Faelan—”

”That’s allowed,” said Faelan. ”Asking’s always allowed. You said. Everybody says.” He looked at me. ”He’s not in his chair. I looked. And he’s not in the chapel or the library or the kitchen. He’s not anywhere.” He was quiet for a moment. ”I can always find them, Garrick. The ones in my book. If I hold the page. I can feel which way they are.” He put his hand flat on the cover. ”He’s north. A long way north.”

Of course he was.

* * *

”I’m not allowed through the gates on my own,” said Faelan. ”Mother says not till I’m twelve. And you can’t fold somewhere you haven’t stood. Not properly.” He looked at me, very straight. ”But you could fold to him. You did before.”

I went cold.

”How do you know that?”

”Seraphina’s boots were wet yesterday morning,” said Faelan. ”Wet, with birch leaves stuck on. And your feet were red this morning. And you both went to sleep at breakfast yesterday. And Mary didn’t write anything about it.” He shrugged. ”I keep accounts.”

* * *

Across the table, Seraphina had stopped eating. She had little Uriah on her knee, and he was trying to put a whole boiled egg in his mouth at once, and she wasn’t stopping him.

She looked at me. I looked at her.

”May I borrow you?” said Faelan. To me. Very politely. ”I need to go north. And I need someone to take me. And you can say no.”

* * *

I didn’t say yes to him. Not right away. He’s ten, and he’s not mine. He’s Adriana’s.

So I went and found Adriana.

She was in the west range, in her sitting room, with the window open and the cold coming in, reading a book on the treaty law of Lyradon with a pencil behind her ear. She’s my father’s second wife and my mother’s lover and my brother’s mother, and she’s the most frightening reader I know. She can read a page of treaty law and tell you which clause the man who wrote it was ashamed of.

I told her what I could. That Ansel had something. That it wasn’t mine to tell. That Faelan’s ledger didn’t balance, and he wanted to go and ask, and he wanted me to take him, three hundred miles up the old road.

Adriana put her pencil down.

”Is it dangerous?” she said.

”Not today.”

”Tonight?”

”Not tonight either. Tomorrow night, maybe.” I swallowed. ”Not for Faelan. For Ansel.”

She was quiet for a long while.

”I asked Ansel his name for my son,” she said, ”when Faelan was a day old. Did you know that? Not the other way around. I didn’t tell him he was going to be a middle name. I asked him if he’d let me.” She looked out of the window. ”He cried. I’d never seen him cry. He said yes.”

”I didn’t know that.”

”He’d just asked the baby his name, the way he asks everyone. So I asked him for his.” She turned a page she hadn’t read. ”Nobody knows that part. Except Uriah. And Ansel.” She picked her pencil up again. ”Don’t ask me. Ask Faelan whether he’s sure. And if he says yes, then yes. And bring him home by dark.” She found her place in the book. ”And Garrick.”

”Yes?”

”Stay on the hill,” said Adriana, without looking up. ”Let him do it.”

* * *

I asked Faelan if he was sure. He said, ”Yes. Can I bring the ledger?” I said yes. He went and put his boots on, and a coat, and Roderic’s old blue scarf, and came back with the ledger under his arm and a pencil behind his ear, exactly like his mother’s.

Seraphina wasn’t coming. She said so herself. ”It’s his,” she said, ”and he asked you.” She tied the scarf properly. Then she knelt in front of Faelan and looked at him seriously. ”If you get frightened, you hold Garrick’s hand. And if he gets frightened, you hold his. All right?”

”All right,” said Faelan. ”Does he get frightened?”

”All the time,” said Seraphina. ”Very bravely.”

* * *

I reached for Ansel. The plain quiet shape of him, the little gold light gone dim, three hundred miles north. And this time I didn’t aim for the birches. I aimed for the bend in the old road, a quarter mile south of the shelter, where you’d come around the shoulder of the hill and see it below you.

Faelan’s hand was in mine. I felt him holding the ledger very tight with the other one.

”May I?” I said.

”Yes,” said Faelan.

And we folded.

* * *

We came out on the old road in thin cold sunshine, with the hill on our left and frost still in the shadows of the wheel ruts. Faelan staggered, and I caught him, and he said ”Oh,” very quietly, and then, ”That’s horrible. Do it again later.”

Below us, a quarter mile on, was Hesketh’s shelter. The hut. The trough. The three lamps, dark in the daylight on their hooks.

And Ansel, sitting on the low wall, in his brown coat. Looking at the water.

He’d been there all night. I could tell from the way he was sitting. Not in his chair at the Council door. Not in his bed. Here. Beside the trough with his doors at the bottom of it.

”He didn’t go home,” said Faelan.

”No.”

”Oh,” said Faelan. And then, after a moment, in a voice I’d never heard him use, very grown-up and very small at the same time: ”He’s lonely.”

* * *

”I’ll stay here,” I said. ”On the road. Where he can see me.”

Faelan looked up at me.

”You’re not coming?”

”He didn’t ask me to,” I said. ”You’re the one who’s asking.”

Faelan thought about that. Then he nodded, and tucked the ledger under his arm, and set off down the road toward the shelter on his own. A small boy in a blue scarf, walking very steadily, three hundred miles from home. I watched him the whole way. I don’t think I breathed.

Ansel saw him at about a hundred yards.

I saw him see him. He went very still. And then he looked past Faelan, up the road, at me. And I lifted my hand. And after a long moment, he lifted his.

* * *

I couldn’t hear everything. The wind was coming down the road toward me, and it carried most of it, but not all. I’ll put down what I heard, and what Faelan told me afterward, and what Ansel told me later still. Between the three of us I think it’s nearly all there.

Faelan walked up to the low wall and stopped in front of it. And knocked three times on the stone, beside Ansel’s knee. The way Loki taught him. The way I taught Roderic. Once is rude. Twice is nagging. Three times means the person inside knows it’s someone who’ll wait.

”May I sit down?” said Faelan. ”You can say no.”

Ansel looked at him for a long moment.

”Yes,” he said. ”You can sit down.”

Faelan climbed up onto the wall beside him. Not touching. Close. He put the ledger on his knees and opened it to the page.

”I’d like to ask you my three questions again,” he said. ”If that’s all right. I know I’ve asked them before. But the answer’s gone wrong.”

* * *

”What’s your name?” said Faelan.

”Ansel.”

”What do you do?”

Ansel was quiet for a moment.

”I knock,” he said.

Faelan wrote nothing. He just nodded, and looked at the page.

”What’s your favorite thing?”

Ansel opened his mouth. And closed it again. He looked down at the ledger, at the six gray words, and his face did something I’d never seen it do.

”I don’t know,” he said. ”Right now. I don’t know.”

”I know,” said Faelan. ”It’s gone gray. That’s how I knew to come.” He held the book up so Ansel could see. ”It’s never not balanced before. Not once. Not even Loki’s. So I came to ask what’s on the other side.”

* * *

Ansel looked at the ledger for a long time.

Then he looked at the boy beside him. And then he looked up the road, at me, standing in the wheel ruts with my hands in my pockets, not coming any closer.

And I watched him decide.

Not about the doors. About Faelan. About whether he was going to tell a ten-year-old the truth, when he’d asked me specifically not to, because he couldn’t bear for anybody to be that sure of him.

He told him.

* * *

He told him all of it. I heard it come down the wind in pieces. The trough. Corvel’s voice. My doors, all of them, from the seabed. Faelan sat very still with the ledger on his knees. One door. For her. To the golden city. And every door opens both ways. Faelan’s pencil came out from behind his ear and he held it without writing. The garden with no gate. Three hundred and eleven. Faelan’s head came up. Tomorrow night. They’ll come back. And I have to tell them something.

And then, quite clearly, because the wind dropped:

”And I want them, Faelan. My doors. I want them very much. I haven’t told anybody that except your brother. I want them so much it frightens me.”

* * *

Faelan didn’t say anything for a while.

He looked at the trough. At the black water, two feet deep. He looked at his ledger. He looked at Ansel.

”Oh,” he said. ”But you’ll say no.”

* * *

It was exactly the way Ansel had said it would be, at the bottom of the meadow. Just like that. As if it were obvious.

I watched it go into him. I watched his shoulders come up, as if somebody had hit him.

”How,” said Ansel. His voice was very rough. ”How can you possibly be so sure? You’re ten. You don’t know what I was. You don’t know what I did. You’ve never even seen Othellos. Everyone who saw him is either very old or very careful not to talk about it. You don’t know what I could do, if I said yes.”

”No,” agreed Faelan. ”I don’t.”

”Then how—”

”Because you knock,” said Faelan.

* * *

He said it the way you’d say the sky is up.

”You knock on everything,” he said. ”Every door. Even empty ones. Even the hut.” He pointed at it. ”Nobody lives in there. Mary told me. And you knock on it anyway, every night, before you light the lamps. You knocked on the library door yesterday, and nobody was in the library. Garrick said you knocked on our door while they were asleep.” He looked at Ansel very seriously. ”People who are going to take things don’t knock on doors where nobody can hear them. It doesn’t make sense. You’d only do it if you meant it.”

Ansel didn’t answer.

”And you told Garrick,” said Faelan. ”And now you’ve told me. People who are going to say yes don’t tell anybody. They just go and do it. Uncle Loki says that’s how you can always tell. The ones who are going to do something bad, they don’t ask anyone first, because they don’t want anyone to say no.” He thought about it. ”You’ve told two people. That’s two people who could say no to you. You made two.” He looked at his ledger. ”That’s not a yes person. That’s the other kind.”

* * *

Ansel put his hand over his eyes.

He sat on the wall beside the trough with his hand over his eyes, and his shoulders shaking, and Faelan sat beside him not touching, close, and didn’t say anything, and waited.

The way you wait outside a door, when you’ve knocked three times.

* * *

”Your mother asked me,” said Ansel at last. Thickly. From behind his hand. ”For your name. When you were a day old. Do you know that?”

”Yes,” said Faelan. ”She told me. When I was seven. When I asked why I had a middle name that wasn’t a river or a grandfather.”

”Did she tell you why?” Ansel took his hand away. His face was wet. ”I’ve never known. I’ve never dared to ask her. All these years I’ve been in that chair, and I’ve never once dared to ask Adriana why she’d want my name on her son.”

Faelan looked surprised.

”Yes,” he said. ”She told me.”

* * *

”She said,” said Faelan carefully, the way you repeat something you’ve kept very exactly, ”that you were the only person she ever met who’d been the very worst thing, and then decided to be something else. And not once. Every morning. Every single morning, when you get up, you decide again.” He looked down at his ledger. ”She said that’s the bravest kind there is. Braver than the war kind. Because the war kind you only have to do once.” He paused. ”And she said she wanted me to have some of that in the middle of me. For when I need it.”

* * *

I was a quarter of a mile away, standing in the frost in the wheel ruts. And I still felt it.

Ansel’s light.

It didn’t flare. It didn’t blaze up gold the way it had in the stories about the hall, the day Varrick fell. It just came back. Slowly. From gray-blue to something warmer. Like a lamp in a window seen from a long way down the road, by someone who’d been walking toward it all night and had nearly stopped believing it was there.

Faelan saw it too. He looked down at his ledger.

”Oh,” he said. ”It’s changing.”

* * *

They sat there a long time.

I stayed on the road. My feet went numb again. I didn’t mind.

After a while I heard Faelan’s voice again, quite clearly, in the tone he uses when he’s working out a sum.

”It has to balance,” he was saying. ”That’s the thing. If they’ve got your doors on their side, something has to go on ours. Otherwise it’s just them taking, and that’s not a ledger, that’s a sack.” He was frowning at the page. ”Could you take your doors back and not build anything?”

Ansel almost laughed.

”That would be lying to them.”

”Is it lying,” said Faelan, ”if you’ve told everybody first except them?”

* * *

Ansel stopped.

He turned his head and looked at the boy beside him for a very long moment.

”Uncle Loki says,” said Faelan, ”a lie is just a coat. It matters whose shoulders you put it on, and who’s underneath. He says that’s why he’s allowed one and Malachar isn’t.” He considered. ”I don’t know if that’s true. Mother says Uncle Loki says a lot of things. But you’d have told us. All of us. So it wouldn’t be lying to us.” He looked at the trough. ”And they’re not really people. Are they? They haven’t got faces. They’re just carrying things for somebody.”

”They were people,” said Ansel quietly. ”Once. Every one of them. Ruan was a bell.”

Faelan thought about that.

”Then maybe,” he said slowly, ”if you said yes, and they brought your doors, and they showed you where. Maybe somebody could ask them their names. Like Selvane did. Like Benjamin. And they’d come back too. And then that would balance even more.”

* * *

Ansel didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then he looked up the road at me.

And he lifted his hand. Not a wave. An asking. Come here.

So I walked down.

* * *

When I got to the trough, he stood up. He was stiff from sitting all night; I saw it in how he straightened. He stood in front of me in his brown coat, with Faelan still on the wall behind him, holding the ledger.

”You said you’d be the one who knew,” said Ansel. ”Which way I was walking. Before I set out.”

”Yes.”

”Then this is me telling you.” He took a breath. ”I’m going to say yes.”

I didn’t move.

”Tomorrow night. At this trough. I’m going to sit on that wall and tell it yes. And take my doors. Every one. And let it show me where. The rock. The palace. The wall. Who’s waiting.” His voice was very steady now. ”And I’m not going to mean it.”

He looked at me straight.

”And I’m not going to do it alone. I’ve done everything alone. For a thousand years. Every terrible thing I ever did, I did by myself, behind a door. I’m not doing this one that way.” He swallowed. ”I’m going to go home now. And I’m going to knock on your father’s door. And I’m going to ask him for help.”

”He’ll say yes,” I said.

”I know.” Ansel almost smiled. ”That’s what frightens me.”

* * *

Faelan was looking at his ledger.

”Ansel,” he said. ”It still doesn’t balance.”

We both turned.

He held it up. The gray had gone out of the six words. They were black again, plain and ordinary. The moment the third lamp catches. But underneath, in the space below, where there’d only ever been one answer, there was a blank line. And the left side of the page sat heavy, as if it wanted something more.

”I think you’ve got two favorite things now,” said Faelan. ”And I’ve only got one written down.” He held out the pencil. ”Would you like to write it? You can say no.”

* * *

Ansel took the pencil.

He sat back down on the wall beside Faelan, and took the ledger on his knee, and thought about it for a long time. Then he wrote, in his plain careful upright hand, under the first answer:

Being asked about.

And Faelan looked at the page, and his whole face cleared, the way a sum clears when it comes out right.

”There,” he said. ”Now it balances.”

* * *

I folded us home at two in the afternoon. All three of us. Ansel held my left hand and Faelan held my right and the ledger went between Faelan and his chest, and when we landed in the inner court Faelan said ”Horrible,” with great satisfaction, and ran off to tell his mother he was back before dark.

Ansel stood in the court with me for a moment. Looking up at the east range. At my father’s study window, where there was a light on.

”I don’t know how to do this part,” he said.

”You knock,” I said.

He laughed. Properly, for the first time in three days.

Then he went in. I heard him on the stairs. I heard him stop outside my father’s door. And then, quite clearly, all the way down in the court, three knocks.

And my father’s voice, deep and unsurprised, as if he’d been waiting all afternoon.

”Come in.”

* * *

He was in there until dinner. And then my father came down and stood at the head of the table and said, in his ordinary voice, ”Blackstack’s tomorrow night. So’s something else. I’d like everybody who’s going in the south solar at eight. And Ansel, if he’ll come.” He looked down the table. ”He’s asked us for help. I’ve said yes. We’re going to need to plan for two things at once.”

Nobody said anything.

Then Loki, from the far end, very quietly: ”Oh, I like this already.”

And Thor, without looking up from her plate, put her elbow in his ribs.

* * *

Mary’s book, that night.

Day three of three.

Faelan’s ledger didn’t balance at breakfast. First time ever.

Adriana asked him if he was sure. He was.

Garrick took him north. Stayed on the road.

Faelan asked Ansel his three questions again. Ansel didn’t know his favorite thing.

Faelan: ”But you’ll say no.” Because he knocks.

Ansel came home and knocked on Uriah’s door. Asked for help.

Uriah: ”Come in.”

Loki: ”Oh, I like this already.” Thor’s elbow.

Tomorrow: two things at once.

And under that, in a round careful ten-year-old’s hand, pressed so hard into the paper that you can feel it on the other side:

Faelan. Ansel’s page balances. He has two favorite things now. The second one is mine.