The Greykeep Chronicles

My father gave me the Thursday hearings the morning after the anniversary, over porridge, the way he gives people most things. Without warning, and as if it were very small.

”Lower hall,” he said. ”Nine o’clock. They’re yours now.”

I put my spoon down.

”Mine,” I said.

”Yours.” He went on eating. ”You’ve sat beside me at them since you were fourteen. You know how they go. Somebody comes in with a problem, and you listen, and then you decide. That’s all it is.”

”That’s not all it is.”

”No,” my father agreed. ”But that’s all I’m going to tell you before you’ve done one.” He wiped his mouth. ”I’ll be at the back. On the bench by the door. I won’t say a word. If you look at me, I’ll look at the ceiling.”

Across the table, Carol was grinning into her tea.

”Don’t,” I said.

”I’m not doing anything,” said Carol. ”I’m just drinking my tea. While my brother becomes a king.”

”I’m not becoming a king. I’m doing the Thursday hearings.”

”That,” said my mother, without looking up from her letters, ”is how it starts.”

* * *

The Thursday hearings are the oldest thing in Greykeep that isn’t a wall.

My father started them the first winter, before the Accord, before the Council, before most of the things people think of when they think of us. Anyone in Greykeep’s lands can come. You don’t need to write ahead. You don’t need a sponsor, or a fee, or a cousin in the household. You walk in at the lower hall door between nine and noon on a Thursday and the Castellan writes your name down, and when it’s your turn, you sit across a plain table from whoever’s ruling, and you say what’s wrong.

There’s no throne in the lower hall. There’s a long oak table on the flagstones, with a chair on each side of it, and a smaller table at the end for Mary and the book. That’s all. My father says the day he needs a dais to make people listen to him is the day he should stop.

I’d sat at that table every Thursday for nine years. On my father’s left, saying nothing, watching him listen.

I’d never sat in his chair.

It was the same chair. Same oak. Same worn arms. It felt completely different.

* * *

”First,” said the Castellan, at nine exactly. Its lights were a careful neutral blue. I think it had been asked by my father to be careful, and it was being very careful indeed. ”Hettie Ludd, of Lower Brook. And Amos Ferrer, of Lower Brook. Together. Regarding a tree.”

Two people came in. An old woman, very small and very straight, in a black shawl that had been black for a long time. An old man, very large and very stooped, holding his hat in both hands. They walked to the table side by side and then, at the very last moment, moved apart, so that there was an exact arm’s length between them when they sat down.

I knew at once I was in trouble.

* * *

The tree was a pear.

It grew on Amos Ferrer’s side of the wall between their two cottages, and had done for forty years. And every autumn its branches hung over the wall, and every autumn the pears fell on Hettie Ludd’s side, into her herb bed, where they rotted and drew wasps. And every autumn she threw them back over the wall. And every autumn he threw them back again.

”Forty years,” said Hettie Ludd. ”Forty years of wasps in my thyme.”

”Forty years of my pears,” said Amos Ferrer, ”going to waste on a woman who won’t eat them.”

”I don’t want your pears.”

”Nobody asked you to want them. Pick them up and eat them like a decent person.”

”I’m not a decent person,” said Hettie Ludd. ”I’m from Lower Brook.”

* * *

I tried.

I want that written down, in case anybody ever reads this who’s sat in that chair: I tried. I did what I’d watched my father do a hundred times. I listened. I asked questions. I asked Hettie Ludd how much of her herb bed the pears covered, and Amos Ferrer whether the tree could be pruned, and both of them whether they’d ever tried just talking to each other, at which point they both looked at me as if I’d suggested they take up juggling.

And then I made a ruling.

I said the overhanging branches should be pruned back to the wall, so that the pears would fall on Amos’s side. And Amos would give Hettie a basket of the pears each autumn anyway, for her trouble. And Hettie would stop throwing them back.

It seemed very fair. Both sides gave a little. Both sides got a little.

They both looked at me with exactly the same expression. Polite. Disappointed. Like people who’d ordered soup and been brought a very nice plate of bread.

”Thank you, Prince Garrick,” said Hettie Ludd.

”Thank you, Prince Garrick,” said Amos Ferrer.

And they got up, and walked out, an exact arm’s length apart. And at the door, I heard Hettie Ludd say, quite quietly, not to him: ”I don’t even like pears.”

* * *

At the back of the hall, on the bench by the door, my father was looking at the ceiling.

* * *

”Second,” said the Castellan. ”Wat Ferrer. Of Lower Brook. Alone.”

I looked up.

He was sixteen, perhaps. Tall and thin, with big hands and a face he hadn’t grown into yet. Amos Ferrer’s grandson, by the shape of the nose. He sat down across from me very straight, the way you sit when you’ve practiced sitting in front of a mirror.

”I want to go to Westmere,” he said. ”To the watch. Steward Tamar’s taking on men. For the wall. In case the ships come back.” He swallowed. ”I need the Crown’s leave. Because I’m not of age. My grandfather won’t give his. So I’m asking yours.”

* * *

I looked at him for a long time.

I knew what I was supposed to do. I knew it the way you know a stair is there in the dark. I was supposed to ask him why. I was supposed to listen. I was supposed to find the thing he actually wanted underneath the thing he’d asked for, and give him that instead, kindly, so that he went away feeling heard.

And I did ask. I asked him why.

”Because they took a goddess’s harbors,” he said. ”A whole town of her. I heard it in the market. Tessaly. Sixty boats. And because there’s a boy in Westmere my age who’s already on the wall, and he can’t swim either.” His jaw set. ”And because everybody in this castle is fighting, the princess and the gods and everyone, and I’m in Lower Brook picking up pears.”

He looked at me.

”You’d go,” he said. ”If you were me. You’d go.”

* * *

I opened my mouth.

And for a moment I couldn’t find it. The word. I had it, I could feel it, it was sitting right there. But every part of me that had grown up in this house wanted to say let me think about it, or what does your grandfather say, or perhaps there’s something you could do here instead. Anything that wasn’t the word.

I thought about Carol, standing in the great hall with Severin’s letter in her hand. Saying it twice. To his face.

Carol Clara Grey. Who says no.

”No,” I said.

* * *

Wat Ferrer went white.

”No,” I said again. It was easier the second time. ”Not this year. You’re sixteen, and your grandfather’s said no, and I’m saying no with him. Not because you’re not brave. You walked in here on your own and asked the Crown to its face. That’s brave.” I took a breath. ”But I’ve been on that wall. I’ve stood on Blackstack. I know what’s out there. And I won’t send a boy who can’t swim to stand in front of it, even if he asks. Especially if he asks.”

His eyes were wet. He was trying very hard not to let them be.

”Then what do I do?” he said.

”Learn to swim,” I said. ”Tamar’s harbor-master teaches every summer. Goss. Ask for him. And ask me again next year.” I looked at him. ”I’ll still say no, probably. But I’ll listen again. Every year you ask. That’s a promise.”

He sat there for a long moment.

Then he stood up, and bowed, badly, the way boys from Lower Brook bow, and walked out. Not happily. But he didn’t slam the door.

* * *

At the back of the hall, my father was not looking at the ceiling.

He was looking at me.

* * *

There were nine more hearings that morning. A miller whose weir had been washed out, asking for stone from the Crown quarry. A widow from Havenreach asking to keep her husband’s post as a gate-porter at the river arch, because she’d been doing it herself for the last three years while he was ill and nobody had noticed. A dispute about a goat, which I won’t describe, because Grandpa was involved and has asked me not to.

I said yes to the stone. I said yes to the widow, loudly, so that Mary could write it down twice, and the Castellan said ”Noted. With pleasure,” which it has never said before in my hearing. I said no to the goat.

I was getting into it. I want to be honest about that. By the sixth hearing my hands had stopped shaking and I’d started to understand what my father meant. Somebody comes in with a problem, and you listen, and then you decide. It’s not grand. It’s not the Council, or Blackstack, or a god’s name freed from a closed hand. It’s a weir. It’s a widow. It’s a goat.

But it’s someone’s whole week. Sometimes their whole year. And they walked in through the door and sat down across from you because they believed you’d decide it properly.

I was in the middle of the seventh, a boundary dispute between two fishing families over a mussel bed, when the Castellan’s lights went from careful blue to sharp white.

* * *

”Westmere,” it said. ”Steward Tamar asks for the King. Now, please.”

Everybody in the lower hall turned to the bench by the door.

My father was already standing.

I was standing too. I didn’t remember getting up. Halfway out of my chair, with the mussel families staring at me and Mary’s pen stopped over the page.

”Sit down,” said my father.

”Father—”

”Sit down, Garrick.” He wasn’t unkind. He was very calm. ”You’ve got a hearing.”

”Tamar’s asking for—”

”Tamar’s asking for the King,” said my father. ”And I’m going. You’ve got a mussel bed.” He was pulling on his coat. ”I’ll send word. Finish your morning.”

And he went.

* * *

I sat down.

I’ve never been so angry in my life. Not at him. Not at anything I could point to. At the whole shape of it. At the war, sitting out there on the western sea, waiting for exactly the moment I’d finally sat down in that chair, and reaching in through the door, and tugging.

The mussel families were looking at me.

”Go on,” I said. ”Please. You were saying about the low-tide mark.”

They went on. I listened. I don’t know how. Every part of me was out the door and through the gate and on the wall at Westmere, looking at the sea. I could feel it. Not the sails; I couldn’t reach that far without reaching, and I’d promised. But I could feel my father go. Through the Westmere arch, a long way west, like a door closing at the far end of a corridor.

And I sat in his chair and listened to two families argue about mussels.

* * *

I ruled for the Gilroys. The low-tide mark had moved; the Gilroys had been there first; the Brakes had known it. I said so. The Brakes didn’t like it. I let them not like it.

Then the eighth hearing. Then the ninth.

Caitlin came in during the tenth, with her blue book, and stood at the end of Mary’s table, and waited until I looked up. Then she held up two fingers. Two tugs, this morning. Two gods with seams, feeling something pull at them and not give. Then she went out again.

I sat in my father’s chair and decided whether a baker on Rope Lane could put his ovens against the wall of a chandler’s shop. The chandler was frightened of fire. The baker had nowhere else to go.

I said he could, if he lined the wall with brick, and the Crown would pay for half the brick.

The chandler cried a little, from relief. The baker cried a little, from relief. I nearly cried, from something else entirely.

* * *

The eleventh hearing was the last. It was noon.

”No more names,” said the Castellan. Its lights had gone back to blue. ”The morning is closed.” It hesitated. Its lights flickered once. ”It was well done.”

”Was it?”

”I have attended every Thursday hearing in this hall,” said the Castellan, ”since the first. I should like it noted that this one was well done.”

Mary wrote that down. I saw her do it.

* * *

My father came back at four.

I was in the map room, standing in front of Eleanor’s long plan, not seeing it. He came in with salt on his coat and his boots wet and stood beside me.

”One sail,” he said. ”Black. On the line, west by south, from Blackstack’s side. The first since we were on the rock. Tamar saw it at the eighth hour and held his watch book open on it and sent for me.” He took his coat off. ”It held for seven hours. It didn’t come closer. It didn’t drop a boat. It didn’t send a song or a seal or anything at all. It just sat there on the line.”

”Watching,” I said.

”Watching,” said my father. ”And then at three o’clock it turned around and went home.”

He was quiet for a while.

”He heard her,” he said. ”On the rock. Through Ansel’s door, before it closed. He heard Carol say her name. He’s had a week to think about it.” He looked at the long plan. ”That sail was him thinking about it.”

* * *

”I should have been there,” I said.

My father looked at me.

”I should have been there,” I said again. And it came out much angrier than I meant it to, and I didn’t stop it. ”Tamar asked for help, and the war was right there, and I was sitting in a chair arguing about mussels. I was ruling on a baker’s oven. While my father stood on the wall and looked at a black sail.” I could hear my own voice going up. ”I’ve been waiting my whole life to sit in that chair. And the first morning I do, the war walks in and takes you out of the room, and I have to sit there and pretend that a pear tree matters.”

* * *

My father didn’t answer right away.

He went and sat down on the edge of the map table, very heavily, the way he does when he’s tired and doesn’t want anyone to notice.

”Do you know what I did,” he said, ”on the wall at Westmere? For seven hours?”

”No.”

”Nothing,” said my father. ”I stood on a wall and looked at a sail. Tamar stood next to me and wrote holding in his book every hour. Edric fished. Badly. I didn’t call up a storm. I didn’t freeze the sea. I didn’t do a single thing, because there was nothing to do, because it was one ship sitting on a line being looked at.” He shook his head. ”That’s what most of a war is, Garrick. Standing on a wall, looking at something, and not doing anything, very carefully, for a long time.”

I didn’t say anything.

”And meanwhile,” said my father, ”a widow in Havenreach found out she can keep the job she’s been doing for three years. And a baker on Rope Lane gets to keep his ovens. And a chandler doesn’t have to lie awake listening for fire.” He looked at me. ”And a boy from Lower Brook is going to learn to swim, because someone told him no and then told him what to do instead.” He paused. ”Which of those things would you have given up, to come and stand on a wall?”

* * *

I didn’t have an answer.

”I wanted to be there too,” said my father. Quietly. ”At your first hearing. I’ve been waiting for it since you were born. I wanted to sit on that bench and look at the ceiling and listen to you get it wrong and then get it right.” He almost smiled. ”And the war came in and took me out of the room. And I had to stand on a wall at Westmere thinking about you ruling on mussels.”

”So we both missed it,” I said.

”We each got the other one’s,” said my father. ”That’s what it’s going to be like now. For a while. Maybe a long while.” He stood up, slowly. ”That’s why I gave you the Thursdays. Not because I’m tired. Because there are going to be a lot of days when I’m on a wall. And somebody has to be in the chair.”

* * *

”The pear tree,” I said. ”I got that one wrong.”

”Yes,” said my father.

”I split it down the middle. And they both hated it.”

”Yes.”

”What should I have done?”

My father thought about it for a moment.

”Hettie Ludd’s husband died three years ago,” he said. ”In the autumn. Pear season. Amos Ferrer was his oldest friend. He didn’t come to the burying. He stayed in his cottage with the shutters closed, because he couldn’t bear it.” He looked at me. ”She’s been throwing his pears back over the wall every autumn since. It was never about the pears.”

I stared at him.

”How was I supposed to know that?”

”You weren’t,” said my father. ”Not from the chair. You’d have to have been to Lower Brook. You’d have to have stood in Hettie’s kitchen and drunk her tea and noticed there were two cups on the dresser and only one ever used.” He put his hand on my shoulder. ”That’s the part they don’t tell you. The chair’s the smallest part of the job. The rest is going and standing in people’s kitchens.”

He went to the door.

”Next Thursday,” he said. ”You’ll have them back. They always come back. Go to Lower Brook first.”

* * *

That evening, I kept a promise.

I asked Seraphina if she’d come, and she said yes, next to me, and Helena gave me a whole round loaf still warm from the oven, wrapped in a cloth, without asking what it was for. And I folded us to Blackstack at sunset.

The rock was warm under our boots. The steam was coming out of its cracks the way it always does, and the sea was quiet all around it, and far off on the western line there was nothing at all. No sail. Just the sun going down into the water, red and gold.

The Lockwarden’s lamp was still burning on the high ledge.

I stopped when I saw that. It had been burning a week ago, on the night of the rock. It should have gone out days since. Nobody had come to fill it; Jörmungandr would have known, and Tamar’s watch would have seen a boat.

But it was burning. Small and steady. As if someone had filled it that morning.

”Garrick,” said Seraphina quietly.

”I know.”

”Someone’s been here.”

”I know.” I looked at the lamp for a long time. ”Whoever it is, they’re keeping it lit.” I swallowed. ”For listening, the Lockwarden said. When he left it.”

* * *

We sat down on the warm black stone, beside the faint warm outline where the gray shape had sunk in, and I broke the loaf in half, and gave Seraphina half, and put the other half down on the rock.

”I said I’d come back,” I said to it. ”With bread. I’m sorry it took a week. I had a hearing.”

The rock didn’t say anything. Rocks don’t.

But the steam coming out of its cracks went warmer. And then warmer again. Until the whole ledge was warm as a hearthstone, and Seraphina laughed and took her boots off and put her feet on it.

We stayed until the stars came out. I told the rock about the pear tree. And the widow. And the boy who’s going to learn to swim. I don’t know why. It seemed like the sort of thing a very young, very lonely rock would like to hear about. Ordinary things. The kind of things nobody ever comes all that way to tell you.

When we left, the bread was still there, beside the lamp.

* * *

Mary’s book.

Thursday. Garrick’s first hearing. Uriah on the bench by the door.

Ludd and Ferrer, the pear tree. Split down the middle. Both disappointed. ”I don’t even like pears.”

Wat Ferrer, 16, asked leave to go to the Westmere watch. Garrick said no. Then told him to learn to swim and ask again next year. He did not slam the door.

The widow from Havenreach keeps the river-arch post. Said twice.

Rope Lane ovens. Brick, half paid. Both cried.

At the seventh hearing Tamar asked for the King. Uriah went. Garrick stayed in the chair.

One black sail on the line, seven hours. Watching. It went home at three.

Caitlin: two tugs.

The Castellan: ”I should like it noted that this one was well done.”

Garrick took bread to Blackstack. The Lockwarden’s lamp is still lit. Nobody knows who fills it.

And under that, in my father’s big square hand:

Uriah. Sat at the back. Looked at the ceiling once. Didn’t need to the second time.