The Greykeep Chronicles

The snow held through Sunday night and froze, and on Monday morning the whole hill down to Havenreach was one long white slope with the road cut into it like a pencil line.

The golems had been carrying stone down that road for a week. You could see where they’d been. Every forty feet or so there was a pair of great square footprints in the snow, side by side, where one of them had stopped to let a cart go by, because the Castellan had told them to give way to carts and they had taken it to heart. Nobody had told them to stop giving way. So they stood aside for every cart, every barrow and once, Helena said, for a goose.

My father and I walked down at eight with the frost hammer and a basket.

He’d been at the gate since five, on his stool under the arch, asking the milk in. Dickon Varley had come up at a quarter past with the churns and his ears pink with cold, and my father had said, ”Good morning, Dickon. Will you come in?” and Dickon had said, ”Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” as he did every morning now, and the slate in the arch had written Dickon Varley. Milk. Asked. in the Castellan’s narrow hand, and that was that. My father says it’s the best part of his day. I believe him.

”You don’t have to come,” I said, on the hill.

”I know.”

”Eleanor and Aldren have it in hand. The Castellan’s going down for the turning. I’m only there to hold the fold.”

”I know,” said my father. ”I’d like to see it.” He shifted the basket. ”And Helena put two of the pork pies in here, and she’ll want to know I ate one sitting down.”

”Did she say sitting down?”

”She said it with her face.”

So we went down together. I walked on his left, which is the wrong side for me now. Since the autumn my left eye has been dark, and everyone who loves me has learned to stand on my right without being told. My father learned first. But on the hill road he walked on my left on purpose, a little ahead, so that I could see the snow in front of him and put my feet where his had been.

He’s done that since I was four. I don’t think he knows he does it.

* * *

The quay at Havenreach runs along the bottom of the town where the river comes into the harbor, a long stone lip with the fish market at one end and the Lantern and Oar at the other, and between them, since last Tuesday, a building site.

They’d cleared the old net sheds. In their place, in a row along the wall where the boats tie up, stood the arches.

Two of them were finished. The Lyradon arch had gone through on Thursday, gray stone from the lower hall, every block numbered in Eleanor’s chalk and carried down the hill and put back exactly as it had been, so that from the front you’d never have known it had moved. The southern towns’ arch had gone through on Saturday. The Concordia arch stood half built between them, a curve of pale stone on wooden centering, with golems holding up both legs and Aldren Shaw standing under the keystone gap in his oilskin waders, which he wears for everything, looking up.

Eleanor stood ten feet away with her arms folded, also looking up.

They didn’t look at each other. They never do when they’re working. Aldren says that’s how you can tell they’re getting on.

”It’s out,” said Eleanor.

”It’s not out.”

”It’s out a quarter inch on the seaward side. I can see it from here.”

”You can see a quarter inch from here?”

”I’ve been seeing quarter inches since before you were apprenticed, Aldren Shaw.”

”Then you’ll have noticed, Eleanor, that it’s out a quarter inch because the quay slopes a quarter inch, because it’s a quay, son, and quays slope toward the water, that’s what makes them quays, and if I put it in true it’ll be out.” He wasn’t looking at her. He was smiling at the keystone. ”Morning, Garrick. Morning, Your Majesty. Tell her it’s not out.”

”I wouldn’t dare,” said my father.

”Coward,” said Aldren comfortably, and called up to the nearest golem to come down a hair on the left.

Eleanor took off her spectacles and polished them on her scarf. Then she put them back and looked at the arch again. Then she said, very quietly, so that only my father and I could hear, ”It’s not out.”

”No,” said my father.

”Don’t tell him.”

”I wouldn’t dare,” said my father again, and she nearly laughed.

* * *

Wynn was at the far end of the arch, on his knees on a folded sack, cutting.

I didn’t see him at first. The golem was in the way, and he was on my left. He was working on the base stone of the seaward leg, where the Concordia plate would go back on once the arch was closed. You cut the lines into the stone first, under the plate, and then the plate goes over them like a lid, and the lines underneath are what hold the gate’s name while it’s being moved. Eleanor explained it to me once. I understood about half. Wynn understood all of it, and had since he was fifteen.

He had his paste pot wedged between his knees and his little brush in his mouth like a cigar while he used the chisel, and his cuffs turned back, inky to the elbow. He was bent so close to the stone his nose was almost on it.

”Morning, Wynn,” I said.

He jumped.

Not much. A small jump, the kind you do when you’re deep in something and someone speaks behind you. The brush fell out of his mouth onto the sack, and he picked it up and looked at it as though he’d never seen a brush before, and then he looked up at me.

He was pale. That’s the first thing I noticed, and I’m writing it down because I want it noted that I did notice. He was pale under the cold, which is hard to be, because cold makes everyone pink. His face had gone thin over the cheekbones since the summer, and there were marks under his eyes like thumbprints in clay.

”Morning,” said Wynn. ”Sorry. Garrick. Morning. I didn’t hear you.”

”You were miles away.”

”I was in the stone.” He smiled. It was nearly his smile. ”Eleanor says you have to be in it or you cut it wrong.”

”Is it going well?”

”It’s going.” He looked down at the line he’d been cutting. He looked at it for a long moment. Then he took the chisel and went back in, very carefully, and cut it again in the same place, a hair deeper.

* * *

Turning a gate is the part they needed me for.

A gate isn’t the arch. The arch is just stone. The gate is the fold, the place where two places have been taught to touch, and the arch is the frame you hang it in so people know where to walk. When you take an arch down and carry it a mile down a hill, the fold doesn’t come with it on its own. It stays where it was, like a door that’s been taken out of a house and left standing in the air.

So someone has to carry it.

I carried the Lyradon fold on Thursday and the southern towns’ fold on Saturday. It’s not hard, exactly. It’s like carrying a bowl of water filled to the brim down a steep stair. You walk slowly and don’t look at anything else.

The Concordia fold was the big one. Concordia’s gate is the oldest on our side, apart from Greymere, and the most used. Twenty years of people going back and forth, merchants and couriers and Loki, mostly Loki, and every one of them wears the fold a little smoother, the way feet wear a stair. It was heavy with all that coming and going. When I’d gone down to the lower hall that morning at seven, before my father and I set out, and put my hand in the empty air where the arch had been, the fold had been waiting there like a big patient animal that wanted to be walked.

I’d walked it down the hill on my right side, the side I can see. It came along all right. It leaned toward Concordia the whole way, the way a dog leans on a lead toward home.

Now it hung in the air beside the half-built arch, a little above the quay stones, where I’d set it down. You couldn’t see it. You could feel it if you stood close, a pressure on your skin like the air before a storm, and the snow didn’t settle in that spot. Two of the gulls had found that out and were standing in it, looking pleased with themselves.

”When the keystone’s in,” said Eleanor, ”you hang it. Not before.”

”I know.”

”I’m telling you anyway.”

”I know,” I said. ”Thank you.”

She looked at me sideways over her spectacles. ”You’re getting very like your father,” she said, and went to argue with Aldren about mortar.

* * *

The Castellan came down at ten.

It doesn’t leave the castle much. It came up the east stair to my door once, the morning the herds didn’t come, and it came to Orselle once because it asked to. But it doesn’t like to be away. It says the walls feel thin when it isn’t in them. So when it came down the hill road that morning, eight feet of gray stone in the shape of a man, walking very slowly and placing its feet exactly in the golems’ footprints, the whole of Havenreach came out to watch.

It stopped at the end of the quay and looked at the arches.

”These are mine,” it said.

”Yes,” said my father. ”If you’ll have them.”

The Castellan was quiet for a moment. The gulls went up off the fold in a hurry.

”I have been thinking about it,” it said. ”All week. In the walls. The lower hall is empty now. It has never been empty. There were arches there before I was made.” It turned its head, slowly, toward the town, the harbor, the long white hill. ”I did not know if I could keep a thing so far away. A mile. It is a very long way, a mile.”

”You keep Greymere,” said my father. ”That’s further.”

”Greymere is a lake. A lake comes to me.” The Castellan looked down at him. ”These are doors. Doors go away from you. That is what doors are for.”

My father didn’t say anything. He doesn’t, when someone’s working a thing out. He just stood there in the snow with the basket on his arm and waited.

”But you asked,” said the Castellan at last. ”You asked me if I would have them. Nobody has asked me that before, about a door. They were only mine.” It put out one great hand, very carefully, and laid it flat on the gray stone of the Lyradon arch, the way Eleanor lays her hand on a plate to listen. ”I will have them.”

And under its hand, cut new into the stone below the Lyradon plate, a line of narrow writing came up like frost on glass.

Lyradon. Kept.

* * *

At half past eleven Aldren called the keystone.

Everyone on the quay stopped. The fishwives at the market end put down their knives. The two golems under the legs went perfectly still, the way they do, so still you forget they were ever moving, and the third golem came along the quay carrying the keystone in both hands like a cake.

It was Eleanor who climbed the ladder. Aldren held the bottom of it. Neither of them said anything about that, either.

She took the keystone from the golem’s hands at the top. It weighs as much as a calf; she can’t lift a calf. She didn’t lift it. She put her hands on it and told it where to go, in that dry, short way she talks to stone, and the golem’s hands moved with hers, and the keystone went down into the gap at the top of the arch with a sound like a door shutting softly in another room.

”It’s in,” said Eleanor from the top of the ladder.

”It’s in,” said Aldren from the bottom.

”It’s out a quarter inch.”

”It’s meant to be.”

”I know,” said Eleanor. She came down the ladder. At the bottom she put her hand on Aldren’s arm, just for a second, and took it away again. ”It’s good, Aldren.”

Aldren Shaw has held up half the falling buildings in the north. He went red to the tops of his ears and told the golems to come out from under, and was very busy with the centering for some time.

* * *

Then it was my turn.

I went to the place where the fold was waiting and put my hands into it. It was warm, the way it always is. It smelled, faintly, of the Concordia side: bread, and lamp oil, and the river, and something sharp and bright and a little bit like laughing, which I’ve always thought was Loki, though I’ve never told him.

I lifted it.

You have to lift it into the arch the way you’d hang a heavy curtain, the top edge first, and let it settle. It wants to go in. Every fold wants an arch the way water wants a bowl. But it was heavy, all that coming and going, and the arch was new to it, and it didn’t know the quay. It hung for a moment on the keystone and swung, and I felt it start to slide toward the seaward side, the side that was out a quarter inch.

”Left,” said Eleanor, very quietly, behind me.

”I can’t see left.”

”I know you can’t. Left. A hand’s width. Now down.”

I went left a hand’s width and down, blind, on her word. The fold settled on the seaward leg, slid the quarter inch toward the water, as Aldren had built it to, and stopped.

And under the stone of the leg, where Wynn had been cutting all morning, I felt the lines take it. Like a hand closing gently around a wrist. Good lines. Sure ones. They held it as if they’d been waiting for it all their lives.

”Wynn,” said Eleanor. ”Paste.”

Wynn didn’t move.

He was standing at the end of the arch with the paste pot in his hands, looking at the fold. You can’t see a fold. But he was looking at it. At the place where it hung, swinging just slightly, Concordia on the other side of it, and he had a look on his face I didn’t know. Not frightened. More like a man looking down from a great height and working out how far it is.

”Wynn,” said Eleanor again.

”Yes,” said Wynn. ”Sorry. Yes.”

He knelt and painted the paste along the seam where the plate would go. His hand was steady. It was always steady; that’s what Eleanor chose him for, twelve years ago, out of all the boys in Lyradon who wanted to be apprenticed to the woman who built the gates. He painted the seam end to end with that little eyelash brush in one long stroke, black and smelling of pine and burned hair, without stopping.

Then Eleanor fitted the Concordia plate over the lines and pressed it home with her palm. And bent and read it, lips moving.

Once.

And then she stopped and looked at Wynn, and said, gently, ”Twice, Wynn.”

Wynn had been reading it with her, the way she taught him. He’d stopped after the first time and stood up.

”Sorry,” he said. He knelt again. They read it through the second time together, both of them, lips moving, the old woman and the young man with their heads close over the brass. Then Eleanor nodded.

Wynn closed his eyes for a second when she nodded. I saw it. I thought it was pleasure.

The Castellan laid its hand on the arch.

Concordia. Kept.

* * *

Loki came through first. Of course he did.

He must have been waiting on the far side all morning, because he stepped out of the arch about four seconds after the plate went home, in a long green coat with a loaf of Concordia rye under each arm, and looked around the quay at the fishwives and the golems and the gulls and the snow.

”Well,” he said. ”This is a step down.”

”It’s a quay,” said Aldren.

”I can see it’s a quay. I’m only saying I was used to coming out in a beautiful old vault under a castle by lamplight with a sense of occasion, and now I come out next to,” he looked to his right, ”a herring.”

”It’s a mackerel,” said a fishwife.

”I beg your pardon, madam. A mackerel.” He bowed to the fishwife. He bowed to the mackerel. Then he saw my father, and the basket, and his face changed. ”Is that one of Helena’s pork pies?”

”There are two,” said my father.

”There’s one,” said Loki. ”And it’s mine.” And he gave one of the loaves to the Castellan, who held it very carefully and did not know what to do with it, and the other to Eleanor, who put it under her arm without looking, and went and sat on the quay wall with my father and ate the pork pie, sitting down, so that my father could tell Helena that one had been eaten sitting down, which was true.

My father ate the other one. Also sitting down.

* * *

Seraphina brought our son down at noon to see the new arch.

He’d walked the day before. Twenty-three steps across the court in the snow to Fenrir, past all of us. He’d been walking ever since. He’d walked to the stove and been carried away from it. He’d walked to the stairs and been carried away from them. He’d walked into the chapel and stood in the aisle looking at the candles for a long time, very gravely, as though he were saying something to them, and then he’d walked out again. Seraphina had followed him all over the castle for a day and a half with her arms out, and she said if she had to follow him any further she’d fold him to the moon and fetch him back at supper.

So she put him down on the quay and he walked.

He walked to Loki, and Loki held out a finger, and our son took hold of it and looked at it and let go and walked on. He walked to the Castellan and stood between its great stone feet and looked straight up, a very long way up, and the Castellan looked straight down, and neither of them said anything at all for nearly a minute. Then he patted the Castellan’s foot twice and walked on.

He walked to Wynn.

Wynn was sitting on an upturned crate at the end of the arch, cleaning his brush. He didn’t see him coming. Our son stopped in front of him and held on to his knee for balance and looked up at him, the way he’d looked up at the Castellan.

Wynn went very still.

Then he smiled, slowly, the way he had in the kitchen the night before, the way of someone who wasn’t expecting to be happy. And he held out the little brush, the eyelash brush, and let my son hold the handle.

”That’s for writing on stone,” said Wynn. ”Very small. You have to be very careful.”

My son put the end of it in his mouth.

”That’s right,” said Wynn. ”That’s what I do too.” He laughed. It came out a bit cracked. ”Only Eleanor tells me off.”

He looked at my son. My son looked back at him, chewing.

Then Wynn did a strange thing. He looked up, past my son, down the quay, at the harbor mouth and the gray sea beyond it, toward the south and the long coast road. He looked for a long time. And then he took the brush back very gently, and stood up, and lifted my son by the armpits, and carried him the ten steps across the quay to Seraphina, and put him in her arms.

”He’s very good,” Wynn said to her. ”He’s very good. You should keep him close. The quay’s slippery.” And he went back to his crate and sat down and cleaned the brush again, though it was already clean.

”Isn’t he lovely,” Seraphina said to me, on my right, softly. ”Wynn. He’s always been lovely with them.”

”Yes,” I said.

* * *

I went and sat beside him after.

I want to set this down exactly, because I’ve been over it so many times since that the edges have worn smooth, and I want to get the edges back.

There was a second crate. I turned it over and sat on it, on his right, so that I could see him with my good eye. The tide was coming in. The snow on the quay had gone to slush where the golems had walked. Somewhere behind us Eleanor and Aldren were arguing about whether to strike the centering today or tomorrow, and Loki was telling the fishwife about the time he’d been a mackerel, and the fishwife was saying she didn’t believe a word of it.

”That was good work,” I said. ”The lines. I felt them take the fold. They held it like a hand.”

Wynn looked at his brush. ”Thank you.”

”You’re tired.”

”A bit.”

”Wynn,” I said. ”Are you well?”

And he looked at me.

I’ve thought about that look a great deal. At the time I thought it was surprise, a man asked a kind thing when he didn’t expect it. Now I think he was weighing something. Not whether to tell me. I don’t think he ever came near telling me. I think he was weighing what I’d do with the answer, and how fast, and what would happen in the time between.

Then he said, ”I’m all right. Just not sleeping much. The room over the Lantern’s right on the water and the gulls start at four.” He smiled. ”And I’ve been missing home a bit. With the snow. That’s all.”

”Your mam,” I said.

”And the girls.” He turned the brush over in his fingers. ”My youngest sister’s eight now. The middle one’s eleven. I used to be home every month, before the lockdown. Mam writes every week.” He touched his coat, over the breast pocket, where I suppose the letter was. ”They’re fine. They’re all fine. She says the girls are fine.”

”Good,” I said.

”Yes,” said Wynn.

That was all. That was the whole of it. He said he was all right and I said good, because I liked him, and because it was a cold bright day and the arch had gone through a day early, and my son was walking, and my father was eating a pork pie on a wall. Because I’d had a week of asking two hundred and eleven people if they were all right, and every one had said yes, or near enough, and I was tired of watching faces. Because Eleanor had said nobody searches anybody, we ask, and I had asked, and he had answered, and that was what we did now. That was the whole idea.

Because it was the answer I wanted.

”Get some sleep,” I said. ”Come up to the castle tonight. Helena’ll give you the little room over the bakehouse. No gulls.”

”I can’t,” said Wynn. ”Aldren wants me here at first light for the centering.” He hesitated. ”Thank you, though. For asking.”

”That’s what we do now,” I said.

”I know,” said Wynn. ”I know it is.”

And I clapped him on the shoulder, and got up, and went to see about the fold.

* * *

Eleanor walked back up the hill with my father and me at two, when the light started to go.

She was quiet for the first half mile. Then, at the place where the road turns and you can see the castle over the trees, she stopped and took the folded paper out of her coat pocket. The list. The seven. She didn’t open it. She just held it.

”I asked Calum this morning,” she said. ”Before you came down. He came through the Lyradon arch with the river plates.”

”Is he all right?” said my father.

”His wife’s expecting again. Their fourth. He wanted to know if I’d stand for it, at the naming.” She put the paper back. ”I said yes. I’ve never stood for anybody’s naming. I didn’t know you could be asked.” She started walking again. ”Five left.”

”Who’s next?” I said.

I shouldn’t have asked. It wasn’t my list. But she answered.

”Bettrys tomorrow. She’s in Lyradon, I’ll go through. Then Old Hedge, though he can barely see and I can’t think how he’d have done it. Then the twins, both at once, because they’ll only tell each other anyway.” She stopped. ”And then Wynn.”

”Last?” said my father.

”Last.” Eleanor looked up the hill, at the castle, at the light going gold on the east range. ”He’s the one I’m surest of. I taught him everything. He reads oath-script better than I do now; I know every line of his hand like my own. I’d know if it was him.” She was quiet for a moment. ”I wanted to end on a sure one. Is that foolish?”

”No,” said my father.

”I nearly asked him today. On the quay. When he forgot to read it twice.” She shook her head. ”But he’s tired, and he was working, and I didn’t want him to think it was because of that. I didn’t want him to think I was watching him. I did that once already, in the autumn, after the Orselle gate. We all did. He went home to his mother’s over it.” She folded her arms. ”I’m not doing that to him twice.”

”No,” said my father again, gently.

”I asked him,” I said. ”If he was well. He’s well. He’s tired. He misses his mam and his sisters. That’s all.”

”There,” said Eleanor. ”You see.” And she almost smiled, and walked on up the hill in the golems’ footprints, fast, the way she always walks, so that my father and I had to lengthen our stride to keep up.

I want it noted that I told her that. That I said that’s all. That I believed it, and I gave it to her to believe, and she took it, because I’m the one who feels the folds and she trusts what I feel.

* * *

That night I sat up in the east-wall nook with the window open a crack and a blanket over my knees, as I have every night since the gold, and watched the court.

Seraphina’s coin was on the sill beside me, lying flat. It had lain flat every night since Thursday. It would stand on its edge if the purse behind the Orselle plate so much as shifted. It didn’t shift.

At about eleven my father came up the stair with two cups and gave me one and sat down on the step below, on my right.

”Eleanor’s going to Lyradon tomorrow,” I said. ”Bettrys.”

”Yes.”

”And then Wynn last.”

”Yes.” He drank his tea. ”You don’t like that.”

I thought about it. ”I don’t know,” I said. ”I think I just don’t like the list. I don’t like any of them being on it.”

”Nor does she.”

”He looked tired, Father. That’s all. He looked very tired.” I turned the cup in my hands. ”I asked him. He said he was all right.”

My father didn’t say anything for a while. The court was dark and white and empty. Down the hill, at the bottom of the long slope, you could just see the lamps along the quay and, among them, three small steady lights at the new arches, where the Castellan had left a little of itself burning, to keep them.

”Then that’s what he said,” said my father at last.

It wasn’t agreement. I’ve thought about that, too. It wasn’t disagreement either. It was only my father, putting the answer down on the step between us where we could both see it, and leaving it there.

Then he finished his tea and went to bed, and I sat up till the coin had lain flat for another three hours, and then I went to bed too.

I slept well. I want that noted. I slept very well.

* * *

From Mary’s book, Monday. In the margin, a small neat drawing of an arch, and under it a line of tiny chalk numbers, the way Eleanor numbers stones:

Monday. Clear and cold.

The Concordia arch went through on the quay at half past eleven. A day early. Aldren held the ladder. Eleanor said it was good. Aldren went red.

The Castellan came down the hill to keep the arches. It said a mile is a very long way. It kept them anyway, because it was asked. Lyradon. The southern towns. Concordia. Kept.

Loki came through first with two loaves. He ate a pork pie sitting down. So did Uriah. Helena is satisfied.

Uriah walked on the quay. He patted the Castellan’s foot. He chewed Wynn’s brush.

Eleanor asked Calum. His wife is expecting. Eleanor will stand at the naming. Five left.

Garrick asked Wynn if he was well. Wynn said he was tired and missing home. That’s all.

Coin flat.

And under that, in a small, careful, very upright hand, every letter exactly the same height, the hand of someone who was taught to write on stone where you can’t rub anything out:

Wynn Harlow, junior ward-keeper. I’d like it noted that the Concordia arch went through a day early, and that I cut the lines under the seaward leg, and that they held. That Eleanor nodded. That it’s good work. The best I’ve done. I’d like that in the book, in ink, so it stays true.