By noon, the whole barony knew that a Null boy in Harrowfield had invoked a law nobody had used in a hundred years, and by nightfall, three different people had come to the Vale kitchen to tell Mara that it would be the ruin of them all.
The first was Steward Hobb.
He did not bring his men-at-arms. He did not bring his satchel. He came up the western lane alone at a trot, and got down from his bay gelding with his round face red and sweating, and stood in the Vale kitchen twisting his hat in his hands.
"The baron's had a rider from the chapter house," he said, before anyone could offer him a seat. "Two riders. One from the High Examiner and one from that Inquisitor woman. Both asking the same thing. Whose side is Westmarch on." He wiped his face. "Do you understand what you've done, Goodwife? A lord of the land is a sworn witness of the Crown's law. Same as a priest. So now the Temple wants to know if His Lordship will uphold a Crown writ against a High Examiner, in his own barony. And the Crown's magistrate at Veyrholt will want to know if His Lordship won't."
"And what does His Lordship say?" asked Mara.
"His Lordship says he has a leaking roof and a son at court and a daughter to marry." Hobb twisted the hat. "His Lordship says he is not on anyone's side. His Lordship says that the rents of the western fields are still due at first frost, writ or no writ, and that if they aren't paid, the lease is reclaimed, and the Vales are on the road, and then they are not his tenants and not his problem." He looked at Tomas miserably. "I'm sorry. Those are his words."
"Seventeen days," said Tomas.
"Seventeen days." Hobb put his hat back on. At the door, he stopped. "For what it's worth," he mumbled, not turning round, "I told His Lordship the boy hit a Hollowbeast in the face with a lantern for his father. I told him the whole valley lied to the Inquisition for him." He cleared his throat. "His Lordship said that was very touching. And that touching doesn't mend roofs."
❖ ❖ ❖
The second was Brother Fennick, and he was the only one of the three who was smiling.
"Suspended," he said happily, lowering himself onto the bench with the short leg. "From my parish duties. Pending review by the Westmarch chapter house. Watch-Sergeant Harl read me the letter himself. He had to read it twice because I couldn't hear him the first time." He accepted a cup of mint tea. "I did hear him the first time."
"Brother, I'm so sorry," said Mara.
"Why? I'm seventy-eight. I've been ordained sixty years. They'll send some young Brother from Westmarch to take over the chapel, and he'll ring the bell at the wrong time and forget everyone's names, and I'll sit in my cottage and read the Laws of the Crown, Volume the Third." His watery eyes twinkled. "Do you know there are four more volumes? I've never opened them. There might be all sorts of things in there."
Adrian laughed, and then stopped, because his mother wasn't laughing.
"They'll take your pension," she said.
"They might." Fennick patted her hand. "I've got a garden. And Hatty's never once let anyone go hungry." He looked at Adrian. "And I've got a thumbprint on a piece of paper that I'm prouder of than any sermon I ever preached. So don't you go sorry at me, either of you."
❖ ❖ ❖
The third was Rowan, and he did not come himself.
He could not. Hollis brought the news at dusk, out of breath, with his big face very grave.
"They've taken his watch duties," Hollis said. "Harl did. He's not allowed out of the chapel loft. Not to the square, not to the Plough, nowhere. Oren says there's going to be a board of review. In Westmarch. For Article Nine." Hollis swallowed. "Oswin heard Dace laughing about it. At the trough. Dace said Vale's finished. Dace said nobody stands in the middle of a lane in front of a sergeant and keeps his white."
Adrian's hands closed on the edge of the table.
"But he sent this," said Hollis, and took a scrap of paper from inside his shirt.
It was torn from the edge of a prayer book this time, and it had only three words on it, in Rowan's big, careful hand.
Not stripped. Yet.
❖ ❖ ❖
Adrian did not sleep that night either.
He lay in the loft - his father had moved back down to the bed, now that Adrian was well - with Elsie's cold feet against his back, and opened the grey window, and looked at the number.
[Dissonance: 4]
It would be zero in two days. His hands were almost clean. Under the fading walnut stain, the grey lines were so faint now that even he could barely find them. In thirty days - in twenty-nine - there would be no proof on him anywhere that a Crown magistrate could put his hand on.
And for that, Brother Fennick had lost his parish. And Rowan had lost his watch, and might lose his white. And Jory Keel, and Hollis, and Bet Marsh, and the Dunns, had lied to an Inquisitor with a Truthbearer on the road, and the Truthbearer had turned around and gone back to the Plough and written to the Archprelate. And the rent was still due in seventeen days.
It's all because of me, he thought.
[Yes.]
You could say something nicer.
[I could.]
[It would not be true.]
Adrian lay in the dark and almost laughed.
What do I do? he asked it. How do I fix it?
[You cannot fix it.]
[You can only decide what it was for.]
❖ ❖ ❖
The High Examiner asked to see him on the second morning.
He did not come to the house. He sent Brother Odo with a note, very politely worded, in common Temple script, which Adrian could read now without help.
Adrian - I leave for Solmere in eight days, as planned. Before I go, I would be grateful for one more walk to the end of the lane. You are under the Crown's protection, and I have no power to compel you, and I would not use it if I did. If you would rather not, I will understand. - S. Crane.
"No," said Tomas.
"Yes," said Adrian.
His father stared at him. His mother did not.
"He can't do anything to me," Adrian said. "The law says so. You read it. And if I say no, he'll know I'm afraid." He looked at his mother. "If you avoid a place, people wonder why."
Mara looked at him for a long moment. Then she took her shawl off the peg and put it around his shoulders.
"To the boundary stone," she said. "Not one step further. I'll be at the gate."
❖ ❖ ❖
It was a cold, bright morning. The first cold one. The blackberries in the hedges had gone over and were soft and purple and full of wasps. The High Examiner was waiting at the boundary stone, alone, with his hands clasped behind his back, looking down at the roofs of Harrowfield.
He did not turn around when Adrian came. He did not need to.
"You walk differently when you're not trying to hide it," he said. "Did you know that? Heel first, when you came up the lane at the Pitchfork. Very ordinary. Very deliberate." He turned. "Today you're not bothering."
Adrian looked down at his feet. Outside edge. Weight last. He hadn't noticed.
"Jory Keel," said Crane. "I know. I watched you cross the barley field during the harvest when you thought no one was looking." He smiled faintly. "I've been watching you for a long time, Adrian. It's what I do. It's the only thing I've ever been good at."
The grey window was dark. Adrian had expected that. He stood at the boundary stone in his mother's shawl, in the cold bright morning, alone with the High Examiner, with nothing behind his eyes but his own thoughts, and found that he was not as afraid as he had expected to be.
"What do you want, Examiner?" he said.
"To give you something." Crane reached into his robe, and Adrian's whole body tensed - the bell, the silver sliver - but what came out was small and soft and blue. A little book. Faded blue cloth, worn white at the corners. Primer.
"It was mine," said Crane, "when I was a ward. I'd like you to have it."
Adrian did not take it.
"It isn't a trick. It's a children's book. Every child in every Temple school in the kingdom has read it." Crane held it out patiently. "I've read it a thousand times. I don't need it anymore. And I think, one day, when you're older, you should read the tale of the King Without a Name again. Carefully. On your own. Without anyone watching you do it." A pause. "Without me watching you do it."
Adrian looked at the book for a long time. Then he took it.
It was very light. The cover was soft with age. He put it inside his mother's shawl, against his chest.
"The Truthbearer," said Crane. "Sister Ysolde. She's left for Westmarch this morning. She wouldn't speak to me." He looked down at the roofs of the village again. "She's served the Inquisition for sixty years. She has seen murderers and heretics and Hollowed and liars of every kind. She's the most frightening woman I have ever met." His voice was very quiet. "And she looked at you and was afraid."
Adrian said nothing.
"Do you know what she saw?" asked Crane.
"No."
"Neither do I." The High Examiner turned his pale eyes to Adrian. "That's the first entirely honest thing either of us has said to the other, I think. In two months."
Adrian thought about it. He thought the High Examiner was right.
"Your mother's secret," said Crane. "I told her I would write to no one. That's still true. It will stay true." He paused. "I want you to know that it's not a bargain. It isn't something I'll take away if you don't come to Solmere. It's simply true."
"Why?"
Crane was quiet for a long time. The wind moved in the hedge. Down in the village, the new Brother from Westmarch rang the chapel bell - at the wrong hour, just as Fennick had said he would.
"Because I was in the gallery," said Severin Crane, "the year she left. And I know what she heard, lying on the floor beside that grate." He did not look at Adrian. "I heard it too. From a little closer."
Adrian's breath stopped.
"I've spent twenty years trying to understand it," said the High Examiner. "What was in that boy. What they wanted from him. What happened when he said the name. Why the mirror cracked, and why the bell rang, and why they couldn't - why they didn't-" He stopped. For a moment his long, clever face was not clever at all. It was simply tired, and old, and something else that Adrian had seen only once before, through a chapel window, bent over a bloody handkerchief. Frightened. "Your mother ran away from that. I couldn't. I've never been able to. I've been walking toward it my whole life."
He turned from the boundary stone.
"The Guild in Veyrholt will enroll you," he said, in his ordinary voice again. "You're young, but there's no rule against twelve. They'll give you a candidate's badge, and a room in a dormitory if you can pay for one, and in the spring there'll be a Proving, and if you pass, you'll be Iron-rank in whatever Profession you choose. And the Crown will protect you, as long as you hold it." He glanced back. "It is a door, Adrian. Your mother is right. It's a very good door. But it opens onto a very large house. And I have friends in every room of it."
"Is that a threat, Examiner?"
"No," said Crane. "It's the second honest thing."
He walked away down the lane toward the village, and did not look back.
❖ ❖ ❖
That night, in the kitchen, Adrian's father and mother talked, and for the first time in weeks they did not shut the bedroom door to do it.
Adrian lay in the loft and listened. He did not have to press his eye to the crack. They were not whispering.
"Nineteen years," said Tomas. There was no bewilderment in it now. Something else. "Nineteen years I've been married to a woman who reads the King's script."
"Badly."
"Badly." A creak of the bench. "And Temple script. And High Canonical, probably."
"No one reads High Canonical, Tomas. Not unless the Canon lets them."
"And did it let you?"
A long silence.
"Some," said Mara.
His father laughed. It was a strange, cracked, exhausted laugh, but it was a laugh.
"I bought all your herbs," Tomas said. "At Westmarch market. Every bundle. Because you looked hungry. And you took my silver and looked at me like I was the biggest fool in Calvane." A pause. "Were you a Sister then? When you sold them? Still?"
"I was nobody then. That was the point."
"You were never nobody." Another creak. "I'm taking him to Veyrholt."
"Tomas, you can't. Your knee. Your arm. It's four days' walk."
"Then I'll ride." His father's voice was very steady. "Goodman Brandt's been wanting Barley for three years. He'll give seven silver for her. Six, at least. That's a place on the wool carter's wagon east for both of us, and a candidate's fee at the Guildhall, and a month's bed in the city for the boy." A pause. "And some left for the rent."
"Barley's the plough-horse. The loan's against her. Hobb-"
"Hobb can have the silver instead of the horse. He'd rather. He doesn't know what to do with a horse." Tomas's voice was quieter. "Mara. I had my hand on the pen. I'm not letting him walk into that city with a stranger. Not with that man's friends in every room. I'm taking my son."
His mother did not say anything for a long time.
"All right," she said.
❖ ❖ ❖
Adrian lay in the dark with the little blue primer under his pillow, and did not open it. He did not want to read the tale of the King Without a Name. Not yet. Not with the High Examiner's voice still in his head, saying, Carefully. On your own. Without anyone watching.
He opened the grey window instead.
[Dissonance: 2]
We're leaving, he told it. Me and Father. For Veyrholt.
[Yes.]
The Inquisitor will be there. With a magistrate. And the Examiner has friends in every room.
[Yes.]
And Mother and Elsie will be here alone. And Rowan's in the chapel loft. And the rent is still due in sixteen days.
[Yes.]
Adrian lay still for a while.
You asked me once what I wanted, he thought. In the loft. And I said I wanted them safe, and I wanted to know the truth. And you said one day they'd pull in two different directions.
[I remember.]
He said Mother's secret isn't a bargain. He said he'll keep it anyway. He said he heard the boy, too. From closer. Adrian swallowed. I think he meant it. I think he meant all of it.
[So do I.]
Then what is he? He's not cruel. You said so. He saved Father. He protected Mother. He held off the Inquisitor. He kept the wolf alive and let it come for us.
The window was quiet for a long time.
[He is a man who heard a boy scream, and could not stop listening.]
[That kind of man will do anything to understand a thing.]
[Even what he hates.]
[Especially what he hates.]
Adrian closed his eyes.
Then I have to understand it first, he thought.
And the grey window, which had never once in two months told him that he was right about anything, wrote a single word, and let it stay there in the dark until he fell asleep.
[Yes.]