The Greykeep Chronicles

There is a way onto the roof of the north tower that only four people in the world know about.

You go up past Carol’s rooms, all four of them, to the very top of the spiral stair, where there is a little landing with a round window and a broom cupboard that has never had a broom in it. At the back of the broom cupboard there is a ladder. At the top of the ladder there is a trapdoor, and if you put your shoulder to it and push, it comes up with a groan, and you climb out onto the leads, into the wind, with the whole sky over your head and the lightning rods standing up around you like the masts of a ship.

We found it when we were five. Carol and Ignatius and Seraphina and me. We were not supposed to be up there. We were never once caught. I have always suspected that this was because the Castellan knew perfectly well, and decided we were safe, and said nothing.

Seraphina was asleep. She had gone down after the lesser hall like a candle going out, and was lying in our bed with little Uriah tucked against her and one arm flung over him, and I had sat beside them until I was sure she wouldn’t wake. Then I had gone looking for Carol, because I knew she wouldn’t be sleeping, and I had found Ignatius on the north stair already, with a basket of Helena’s honey biscuits and a jug of something warm, going the same way.

”She’ll be on the roof,” he said.

”I know.”

So we went up.

* * *

Carol was lying on her back on the leads with her arms folded behind her head, looking at the stars.

She didn’t look around when the trapdoor groaned. She just moved over a little, to make room, the way she always used to. Ignatius lay down on her left, and I lay down on her right, and for a while none of us said anything at all.

It was a clear night. Summer, and warm, and very still. No frost on anything. Down below, the castle was mostly dark, with a few windows lit here and there like coals in a banked fire. Father’s study. The little kitchen, where Helena was awake, as she is always awake. The guest rooms in the east wing.

Above us, the lightning rods hummed.

I had never heard them hum before. They are tall iron spikes, eight of them, set around the edge of the roof in a ring, and Davren put them up years ago after the roof was struck for the third time, and they have always just stood there, quiet and black. Tonight they were singing. Very faintly. A high clean note, like a wet finger on the rim of a glass, rising and falling as Carol breathed.

”That’s you,” said Ignatius.

”I know.” Carol didn’t open her eyes. ”I can’t make it stop. I don’t think I want to.”

”In whom lightning sleeps,” I said.

”Not anymore,” said Carol, and she smiled at the sky. ”I’ve used the edges of it all my life. Sparks. Weather. The roof getting struck. But the whole of it has been asleep for twenty-three years. I always knew it was there. Like a cat on the end of the bed. I just never... I never asked it to wake up. I didn’t know I could.” She opened one eye and looked at me sideways. ”Do you remember the snow forts?”

”Which ones?”

”The first ones. In the nursery. When we were two.”

I didn’t, really. I remembered being told about them. Father tells it at midwinter sometimes, when there’s been enough wine: four children in a nursery, two years old, who had decided to build a snow fort indoors. Carol making the snow. Me folding the space so there was room for it. Ignatius keeping the walls from getting so cold they cracked the floor. Seraphina ending every crack the moment it started. And the whole thing collapsing seven times, and Aurethar standing in the middle of the nursery holding several hundred pounds of snow over our heads while we laughed.

”Rysa told him not to laugh,” said Ignatius. ”And he said he wasn’t. And she said he was. And he said, A little.”

Carol laughed. The lightning rods went up half a note.

”I remember Rysa’s face,” she said. ”That’s what I remember. Not the snow. Her face, when the fourth fort came down. She wasn’t angry. She was just... waiting. To see what we’d do.”

”She always did that,” I said.

”She still does.” Ignatius rolled onto his side and propped his head on his hand. ”She came to little Uriah’s name day with that cloth bag. The one she never opens. And she looked at me across the courtyard and mouthed Name? at me. As if I were still two.”

”She does it to me too,” I said.

”She does it to everyone. She did it to Father last winter. He nearly answered.”

We lay there in the warm dark and the stars wheeled slowly over the lightning rods, and I thought about Rysa. A small woman with deep brown skin and dark curls threaded through with silver, and the calmest voice I have ever heard used to stop a child from doing something dangerous. A goddess. Of childcare, which most people don’t think is a real thing to be a goddess of, until they’ve been in a nursery with four children who can bend space and make snow and set things on fire.

She taught us everything. Not letters. Not sums. Mary did those. Rysa taught us the other thing. The thing underneath.

”Say them,” said Carol, very quietly.

So we did. Lying on our backs on the roof of the north tower, the three of us, like children saying a prayer.

”Name,” said Ignatius.

”Want,” I said.

”Permission,” said Carol.

And then, together, because it had always been together, because it was the one we had needed most when we were two and the walls of the nursery were falling down around us:

”Stop.”

The word went up into the dark and was gone.

The lightning rods hummed.

None of us said the last one. Not yet.

* * *

”He skipped a step,” Carol said.

She said it to the sky. I didn’t have to ask who she meant.

”Which one?” said Ignatius.

”That’s what I’ve been lying here trying to work out.” She unfolded one arm from behind her head and held her hand up against the stars, and counted on her fingers. ”Name. He had the names. He had everyone’s names. He had little Uriah’s first word. He didn’t skip that one.”

”No,” I said.

”Want.” Second finger. ”He told us what he wanted. He was very clear about it. I want her.” Her voice didn’t change when she said it. I was proud of her for that. ”He didn’t skip that one either.”

”He skipped your want,” said Ignatius. ”He never asked what you wanted. Not once, in the whole letter.”

”Yes. But hold on.” Third finger. ”Permission. He asked. He actually asked. That’s the whole point of him, isn’t it? Severin kept saying it. His Radiance asks. He’s built an entire empire on asking. He’s proud of it.” She lowered her hand a little. ”So he didn’t skip permission.”

”Stop,” I said.

”Stop.” Carol’s fourth finger. She held it there, against the dark. ”That’s the one. He’s never stopped. Not in three hundred years. He asks once, and if you say no, he asks again, and if you say no again...” She closed her hand. ”Those cities aren’t on the map anymore.”

We were all quiet for a moment.

”So he skipped Stop,” said Ignatius.

”No.” Carol let her hand fall back onto the leads. ”That’s what I thought at first. But that’s not it either. I’ve been going around and around. Every rule, he does his half perfectly. He says the name. He says his want. He asks permission. He’d probably even say stop, if you asked him to. He’d say it beautifully.” She turned her head and looked at me, and then at Ignatius. ”He didn’t skip a step. He skipped the other person.”

The lightning rods hummed.

”Every one of those rules has two people in it,” Carol said. ”That’s the thing Rysa never said out loud, because she didn’t have to, because we were two and we already knew. Name isn’t you saying your name. It’s you asking for mine. Want isn’t you telling me what you want. It’s you asking what I want, and then listening to the answer. Permission isn’t a question you ask so you can say you asked. It’s a question where no is a real answer. Where no means no, the first time, and you go home.” She was quiet for a moment. ”He does all of it. He just does it alone. Like a man playing both sides of a chess game and wondering why he always wins.”

I lay there and thought about Severin, crouching down in the butchers’ street to ask a little girl her name. Doing it perfectly. Every time. With everyone. And meaning it, I think, as much as he could. And carrying, the whole time, a letter from a man who had never once in three hundred years let the other person’s answer count.

”That’s what was wrong with him,” I said slowly. ”Severin. Why it felt like someone had read the household book over my shoulder. He knew the words. He didn’t know they had someone else in them.”

”I think he’s starting to,” said Carol.

* * *

After a while, Ignatius said, ”I nearly did something today.”

Carol and I both turned our heads.

He was lying on his back again, with his hands folded on his chest, looking straight up. He has a very gentle face, Ignatius. People always say so. Mother says he looks like Io, only kinder, which Io says is a lie and also true.

”When Sera said it,” he said. ”About the halves. He got the half that heals. Everyone loves him for it.” He stopped. ”She wasn’t being cruel. I know she wasn’t. She was telling the truth. And then she said I’m not a hearth. That’s my brother, if anything.”

”Iggy,” said Carol.

”And I thought, she’s right.” He kept looking at the sky. ”I thought, if he’d asked for me, I don’t know what I’d have done. A fire to keep at the heart of an empire. Tended, and safe, and never going out, and every child in every river town fed and warm. I heal people. That’s what I’m for. What if that’s exactly what I’m for? What if I’d have said yes?”

Nobody answered for a long moment.

”You wouldn’t have,” I said.

”How do you know?”

”Because you’d have asked first,” I said. ”You’d have asked what the children wanted. You’d have asked the river towns. You’d have asked Sera, and Carol, and Mother, and Rysa. You’d still be asking. He’d have had to send someone else.”

Ignatius laughed. It came out a little cracked.

”And you?” he said. ”You nearly did something too. I saw. Everyone saw.”

”Yes.”

I didn’t want to talk about it. But Carol had said no means no, the first time, and it would have been a lie to lie there on the roof under all those stars and pretend I hadn’t.

”I was going to fold into him,” I said. ”I had the whole fold ready. Nine feet. I could feel exactly where he was standing. I don’t know what I was going to do when I got there. I don’t think I was going to do anything good.” I swallowed. ”I wanted to. More than I’ve ever wanted anything. I wanted to put my hands on him and make him stop saying it.”

”But you stopped,” said Carol.

”Sera stopped me.”

”No,” said Carol. ”Sera said your name. You stopped.” She found my hand on the leads between us and held it. Warm. ”That’s the whole thing, Garrick. That’s all it is. Anyone can want something that badly. Everyone does, sometimes. Father does. Sera does. I do. Wanting isn’t the wrong part.” She squeezed my fingers. ”The wrong part is not being able to hear someone say your name and put your hands down.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

On her other side, Ignatius reached over without looking and took her other hand.

We lay there, the three of us, holding on, on the roof of the north tower with the lightning rods singing over our heads. And I thought: this is it. This is the thing Rysa taught us in the nursery, with the snow coming down around our ears. Not the words. The words are just the shape of it. The thing itself is this. That there is someone else. That they are real. That they get to say no, and the no is real too, and you can hear it and stop and still be there in the morning, and they will still be there, and that is how you get to the last word.

You can’t get to Friend without going through Stop.

That’s the whole of it. That’s all I know. I’ve thought about it every day since, and I don’t think there’s anything more.

* * *

The trapdoor groaned.

All three of us sat up at once, the way you do when you’re five and you hear a grown-up on the ladder. Carol’s lightning rods jumped a whole note higher. Ignatius nearly knocked the jug of warm cider off the edge of the roof.

A head came up through the hatch. Dark curls threaded with silver. Then a pair of small brown hands, and a cloth bag, set carefully on the leads, and then the rest of her, climbing out onto the roof without any hurry at all, and brushing off her skirt, and looking at us.

Rysa.

”I thought I’d find you here,” she said.

The calmest voice I have ever heard. Exactly the same as it was when I was two.

”How did you know about the roof?” said Carol.

Rysa raised one eyebrow, very slightly.

”Oh,” said Carol. ”Of course you did.”

”The Castellan and I agreed you were safe,” said Rysa. ”Mostly.” She came and sat down on the leads with us, at the end of the row, beside Ignatius, and folded her legs under her, and put the cloth bag in her lap. It was the same bag. Faded blue, with a drawstring, lumpy in the way bags are when they have small hard things in them. She has carried it to every single lesson since we were born. I have never once seen it opened.

She looked at each of us in turn. Ignatius. Carol. Me.

Then she looked at me again, and her mouth moved. No sound. Just the shape of it, the way she has done to me a thousand times across a courtyard or a dinner table or a crowded hall.

Name?

”Garrick,” I said. Out loud. And I felt stupid, and I felt about two years old, and I felt something in my chest come loose that had been wound tight since the morning.

She nodded. Then to Ignatius. Then to Carol.

”Ignatius.”

”Carol.”

”Good,” said Rysa.

She didn’t say anything else for a while. She just sat with us and looked at the stars. The lightning rods went on humming, softer now. Far below, in the little kitchen, Helena’s window glowed.

* * *

”I heard about the lesser hall,” Rysa said eventually.

”Everyone’s heard about the lesser hall,” said Ignatius.

”Mary told me. She showed me her book.” Rysa’s hands rested on the cloth bag. ”She told me what Carol said. And what your father said. And what Seraphina did.” She paused. ”And she told me about you, Garrick. That you stopped.”

I looked down at the leads.

”I didn’t come up here to tell you anything,” Rysa said. ”I think you’ve told each other everything that matters. I could hear you from the ladder.” She smiled slightly. ”I’ve been teaching those words for a very long time. To a great many children. Most of them learn to say them. A few of them learn what they mean.” She looked at the three of us. ”You’ve been saying them for twenty years. I think tonight you heard them.”

Then she did something I had never seen her do.

She loosened the drawstring of the cloth bag.

All three of us went still. Ignatius actually stopped breathing; I heard him. Carol’s hand tightened on mine. In twenty-three years, I don’t think any of us had ever once believed that bag would open. It was like watching a mountain sit down.

Rysa reached in, and took something out, and set it on the leads in the middle of us, where the moonlight fell.

It was a top.

A small wooden spinning top, painted red and blue, with most of the paint worn off. The kind you can buy for a copper in the lower market. Nothing special about it at all.

I knew it at once.

”That’s the one from the snow forts,” said Carol softly.

”It’s the one I put between you,” said Rysa, ”on the day I taught you the last word. You were two. You’d just built a fort that didn’t fall down, for the first time, all four of you together. And I put this down in the middle of you, and I said, If you want to use another person’s power, you ask.” She looked at Ignatius. ”And you pointed to Carol’s snow, and you said...”

”Friend?” said Ignatius. His voice cracked a little.

”And Carol thought about it,” said Rysa, ”for a long time, for a two-year-old. And she said yes. And she gave you a ball of frost.”

”I remember,” said Carol. She didn’t. None of us did. But she said it anyway, and it was true in the way that mattered.

”And Seraphina looked at Garrick,” said Rysa, ”and said Friend? And Garrick didn’t have any power she could use. He was too small to fold anything but blankets. So he gave her a wooden ring off the toy shelf instead. And your father said, That’s not your power. And you ignored him.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

”She still has it,” I said. ”The ring. She keeps it in the box with her mother’s letters.”

”I know,” said Rysa. ”I’ve seen it.”

She looked down at the little top in the moonlight.

”I keep the bag closed,” she said, ”because what’s in it is for when you need it. Not before. Most children never need it. Most children grow up and never once have to sit on a roof and work out what the words mean, because nobody ever comes across the sea with a collar in a box and asks them for themselves.” She touched the top with one finger and set it spinning. It went around and around on the leads, wobbling slightly, red and blue blurring together. ”Tonight you needed it.”

We watched it spin.

”Say the last one,” said Rysa.

Ignatius looked at Carol. Carol looked at me.

”Friend?” I said.

”Friend,” said Carol.

”Friend,” said Ignatius.

The top wobbled, and slowed, and tipped over, and lay still in the middle of us.

* * *

Rysa went down a little after that. She left the top. She took the bag, closed again, and climbed back down the ladder without a word, and the trapdoor groaned shut behind her.

We stayed. We were not ready to go in.

After a while I sat up and went to the edge of the roof, between two of the humming lightning rods, and looked down across the dark inner court toward the east wing.

The guest balcony was lit.

She was there again. Iselle. Standing at the carved balustrade in her gray dress with her bare arms, very still, looking up. Not at Carol’s window this time. Carol’s window was dark. She was looking higher. At the roof. At us.

I don’t know if she could see me. I was only a shape against the stars. But she lifted her right hand again, the way she had the first night, and held it up against the lamplight behind her.

Open. Palm out. The fingers spread.

And I thought about everything Carol had said. About two people in every rule. About Severin, doing his half perfectly, alone.

I thought: She came up the river with him, and stood behind his chair, and carried his case, and kept his papers. And in three days, in this whole house full of people who were raised on Rysa’s rules, not one of us has asked her a single thing.

Not her want. Not her permission.

Not even her name. Severin gave us that. She never did.

I lifted my own hand, on the roof of the north tower, and held it up. Open. Palm out.

Down on the balcony, Iselle went very still.

Then she lowered her hand, and turned, and went inside. But slowly, this time. And she left the lamp burning.