The Greykeep Chronicles

Caitlin hadn’t been to bed in three days.

Nobody had noticed. That’s the thing about Caitlin. She’s my sister, the one between Roderic and Elenos, nineteen this year, with my mother’s careful hands and my father’s habit of going very quiet when she’s thinking, and she’s so good at being somewhere useful that nobody ever notices when she isn’t anywhere else.

I found her in the map room at six in the morning, the day after Halemar came home.

* * *

The map room is at the top of the west range, under the roof. It’s long and low and smells of old paper and ink and the beeswax Mary uses on the tables. The great map of Avarra is painted on the floor, every river and road and hill, and the Castellan adds to it in the night, small and neat, whenever something changes. You walk on it in your socks. Mirelle has spent more hours on that floor than anyone but the Castellan.

This morning it was covered in pins.

Hundreds of them. Brass dressmaker’s pins from Mary’s sewing box, and bone ones from Helena’s, and a few rusty iron ones I suspected had come out of the stable. Stuck into the floor all over the painted map, with little paper flags on them, each flag with a few words in Caitlin’s small, square, sloping hand. And between the pins, red thread. Strung from one to another, back and forth, crossing and recrossing, like a spider had been at the map all night with a ball of wool.

Caitlin was sitting cross-legged in the middle of it, in her nightgown and a cardigan of my mother’s, with her blue book in her lap and a pencil behind each ear and a third in her mouth.

Kip was asleep against the wall by the door, with a bag of pins in his lap.

* * *

”How long?” I said.

Caitlin took the pencil out of her mouth.

”Since Meriel,” she said. ”Since the chapel. Since the candles went out.”

”Caitlin, that’s three days.”

”Four,” said Caitlin. ”Kip came at midnight. He brought pins. He said he’d stay till I fell asleep, and then he fell asleep.” She looked at him with an expression I didn’t see on her face very often. ”He’s very good at finding pins.”

* * *

I should say something about Caitlin and counting.

All my father’s children are at least half of what he is. It comes out differently in each of us. In Caitlin it comes out in numbers. She can count things that can’t be counted. Raindrops on a window. Starlings in a murmuration. The number of times a word appears in a book she’s only read once. She’s never been wrong. Not once. Not since she was four and counted the stars over the east wall and Mary wrote the number down, and Faelan, years later, checked it against an astronomer’s chart from Concordia, and it was right to the star.

At the Festival of Lanterns, when the masks came, she stood on the parade ground and counted them. Eleven. Twenty-two. Thirty-three. She was right every time.

She’d been counting something now. For four days. I could see it in her face. She had the look of someone who’d been adding up a column of figures and found that the total was a word.

* * *

”Sit down,” said Caitlin. ”Carefully. Don’t step on Corlis.”

I sat down on the painted sea, carefully, between a pin marked Ternhollow and a pin marked Skellow.

”Tell me,” I said.

* * *

”Ruan told you what Kessavel said,” said Caitlin. ”In the cave. Find the seams. Tear along them. Bring me the pieces that speak.”

”Yes.”

”And Meriel was torn while she was saying a name. Doing what she’s for.” She tapped her pencil against her teeth. ”And Soren’s seam opened while he was lighting the window. Doing what he’s for. And Draum’s hands came up.” She looked at me. ”So I thought: if they’ve been trying for a month, they’ve been trying everywhere. And nobody’s noticed, because most of the time it wouldn’t look like anything. A god doing their work, and for a second, something tugs, and then lets go.”

She held up her blue book.

”So I asked,” she said.

* * *

She’d asked everyone.

That’s what she’d been doing for four days. Not just sitting on the map room floor. She’d gone through the Concordia gate, and the Lyradon gate, and down to Havenreach, and out to Westmere, with Faelan’s list of two hundred and twelve in her pocket. And she’d asked every god on it she could find one question.

In the last month, while you were doing what you’re for, did anything feel wrong? Even for a second?

”Nineteen said yes,” said Caitlin.

She pointed at the pins.

”Nineteen gods. Nineteen times. All in the last five weeks.” She ran her finger along the red thread, from pin to pin. ”Lorn, at the Hallow Ford, while he was carrying a drowned dog’s body down to the sea so its owner could bury it on the right bank. Something tugged at the part of him that carries. Then let go. Corra, the first cold morning, on a hill above Lyradon, while a shepherd’s boy saw his breath and laughed. Something tugged. Then let go. Morning, at Sedge, while he was being lit for a traveler who was late. Something tugged. He thought it was the wind.”

Pin after pin. Flag after flag. Nineteen times, something had reached into a seam while a god was doing their work, and pulled, and let go.

”Most of them didn’t open far enough,” said Caitlin. ”Most of the gods weren’t doing it hard enough. Not like Meriel saying his name. Not like Soren lighting every window in Westmere for a man who’d crossed the sea.” She looked at the pins. ”So it tugged, and it didn’t tear, and it went away. Sixteen times.”

”And the other three?”

Caitlin was quiet for a moment.

”Meriel,” she said. ”You know about Meriel.”

”And?”

She pointed at two more pins. Red flags, not white. One far up in the hill country, at the head of the Varrow valley. One at Brannock Falls, on the river, where the locks are.

* * *

”Tessel,” said Caitlin. ”The well in the square at Hallowmere.”

I remembered him. He’d voted. On a fish crate at the back of the Westmere hall. Tessel. The well in the square at Hallowmere. Aye.

”He’s a small god,” said Caitlin. ”Very old. Very quiet. His well’s the kind that answers. You lean over and say your name into it, and it says your name back. Children do it. Everyone in Hallowmere has done it since they were small enough to need lifting up.” She looked down at her book. ”Nine days ago a girl leaned over and said her name, and the well didn’t answer. And hasn’t since. Tessel’s still there. He’s still the well. But the part of him that answers, the echo, is gone. He didn’t tell anyone. He thought he’d just gotten old.”

My stomach went cold.

”And the other?”

”Corvel,” said Caitlin. ”The horn at Brannock Falls.”

* * *

I knew Brannock Falls. Every barge from Westmere to Havenreach goes through the locks there. Three great stone steps of water, with a lock-keeper’s house on the top one, and a horn on a post outside it, a long curled ram’s horn, very old, black with handling.

”When a barge comes down the river in fog,” said Caitlin, ”the lock-keeper blows the horn. And the barge hears it, and knows where the gates are, and doesn’t go over the falls. That’s Corvel. He’s the horn. Not the horn itself; the call. The part of the sound that goes out over water and finds whoever’s lost on it.” She looked at me. ”Six days ago, in fog, the lock-keeper blew. And the sound came out of the horn and just… stopped. A foot from the end. Like it had walked into a wall. The barge went past the gate. They got a line on it with about thirty yards to spare.”

”Six days ago,” I said. ”I was asleep.”

”You were asleep,” said Caitlin. ”Everybody was looking at you. Nobody was looking at Brannock Falls.”

* * *

I sat on the painted sea and looked at the red flags.

Three pieces taken. Meriel’s voice, the part that says heard. Tessel’s echo, the part that answers when you say your name. Corvel’s call, the part that goes out over water and finds whoever’s lost.

”They all speak,” I said slowly. ”Ruan said. The pieces that speak.”

”Yes,” said Caitlin. ”But they don’t just speak. Look.” She leaned over and touched the three red flags with her pencil, one after another. ”Meriel names. She says the name, so it’s heard. Tessel answers. You say your name, and something says it back, so you know you’re there. Corvel calls. Across water. To find someone who’s lost.”

She looked up at me.

”Naming. Answering. Calling,” she said. ”Garrick. Somebody’s building a voice.”

* * *

Kip woke up.

He woke the way he always does, all at once, with his hand going to his left wrist, where the brand is, before he knows where he is. Then he saw Caitlin and his hand came away from his wrist and his whole face changed.

”You’re still up,” he said.

”I’m nearly done.”

”You said that at two.”

”I was nearly done at two,” said Caitlin. ”Now I’m nearer.” She held out her hand without looking, and he got up and came over, stepping very carefully between the pins in his socks, and put a bone pin in it. ”Thank you.”

He sat down beside her. Not touching. Close.

I looked at my sister, nineteen years old, in my mother’s cardigan, with three pencils and red thread all over the floor, and a branded boy from the Kethran ships handing her pins without being asked. And I thought: oh. And then I thought: I’ll tell Seraphina later. And Carol. Not now.

* * *

”There’s more,” said Caitlin. ”The thread.”

I’d thought the red thread was just to connect the pins. It wasn’t.

”I asked Selvane,” said Caitlin. ”And Elenos. And Damar, through the lower hall. Where things go. When something’s taken.” She ran her finger along one of the red threads. ”Meriel’s voice went south, to Ternhollow, because Ruan ran. But it was meant to go west. To the ships. And Tessel’s echo went west, down the Varrow, out to the sea. Damar heard it go along the riverbed, like a pebble rolling.” She moved her finger. ”And Corvel’s call went west, down the river, through the marshes, out past the coast. Selvane felt it go past Saltreach on the night of the fog. Like something being carried in a fist.”

”West,” I said. ”To Kethra.”

”No,” said Caitlin.

She pointed.

Every red thread, from every red flag and every white one, ran west across the painted floor of the map room. Across the coast. Out over the painted sea. And they didn’t run all the way to Kethra, to the edge of the floor where the Castellan’s map gives way to Severin’s silk. They stopped.

All of them. At the same place.

A tiny ink dot on the bare painted sea, between the Avarran coast and the Kethran shore, where the Castellan had marked it in its small neat hand two seasons ago, when Mirelle found it with her silver scissors.

Blackstack.

* * *

I knew Blackstack. I’d stood on it.

A black tooth of rock a hundred feet tall, in the middle of the western sea, with steam coming out of its cracks and the water warm all around it and a smell of sulfur. A young rock. Damar had said so: still warm in the middle; doesn’t even have moss. No bird nests there; the phoenixes won’t land on ground that remembers being fire. Jörmungandr carried us out to it once, on his back, me and Loki and Thor, and it was the loneliest place I’ve ever been. Thor stood on top of it with her hammer, looking extremely threatening at nothing at all. I’d said hello, sorry, we won’t be long to the rock, because it seemed rude not to.

And the three ships had sat off it for a whole afternoon. And then the Lockwarden had come and lit a small ship’s lamp in a crack in its side and left it burning.

”That’s where they’re taking them,” said Caitlin. ”Not to Kethra. Not to Kessavel’s ships. To Blackstack. Halfway.” She looked at the dot. ”Every piece. Every tug. Every thread. All of them go there.”

* * *

”Why?” I said. ”Why there? Why not all the way home?”

Caitlin didn’t answer for a long time.

Then she said, slowly, the way she says things when she isn’t sure yet and doesn’t like not being sure:

”Damar said it’s young. That it’s still warm in the middle. That it’d like to be visited.” She looked up at me. ”What if it’s not just a rock?”

I stared at her.

”Naming. Answering. Calling,” said Caitlin. ”Those aren’t things a god does, Garrick. Not really. Those are things a god is. The very beginning of one. When a new god starts, when a lamp’s been lit at a crossroads for twenty years and turns into Morning, the first thing it does is answer. And then it learns to be called. And then, one day, it says its own name.” She put her hand flat on the painted sea, next to the dot. ”Somebody’s taking the pieces of other gods that name and answer and call. And putting them somewhere warm. Somewhere young. Somewhere that remembers being fire.”

The map room was very quiet.

”I think somebody’s building a god,” said Caitlin. ”Out of pieces. On Blackstack.”

* * *

I went and got my father.

I didn’t fold. I’d promised. I walked down the whole length of the west range and across the inner court and up the east stair, and knocked on the door of the south solar, three times, and waited for him to say come in.

He came. In his socks. And my mother and Adriana behind him. And Aurelia, who’d been at breakfast. And Seraphina, with little Uriah on her hip, and Carol from the north tower, and Mary with her book, and Iselle, who’d woken up an hour before in Saba’s bed and come down still wrapped in Saba’s shawl.

They all stood in the doorway of the map room and looked at the floor.

Caitlin stood up in the middle of it, in her nightgown and our mother’s cardigan, with three pencils and a pin cushion, and told them. All of it. The nineteen. The three. Naming, answering, calling. The red thread. Blackstack.

Nobody interrupted her once.

* * *

When she’d finished, Aurelia had gone very pale.

She walked out onto the painted floor in her stockings, carefully, between the pins, until she was standing beside Caitlin, looking down at the dot.

”Say it again,” she said. ”The three.”

”Naming,” said Caitlin. ”Answering. Calling.”

Aurelia closed her eyes.

”Those are the first three things,” she said. ”The first three things any god ever learns. Before it knows what it’s for. Before it has a domain. Before it has a face.” She opened her eyes. ”Morning answered first. Then he was called. Then, at the crossroads at Sedge, Ansel asked him his name, and he said it. Morning. And then he was a god.”

”So someone’s building one,” said my father quietly.

”Someone’s building the beginning of one,” said Aurelia. ”Out of pieces of other gods. On a rock that’s still warm.” She looked at Caitlin. ”Not finished. Not yet. Three pieces isn’t enough. It would need many more.” Her voice dropped. ”And it would need a name.”

* * *

”Whose?” said Carol.

Nobody answered.

”Whose god?” said Carol again. ”Kessavel’s? Malachar’s?” She looked at the dot on the floor. ”Malachar doesn’t build things. He holds them. He doesn’t make. Selvane said so. Ansel said so. He’s a closed hand.”

”I don’t know,” said Aurelia. And for the first time in my whole life, I heard her say it as if it frightened her.

* * *

Iselle was looking at the dot too. In Saba’s shawl, with her open hands at her sides.

”He wrote I do not remember,” she said slowly. ”Under Carol’s question. What do you want.” She didn’t look up. ”What if somebody else is remembering for him?”

Everyone turned.

”My father,” said Iselle. Very quietly. ”Our father. The one Ansel saw in the dark, outside the window. With the closed hand.” Her voice shook. ”He made Malachar. He taught him to reach. What if he’s been gone a long time, and now he’s—” She stopped.

”Iselle,” said Aurelia. Sharply. ”Not yet.”

Iselle closed her mouth.

But her hands, at her sides, had closed. And she didn’t open them again for a long time.

* * *

My father looked at the map for a long while.

”Tessel and Corvel,” he said at last. ”Their pieces are out there. On that rock. Or on their way to it.”

”Yes,” said Caitlin.

”And two hundred and nine more seams, on two hundred and nine more gods, every one of them doing what they’re for every day.” He looked at me, and then at Carol. ”We can’t stand guard over two hundred and nine gods. We can’t stop every god in the Accord from doing their work.” He turned and looked at the dot again. ”So we stop it at the other end.”

”Blackstack,” said Carol.

”Not tonight,” said my father. ”Not angry. Not alone.” He almost smiled. ”Somebody wise said that. I’ve forgotten who.” He looked at Caitlin, standing in the middle of her red thread. ”But soon. Before whatever’s on that rock learns its own name.”

* * *

Caitlin went to bed at noon. Kip walked her to her door and then sat down on the floor outside it with his back against the wall, the way Benjamin sleeps outside the little kitchen, and Mary stepped over him on her way to bed that night and didn’t say a word, and wrote it down anyway.

Caitlin did not sleep for four days. She asked every god on Faelan’s list one question. Nineteen said yes.

Sixteen tugs, let go. Three torn. Meriel’s voice: naming. Tessel’s echo, the well at Hallowmere: answering. Corvel’s call, the horn at Brannock Falls: calling. Tessel thought he’d only gotten old.

Every thread runs west. They stop at Blackstack.

Caitlin: somebody’s building a god. Out of pieces. On a rock that’s still warm.

Aurelia: naming, answering, calling are the first three things a god learns. It would need many more pieces. And a name.

Carol: Malachar doesn’t make. He holds.

Iselle: what if somebody else is remembering for him? Aurelia: not yet.

Uriah: we stop it at the other end. Soon.

Kip brought pins at midnight. He sits outside her door.

And under that, in Caitlin’s small, square, sloping hand:

Nineteen. Sixteen. Three. One rock. I counted twice. I’m not wrong.