The Greykeep Chronicles

Adriana was in the garden at eight on Sunday morning, kneeling in Helena’s herb bed with her sleeves rolled up, pulling chickweed out from under the parsley.

The parsley was doing very well. It had been rained on, very gently, only over that one bed, two days before.

The children came out after breakfast. Elenos first, with his hands in his pockets. Then Faelan, with his green ledger under his arm in case anything needed writing down. Then Mirelle, with Helena’s gray scarf still around her neck; she’d refused to give it back, and Helena had said, after a long look, that it suited her. And then, last, hanging back in the doorway of the kitchen as if he wasn’t sure he was allowed, Wilm.

Adriana looked up at him.

”You too,” she said. ”If you’d like. You can say no.”

Wilm looked at Iselle, who was sitting at the open window of the little room off the kitchen with Roderic propped up on his pillows behind her. Iselle translated. Wilm thought about it for a long time.

Then he came out and sat down on the grass at the end of the row.

* * *

I was on the back step with my tea. I’d meant to stay out of it. It was Adriana’s lesson, and they were Adriana’s children, and one of Evelyn’s, and one who wasn’t anybody’s yet. But Adriana looked up at me over the parsley.

”You too, Garrick,” she said.

”Me?”

”You,” said Adriana. ”You’ve spent a week saying yes to every storm in this family. Take. Take. Take.” She sat back on her heels and brushed the soil off her hands. ”You’re very good at yes. Come and sit down.”

So I came and sat down.

* * *

My father came out a little later and leaned on the wall by the back door with his arms folded. He didn’t sit with us. He just listened. I think he’d heard this lesson before, a long time ago, in a different garden.

* * *

”Yesterday,” said Adriana, ”Elenos said no.”

Elenos went pink. He does that. He’s thirteen.

”Mirelle said tell him to stop,” said Adriana. ”And Elenos said no. Because if we told Wilm to stop, he’d stop, and it would just be us giving orders instead of the priest.” She looked at Elenos. ”That’s the first kind of no. It’s a no you say to yourself, about what you’re going to do. I won’t. I won’t push. I won’t take. I won’t make someone do a thing, even a good thing, even for their own sake.” She paused. ”It’s the hardest one. Because it usually feels like doing nothing. And it never is.”

Faelan was writing it down.

1. I won’t.

* * *

”The second kind,” said Adriana, ”is the no you say about yourself. Not me. Not mine.” She looked up at the window where Iselle sat. ”When the old priest at the brazier called Iselle holy daughter, she said no. Just that. One word. She wasn’t telling him to do anything. She wasn’t stopping him. She was telling him who she was. Who she wasn’t.” She looked back at the children. ”When your sister Carol said Hello, Malachar on the deck of his own ship, she was saying no. Not to him. To being afraid of him.”

2. Not me.

Faelan’s pencil was moving very fast. Mirelle was sitting with her chin on her knees, listening with her whole face.

”And the third,” said Adriana.

She stopped.

She was quiet for long enough that Faelan looked up from his ledger.

”The third is mine,” said Adriana. ”That’s the one I want to show you.”

* * *

She took them down to the beach.

All of us. Down the lane between the dunes and out onto the North Sands, with my father behind us, and Iselle at the window of the little room calling after us to come back and tell her everything, because Roderic wasn’t allowed out of bed and she wasn’t going to leave him.

The tide was coming in. It was about an hour from full, the long gray lines of it sliding up the flat sand one after another. Mirrow and Ondry had moved their heap up above the tide line and were watching with great interest.

Adriana stopped about twenty yards above the water and knelt down in the wet sand.

”Mirelle,” she said. ”Build me a castle.”

* * *

Mirelle built a castle.

She’s seven, and very determined, and she had help: Faelan dug the moat, Elenos carried water for the walls in his cupped hands, and Wilm, after watching for a while, got down on his knees and showed them how to pack wet sand so it wouldn’t slump, the way you’d pack a rope coil so it doesn’t kink. It took nearly an hour. By the time it was done the tide was ten yards off, and the castle had four towers and a gate and a wall around it, and Mirelle had stuck a gull’s feather on top of the tallest tower for a flag.

The tide came on. One gray line after another. Each one a little closer.

Mirelle stood beside her castle and looked at the sea.

”It’s going to knock it down,” she said.

”Yes,” said Adriana.

”Can you stop it?”

* * *

Adriana knelt down beside her daughter in the wet sand. She didn’t answer straight away.

”Is it yours?” she said. ”The castle.”

Mirelle looked at her as if she were being very slow.

”I made it,” she said.

”Then it’s yours,” said Adriana. ”And do you want me to keep the sea off it?”

”Yes.”

”For how long?”

Mirelle thought about that. She hadn’t expected the question. ”For a while,” she said at last. ”Long enough to look at it.”

”All right,” said Adriana. ”You asked. It’s yours. I’ll refuse it for a while.” She held out her hand, palm toward the sea. ”Watch.”

* * *

I’d seen Adriana’s light before. Everybody in Greykeep has. Silver, like moonlight on a wall. My father says that when it first woke in her, it came up around her like a defended wall beneath the moon, and Aurelia said that one day it would stand between anything that came and the people who had chosen to shelter behind it.

I’d never seen her use it on the sea.

The next gray line of the tide came up the sand. It came up to within a yard of Mirelle’s moat. And then it met something.

Nothing you could see. Just a faint silver shimmer in the air above the sand, a curve of it, like a soap bubble lying on its side around the castle. The tide met it, and stopped. Not frozen. Not pushed back. It simply didn’t go any further. It foamed against the curve of silver, gently, and then went around it on both sides, the way water goes around a stone in a stream. And met itself on the far side of the castle, and went on up the beach.

And Mirelle’s castle sat in the middle of the incoming tide in a little circle of dry sand, with its gull’s-feather flag, untouched.

* * *

Faelan’s mouth was open. Elenos had gone very still, with his head on one side, listening. Wilm had sat back on his heels.

”Oh,” said Mirelle softly.

”That’s refusal,” said Adriana. She didn’t sound strained at all. Her hand was still held out, palm toward the sea, and the silver shimmer was steady around the castle. ”Not a wall. A wall is a thing you build to keep something out. This is a no. I’m telling the sea that this, here, isn’t its. Not today. Not because the sea is wrong. The sea isn’t wrong. It’s only doing what it does. But Mirelle made this, and Mirelle asked, and so for a little while, it isn’t the sea’s to take.”

The tide came in around them. Another line. And another. The water was knee-deep on either side of the castle now, and still the little circle of sand inside the silver was dry.

* * *

”Could you do it forever?” said Faelan.

”No,” said Adriana.

”Why not?”

”Because it isn’t mine to refuse forever,” said Adriana. ”It’s Mirelle’s castle, not mine. I can only hold it as long as she wants me to.” She looked at her daughter. ”Mirelle? How long?”

Mirelle looked at her castle for a long time. At the four towers and the gate and the wall and the gull’s feather. Standing in the middle of the sea, dry, untouched, while the tide went past on both sides.

”I’ve looked at it,” she said. ”You can let go now.”

* * *

Adriana lowered her hand.

The silver went out like a candle. The next line of tide came in over the circle of sand, and over the moat, and over the wall. It took the gate first, and then two of the towers, gently, slumping them into the water. The gull’s feather floated off the last tower and turned around twice and went away down the beach on the backwash.

Mirelle watched it go.

She didn’t cry. I’d thought she might. She just watched it, with her chin up and Helena’s scarf around her neck, until the feather was gone.

”That’s all right,” she said. ”I said.”

* * *

”That’s the third kind,” said Adriana, standing up, with the water around her ankles. ”Refusal. Not I won’t. Not not me. This one is: That isn’t yours.” She looked at each of them in turn. ”You can only say it for something that belongs to somebody. You can only say it for them if they’ve asked you to, or if they would if they could. And you can only hold it as long as they want you to.” She paused. ”And it’s the strongest thing I know how to do.”

* * *

We walked back up the beach above the tide line. Adriana sat down on the dry sand at the foot of the dune, and the children sat around her, wet to the knees. My father leaned on a driftwood log behind her. I sat at the end of the row next to Wilm.

”Did you ever do it to a person?” said Elenos.

He’d been quiet all morning. He said it very quietly now.

Adriana looked at him for a long moment.

”Yes,” she said. ”Twice that I’ll tell you about.”

* * *

”The first time,” said Adriana, ”was a long time ago. Before you were born. Before any of you were born, except Carol and Garrick, and they were very small. There was a man called Varrick. He took things from people. Gods and men. He took their powers, and their names, and their wills. He’d built a door, a great black door in the dark, and everything he took went through it, and didn’t come back.” She was quiet for a moment. ”One night he tried to open it on Havenreach. On all of us. On the twins, who were very small.”

My father, behind her, had gone very still.

”I didn’t know I could do anything,” said Adriana. ”I was a princess of Lyradon. I’d lost my country and my father. I knew how to set a table for forty and how to say no to suitors. That’s all I knew. But when that door started to open, I stood in front of it. And I found out that I could say That isn’t yours.” She looked down at her hands. ”So I did. And it was true. And the door couldn’t open on any of us, because none of us were his. Not one.”

* * *

”And the second time?” said Faelan. He’d stopped writing.

Adriana smiled a little.

”The second time was your father,” she said. ”The night before he went to Carrow Tor. He was going somewhere very far away to do something very dangerous, and he might not come back. And I held out my hand, and he took it, and I refused.” She glanced back over her shoulder at my father, leaning on the log. ”Of him not coming home.”

My father didn’t say anything. But he unfolded his arms. And put one hand on Adriana’s shoulder, very lightly.

”It didn’t stop anything dangerous happening,” said Adriana. ”That’s not what it was for. He still went. He still did the dangerous thing. But he was mine, and he’d said I could, so I said it for him. That isn’t yours. To the road. To the dark. To whatever was waiting.” She put her hand up over my father’s on her shoulder. ”And he came home.”

* * *

Nobody said anything for a while. The tide went on coming in. Out on the sand, Mirrow had wandered down to the water’s edge and was sniffing, with deep suspicion, at the place where Mirelle’s castle had been.

Then Wilm said something in Kethran.

Very quietly. I didn’t catch it. My Kethran is better than it was, but not that good. I looked at Adriana. Adriana’s Kethran is better than mine.

She’d gone very still.

”He wants to know,” she said, ”if you can say it about words.”

* * *

She turned to Wilm. She asked him something in Kethran, slowly. He answered. She asked him something else. He answered again, longer, looking at his hands.

Then she turned back to us.

”Yesterday,” she said, ”when Faelan said the priest’s words, Wilm’s body did what the words told it. He says he couldn’t help it. He says it still happens. In the night, when he’s half asleep, he hears them, and his arms go up.” She paused. ”He wants to know if he can say That isn’t yours to the words. So they can’t do it anymore.”

* * *

Faelan had gone white. He was looking at Wilm.

”I’m sorry,” he said. ”I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t know—”

Wilm looked at him. Then he said something to Adriana, short.

”He says you asked him the three questions,” said Adriana. ”He says it was all right after that.”

* * *

Adriana knelt up on the sand, facing Wilm.

”I can’t do it for you,” she said, in Kethran, and then again in Avarran so we’d all understand. ”The words are inside you. They’re yours to refuse, not mine. But I can show you how, and I can stand beside you while you try.” She held out her hand. Open. ”And Faelan will have to say them. One more time. So you can practice.” She looked at Wilm. ”Only if you want. You can say no.”

Wilm looked at her hand for a long time.

Then he took it.

* * *

I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

A boy of twelve kneeling on the sand at the foot of the dune, holding Adriana’s hand. Faelan kneeling in front of him, white as a sheet, holding his ledger against his chest with both arms like a shield. Elenos and Mirelle on either side. My father behind, very still. The tide coming in.

”Faelan,” said Adriana quietly.

Faelan swallowed.

”I’m sorry,” he said to Wilm. ”This is the last time. I promise. I promise I’ll never say it again.” And then, in his best careful Kethran, very small, he said the words.

The hand closes.

* * *

Wilm’s free arm jerked. I saw it. It came up off the sand, a few inches, palm out, the way it had on the dune. His face went blank for half a breath.

And Adriana’s hand tightened on his other one, and a faint silver light rose around her fingers, the way it had around the castle. Not on him. Beside him. Like a hand on a shoulder.

And Wilm said, in Kethran, through his teeth, very hoarsely:

”That isn’t yours.”

* * *

His arm came down.

Not because anybody told it to. Because he put it down. I watched him do it. He looked at his own hand, palm out, a few inches off the sand, and he took it back, deliberately, the way you’d take back something somebody had picked up off your table without asking, and he laid it down flat on the sand beside his knee.

And the blank went out of his face, and he was just a boy again, breathing hard, holding Adriana’s hand.

”Again,” said Wilm in Kethran.

* * *

They did it four times.

The second time his arm only twitched. The third time it didn’t move at all, and he said the words before Faelan had finished saying his, and Faelan stopped halfway and stared at him. The fourth time, Wilm didn’t even need to hold Adriana’s hand. He let go of it. He knelt there on the sand on his own, and Faelan said The hand closes, and Wilm looked at him, perfectly calm, and said:

”No. That isn’t yours.”

And then, after a moment, in very bad Avarran, the first Avarran I’d ever heard him speak:

”Mine.”

* * *

Mirelle burst into tears.

So did Faelan. So, I’m not ashamed to say, did I.

* * *

Afterward, when the children had gone back up to the house with Wilm in the middle of them, all four of them wet to the knees and talking at once, and my father had gone with them, Adriana and I sat on the dry sand at the foot of the dune and watched the tide come in over the place where the castle had been.

”You told them about Varrick’s door,” I said.

”Yes.”

”You’ve never told me about it.”

”You were there,” said Adriana. ”You were very small. You just don’t remember.” She was quiet for a while. ”I wanted them to know that it’s possible. That a person who doesn’t think they can do anything can stand in front of a door and say no.”

”Because of Ovaren,” I said.

She didn’t answer straight away.

* * *

”He takes things,” said Adriana at last. ”That’s what he is. Varrick took things too. But Varrick was a man who’d learned to take. Ovaren is a god who’s never done anything else.” She looked out at the sea. ”He took Kessavel’s will while Kessavel was asleep. He took three hundred voices. He tried to take Draum’s whole self through a crack in a door. He’ll come for something in this house one day, Garrick. I don’t know what. A person. A name. A power. One of the children. But he’ll come. And when he does—”

She stopped.

”When he does,” she said, ”if I’m standing in front of it, I want you to let me.”

* * *

I looked at her.

”You want me to let you stand between Ovaren and—”

”Yes.”

”Adriana. I can fold the sea. I can borrow from every god in this house. I can—”

”You open things,” said Adriana. ”That’s what you are. You’re the one who opens. You open doors and chains and dragons’ hoods and locks that face out. You say yes to everybody’s storm.” She turned and looked at me, and her eyes were very steady. ”I’m the one who doesn’t. That’s what I am. I’m the no. And there will be a day when what’s needed isn’t a door opening. It’s a door that won’t.”

I didn’t say anything.

”Promise me,” said Adriana. ”If I’m standing there. Let me.”

* * *

I didn’t promise. Not then. I couldn’t make my mouth do it.

But I held out my hand, open, the way I’ve done my whole life. And she put hers in it. And for a moment, very faintly, I felt the silver come up around her fingers, and settle over my hand like a glove, and sink into the skin.

”What was that?” I said.

”A refusal,” said Adriana.

”Of what?”

”Of you saying yes to everything,” said Adriana, ”and never once saying no for yourself.” She stood up, and brushed the sand off her skirt. ”Think about it. There’s no hurry. There’s never any hurry with a no. That’s what makes it strong.”

* * *

Mary’s book. Sunday. Written at Westmere, in the kitchen, after supper, with all four children helping, and Iselle at the table translating for Wilm, and Roderic shouting corrections from the little room off the kitchen because he’d heard every word through the window and wanted it right.

8 a.m. Adriana in Helena’s herb bed. The parsley is very good.

She asked Wilm to come. She said you can say no. He came.

She asked Garrick to come. She said he’s very good at yes.

Three kinds of no.

1. I won’t. (Elenos, yesterday.) The hardest one. It feels like doing nothing. It never is.

2. Not me. (Iselle to the priest. Carol to Malachar.)

3. That isn’t yours. Adriana’s.

Mirelle built a castle on the North Sands. Wilm showed them how to pack the sand. Mirelle asked Adriana to keep the sea off it. Adriana asked whose it was and how long. Silver light. The tide went around it. Mirelle said I’ve looked at it, you can let go. The sea took it. Mirelle said that’s all right, I said.

You can only say it for something that belongs to somebody. Only if they ask, or would. Only as long as they want.

Adriana told them about Varrick’s door. And about the night before Carrow Tor, when she refused Uriah not coming home.

Wilm asked if you can say it to words. Faelan said the hand closes one last time. Wilm held Adriana’s hand. His arm came up. He said that isn’t yours. His arm went down because he put it down.

Four times. The last time by himself. Then he said Mine. In Avarran. His first word.

Everyone cried. Garrick too. He says to put that down.

Adriana asked Garrick, if she’s ever standing in front of something Ovaren comes to take, to let her. Garrick didn’t promise. She gave him a refusal anyway. Of him saying yes to everything and never no for himself.

And under that, in big, careful, uneven letters, in Kethran script first, and then underneath in Avarran, copied very slowly letter by letter from what Iselle had written on a slate for him, with the pencil gripped in his whole fist:

Wilm. I’d like it noted that it isn’t his. It’s mine.