Against The World

Chapter 100: The Light in the Windows

The first fish from Orselle arrived with a complaint.

Beatrice opened the crate, examined its contents, and looked at the merchant.

“These are smaller than the sample.”

“They’re the same kind.”

“So are children and grown men. I still order different portions.”

The merchant looked toward me.

I became interested in the receiving ledger.

Beside me, Evelyn hid a smile.

The fish were accepted at a revised price.

The salt passed inspection without argument.

By the end of the morning, Orselle had sent us three modest consignments and received iron fittings, wool cloth, and six workshop lamps.

Perrin stood beside the lamps until the receiving clerk asked him to move.

He stepped back.

Then leaned sideways to keep watching.

I understood the impulse.

The lamps had been ordered for the quay stairs.

They were the first things our workshop had sold to someone who had never seen the workshop.

That mattered to Della.

She had brushed her sleeves before coming to the gate court.

Oswin pretended it did not matter to him at all.

Then he asked three times whether the charging instructions were packed.

“They’re in the box,” Brin said.

“And the spare mounting pins?”

“In the other box.”

“And—”

“Tilda checked.”

He nodded.

That settled it.

Through the gate, Bren lifted one lamp from its packing and turned it carefully in his hands.

He found the warning mark.

Then the little turning shade.

Perrin smiled.

I could remember the wooden beetle falling into my palm.

Now something he had helped make was going to light a harbor stair.

Aldren found me afterward.

He carried a page covered in figures.

I braced myself.

He noticed.

“It’s good.”

“You should begin with that more often.”

“The foundry has enough confirmed work to keep the second furnace crew employed through the next two months.”

I took the page.

Repairs.

Tools.

Gate fittings.

Orders from Westmere and Stoneford.

A small order from Orselle that had already become a larger inquiry.

“How many new hands?”

“If the work holds, six.”

“Trained?”

“Two. The others can learn.”

I looked toward the workshop.

Through the open door, Tilda was explaining something with enough force that even I understood where the piece of metal should go.

“Then speak with Mary.”

Aldren nodded.

He had nearly reached the door before turning back.

“The boy in the borrowed coat.”

I remembered him at once.

“What about him?”

“He’s working with the carters now. Repairs wheels in the evening. Perrin thinks we should ask whether he’d like a place.”

I smiled.

“Yes.”

His name was Davin.

I learned that when he came to the workshop two days later wearing a coat that fitted him.

He stood in the same place where I remembered him waiting with his father.

This time, he carried a wheel hub.

Perrin had asked him to bring it.

Tilda examined the repair.

“Yours?”

“Yes.”

“Who showed you?”

“Master Rennick. At the cart yard.”

She turned it over.

Davin watched her hands.

I remembered that too.

The attempt to look as though an answer did not matter very much.

Tilda tapped one of the joins.

“Good. This bit could be better.”

He leaned closer.

She showed him.

By the time Mary arrived with the apprenticeship terms, he had forgotten I was there.

I left before anyone reminded him.

That afternoon, Evelyn held a shield while I rolled a wooden ball toward it.

The first time, the ball stopped.

The second, it passed through and struck her shoe.

She looked down.

Then at me.

“A little more warning.”

“I said ready.”

“You said it while letting go.”

Alistair sat nearby, repairing a strap.

He did not look up.

“She has a point.”

I retrieved the ball.

“Ready?”

“Yes.”

I waited.

Evelyn raised her hands.

The pale golden curve appeared between them.

I rolled the ball.

It struck the light, slowed, and settled against it.

My wife smiled.

Then the shield vanished.

The ball continued on its way.

We both watched it roll beneath a cupboard.

Alistair finally looked up.

“A successful defense. An inconvenient aftermath.”

Aurelia had begun teaching us how to end a working deliberately.

I had expected that to be the easy part.

It was not.

Letting a shield collapse differed from lowering it. Releasing a lifted weight differed from setting it down.

In the dream courtyard, she showed me a suspended bowl.

“Bring it to the ground.”

I lowered it.

Water spilled over one side.

“Again.”

I tried more slowly.

This time, I kept the bowl level but tightened the air around it until the surface trembled.

Aurelia crouched beside me.

“You’re still holding it after it has landed.”

I looked at the bowl.

She was right.

Evelyn sat on the bench, watching.

“I do that with the light.”

“Yes,” Aurelia said. “You both dislike trusting that something will stay where you put it.”

My wife and I looked at each other.

Neither of us had a useful defense.

During the next waking lesson, I managed to set the bowl down without disturbing the water.

It took most of the morning.

Evelyn managed it before me with a little shelf of golden light.

She was gracious about this.

For nearly a minute.

Then she asked whether I wanted advice.

I splashed her with one finger.

She looked at the drop on her sleeve.

Alistair put down his strap.

“Shall I leave?”

“No,” Evelyn said. “I may need a witness.”

We finished the lesson laughing.

I carried the bowl back to the shelf by hand.

There were still things ordinary fingers did very well.

Mary asked to see us after supper.

She had brought the blue book I had left in my study, a bundle of older papers, and an expression I could not quite read.

“Have I missed something?”

“Several things. None urgent.”

She set the bundle on the table.

The top sheet was an early list of households.

I recognized my handwriting.

Not because it was good.

Because there were places where I had pressed so hard the pen had nearly gone through.

Names.

Skills.

Children.

Beds required.

I touched the corner.

“Where did you find this?”

“In the first allocation records.”

Evelyn sat beside me.

I turned the page.

A list of tools.

A food estimate that now looked frighteningly small.

Notes about roofs we had since repaired.

Some of the names belonged to people I now passed every day without thinking of them as newcomers.

Mary watched me read.

“We need a proper account of the return,” she said.

I looked up.

“We have your records.”

“We have thousands of records. We also have people who remember things no one wrote down.”

I thought of the old healing house.

Different hands filling the same book.

Of the little recording that had shown Aurelia with dirt on her sleeve.

“What sort of account?”

“Several. A public history. Personal recollections, if people wish to give them. Drawings. Names attached to the work.”

Evelyn leaned forward.

“Who will collect them?”

“I’d like to ask Abigail to help. Some of the older pupils could interview their families.”

“Would they enjoy that?”

“I think some would. Others will discover their parents were once young and require time to recover.”

I laughed.

Then looked back at the list.

There were things I could barely remember now.

The order in which people had arrived.

Which room had first been warm.

Who had handed me food when I was too occupied to notice I had not eaten.

“Will you ask Melody?”

“Yes.”

“And Alistair?”

“Yes.”

I tapped the page.

“Ask the people who thought we were making a mess of it.”

Mary’s mouth curved.

“That will make finding contributors easier.”

The first interviews began that week.

I encountered one outside the kitchens.

A girl with a slate was asking Beatrice what she remembered most clearly about the early days.

“People underestimating how much flour they needed.”

The girl wrote that down.

“And the king?”

Beatrice saw me in the doorway.

“Him especially.”

I withdrew before the account became more detailed.

In the yard, another pupil was listening to Oswin explain that he had repaired kettles for forty years before anyone thought to ask him about the blue light.

The boy’s eyes widened.

“Forty?”

Oswin nodded.

“Were there kings then?”

I kept walking.

Behind me, Della made a sound that suggested she would not be useful for the next several minutes.

Melody gave her account beside the practice yard.

I passed while she was describing our first attempts to organize people.

“He looked as though someone had handed him a kingdom without the instructions.”

The girl writing looked up.

“Had they?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know what to do?”

Melody considered this.

“I knew what some of the wrong choices looked like.”

I stopped a little way off.

She had not noticed me.

“Were you frightened?” the girl asked.

Melody’s ears shifted.

“Yes.”

“But you stayed.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

For a moment, she watched the guards practicing beyond the wall.

Then she said, “He was trying. And when someone knew more than he did, he usually listened.”

“Usually?”

“We’re writing history. We should be accurate.”

I left smiling.

But I remembered the first part longer.

Evelyn began a painting for the collection.

She did not paint the throne room.

She chose the service court in late afternoon.

A cart near the arch.

Washing above the kitchen steps.

People crossing in several directions, most carrying something.

I watched her sketch the first lines.

“Will I be in it?”

“Possibly.”

“Where?”

She pointed to a very small figure beside a stack of crates.

“What am I doing?”

“Being in someone’s way.”

“That seems unnecessarily precise.”

She smiled and continued.

The little grey stone from Orselle held one corner of the paper flat.

I reached down and turned it slightly, bringing the white line into the light.

Evelyn glanced at my hand.

“We should take the children there when the weather warms.”

“Yes.”

“And to Valewood before then.”

“Yes.”

She looked up.

“You’re agreeing very easily.”

“I’m enjoying the proposals.”

The Castellan contributed an image.

He could not restore every detail.

Some sections remained faint, and the sound had gaps.

But when Mary called us into the old receiving hall, I found myself looking at Greykeep as it had been when I arrived.

Dark windows.

Dust.

Stone waiting in silence.

Then I appeared.

Younger by far more than the time between us should have allowed.

I stood uncertainly in the hall, looking up.

My coat was wrong for the place.

My face was drawn.

For several seconds, I could not remember being that person until the figure on the wall made a small, familiar movement with his hands.

Then I remembered everything at once.

Evelyn’s fingers slipped between mine.

We watched without speaking.

The image ended.

Mary reached toward the control.

“We don’t have to use it.”

I looked at the blank wall.

“No. Keep it.”

“For the public account?”

I thought about that.

“Let me watch it again first.”

“Of course.”

The others began to leave.

Evelyn stayed.

After a while, I said, “I’d forgotten how tired I was.”

She squeezed my hand.

“I wish I’d been here.”

“I know.”

She leaned her head against my shoulder.

We stood in a hall that was now warm enough for the doors to remain open.

Beyond them, someone was calling for a porter.

A child laughed.

The evening meal smelled of onions and bread.

I listened until the tightness in my chest eased.

That night, Aurelia asked why I was quiet.

We sat in the dream garden.

There would be no lesson until I answered; I could tell by the way she had folded her hands.

“The Castellan showed us my arrival.”

Her expression softened.

“Oh.”

“I looked very young.”

“You were.”

“I didn’t feel young.”

“No.”

Evelyn sat close beside me.

I looked toward the windows beyond the garden.

“Did you see me then?”

“Briefly.”

“Were you certain I would stay?”

Aurelia shook her head.

“I hoped you would find reasons to.”

I thought of Melody.

Mary.

The first families.

Evelyn’s hand resting beside mine.

“I did.”

Aurelia smiled.

“I know.”

Before we left the dream, she showed us a ward spread across three openings in a wall.

One working, divided carefully.

I felt its shape before she pointed out the joins.

That was new.

She noticed.

“Good.”

Evelyn rose to examine the nearest opening.

“Could we learn to hold something like this together?”

“Yes. Eventually.”

My wife looked back at me.

“For the nursery?”

“For the nursery,” Aurelia agreed. “And other places, as you become more practiced.”

I stood beside Evelyn.

The ward shimmered faintly before us.

We had a long way to go.

For the first time, I could feel a little of the path.

A few evenings later, Mary brought a clean page to the nursery.

“The collection needs an opening statement.”

I looked up from Garrick.

He had been studying my mouth while I spoke, apparently interested in whether he might attempt something similar.

“What sort?”

“Why we’re making it. What we hope to preserve.”

Evelyn sat nearby with Carol.

“Have you written one?” she asked.

“Three.”

“And?”

“They sound like opening statements.”

I laughed.

Mary handed me the page.

I looked at it for a while.

Then passed Garrick carefully to her.

He accepted the change of company with suspicion.

I took up the pen.

Outside, the last light rested on the opposite roofs.

I wrote only a few lines.

We have tried to keep the names of those who came here, and the work they did.

There will be things we remember differently.

These are some of the ways we began.

Mary read it.

Then nodded.

“That will do.”

After she left, Evelyn asked whether I wanted a walk.

“Now?”

“Only to the gallery.”

We wrapped the children and carried them together.

The passage was quiet.

Below us, the courtyard lamps were being lit.

Ordinary lamps stood beside the newer ones from the workshop. Their light reached the same stones.

Across the court, the infirmary windows glowed.

Farther down, smoke rose from the kitchens.

I could see someone moving in the chapel doorway.

Evelyn stood beside me with Carol against her chest.

“Different from the recording,” she said.

“Yes.”

Garrick shifted in my arms.

I looked down at him.

His eyes were open, catching the lights below.

I wondered what he could make of them.

Probably very little.

That was all right.

I held him closer while Evelyn leaned against my shoulder.

We stayed until the bells rang for the changing watch.

Then we took our children home.

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