Against The World

Chapter 71: The Other Side of the Door

The first piece of the Willowbrook gate resembled an expensive soup bowl.

I turned it over.

Tilda watched me from across the workbench.

“Do not.”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You’ve been looking at it for a while.”

“It is very round.”

“It was ordered round.”

“And hollow.”

“Also ordered.”

I set it down.

Beside me, Aldren unfolded the drawing.

The bowl was a housing for the receiving assembly. It would hold three smaller components, two of which depended on skills nobody in the foundry possessed.

Those were my responsibility.

I looked toward the bronze plate mounted beside the door.

“Castellan. How much of this do you expect me to understand?”

“The sequence, preferably.”

“An ambitious beginning.”

A narrow pattern of light appeared above the bench.

For the next hour, I attempted to understand it.

By the end, I had developed considerable respect for soup bowls.

The original gates had been made by people who could persuade magic to remain where they put it.

I could throw lightning.

I could lift stone.

I could repair things when I understood their shape and what held them together.

Asking a piece of bronze to remember an instruction after I took my hand away was different.

The Castellan began with a practice disk.

“Establish the first line.”

I drew a thread of light through the shallow groove.

It glowed.

“Maintain the return path.”

I joined the ends.

The light vanished.

Aldren made a note.

I looked at him.

“What did you write?”

“That it vanished.”

“Thank you.”

“Someone will need to know.”

On the fourth attempt, the disk remained lit for three breaths.

On the seventh, it grew hot enough that I put it down quickly.

Tilda moved a stone tray under it.

By the tenth, I had a headache.

The Castellan dimmed the pattern.

“Further attempts are unlikely to benefit from present fatigue.”

“I nearly had it.”

“Yes.”

I looked up.

That was not the answer I expected.

“The final attempt maintained a complete circuit. Its instability arose during separation.”

I stared at the disk.

“So I did nearly have it.”

“Yes.”

Tilda handed me water.

“Good. Nearly have it tomorrow.”

Evelyn was in the garden when I found her.

Helena sat beside her with a basket of sewing between them. A pale length of linen lay across my wife’s lap.

They both looked up.

“How did it go?” Evelyn asked.

“I made a small plate hot.”

Helena nodded as though this were a reasonable royal achievement.

“Useful in winter.”

I sat beside Evelyn.

She touched the space between my eyebrows.

“Headache?”

“A little.”

She shifted the linen and let me lean against her shoulder.

For several minutes, I listened to them discuss sleeves.

Tiny sleeves.

There was something astonishing about the seriousness of it.

A child who had not yet taken a breath already required decisions about seams.

Helena lifted the little garment for inspection.

“What do you think?”

I looked at Evelyn.

Then back at the garment.

“Very small.”

“That is intentional,” she said.

“I’m beginning to understand the day’s theme.”

Evelyn laughed and kissed my hair.

Mary brought news of Oren Pell the following afternoon.

I had almost forgotten the name.

The works clerk whose box had been hidden at Bellcross.

“He’s alive,” she said.

Evelyn set down her pen.

“Where?”

“South of Stoneford. Living with his married daughter.”

“Has someone spoken to him?”

“A local clerk delivered our inquiry. Pell agreed to meet, provided he could bring her.”

Mary placed the reply on the table.

“He knew which records we meant before the clerk described them.”

I read the short statement.

Oren Pell had kept duplicate accounts because the originals submitted to the district office did not match his own.

When he refused to certify the labor payments, he had been dismissed.

A later inspection appeared under his name anyway.

“Why hide the copies?” I asked.

“He says someone searched his lodgings.”

Evelyn’s expression sharpened.

“Does he know who?”

“He has suspicions. We’ll ask what he can support.”

I looked toward the window.

Beyond it, a cart rolled through the courtyard carrying clean linen to the infirmary.

Eleven years.

A broken channel.

A widow buying a bed with wages her husband should have brought home.

“Bring him safely,” I said.

Mary nodded.

“We’ve offered lodging for both of them.”

After she left, Evelyn touched the old labor receipt beside her notes.

“Perhaps Hester will finally learn who wrote that payment acknowledgment.”

“Perhaps.”

It was not much to promise.

We had learned to let it be enough until we knew more.

The practice disk held its light two days later.

I almost ruined it by celebrating.

The moment I felt the circuit settle, I lifted my head.

The glow wavered.

I stopped moving.

Across the bench, Tilda stopped too.

“Separate gradually,” the Castellan said.

I withdrew the thread of power as slowly as I could.

The disk remained lit.

One breath.

Two.

Ten.

Aldren leaned closer.

“Is it—”

“Yes,” I said.

“Allow the test to continue,” the Castellan added.

We stood around a glowing piece of bronze in complete silence.

At last, a line on its surface faded.

Then another.

The light went out.

I looked up.

“Did it fail?”

“The test charge was exhausted. The pattern remained intact.”

Aldren smiled.

Tilda picked up the disk with tongs and examined it.

I sat down rather abruptly.

I had opened ancient doors.

This was the first time I had helped make a piece of one.

The real components took another week.

During that time, Willowbrook’s new sluice pin was fitted, the mill completed its first reserved batch for the public grain stores, and Catrin sent us a sack of flour with an invoice attached.

Beatrice approved of both.

“Good flour,” she said.

“And the price?”

“Also good.”

Evelyn looked pleased.

The infirmary apprentices began attending their first supervised visits. One came back so shaken by the experience of an ordinary birth that Nessa sent her to eat before asking whether she wished to continue.

She did.

The other discovered that she fainted at the sight of blood.

Ilyen found her useful work preparing linens while they considered what came next.

Not every plan unfolded as neatly as the council minutes.

Most still moved forward.

Evelyn’s afternoons grew quieter.

She continued working, but sometimes she brought her papers into our rooms and put her feet up while I read the more tedious passages aloud.

One afternoon, she fell asleep halfway through a storage lease.

I finished the paragraph before noticing.

Then I put the pages aside.

Her hand lay against her stomach.

I rested mine beside it.

A little movement answered several minutes later.

I had been tired before.

Afterward, I sat there smiling like an idiot until she woke.

We traveled to Willowbrook with the completed assembly in a padded chest.

Aldren insisted on checking it at every stop.

Eleanor eventually told him that looking inside would not improve the road.

The village had cleared the gate station’s approach. Ivy had been trimmed from the arch, the roof over the control alcove repaired, and a low fence put around the work area.

Catrin met us near the mill.

She looked at the chest.

“That’s it?”

“Most of it,” I said.

“It’s smaller than I expected.”

“I’ve been told that’s intentional.”

Evelyn squeezed my arm.

Catrin led us toward the orchard.

The mill wheel turned steadily behind us.

I liked hearing it.

The installation took the rest of the morning.

Eleanor fitted the housing.

Aldren checked the ordinary connections.

I seated the three attuned pieces while the Castellan guided the sequence through my Crown mark.

The last component slid into place.

A line of gold traveled up the arch.

Then stopped.

Nobody moved.

“Local circuit established,” the Castellan said.

I exhaled.

“What next?”

“Receiving station confirmation.”

In Greykeep, Eliza and the gate keeper had been waiting for our signal.

I touched the control.

Light gathered in the center of the arch.

For a heartbeat, I saw our gate chamber.

Then the image folded inward and vanished.

My stomach dropped.

Aldren checked the indicator.

“Did we lose the circuit?”

“No,” the Castellan said. “The receiving station declined transit.”

I stared at the empty arch.

“Why?”

A moment later, Eliza’s voice came through the communication plate.

“Because I was asked to.”

Eleanor folded her arms.

“Good.”

I looked between them.

“A test?”

“A door that opens is only half the job,” Eliza said.

I rubbed a hand over my face.

“Next time, warn me.”

“You approved the test schedule,” Aldren said.

I remembered a document.

Several documents.

Evelyn was smiling.

I decided not to look at her.

The next attempt held.

Greykeep’s gate chamber appeared within the arch, bright and familiar.

Eliza stood on the far side.

She raised a hand.

I raised mine.

Between us lay several hours of road, a bridge, and a great many orchard trees.

At our feet lay a threshold.

We began with the test cart.

It passed through smoothly and returned with its markers undisturbed.

Then an empty transit cycle.

Then another inspection.

By the time Eleanor was satisfied, a small crowd had gathered beyond the fence.

Nobody complained about waiting.

They could see the castle.

That was enough to occupy them.

I went through first with Alistair.

One step.

The scent of warm apples vanished.

Cool stone beneath my boots.

Eliza looked me over.

“Everything present?”

“I believe so.”

“Good.”

We returned after the agreed interval.

Evelyn waited beneath the orchard trees.

When she saw me, she smiled with such relief that I crossed straight to her.

“That was considerably less unpleasant than the road,” I said.

“Less opportunity for you to become my pillow.”

“I shall try to endure the loss.”

She took my hand.

Behind us, the waiting crowd began to applaud.

Catrin did not use the gate that day.

Her keeper still needed practice. The receiving schedules had to be settled. Her sister had to be asked.

Mary arranged the message.

Three days later, Catrin came to Greykeep with her youngest son.

I happened to be crossing the receiving hall when they arrived.

The boy clutched a cloth bundle against his chest.

“Your sister?” I asked Catrin.

“Coming through from Westmere in the next interval.”

Her voice was steady.

Her hands were not.

We waited together.

When the Westmere gate opened, a woman stepped through carrying a basket and wearing the same determined expression as Catrin.

She stopped.

Catrin took one step forward.

Then the two of them were holding each other.

The boy stood awkwardly beside them.

After a moment, the new arrival drew back and looked down.

“Well,” she said, her voice unsteady. “You were smaller when I last heard about you.”

He held out the bundle.

“Mother said to bring you flour.”

Both women began to laugh.

Catrin wiped her face.

I quietly moved out of the way.

Oren Pell arrived the next morning.

He was thinner than I expected, with a bent finger on his right hand and a daughter who watched every doorway.

Mary received them herself.

I attended only the beginning.

Pell looked at the copied receipt laid on the table.

He did not touch it.

“That isn’t my hand.”

Mary nodded.

“We would like you to explain how you know.”

He glanced at me.

I pulled out a chair.

“You have time.”

His daughter sat beside him.

Slowly, he began.

I stayed until the first account was complete, then left Mary and the examining clerk to their work.

Outside, I found Evelyn waiting on the bench beneath the window.

“How is he?”

“Frightened.”

She looked toward the closed door.

“Still?”

“Yes.”

Her hand found mine.

We sat for a moment before returning to the day.

That evening, Evelyn asked to walk as far as the nursery.

We had spent weeks filling it.

Now she wanted to take something out.

“The tall stand by the door,” she said.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing. Except that I have caught my sleeve on it twice, and I imagine doing that while carrying one of them.”

I moved it to the adjoining room.

She tested the doorway.

Then nodded.

“Better.”

I watched her cross to the cradles.

The fox.

The bird.

The little trees beneath which our children would sleep.

“The Willowbrook gate worked,” I said.

“I heard.”

“The sisters found each other.”

“I heard that too.”

I sat in the second chair.

For a while, I said nothing.

Evelyn turned.

Then came to stand beside me.

“You’re thinking about Caroline.”

I nodded.

All day, I had been glad.

I was still glad.

That did not stop the other feeling.

Evelyn took my hand without offering an answer neither of us possessed.

After a while, I drew her down beside me.

We fitted awkwardly in the chair.

She laughed and shifted.

Then one of the children moved beneath my hand.

I looked down.

Evelyn covered my fingers with hers.

“There.”

“Yes.”

We waited.

Another small press.

I smiled despite the ache in my throat.

Later, I opened the letter in my desk.

Beneath the last line, I wrote about Catrin and her sister.

Then about the gate.

Then, after a pause:

I wish you could have been waiting on the other side.

Evelyn came to stand behind me.

I reached for her hand.

With the other, I added:

There is so much I want to show you.

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