Against The World

Chapter 84: An Open Door

By noon, Evelyn had discovered that divine magic did not help her find a missing stocking.

She held one small woolen sock in her left hand.

A golden light hovered over her right.

“It was here.”

I looked beneath the chair.

Garrick slept against my shoulder, apparently satisfied with the warmth of one foot.

“Perhaps he’s hidden it.”

“He is twelve days old.”

“A convincing disguise.”

She gave me a tired smile.

The light brightened.

We both watched it.

Then she let out a slow breath, and it softened again.

We had spent part of the morning learning that excitement made it stronger. So did frustration. Trying very hard to make it disappear had produced enough light for Helena to ask whether we were opening the curtains.

Now Evelyn closed her fingers gently.

The glow faded.

“There,” she said.

I found the stocking caught in the fold of my sleeve.

Neither of us spoke.

Then my wife held out her hand.

Ilyen arrived while I was attempting to dress a foot whose owner had objections.

She examined Evelyn first, then the children.

Only afterward did she ask to see the light.

Evelyn opened her palm.

Gold gathered above it.

Ilyen drew her chair closer.

For once, she did not immediately reach for anything in her bag.

“Does it hurt?”

“No.”

“Leave you tired?”

“A little, if I hold it too long.”

“Then we shall begin with holding it briefly.”

Evelyn looked toward me.

I raised both hands.

“I haven’t suggested anything.”

“Yet,” she said.

Ilyen smiled.

She brought out her silver-rimmed bowl and set it on the table. When she touched the water, a faint amber thread moved across its surface.

Evelyn leaned forward.

“I can feel that.”

The midwife became still.

“What can you feel?”

“Where you’re holding it. Like a thread pulled tight.”

“Good. For now, simply watch.”

The amber light moved.

Evelyn’s little golden flame bent toward it.

I felt the answering warmth from across the room.

Aurelia had said she was giving my wife a measure of her power.

In the dream, the words had been beautiful.

Here, with a washcloth drying beside the hearth and our son complaining about his stocking, they were real.

I left Evelyn with Ilyen and went to the old chapel.

Eleanor was already inside.

Naturally, she was looking up.

Aldren stood beside her with a slate, while two constructs waited near the entrance holding timber props.

I stopped on the threshold.

“How bad?”

“The main roof is sound,” Eleanor said. “The little room at the back is another matter. Stay out of it.”

“That seems manageable.”

“So does most trouble from a doorway.”

I obeyed the spirit of the advice and remained where I was.

The chapel stood along the quieter side of the inner court. We had cleared its approach months earlier, but there had always been roofs over occupied beds to repair first.

Now pale winter light fell through three tall windows.

One still held pieces of colored glass.

The others had been boarded.

There were no benches left. A stone basin lay on its side near the wall. Someone had chipped the face from a relief above the far end of the room.

I looked at the scattered marks.

They were too regular to be weather.

Eleanor followed my gaze.

“Yes.”

I crossed the safe part of the floor.

The figure’s hands remained.

One rested upon the bowed head of someone kneeling.

The other held a shallow bowl.

I thought of Aurelia bending over Carol.

“Can we repair it?”

“The stone?”

I nodded.

“Yes. The face will need someone who knows what she looked like.”

“I do.”

Eleanor studied me for a moment.

Then she marked something on Aldren’s slate.

Mary found the first prayer in an account book.

She brought it to the small room beside the chapel, where a brazier had begun taking the chill from the air.

I had expected a gilded volume.

The book was narrow, stained, and concerned mainly with oil.

“This was stored among the household expenditures,” she said.

She laid it on a clean cloth.

Near the back, after an entry for replacement lamp wicks, someone had written six lines in a cramped hand.

Mary read them aloud.

“Aurelia, who knows the weight of a child, remember ours.

“Who has sat beside the sick, remain beside them.

“Who has kept watch through the night, receive those who cannot sleep.”

She paused.

Below the prayer were names.

Some had been crossed out.

Others had a small mark beside them.

“Do we know what the marks mean?” I asked.

“Not yet.”

I touched the edge of the cloth rather than the fragile page.

There were no kingdoms in the prayer.

No victories.

I could imagine someone speaking it in a room like ours, exhausted, watching a small chest rise and fall.

“Will you make a copy for Evelyn?”

Mary nodded.

“And one for the chapel.”

“Yes.”

She looked toward the damaged relief through the doorway.

“I’ll keep searching.”

The Castellan spoke while I was alone beneath the broken windows.

“Your Majesty.”

His golden eye appeared in a surviving bronze plate near the door.

“Did you know her?”

“I served during her reign.”

I turned.

“What was she like?”

A pause followed.

I had asked him many questions about old Greykeep.

Weights.

Roads.

Stored power.

Which corridors could safely support a crowd.

This question seemed to require a different sort of searching.

“She objected to the placement of the infirmary.”

“Why?”

“The afternoon sun made the patients uncomfortable.”

“What did she do?”

“Moved her council meetings into the hotter chamber and gave the patients the cooler rooms.”

I smiled.

“That sounds inconvenient.”

“It was discussed at length.”

“By her?”

“By everyone else.”

I looked back at the relief.

The hands were beautifully carved. Whoever had made them had understood the way a person touched someone frightened.

“And my father?”

The word caught slightly.

The Castellan’s eye remained steady.

“He came here before the evacuation began.”

I swallowed.

“Do you know what he said?”

“No. He requested privacy.”

I was glad.

Then disappointed.

Then glad again.

“Was he frightened?”

“I cannot reliably determine what he felt.”

I nodded.

“He remained for eleven minutes,” the Castellan added. “When he left, he asked that the smallest children be carried through the lower passage first.”

For a while, I stood without speaking.

Then I sat on the chapel step.

Garrick came looking for me before the afternoon bell.

He stopped beside the door, saw where I was sitting, and lowered himself onto the step.

His knees objected.

He ignored them.

“Evelyn?”

“Resting. Helena has Carol.”

“And the other Garrick?”

“Expressing dissatisfaction with my absence.”

I smiled.

We sat together in the cold.

Eventually, I said, “I used to think he was ordinary.”

“Your father?”

I nodded.

“Work. Supper. Telling Caroline and me to stop arguing from the other room.”

“What did you argue about?”

“Everything. Usually something neither of us actually wanted until the other one touched it.”

Garrick’s mouth curved.

“That sounds familiar.”

I looked at the damaged stone above us.

“Now I keep seeing him in that doorway.”

The torn coat.

My mother’s hand on his sleeve.

People running behind him.

Garrick rested his forearms on his knees.

“Can you still remember him at supper?”

“Yes.”

“Then keep that too.”

I rubbed my hands together.

The chapel was colder than I had noticed.

After a while, he stood and offered me his hand.

“Come upstairs. Your son has been very patient by his own standards.”

We announced the church the following morning.

Mary read the notice to us first.

It named Aurelia as the queen who had ascended, the goddess who had protected Greykeep, and the grandmother who had brought me home.

It said Evelyn and I would restore her chapel and begin worship there.

Those who wished to join us were welcome.

Evelyn listened while feeding Carol.

When Mary finished, my wife nodded.

“That says what we mean.”

“There will be questions,” Mary said.

“We’ll answer what we can.”

“And what we can’t?”

“We’ll say so.”

Mary folded the notice.

Garrick, who had been reading the morning correspondence by the window, set down a letter.

“The neighboring courts will hear of it.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Some of their temples still teach the old stories.”

I remembered Aurelia’s voice when she had spoken of being unable to reach her son.

“They can hear ours.”

Garrick regarded me steadily.

Then nodded.

“I thought that would be your answer.”

Evelyn looked down at Carol, whose hand had opened against her gown.

“We’ve spent months asking people to believe they can make a home here,” she said. “I won’t tell them we must hide the person who helped us make ours.”

Mary went to have the notice copied.

By afternoon, people had begun bringing things.

Beatrice sent candles.

Joren offered to repair benches, provided someone found benches worth repairing.

Della brought a folded cloth her sister had helped wash.

An older woman from the river district arrived with a little wooden disk wrapped in a handkerchief.

Mary brought her to us.

Her name was Eda.

She stood before Evelyn’s chair, worrying the edge of the cloth between her fingers.

“My mother wore it under her dress,” she said.

The disk bore a shallow carving of two open hands.

I looked toward Evelyn.

She had gone very still.

“Did your mother tell you whose sign it was?” she asked.

“Only that her grandmother had carried it out of Greykeep.”

Eda laid it on the table.

“She said to hold it when I was afraid.”

“Did it help?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

She smiled uncertainly.

“I thought that might have been because it was hers.”

I looked at the worn wood.

“Perhaps it was both.”

Eda’s eyes filled.

She pressed her lips together and waited until she could speak.

“May I come when you open?”

“Yes,” Evelyn said.

The woman reached for the disk, then hesitated.

“I could leave it.”

“Bring it with you,” my wife replied. “It belongs with you.”

Not everyone came with an offering.

A mason stopped me outside the chapel on the third day.

He had worked on the lower housing roofs. I recognized the missing tip of his little finger before I remembered his face.

“My wife wants to attend.”

“She’s welcome.”

He glanced toward the open doors.

“I don’t know what I believe.”

I waited.

Behind him, one of Joren’s apprentices carried a bench through the entrance.

The mason stepped aside to let him pass.

“Will that be a problem?”

“No.”

He looked back at me.

I thought he might have more to say.

Instead, he nodded toward the chipped relief.

“I’ve done faces before.”

I smiled.

“Eleanor will want to see your work.”

“I assumed she would.”

Evelyn’s first proper lesson lasted less than a quarter of an hour.

She complained about this.

Ilyen remained unmoved.

“You have fed two children, received visitors, and attempted to read a report while eating lunch.”

“I finished lunch.”

“After your mother reminded you twice.”

Evelyn looked at me.

I found no safe expression and settled on honesty.

“She did.”

My wife sighed.

The lesson took place with a bowl of water between her hands.

Ilyen asked her to let the light settle upon the surface without pushing it through.

The first attempt lit the entire bowl.

The second went out.

On the third, a thin golden circle formed above the water.

Evelyn held it for three breaths.

Then let it fade.

She looked up at me.

Her expression reminded me of Brin beside the first warning bell.

“I did it.”

“Yes.”

She looked down at her hands.

“I’ve watched you do things like that so often.”

I sat beside her.

“It feels different from this side?”

“Very.”

She leaned against my shoulder.

Ilyen began packing her bag.

Tomorrow, she said, they would try again.

For once, I found myself looking forward to being the person who watched.

We held the first gathering five days after the dream.

The rear chamber remained closed.

The windows had clear glass where the colored pieces were missing, and the repaired benches did not match.

A brazier warmed the entrance.

Someone had placed winter greenery around the stone basin, now upright.

The relief above the front had been cleaned. Its face was still unfinished.

I had spent an hour with the mason describing Aurelia’s eyes, then realized I had said almost nothing about their shape.

Only how she had looked at our children.

He had listened without impatience.

Now Evelyn sat near the front with Carol in her arms.

Helena sat beside her.

I held Garrick, who had chosen this occasion to remain thoroughly awake.

Mary stood near the lectern with her copied prayer.

Melody waited beside Alistair, her ears turned toward every small noise the babies made.

More people arrived than we had benches for.

Eda came carrying her wooden disk.

The mason stood near the back with his wife.

I recognized workshop hands, guards, kitchen staff, and people whose names I had not yet learned.

When the doors settled, I stepped forward.

I had spoken before crowds about food, shelter, work, and war.

This felt harder.

“My grandmother came to meet her great-grandchildren,” I began.

Several people smiled.

I looked down at Garrick.

“She kissed them. She told us about her son. And she told us what happened to this place.”

I spoke about the queen who had healed her people.

About the worship that had followed.

About the attack, and the gods who had held her back.

I did not tell them every private thing she had said.

Some words belonged beside a cradle.

Others belonged here.

“When I arrived in Greykeep, I thought I was alone,” I said. “I’ve been learning how wrong I was ever since.”

Evelyn met my eyes.

I took a breath.

“We’ve opened this church because we want to thank her. And because we want her name spoken here again.”

Then I stepped aside.

Mary read the old prayer.

At the line about children, Evelyn bent her head over Carol.

At the line about the sick, I saw Ilyen close her eyes.

At the line about those who could not sleep, Helena reached across and touched her daughter’s arm.

When Mary finished, silence settled.

There was no thunder.

No figure descended among us.

Garrick made a small questioning noise against my chest.

I adjusted the blanket beneath his chin.

Then something moved above the stone basin.

A point of gold.

At first, I thought it was a reflection from a candle.

But the candles stood behind me.

The light rested on the surface of the water, scarcely larger than a coin.

Evelyn looked at her hands.

They were quiet around our daughter.

Across the room, Eda began to cry.

The golden point opened slowly into the shape of a small rose.

It remained for several heartbeats.

Long enough for everyone to see.

Then the petals loosened into light.

I felt warmth against my forehead.

Exactly where Aurelia had kissed me.

Beside me, Evelyn let out a trembling breath.

“She heard.”

I looked toward the unfinished face above the chapel.

“Yes.”

Our son settled against me.

And all around us, softly at first, people began saying her name.

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