Nyra's Vow

Year 0, the night after Halric Vendell's death. The chapter house at half strength, the chapel, the chapter house roof. The Lower Sward, Valdris.

Nyra wrote the seven-piece report's final assembly's appendix by the small lamp at the steward's stair, which had been re-lit by Brother Carrick on the third evening after Tarrek the Third's arrest.

The lamp had been, for those three evenings, dark. The not-being-lit had been the chapter house's particular acknowledgment of the steward's absence. The re-lighting had been Brother Carrick's particular acknowledgment that the chapter house was, by its own slow measure, beginning to remake itself.

The appendix was three thousand words. The appendix covered, in Nyra's clean paladin's hand, the events of the past four weeks, from the council's collapse through the records cellar fire through the Malrien-graft's unwinding through Halric Vendell's death at the second bell of the previous afternoon.

She finished the appendix at the third bell of the morning.

She set the pen down. She rolled the appendix into the small leather case the chapter house used for council submissions. She tied it with the small white binding-cord. She labeled it, in the hand, for the elected steward and the Master of Records, with copies for the Order's central council.

She set the case at the corner of the small steward's-room desk.

She stood.

She had, this morning, with the appendix written out in full, finished a thing she had been carrying for four weeks.

The carrying had not, in those four weeks, been, by her own measure, exactly a weight. It had been, more accurately, a steady presence, the way the chapter house at half strength was a presence rather than a weight, the way her sword on the altar at the chapel was a presence rather than a weight. The carrying had been the carrying of someone who was in the middle of becoming, very slowly, a different paladin.

The appendix being written meant the carrying was, this morning, no longer the same carrying.

It meant something had to be done.

She left the small steward's-room.

She walked the central stair. She passed the entry. The rack at the entry was the rack she had laid her sword across every night for nine years. The rack was, this morning, empty. It had been empty for the four weeks. Sister Eira had not, in those four weeks, taken the rack down, though Nyra had once asked her quietly to consider it. Sister Eira had said: the rack stays, my lady. We will not, by removing it, pretend the sword has not been at it.

The rack stayed.

Nyra walked past it.

She walked the south corridor. She passed the dining hall. Brother Gareth and Sister Mara were not in the dining hall this morning; Sister Mara had ridden to the Sunward family chapel two days ago with Halric and Kaelith, and Brother Gareth was at the central pavilion's small chapel-roof attending Master Tael's two-week memorial.

She walked to the chapel.

She entered the chapel.

The chapel, at the small hour past third, was lit by the seven candles Sister Tessane had been tending for nine years. The candles were the candles. The altar was the altar.

Her sword was at the altar.

It had been at the altar for four weeks.

She walked to the altar.

She did not, this morning, kneel.

She stood at the altar.

She placed both hands on the altar's worn place, where seven generations of paladins had laid their hands, and where the wood had taken on the small soft sheen of palm-warmth.

She let her hands stay there for a long pause.

Then she said, aloud, to the empty chapel: "Tovar."

She had not, in eleven years, said the name aloud in the chapel.

She had said it in private, in her own quarters, perhaps a hundred times. She had said it once to Hadran in the cell-stair, four weeks ago. She had said it once to Captain Moren, at the central pavilion's small chapel-roof, the day after Master Tael's death. She had not, in eleven years, said it in the chapel.

She said it.

The chapel did not respond. Chapels were not, by their nature, the kind of rooms that responded.

She said it again. "Tovar."

Then she said, in the paladin's cadence, the particular thing she had been preparing to say in the chapel for eleven years.

She said: "I should have dropped a barrier. I should have. I did not. I am sorry."

The seven candles burned.

She said: "I have, in eleven years, carried this. The carrying has been, by my own discipline, the way I have honored you. The carrying alone has not been enough. I have, in the four weeks, refused. I have laid this sword on the altar. I have walked unarmed for forty days. I have, in the slow telling, refused the institution that made you and that made me. The refusal is the particular thing I had needed to do. It is not, this morning, the particular thing I need to keep doing forever."

She drew breath.

"The institution is beginning to remake itself, through the elected stewardship and the chapter house's slow remaking. The institution is not, this morning, the institution that canonized you against my consent. The institution is, this morning, different. The institution is the institution that lost Master Tael two weeks ago and that did not, in those two weeks, fall apart. The institution is the institution that produced Brother Aldwen at the road bend, and Sister Eira at the inner gate, and Sister Tessane at the seven candles, and Brother Carrick at the cell-stair, and the steady gathering of six-now-becoming-twelve-by-Sister-Eira's-recruiting paladins of this house. The institution is not, this morning, the institution that I had refused four weeks ago. I am, this morning, going to take the sword back."

She paused.

"I am taking it back not because the institution has earned it. I am taking it back because the institution is trying. The trying is what I will, by my discipline, witness. I will, by witnessing, hold the sword again."

She lifted her sword from the altar.

She did so slowly. The sword had been at the altar for four weeks; the wood had begun to take the very faintest impression of it. She lifted carefully. The impression remained on the wood.

She measured the sword across her two open palms, the way the Order had taught her to measure a thing before she committed it to her own carrying.

She lowered it slowly to her side.

She did not, in the lowering, sheath it. She walked to the chapel's small alcove where the seven candles burned, and she set the sword on the small ledge for a still moment. She lit one of the seven candles' small companion-candles, which the chapel kept for the moments paladins took or gave back the swords the chapel had been holding.

She lit the candle.

She returned to her sword.

She lifted it.

She sheathed it.

The cold at her right hip, which had been the cold she had been knowing for forty days, became, in the sheathing, warmth. The warmth was the small warmth of the sword's hilt at her hand. The warmth was familiar. The warmth was, also, by the four weeks of cold, new. She had, by the four weeks, learned to know the cold. She would, in the days to come, learn to know the warmth as the same warmth-with-a-different-history.

She bowed once to the altar.

The bowing was the bowing of a paladin who had given the sword and was, this morning, taking it back as a paladin who had, by the giving, become a slightly different paladin. The altar would, in the chapel's keeping, remember the giving. The altar's worn place, by the small impression the sword had left, would carry the giving as long as the wood lasted.

Nyra walked out of the chapel.

In the entry, she laid the sword across the rack.

The rack was, by Sister Eira's quiet tending, dust-free.

Nyra did not, in the laying, place the sword permanently. She laid it the way she had laid it every evening for nine years before the four weeks. She laid it with the tilt that meant for tonight. She would, in the morning, take it up again.

She climbed the small narrow stair to the roof.

The roof, at the third hour past dawn, had the small thin frost the Lower Sward got in late autumn. The lead flashing was cold. The lamps at the chapel corner and the steward's stair were, this morning, both lit. The Lower Sward in the early morning was waking. A baker's chimney at perhaps the second street west had been venting for hours. A shutter opened at perhaps the third street north and was closed again, slowly.

Nyra sat with her back against the cold lead at the south parapet.

She did not, this morning, count the hour.

She let it go.

In the long count of the morning, she did, for the first time in eleven years, pray.

The prayer was not the canonization prayer. She would not, in her life, ever again say the canonization prayer. The prayer was the prayer the Order of the Silver Dawn had, before the canonizations, used as the small evening's-end prayer of a paladin who had been at her duty all day and was, in the evening, asking the question of was it enough.

The prayer was four lines.

Nyra had not been able to say it for eleven years because the prayer's to-whom had, since Tovar, been a thing she had not been able to name. The prayer was addressed to the Order. The Order had, by Tovar's canonization, become a thing she could not, in honesty, address.

The Order, this morning, was different.

She prayed.

She prayed the four lines slowly. She prayed them once. She did not pray them a second time. The prayer was not, by her own discipline, a thing one repeated.

After the prayer, she sat with her back against the lead for the rest of the long moment.

The morning, this morning, was enough.

Nyra stood.

She climbed back down the small narrow stair.

In the entry, she lifted the sword from the rack.

She buckled it at her hip.

The cold at her right hip was, by the buckling, gone. The warmth was the warmth of the sword's hilt.

She walked through the courtyard.

She walked the slow walk through the Lower Sward streets, in the cold gray light before the dawn, the way she had walked, four weeks ago, with the seven-piece report under her arm. This morning she walked with the leather case from the small steward's-room desk under her arm.

She walked to the High Hall.

She delivered the appendix.

Borren the new Master of Records received it at the records desk. He was, this morning, learning the careful tilt of the records desk's morning-protocols. He had been Master of Records for two weeks. Master Tael had died two weeks ago. Borren had, in those two weeks, kept the records. He had been keeping them for two weeks, as carefully as he could, in his own way.

He received the appendix.

He read the first three lines. He nodded.

He said: "Sister Brightblade. Thank you. I will, by the third bell, file it appropriately."

Nyra said: "Master Borren. The third bell is fine."

She said: "Master."

He said: "Sister."

The small old courtesy of the records desk was, by their careful exchange, intact.

Nyra walked out of the High Hall.

She walked back to the chapter house.

The lamp at the steward's stair, in the early light, was still lit.

She entered the chapter house.

In the entry, she nodded once to Sister Eira at the inner gate.

She unbuckled her sword. She laid it across the rack.

The rack accepted it the way the rack had accepted it for nine years.

She walked to the small steward's-room.

She took down, from the small high shelf, the chapter house's small ledger of the morning's day-shift assignments.

She opened it.

She began the day.