The Door Open

Year 0, late winter, evening. The Sunward chambers, Valdris.

Kaelith stood at the chamber window.

The Lower Sward in late winter was thin. The frozen mud at the alleys had a small scent the city had only at this season. The smoke from the bakers' chimneys was beginning the steady evening's slow venting. The lamps at the alley corners were being lit one by one by the small lamp-lighter who had walked the same six streets every winter evening for thirty-one years.

A child was being carried up the alley on a man's shoulders.

The child was holding the man's ears.

Kaelith watched them.

The man was perhaps twenty-six or twenty-seven. He walked carefully. The child was perhaps three. The child laughed once, very softly, at something Kaelith could not, from the second-floor window, see.

The man did not laugh. The man only walked, slowly, with the child on his shoulders.

The man and the child went out of sight at the alley's turn.

Kaelith remained at the window.

The warmth in his chest had settled, in the past three weeks, into the temperature it had been holding since the careful evening of the Crown ceremony. The temperature was the temperature of a man who was carrying.

He had used Light of Unity, by his careful counting, twenty-seven times in the four months since the bakery in the Lower Sward.

He carried twenty-seven absorbed worst memories.

He carried his own. The seventy seconds of his mother dying at the Cobalt River. He carried Anlie's fever-bedside. He carried Aria's eleven-month-old body in a kitchen above a bakery. He carried the original Lord Malrien's wife and daughter. He carried Master Tael's last hour. He carried the Ashwood's slow remembering. He carried Halric Vendell's seventy seconds at the moment Halric had become himself for the first time in nineteen years. He carried Lord Darrenth's twenty-three-year-old worst memory at the road in Year -20. He carried, in smaller weights, the particular worst seventy seconds of seventeen other men and women he had reached for in the past four months.

He carried, also, his mother's seventy seconds.

The seventy seconds were not, this evening, alone.

They were, in his sternum, beside the original Lord Malrien's seventy seconds, which had been laid into him by the river-stone's reach four weeks ago.

The two seventy-second memories sat together. The warmth had arranged them so. They were neighbors.

Kaelith laid his palm flat on the cold glass of the window.

He thought, briefly, of a woman he had never seen, on a world he did not know the name of, who had, at some point in the past four months, hummed the first verse of a song his mother had sung.

He thought about her the way he had been thinking about her since the afternoon he had reached for Darris and the warmth had brushed something on a different world. He had not, in those four months, thought about her constantly. He had thought about her at certain hours: the slow hour before sleeping, and the slow hour at the chamber window when he was carrying. He had not, in any of the thinking, named her. He did not know her name.

He did not, this evening, expect to know her name for years.

He thought, briefly, that he would, in some season to come, hear her humming.

He did not, this evening, know.

He was at peace with not knowing.

He stood at the window.

He carried the twenty-seven memories.

He thought, also, about the man with the child on his shoulders. He thought about the twenty-six-year-old who was not a young father in any of the small ways the council's records would have noted. He was simply a young man with a child, walking slowly home through the early winter evening of the Lower Sward.

The child had laughed once.

The man had not laughed.

The man and the child had gone out of sight at the alley's turn.

Kaelith did not, this evening, know who the man was. He did not, this evening, know the child's name. He did not, this evening, know whether the man would come home to a kitchen above a bakery or a small one-room above a tavern or a small two-room near the eastern gate.

He stood with what he did not know, and let the man and the child go.

He stood at the window.

The bell at the central pavilion struck the second bell of the late evening.

The bell was, under the new charter, a council-shared bell. The bell did not, by the new charter, signal anything in particular. The bell simply struck the hours.

Kaelith took his palm off the cold glass.

He walked to the bedside table.

He laid his palm flat on the small wooden horse.

The horse was the small wooden horse the original Lord Malrien had given his father at his father's coronation as Sunward heir, twenty-three years ago. The horse had been at the bedside table since Kaelith had been the Sunward heir.

He laid his palm flat on the small wooden box beside the horse, where the two pieces of the Broken Crown rested.

The box was the small wooden box he had had the chamber-keeper bring up the previous evening before the ceremony.

He laid his palm flat on the lid of the small leather-lined box on the long table, where the four other pieces of the Crown sat. F3 (from the chapter house chapel). F4 (from the records cellar). F5 (which had arrived from the Sunspear chapel cellar three days ago). The unidentified piece Master Tael had retrieved from the seam-records' second drawer (which was, by Brother Aldwen's reading, possibly F1 or possibly an unrelated cobalt-and-silver fragment from a different small artifact entirely).

Five pieces, by the long table's accounting.

The Crown was incomplete by two.

He stood at the long table for a long moment.

The warmth, in his sternum, rested.

Kaelith did not, this evening, know how far the warmth had reached, or what, by some careful working he could not see, had settled in answer.

He knew only that he had been chosen, four months ago in a small chair in the records cellar, and that he had used the Light of Unity twenty-seven times since the bakery, and that the warmth in his sternum was, this evening, settled.

He went to the small leather-bound notebook at the long table.

He drew the next morning's first line.

The line was: Year 0, late winter, evening. The Sunward chambers. The Crown is two pieces visible and four pieces in the small leather-lined box on the long table. The reconstituted council has met. The elected stewardship is, by Tavienne's striking and Borren's recording, in force. The Cult of the Broken Chain in Aerros is, by Aleri Pennarith's walk into the Ashwood, ended. The Ashwood is, by Brother Aldwen's reading, recovering. Master Tael was buried at the central pavilion's small chapel-roof eleven weeks ago. Lord Malrien (Halric Vendell) was buried at the Sunward family chapel seven weeks ago. The original Lord Malrien's marker has been laid at the small flat clearing at the third bend of the eastern road. The river-stone has been returned to the family chapel altar. The four months are, by this evening's hour, finished.

He set the pen down.

He laid his palm flat on the page.

He stood up.

He walked to the chamber's small bed.

He sat on the bed.

He had, in the four months, slept four times without dreaming. The night of the council's collapse. The night of the threshold's reach in the records cellar. The evening of the Velra-brushing. The night the river-stone had been returned to the family chapel altar.

He thought, this evening, that he might, by his own measure, sleep without dreaming for the fifth time.

He undressed.

He did not, in the undressing, take the small note from Master Tael out of his coat pocket. He laid the coat at the foot of the bed with the note still in the pocket.

He laid his hand on the small wooden box at the bedside.

He laid his hand on the small wooden horse.

He extinguished the small chamber lamp.

He lay down.

In the dark, he could feel, by the warmth in his sternum, the Codex's steady presence.

He could feel, by the slower slower steady warmth at the very edge of his sternum's reach, the steady not-aloneness that he had been feeling since the evening of the Velra-brushing.

He thought, briefly, of her.

He did not name her.

He hummed, very softly, the first verse of his mother's lullaby, the way he had been humming it without knowing for the past four months.

The fragment in the chapter house chapel hummed it back, very faintly.

The fragment in the small leather-lined box on the long table hummed it back, very faintly.

The fragment, on a different world, sewn against a woman's ribs in the pocket of a coat that had been sewn by a hand he had not seen, hummed it back.

Kaelith slept without dreaming for the fifth time in two months.

He slept the steady sleep of a man who had, in the four months, become Aerros's first elected steward, and who carried twenty-seven absorbed worst memories, and who knew, in some unnamed way, that he was not alone.

He slept.

The lower Sward, in the early winter night, was thin and frozen-mud and the small smoke of the bakers' chimneys at perhaps eight bells before the morning.

A child cried very faintly two streets over.

Was comforted.

The lamps at the alleys burned low.

The night went on.

The Crown sat in its boxes.

The horse sat at the bedside.

The chamber, in the late winter night, was very quiet.

The door was open.