The Night Three Angels Stood in the Same Field

Aelinna had ridden out of Vextar at the second hour after dusk, and she had ridden out alone.

This was not, by the careful instructions her father's lord-chancellor had set on her movements in the past season, a thing she had been authorized to do. The lord-chancellor had, in the past season, been receiving small written reports of the princess's movements from a clerk in the royal stables whom he had retained, by the payment of four silver each month, to read the daily ride-book of the inner stable. The clerk had, on the night of her quiet departure, been at his narrow supper in the south wing of the palace, and the ride-book at the inner stable had not, on the night of her departure, registered her name. She had taken her usual grey gelding from the inner stable in the careful unannounced way she had been taking him from the inner stable for the past two months, and the senior groom of the inner stable, who had served her since she had been twelve, had not, in those two months, asked her where she was riding.

He had, on this night, only one question.

She rode east.

She did not ride to the cathedral. The cathedral was, at this season's close, three days' ride from Vextar by the road her column had taken in its long uneven progress across the kingdom in the past three seasons, and three days was not a journey she could absent herself from the inner palace on. She rode instead to the flat country at the eastern edge of the kingdom's home district — to the border field, the long flat expanse of stripped autumn grasses that ran along the thin uneven river that had, for nine generations of treaty work, been the negotiated boundary between Krypton and the further north country of Avarath.

She rode there tonight because Vesper of Avarath had, in a small letter delivered through Kira Morrow's hand a fortnight ago, asked her to.

The letter had said one sentence.

Be in the border field on the night of the new moon, at the third hour after dusk, alone.

The letter had been signed in Vesper's narrow astronomer's hand. It had been sealed in Vesper's own private wax, which Aelinna had seen on the master ledger Vesper had given her in the first season of her northern journey.

She had thought, on the morning after the letter had reached her, for two evenings about whether to go.

She had decided, at the close of the second evening, to go.

She rode at the steady pace the grey gelding rode at when he had been told, by the small particular pressure of her left knee, that the ride was not to be hurried. She wore, under her travelling cloak, the plain riding clothes of a junior officer of the kingdom's military.

She reached the border field at the third hour after dusk.

The night was clear. The moon, on the season's accounting, was the new moon — an absent moon, a moon whose phase did not, by any of the old astronomical readings her grandmother's books had given her, give light at all. The sky, in its absence, was the uneven blackness that the new moon gave a clear country at the third hour after dusk in late autumn — a blackness in which the careful patterns of the stars were the only light.

Aelinna had not, until tonight, been in a sky of this kind alone.

She drew the gelding up at the eastern edge of the border field, on the low rise from which the long flat expanse of the field could be observed in the grey absence of moonlight.

She did not see Vesper.

The field was empty. The river at its further edge was the uneven dark line she had read about in the histories. The grasses at the field's centre were the stiff brown grasses of late autumn. The eastern hills beyond the river, which were the first hills of the further north country of Avarath, stood in uneven dark masses against the dense sky.

She waited.

She waited the careful patient minutes a princess of her discipline waited at any rendezvous her correspondent was permitted to be late to. Vesper had, in the past nine seasons, been late to none of their correspondences. Aelinna did not, in the careful patient minutes, allow herself to consider that Vesper might, on the long northern road from Hold-Above-the-Snow, have been delayed by the small uneven hazards of an autumn ride.

She spoke, very quietly, into the dark of the field. She had not, on any of her previous rides, spoken into a field.

"Vesper."

The field did not answer.

"If you are here, I would prefer to know."

The field did not answer.

"If you are not, I would prefer to know that also."

The field did not answer.

She did not, on the silence, allow herself any of the small private reactions a princess of her discipline would have allowed herself.

Then she saw them.

She saw them not on the field but on the eastern hills — three figures, on three of the eastern hills, standing motionless on three low ridges that the eastern hills made against the dense sky. The figures were not, on her reading, the figures of men. They were too tall. They were too still. They stood at a particular angle on the ridges that suggested, on her careful reading, that the angle had been agreed among them — an uneven equilateral triangle of three positions on three ridges, the way three persons stood on three positions when they had decided, by some method she had no equipment to read, to decide together about what they were looking at.

What they were looking at was the field.

She understood this without bending the careful flat reading her grandmother's books had given her of the long uneven custom of how figures of higher orders held their positions when in council.

She did not, in the careful flat reading, allow herself to wonder whether the council was deciding about her.

She held the gelding still.

She watched the three figures.

They did not move. They stood at the angle the equilateral triangle of their positions required, and they did not, in the careful flat reading she could take from her place at the field's edge, perform any of the careful motions a council of beings of the kind would, on her reading of her grandmother's books, have performed in deliberation. They did not raise their hands. They did not turn to one another. They did not, on her careful reading of the dense sky behind their shoulders, speak.

The council was conducted in silence. The silence was the conduct.

She watched them for an hour.

Then the three figures, at the same instant, withdrew.

She did not see them go. The going was not the going of a man on a hill. They did not walk down the back of any of the three ridges. They did not lift, on the dense sky, any of the small particular shapes a being of the order would have lifted in flying. They were, in the instant, not there.

The decision had been made.

She did not, on her careful reading, know the decision.

She held the gelding for a further count. She turned the gelding. She rode west, the careful steady pace home, in the dense new-moon sky.

Halfway home, in the small low hollow before the last hill before the road came out at the southern gate, she stopped the gelding for a small careful breath. She spoke, very quietly, into the dark.

She did not, on the speaking, expect any of the figures in the dark to answer. None of them did.

She did not finish the sentence. She had no name to put at the end of it. She inclined her head once, in the small inner Avarathan academy nod, to the dense new-moon sky, and she rode on.

She did not, in the long ride, allow herself to consider what a princess of a kingdom would have to do, on the morning after, with the flat reading that her kingdom had been visited, on the night of the new moon, by a council of three beings of an order she had not, in twenty-eight years, been told her kingdom was permitted to be visited by.

A kingdom can be visited by its protectors and never know it has been visited. A princess can be present at the visiting and never be addressed. The chronicle, on its higher register, recorded the field as a field that had been visited; it did not record the visiting as a visiting the kingdom had received.

She rode home alone. She did not, in the long ride, turn back once to look at the eastern hills.

She did not, in her quarters that night, write a letter to Vesper. She did not, in her quarters that night, write a letter to anyone. She lay on her bed, in her riding clothes, and she did not sleep, and the dense new-moon sky stood, in her head, with three motionless figures on three low ridges in the careful flat equilateral triangle they had held against each other for an hour, deciding, in silence, about a question whose lines ran along a country a princess of Krypton was not, by any of the readings her kingdom had built her into, equipped to read.