Calix Is Found

The boy was fifteen.

He had been with the master since he was twelve, which was the careful age the master preferred his apprentices to be received at on his particular reading of the kind of mortal apprentice the work required. The boy had not, in three years, asked to be received. He had been found by the master, in the country south of Marrowport in the third year of the master's work on Celesterra, in the careful manner the master had developed of finding apprentices on whatever world he had been working on for any of the four lives he had so far lived. The finding had been, on the boy's careful reading of his own life, the kind of finding a hungry boy on a southern road did not refuse. He had been hungry. The master had given him bread.

His name, on the careful private rolls the master kept of his apprentices, was Calix.

He had been born, by the record his mother had given the village's record-keeper, with another name. The other name had been the name his mother had used for him until she had died.

The morning the master had renamed him had been a small careful morning at the working table at the stone house in the interior. The master had, on the giving of bread, written a single line in his small private hand on a small piece of writing-paper. He had not, on the giving, looked at the boy. He had spoken in the small even voice the boy had since learned was the master's only voice.

"The name your mother gave you is the name of a boy who has not yet been received. The work you are about to begin is the work of a boy of a different name. I propose, on your agreement, the name Calix."

The boy, who was twelve, who was hungry, who had not, in the small steady weeks since his mother's death, been given a sentence with the word propose in it, had answered.

"What does it mean."

The master had not, on the asking, lifted his head. He had answered in the same even voice.

That had been three years ago.

He had not, in three years, regretted the agreement.

This morning he was in a village three days' ride east of Marrowport, on the country road that ran along the edge of the low hills the master had begun, two months ago, to use as the careful waypoint between his second working chamber north of Marrowport and his stone house in the further interior. The village had not, by any of the readings of his master's instruments, been a village the master had marked for the work. It had been a village the woman who served the master had, in her own unhurried way, decided was a village whose private records of three of its merchants had grown, over the past summer, too useful to leave to the village's own clerks.

The woman who served the master had cleared the village three days ago.

Calix had not been with her on the clearing. He had been with the master, at the stone house in the interior, at the narrow desk in the narrow chamber he had been given for the careful private exercises of the apprentice's third year. He had heard about the clearing on the morning after, in the flat manner the woman who served the master had brought the news to the master at the working chamber.

Maelis had not, on her bringing of the news, said the word clearing. He had heard her say it in the small careful even tone she used for reports.

The master had nodded once. He had not, on his nodding, asked any further question.

Calix had been sent, two days later, to inspect.

He had not been sent on the woman's orders. He had been sent on the master's. The master had, in the morning of the second day, called him to the working chamber.

He had ridden the careful pony the master had given him at the close of his first year, and he had reached the village at the second hour after midday, and the village had been, on his careful reading of it from the small rise at its eastern edge, the village the woman who served the master had cleared three days ago.

The village was empty.

The houses stood. The chimneys did not give smoke. The narrow streets between the houses did not have, on his careful reading from the rise, any of the shapes of villagers. The narrow square at the centre of the village, in which the village's well stood, did not have any of the shapes of villagers around the well.

The village was empty in the way the woman who served the master left villages.

Calix had not, in three years, seen one.

He rode the careful pony into the village. He held the leather case at his shoulder. He held the rein at his hand. He rode, in the empty square at the centre of the village, to the well, and he dismounted at the well, and he tied the careful pony at the post the well's custodian had set there for the use of any traveller who had come to draw water.

He did not draw water.

He walked, in the empty square, to the narrow chapel at the western edge of the square. The chapel was the chapel of the village's priest.

The chapel's door was open.

It had been forced. The forcing had been, on his careful reading of the splinters at the door's lower hinge, the forcing of a hand that had, in the forcing, not bothered to attend to the appearance of the splinters in the aftermath. The hand was the hand of the woman who served the master.

He went in.

The chapel was, on his careful reading from inside, the chapel of a priest who had been, in the moments before the forcing, in the careful daily work of his daily reading. The priest's narrow desk at the eastern wall was open to a small bound book. The priest's narrow chair was, on his careful reading of its angle from the desk, a chair that had been, in the moment before the forcing, occupied. The priest had been at the desk. The priest had not, on his careful reading of the chapel's floor, been allowed to leave the desk on his own feet.

The priest's body was not, on his careful reading of the chapel's narrow nave, in the chapel.

Calix walked to the desk.

The small bound book on the desk was the book the master had described in the morning of the second day. It was, on his recognition, a small bound book of the kind a priest of the older liturgy kept for the daily readings of his liturgy. The cover was dark leather. The clasp was brass. The pages, where the book had been left open, were of the thin paper the older liturgy had used.

The book was open to a particular passage.

The passage was about Kryor.

He recognized the name. He had read the name of Kryor, in his three years, perhaps four or five times. He had not, in the four or five times, allowed himself any of the small private reactions a boy of his age would have allowed himself to the name of an Archangel of an order the master's work was, on every reading the work required, dedicated to not permitting on the world the work was being performed on.

The passage on the small bound book on the priest's desk was, on his careful reading, a passage about the older liturgy's reading of the Archangel's bowing — the moment, in the history of the older liturgy, in which the Archangel had been said to have bowed his head to a mortal warrior-priest at the cathedral on the hill of the country to the north. The passage described the bowing.

The passage had been circled.

The circling was in pencil. The pencil was a pencil of the kind the priest of the village had used, on Calix's careful reading of the marks in the margin of the page. The circle had been made, on his careful reading of its freshness against the ink of the page, in the past day.

The priest had circled the passage in the hours before the woman who served the master had reached him.

Calix stood at the desk for a long count.

He spoke, very quietly, to the empty chapel. He had not, in three years, spoken to an empty chapel.

"You knew."

The chapel did not answer.

"You knew. You sat at this desk, and you knew. You opened the book to this passage. You marked the passage. You did not, in the marking, hide the book. You did not put it on a shelf. You did not put it under the desk. You did not burn it. You left it on the desk for whoever came in."

The chapel did not answer.

"She left it. She left it for me."

He read the passage twice.

He picked up the book. He set it in the leather case at his shoulder.

He walked out of the chapel into the empty square. He untied the pony at the post by the well. He mounted. He rode the empty street back out of the village by the western road.

At the rise on the eastern edge of the village, he stopped.

He sat the careful pony in the afternoon light. He did not, on his careful reading from the rise, look back at the village. He looked, instead, at the leather case at his shoulder. He took the small bound book out of the case. He held it in both hands.

He spoke, very quietly, to the book.

"He told me to bring you to him."

He did not, on the speaking, expect the book to answer. It did not.

"He told me not to open the case on the road. I have not opened the case on the road. I have opened you. That is, on every reading the master would give me, the same thing."

He did not, on the speaking, give himself the small careful private satisfaction of the technicality. He read the passage one further time.

"If I bring you to him, he will burn you. He will not let me read you again. He will not let any of the other apprentices read you. He will not let the woman who served him read you either."

He closed the book.

He did not, in the closing, allow himself the small private reaction a boy of his age would have allowed himself.

He spoke to the book a final time.

"You were left for me. By a man I did not know. By a hand I cannot, on any of the master's instruments, name. I have not been left a thing in three years. I will keep you."

He put the book back in the case. He did not put it back where the master would, on receipt, expect it to be. He put it, in the manner of an apprentice who had not yet, in three years of careful discipline, performed an action the master had not given him permission to perform, into the inner pocket of the case — the inner pocket the master had not, on his giving of the case, told him to use, and which had been, on his three years' careful reading of the case, the private inner pocket that the master had built into the case for the private use of the apprentice's own materials.

He did not, on his careful reading of his three years, have any private materials of his own.

He had not, in three years, kept anything from the master.

He did, on this afternoon.

He rode the pony to the stone house in the interior. He delivered, at the working chamber, the leather case with no book in the outer pocket where the master's instructions had been to put it.

The master, at the working chamber, did not open the case in his presence.

The master inclined his head once. He did not, on the inclining, ask any further question. The master gave, on receipt, the small motion of the hand that the master gave at the close of any errand the apprentice had completed correctly. Calix bowed, in the manner the master had taught him to bow, and he left the working chamber, and he went to the narrow chamber at the upper floor of the stone house in the interior that had been, for three years, his.

The case he set on the shelf at the eastern wall of his narrow chamber, in the place an apprentice of his discipline kept his case in the hours between errands.

He did not open the case.

He sat on the narrow bed.

He had only, in the inner pocket of the case, a book his master had not been given.

That was the smallest private reaction a boy of fifteen, in three years of training under a master of the work, had allowed himself to perform.

It was, on the chronicle's higher register at this hour, the largest one that had ever been performed by an apprentice of his master. An apprentice who keeps something his master would burn has begun, on the chronicle's careful reading, to apprentice himself elsewhere. He did not yet know, on this afternoon, whom. The chronicle did not yet know either. The book, in the inner pocket, knew. The book had been, in the hours before the priest of the village had been removed from the chair at his eastern desk, opened to a passage that named, in the language of the older liturgy, the Archangel of Light. The book had been circled by a hand the master had not yet been given the equipment to read. The circle was, on the chronicle's higher register, a flat seal set on a boy of fifteen by a hand neither the master nor the boy had yet been told the name of.

The seal would, in the seasons to come, be claimed.