The girl did not know, when she rose at first light and was sent by Silas to the courtyard, that she was going to be trained. She had been told, the previous evening, that a man would speak to her in the morning. The phrase had been given to her by Silas in the small careful tone he used for everything he said to her, and she had, by long shepherdess habit, simply accepted it.
She came out into the courtyard. The courtyard was empty. There was no sun yet. The grey light of the morning lay on the courtyard's worn flags and made each flag the same colour as the one beside it, and the air was cold the way the air had been cold on the eight days of her walking. She stood for a moment near the small stone bench at the side of the courtyard, where she had been told to stand. She looked, for a moment, at her left hand. The flame in it was very small. It had been smaller, the past three days, than it had been on the road.
A presence came out into the courtyard from the eastern side.
The presence was burned.
She knew this before any small ordinary register confirmed it. She knew it because the air of the courtyard, in the place where the eastern arch had been crossed, changed — not in temperature, not in scent, but in the small specific way air changes near a fire that has not yet been lit but is about to be. She had grown up in a village where the bakery had its oven against the back wall of her family's house. She had known, since she was four, the small specific air of an oven that had a fire built in it but had not yet had the fire opened. The presence at the arch carried the same air.
It was tall. By every small measurement her shepherdess eye could take, it was too tall for the courtyard it had crossed into — taller than the eastern arch at the place where the keystone was, and the courtyard, at the place the presence stood, was the courtyard of a building that had become, briefly, the wrong scale for its occupant. There was, where a face would have been on a man, the small unmistakable weight of a being whose burning had been carried for ages — patterned, not featureless. She did not, in registering it, want to look away. She wanted, with the small clean child's hunger that had made her reach into the well-bucket two months ago, to look longer.
The presence crossed the courtyard to her. It stopped six paces from her. There was no sitting. There was no second bench. The bench she stood near was not gestured to. There was no greeting.
The flame in her cupped left hand was attended, instead.
The attending held for a long count. It was not the attending Silas had given the flame at the gate two months ago. The attending Silas had given was the attending of a man who had found a flame he had been told would, perhaps, one day come. The attending of the burned presence was the attending of a being who had, in the giving of the flame, lost something he could not in that moment name, and had been required, by the chronicle, to attend the flame anyway. There was no anger in it. There was, in its place, the small careful weight of a being who had been required, more times in its existence than the chronicler will count, to attend fires that had cost him.
A sentence arrived. The arrival was not loud. It was lower than Silas's voice, and slower, and it had on it the small grain of a sentence that had been used in courtyards of war for a long time and had, by the using, kept itself plain.
"You are holding it badly."
She blinked.
"I — I'm sorry."
"Do not apologise. You have not been taught. I am here to teach you, once."
The presence came a half-pace closer. There was no raised hand.
"You hold it like a moth. A moth is a thing you do not want to lose. The flame is not a thing you can lose. The flame is a thing that wants, by its nature, to be open. You are closing your hand. You are making it small."
She looked at her hand. He was right. She had, without ever deciding to, been closing her fingers, by small careful increments, around the flame. Her thumb was, this morning, almost touching the tip of her index finger. She had been keeping the wind off it. She had been keeping it the way she had been taught to keep a small bird that had fallen from a nest.
"Open the hand."
"Yes."
She opened her hand.
The flame leapt.
It did not leap up. It did not become tall. It sat, on her flat open palm, and it was, in the open palm, perhaps three times the size it had been in the cup of her closed hand a moment before. She felt — for the first time in two months — the small specific weight of it. The flame had, in the cup, weighed nothing. The flame, on the open palm, weighed something. The weighing was not a weight her muscles felt. The weighing was a weight her bones felt.
She looked up at the burned presence.
"That is the size it is when you let it be. That is the size you will, in time, be required to hold."
"I — I can hold it."
"You can hold it now. You will hold it for some time. You will not, in the end, hold it."
"What does that mean."
She had not expected to ask. The question came out of her quickly, the way a question comes out when a girl has been holding a question in her chest for fourteen days and the chest, on the asking, has run out of room.
The presence did not, on the question, soften.
"It means the flame is not yours. It was given. The giving was not in your asking. The flame, while it sits on you, will take. It takes slowly. You have not yet noticed."
"Take — what."
"Feeling. First in the hand."
"The hand."
"Then the wrist. Then further, by the route the flame chooses."
"Will it hurt."
"Not in the taking. The taking is quiet. It will hurt, at the end, in the spending."
"The spending."
"The flame is the rent, Auren. You are the building. The flame burns in you, and you keep, while it burns, the small careful work of being a building. The building is not, by any of its architecture, designed to burn for very long."
"How long, then."
"Until the night you are asked to spend it."
"And after."
The presence attended her. It did not, for a long count, answer. The attending did not, in the count, withdraw.
"After, you may not be a building at all."
She felt, in her small private throat, the place tears went.
She did not let them come.
She had been raised, by a mother who had been raised by a mother, to listen to the older men when they came into the kitchen. She listened. She did not, in the listening, take her hand off the flame.
"Why are you telling me this."
"Because you should know."
"Will it change anything I do."
"No."
"Then —"
"Auren."
"Yes."
"It will not change what you do. It will change how you carry it. The carrying, when you know the cost, is not the same as the carrying when you do not. The flame will know. The country will know. The night you are asked to spend it, you will know, by the carrying you have been doing, that the spending was not a surprise."
"Will I be asked."
"Yes."
"By whom."
"By the work the chronicle has been waiting on."
"Will I have a choice."
"On the night, yes. By that night, by the carrying, the choice will be one your chest has already made. You will only, on the night, hear the choice in your own mouth."
She nodded, slowly. She did not, on the nodding, close her hand. She kept her palm open. The flame sat on it.
"Why did you come."
She had not expected to ask it either. The question came up out of her without her preparation. It came up out of her with the small clean directness of a sixteen-year-old who had, by some private permission, decided that she had earned, this morning, the right to ask one question of a being who had crossed worlds to attend her hand.
The presence considered her, for the first time, as a person.
It had been considering her, until this moment, as a flame-bearer.
The considering did not, in any visible register, change. The patterned air around it remained the patterned air around it. But an answer arrived, after a long count, and the answer was the only sentence given her, in the entire training, that was not a thing about the flame.
"Because someone had to. And the others were not honest about cost."
She nodded.
"Thank you."
"Do not thank me. I have not been kind to you."
"You have been honest."
"Honesty and kindness are not, on this question, the same thing."
"I know."
The presence attended her once more. The patterned air did not, in the attending, soften. It did, on the smallest measurement her shepherdess eye was capable of, register her. It was the register an older man in her village's kitchen had given her father, on the nights her father had been honest with the older men.
"You will not see me again until the night you spend it."
"I will, on that night, look for you."
"I will, on that night, be looking back."
The presence turned. The courtyard was crossed in the same patient pace, and the eastern arch took him, and the air of the courtyard, in the place where the arch had been crossed, returned by small slow increments to the air the courtyard had had before he came.
She closed her hand again, after a long count.
She did not, in the closing, reduce the flame. The flame sat in her closed cup at the size it had had on her open palm.
She walked, after a long count, back into the cathedral. She did not, on the walk, speak to anyone. She went, by small careful steps, to the eastern chapel. She sat on the stone bench. She set her cupped hand in her lap. She watched the flame.
The flame burned, in her closed cup, the size it had been on the open palm.
A celestial gift given honestly is given with its cost written into the gift. The chronicler will not sentimentalize the line. The girl had been told the cost. The girl had heard. The chronicler will record only that the small body in the chapel did not, on the rest of the morning, ask for the cost to be removed. The girl had been raised, by mothers and by the older men in the kitchen, to know that the asking would have been an insult to the giving. She did not ask. She held.