Auren Holds the Mirror

She woke in the small chapel at the eastern wall before dawn on the morning the priest had told her, the previous evening at the small wooden plate of dry bread and the cup of thin soup, that she was required — and the word required, when Silas had used it, had not been the word he had used at any other meal in the four months she had been in the cathedral. He had used, on every other morning, the small careful word welcome.

He had said it, in the small private way of a man who had not slept well in the days since the angel had come to the altar.

"Tomorrow morning, child, you will be required at the altar."

She had set the spoon down at the small wooden plate. She had not, in setting it down, shown any of the small careful changes a young woman might have shown a priest who had used a new word.

He had looked at her for some count. He had not, in the looking, smiled. He had not smiled at her since the morning of the gate. He had said, in the small dry voice of a man who had become, by the four months of her in the cathedral, a man he had not been:

He had inclined his head.

"Eat your bread."

She had eaten her bread. She had drunk her soup. She had, in the night, slept perhaps four hours.

She rose at first light. She washed her face at the basin. She put on the dress the older sister had given her — the second dress, the one she had been wearing since the morning Phaeren had come to the courtyard. She did not, in the dressing, bind her hair. The older sister had taught her to bind it; she had not, on the morning, been able to find the length of cord. She let the hair fall the way it had fallen at fifteen in the small house her mother had kept by the well. She came out of the chapel into the great nave with her cupped left hand at her side and the flame in it.

The flame was the size of a small apple still. It had not, since the morning of Phaeren's training in the courtyard, grown. It had also not, since that morning, been smaller — she had begun to notice this, in the past three weeks, in the small careful way she noticed the size of bowls and the depth of pails. The flame had stopped doing the small ordinary thing flames did when their bearers were tired. It had begun, in her cupped hand, to be the size it was. The size was the size of a small apple. She did not, on the morning of the requirement, ask herself why.

The great nave was full.

It had been full, in pieces, at every hour of the past three months — a column resting at one end, a delegation from Caedrin in two pews, the heir's small careful retinue at the eastern map-table, the priest's older sisters at the cooking-fires by the western wall, the flame-bearer's small stone bench in the small chapel of the eastern wall. It had not been full, in this morning's specific way, since the night before the morning of Phaeren's first arrival — and not, even on that night, the way it was now. The great nave on this morning had on it the shape of an audience. The pews had been pulled back into rough lines. The map-tables had been moved against the side walls. The cooking-fires had been put out. The cots had been folded against the eastern columns. At the western door stood the heir of Krypton in the dark grey wool she wore for council mornings, with the Major at her right shoulder and Tovalen's envoy from Caedrin at her left and Vesper's young deputy from Avarath one step behind and the Doge's appointed reader from Marrowport a step behind that. Inside the nave, at the small careful arrangement of the lines, sat perhaps three hundred souls.

At the western door, before the morning had begun, the heir had asked the Major a single question.

"What will be done."

The Major had not, on the question, immediately answered. He had been looking, with the small held attention of a man who had served twenty-one years, at the altar.

She had, on his answer, inclined her head a small fraction. She had not asked him whether he believed the angel. She had not asked him whether he believed the morning. She had been in his service long enough to know that the Major did not, on the eve of an unexplained mortal-anchored ceremony, take questions of belief.

He had stepped a fraction backward, into the line of the western door. He had not, in the stepping, looked at the altar.

In the centre of the nave, at the altar, stood Silas.

Silas was holding nothing. He had, by some small careful pre-arrangement, set the small wooden case of the original feather on the altar's western side, where the lamp at the eastern wall did not directly cast its light on it. He had cleaned the altar. He had, on the previous evening, walked the older sisters once through the small careful order of the morning. He had not, on any of the walking, told them what would happen on the eastern wall. He had not, the chronicler observes, been told by anyone what would happen on the eastern wall. He had been given, by Vaelor, on the morning of the angel's return four days previously, only a small flat case of pale wood and a single careful sentence of instruction. Silas, who had built his life out of accepting instructions of that form, had accepted.

The case was on the altar's eastern side, in front of the lamp.

She walked up the centre aisle of the nave. She had not been told to walk slowly. She walked at the small steady pace she had walked in her village to the well. The nave watched her. Three hundred faces watched her with the small careful attention of three hundred people who had been told nothing except that the morning required them. She did not, in the walking, look at any of the faces. She had not, in her four months in the cathedral, learned to look at faces that were watching her. She looked, at the start of the walk, at the altar; in the middle, at her own bare feet on the cold flagstones; at the end, at the small flat case on the altar.

She came to the altar.

Silas inclined his head, the small fraction. He did not, in the inclining, smile. He stepped, very slightly, to the side of the altar, the way a host steps slightly aside at the door of his own house when the host has decided that the threshold is, on this evening, the guest's. He spoke, very quietly, only loudly enough for her to hear:

She set her cupped left hand on the altar.

She did not, in setting, open her hand. She set the cupped hand down on the altar's eastern side, beside the case, and the flame, in her cup, sat the size of a small apple in the cathedral's cold morning air. She looked at the case. The case did not, by any of the small surfaces it had, do anything. It was, in the lamp's light, a flat case of pale wood. It had on its front, at the small clasp, a tiny hinge that had not been opened in some time.

She put her right hand to the clasp.

She opened the case.

Inside the case lay a thin disc of a metal she had not, in any of her small careful shepherdess-eye trainings, seen. The metal had on it, at its centre, a single mark of a script she had not been taught. She did not, in seeing the mark, attempt to read it. She had not, in fifteen years, been taught the script that was on the metal disc. She had been taught the small careful village reading of the year — what marks meant on the wax of a baker's seal, what marks meant on the small painted tiles of the sister of the cathedral she had not yet met. She had not been taught the marks on the disc. The disc, she understood, was not for the script. The disc was for the flame.

She opened her cupped left hand.

The flame, on her open palm, leapt. It was, on the open palm, the size Phaeren had told her it would be — perhaps three times the size it had been in the cup. It was the size of a man's fist. It sat on her palm. It weighed, in her bones, the weight she had been carrying for four months in the small careful underread weight of the cup. It weighed, on the open palm, a weight her bones had nowhere left to put, and her bones, at the weighing, for the first time in the four months, trembled.

She lifted her right hand.

She reached with her right, slow, to the disc. She did not, in reaching, hesitate. She had been taught, by the burned man in the courtyard, that the flame was not hers; that the flame had been given; that the flame, in the spending, would take. She had been taught, by him, also, that she was the building. The building, this morning, had been brought to the place the building was for. She picked up the disc with her right hand. The disc was cold. The cold was the cold the priest had described, the morning the case had been brought up the western lane, of a thing the warlock has set down by hand. She did not, in feeling the cold, drop the disc. She had, in the past four months, learned the small careful trick of holding things that were colder than the morning.

She set the disc on the open palm.

She set it, gently, into the flame.

The flame, on the disc, did not spread. It did not, by any of the small ordinary motions a flame would have made, eat the disc. The disc, on the flame, did not melt. The two simply registered each other. The flame stood at the size it had been on her open palm. The disc lay flat on the flame the way a coin lies flat on a still pool. For a count of perhaps three breaths, nothing happened.

Then the wall lit.

The eastern wall of the cathedral — the wall behind the altar, the wall above the small lamp, the wall the high windows had on their stone — lit, in the cold morning light, with a script. The script was the script of the disc. The script, in the small careful reading of the chronicler, was a script that was not any of the scripts of the worlds; it was the script the order of the Twelve had used, in the founding of the order, to inscribe the small careful protocols of artifacts of the divine grade. No mortal in the cathedral had been taught the script. No mortal in the cathedral could have read it. The script, on the wall, did not need to be read for the script to do its work.

The script wrote names.

It wrote them in lines. It wrote the lines slowly. It wrote the lines in the script of the disc, but the script of the disc, for each name, briefly resolved into the small careful letters of Krypton, and Sereveld, and Avarath, before the script returned to itself.

The first name resolved on the wall in the careful letters of a Krypton lord's house. The second resolved in the same letters of a second Krypton lord's house. The third resolved in the letters of a third. Aelinna, at the western door, did not, in the resolving, react on her face. She had been taught, by long discipline, not to react when a thing she had counted hands for in a council chamber a year ago was, in a cathedral on a cold autumn morning, named in front of three hundred witnesses. She nodded once.

The Major at her shoulder, at the third name, breathed out — a single low quiet breath. He spoke very quietly, only to her.

"Anriken. Selvinor. Verelis."

She did not, on his naming, turn her head.

The fourth name resolved, on the wall, in the careful letters of the Counted Houses of Marrowport. The Doge's appointed reader, at the back of the heir's small column at the western door, took, for the first time in the month she had been in the cathedral, a small step backward. She did not, in the stepping back, look away from the wall. She read. She knew the family. She had eaten dinner at their table, the previous spring, in the small careful round of the Doge's annual courtesies. She read the name. She memorized it. She did not, in the morning, write it down. The wall would, by the small careful precision of its own logic, hold the writing.

The fifth name resolved, on the wall, in the careful letters of a second Counted House. The reader nodded once. She had, on the second, suspected.

She turned her head a fraction, quietly, to the heir's deputy at her side.

The sixth resolved in the letters of Avarath. Vesper's young deputy, at the western door, took a small breath. The name on the wall was the name of a member of the Astronomer Royal's own staff — a junior astronomer who had, the previous summer, been given the small careful errand of carrying a coded letter to Krypton, and which had not, by any audit Vesper had run, been compromised. The young deputy did not, on the breath, react further. He did, the chronicler observes, write the name on the small slip of paper he had brought with him to the morning, in the small careful precise hand he had been taught at the academy. He folded the slip. He put the slip into the small inner pocket of his coat.

The wall held the names for a count of perhaps thirty breaths.

The flame on Auren's open palm, during those thirty breaths, became smaller.

It did not flicker. It did not gutter. It did not, by any of the small ordinary motions, do the things a flame did when it was being spent. It became, by small slow even increments, smaller. The size that had been the size of a man's fist became, by half a minute, the size of an apple again — the size it had been in her cup. Then it became, in another half minute, the size of a walnut. Then, at the moment the wall began to fade, the size of a small bead.

The wall faded.

The names came down, one by one, in the order they had risen. The wall returned, on the morning's cold light, to the wall of an old cathedral. The lamp at the eastern wall burned the way the lamp had burned for two centuries. The disc on Auren's palm sat on the small bead of flame in her open hand. The disc was not cold, any longer; it was warm, the way the Major's lantern had been warm at the foot of the desk in his tent at Shadowglade two years ago. The disc had, by the small careful reading the priest had been making at the altar, spent. It would not, the chronicler observes, light the wall again. The Sigil had been brought out three times in the long careful keeping of the order. It had been brought out, on this morning, a fourth. It would not, in the chronicle's remaining seasons, be brought out a fifth.

She stood at the altar with the disc on her palm and the small bead of flame under it. She did not, on the standing, look out at the nave. She looked at the disc. She looked at the small bead. The bead was, by her small careful shepherdess-eye reading, perhaps a fifth of the flame she had carried at the gate.

Silas, beside her, spoke in the small dry voice of a priest who had not, in any of his thirty-one years, been at an altar that had been used in this way.

"Are you whole, child."

She looked at him a small fraction.

She lifted the disc. She set it back into the small flat case on the altar. She closed the case.

She did not, in any of the small ceremonial things, do any. She stood at the altar with the small bead of flame in her open palm and she looked, at last, out at the nave. The nave looked back. Three hundred faces looked back. They did not, in the looking, smile or weep or do any of the small audience things three hundred faces did when they had been required by an unexpected morning. They watched. They had, by the slow long shape of the chronicle's seasons, learned to watch.

The Major did not, on his face, do anything. He turned his head a fraction toward the heir.

He turned, on the nodding, and walked out of the nave to give the riders he had had standing in the courtyard since the second hour of the morning the small careful list he had memorized in the thirty breaths of the wall. The riders were already mounted. The riders were already in the small careful line he had set them in. He gave the list. He gave it in the small even tone he had used for orders of importance for twenty-one years.

"Three names. Two for arrest. One for pursuit. Anriken at his gate. Selvinor at the southern inn. Verelis south by the Caedrin road. The Lord-General will receive the names at Vextar at the close of the second day. Ride."

The riders went. They went west. They went to Vextar.

The chronicler will not, in the line that closes the chapter, lend any of the small ordinary phrases of the chronicle to the moment Auren stood at the altar with the bead of flame in her palm and the closed case at her side. The chronicler observes only that a mirror that names the rotten does not save the kingdom. It only tells the kingdom what to cut. The cutting would, the chronicler also observes, fall to the kingdom — and to the heir, and to the Major, and to the Doge, and to the Queen, and to the Prince-Regent — over the remainder of the season. The flame had given, on this morning, what the flame could give. The flame, in its small bead, had paid the morning's rent. The girl had, by her open hand, agreed in advance to the rent that would, in seasons to come, be larger. She closed her hand. The bead, in the cup, sat the size of a small bead. She walked, at the small careful pace she had walked up the centre aisle, back down it, and the nave, on her passing, stood for her, and she did not, in the standing, look at the standing. She went back to the small chapel at the eastern wall. She lay down on the stone bench. She slept, in a way she had not slept in two months, for the rest of the morning.