She was admitted to the queen on the fourth morning of her stay. The audience was brief. The audience was, by Avarath's standing practice, conducted in the queen's private reading-chamber and not in the formal hall, and the queen, who was a tall thin woman in her late fifties, did not rise from her chair when Aelinna entered. She gestured Aelinna to the second chair. Aelinna sat. The two chairs were the only two chairs in the chamber. There was no servant. There was no clerk. There was no record-taker.
Queen Ysmara the Patient did not, in any of her public correspondence, use her epithet. Aelinna had, until that morning, considered the epithet a flattery of her court. She did not, on this morning, consider it a flattery any longer.
"You have been with my astronomer."
"Yes."
"You have her ledger."
"Yes."
The queen did not, in the first quarter-minute of the audience, look at the case at Aelinna's feet. The queen looked, instead, at the small clear winter light at the inner window. The light fell on the inner ledge in a small soft band. The queen did not, in any of the seconds of the looking, lift her hand to it.
"There are old measurements that are becoming new again."
That was the longest sentence the queen spoke in the audience.
She said it, and she did not elaborate, and Aelinna understood, in the small private way of a princess raised in a court whose sentences had also been short for a decade, that the queen would not elaborate. The queen had spoken the sentence as a kind of private acknowledgement — an acknowledgement that was meant for Aelinna alone, in the absence of any record-taker, and that was meant to confirm, in the most economical phrasing the queen could give it, that the master ledger's gift had not been a private decision of an old astronomer's. The queen had known. The queen had assented.
"Your astronomer's ledger will be read."
"I trust so."
"It will not, by my chancellery, be acknowledged."
"I had not expected it to be."
"You will not, in your own chancellery, acknowledge it either. Not until a season your father's kingdom is ready to acknowledge such things. You will know that season when it arrives. I trust."
"I will know it."
The queen lifted her gaze, briefly, to Aelinna's face. The lifting was small. The lifting was brief. The lifting carried, in the small careful private way of an Avarathan queen, the small invisible pressure of a question that the queen would not, in this audience, ask aloud.
The question was, by Aelinna's hearing, the same question the astronomer had not asked in the carriage.
The queen did not ask why a princess had come north.
The queen, like the astronomer, took the count.
"Travel safely back to your kingdom, Crown Princess of Krypton."
Aelinna rose. She inclined her head, deeply, in the small Avarathan curtsy the academy had taught her — not the deeper Krypton curtsy of state, but the lighter Avarathan one used between scholars of equal standing. The queen acknowledged the curtsy with the small careful inclination of her own head. The audience was, by the convention, ended.
Aelinna walked out of the reading-chamber and through the corridor and down the small inner stair to the inner court of the Hold. She crossed the inner court. She passed under the narrow archway between the inner court and the upper terrace. She stepped into the narrow passage. She came out, on the other side, onto the upper terrace's first landing, which gave onto the snowfield outside the eastern wall.
She stopped.
She had not, on any of the previous mornings, stepped onto the upper terrace's first landing. She had been told, by the small careful instructions of the chamberlain, that the upper terrace was for the queen's private use. She had taken the upper passage by mistake, in her small unfocused walk after the audience.
She was about to turn back.
She did not.
There was a figure on the snowfield.
The figure was at the third small thicket of pines on the eastern margin of the field. The figure was standing, and the figure was, on Aelinna's first look, too tall. The figure was taller than the third pine. She had walked the eastern margin of the snowfield two days previous, in her own slow private exercise of the morning, and she knew — she knew, by the small private discipline of having measured, for one cold morning, the heights of the first row of those pines against the small stick she had brought along for the purpose — that the third pine was the tallest pine on the margin. She had measured it. The figure was, on her quick rough estimate, eleven feet.
The figure did not move.
That was the second thing she registered. The figure was too tall, and the figure was too still. There was a small light wind at the eastern margin of the field, the kind of wind that, by Avarathan winter's standing practice, moved every cloak it touched. The figure's cloak — and the figure was wearing what looked, at the distance, like a long pale cloak — did not move. The cloak did not stir. The cloak did not, in any of the seconds Aelinna stood at the rail, do any of the small ordinary things a cloak in a wind did.
She did not look directly at the figure.
She looked at the second thicket of pines. She watched, in the corner of her left eye, the third thicket. The figure remained in her peripheral vision, in the small soft outline of an unmoving column of pale cloth, and the figure did not, in any of the seconds of her looking-at-the-second-thicket, lessen in its presence in her peripheral attention. The figure was not — and this was the third thing she registered, and the most carefully — fading. The figure was not the small soft trick of a watered eye. The figure was on the snowfield. The figure was eleven feet tall. The figure had, on Aelinna's small private hearing of the wind, no weather.
She had, in her years at home, read the records of every audience the cathedral at Darklume had documented since the courtyard's miracle.
She had, in her last week at Vextar, read the Major's letter.
She had a category for the figure on the snowfield.
She did not name it, even in her own thinking.
She turned, slowly, from the rail. She walked back through the narrow archway. She went down the small inner stair. She crossed the inner court. She did not, in any of the steps, look back at the upper terrace's first landing. She went back to her small chamber on the third floor. She closed the door. She sat at the small desk under the eastern window.
She did not, for the rest of the day, mention the figure.
That evening, Vesper came to her chamber. Vesper had not, on any previous evening, climbed the inner staircase to the third floor. She climbed it now. She did not knock. She let herself in. She closed the door behind her. She did not sit. She stood by the eastern window.
"You went on the upper terrace this morning."
"Yes."
"You looked at the eastern margin."
"Yes."
The astronomer waited.
"I will not ask what you saw."
"Good."
"But if you saw a thing on the eastern margin that was too tall and that did not have weather, I will tell you only this. The Hold has been, for some weeks, on a register I do not measure. The register is older than my glass. It is older than the academy. It is, by the small careful private reading of an old astronomer who has begun to measure things she should not by training have measured, a register the kingdoms of this continent have stopped maintaining. Avarath has not stopped maintaining it. Avarath has only, in the past three decades, stopped writing it down."
"Is the figure dangerous to me."
"No."
"To Avarath."
"No."
"To anyone."
"Yes. To one. And the one is not on this continent in any way that the figure's presence in the eastern margin of a snowfield outside Hold-Above-the-Snow would, on any sensible reading, predict."
"The warlock."
The astronomer did not answer in words. She inclined her head, once, in the small Avarathan academy nod, and she did not, on the inclining, look at Aelinna.
"Then I will not name it."
"Good. There are sights that cannot be testified to without becoming someone else's evidence first."
"I have been raised on the principle."
"Your training shows."
The astronomer turned. She walked to the door. She stopped at the door. She did not look back.
"Sleep, princess. Tomorrow you go south."
She left.
She did not, for the rest of the season, mention the figure to anyone — not to the astronomer at her parting, not to the queen by any letter, not, on her return south, to her father.
She did not, that night, sleep more than the small careful three hours her body required at the worst.
There were sights that could not be testified to without becoming someone else's evidence first.
She had, that morning, been given one.