Ch. 174 What He Feared

Chapter 174: What He Feared

Two days before the birthday, Carol discovered the cupboard containing the gifts.

She could not open it.

This did not prevent her from sitting in front of it and objecting.

I found her there with Evelyn beside her.

“Who told her?”

“Nobody.”

“Then how does she know?”

My wife looked at the cupboard.

“You have checked it four times since breakfast.”

I considered that.

Carol struck the door with her palm.

We were raising an observant child.

Thesra arrived while Beatrice was explaining how many small cakes could be made from the butter we had set aside.

She brought a narrow wooden case.

Eliza met her at the gate and sent word upstairs.

Aurelia had been finishing the cloth book.

When I found her, she was drawing the last stitch through the little house.

“She has the records?”

“Yes.”

Aurelia cut the thread.

Then laid the scissors in their box.

“Ask Mary to join us.”

We met in the same sitting room.

Thesra placed the case on the table.

There were papers inside, some old enough that Mary brought a board to support them.

The records concerned the sleeping houses.

Names.

Instructions.

Changes made by keepers who had understood only part of what they inherited.

Thesra showed us which houses she had visited.

One working had already been put aside.

At another, the patient wished to continue receiving help sleeping through painful nights. Ilyen’s colleague had examined him, and the keeper had agreed to wake him each morning.

Aurelia listened.

She asked questions.

Then Thesra reached beneath the final folder.

“There is something else.”

It was a sheet of pale, heavy material.

Writing covered most of it.

At the bottom stood a seal I did not recognize.

A straight line within a circle.

Three smaller lines beneath it.

Aurelia’s hand stopped beside the table.

“Where did you keep that?”

“With the original design.”

“You had it when you first came.”

“Yes.”

Mary looked up.

Thesra kept her eyes on Aurelia.

“I should have brought it then.”

“What is it?” Evelyn asked.

Aurelia answered.

“An order.”

Thesra drew a breath.

“Othellos commanded me to help restrain her.”

The name was unfamiliar to me.

Aurelia knew it.

I could see that before she spoke.

“The god of order.”

Thesra nodded.

“Head of the pantheon.”

I looked at the seal again.

“Above Avar? Nereth?”

“He presides over us,” Thesra said. “He summoned the convocation. He decided what would be brought before it.”

“And you obeyed.”

“Yes.”

Aurelia’s voice remained level.

“Was your hand compelled?”

“No.”

“Your will?”

“No.”

Thesra swallowed.

“He gave the order. I chose to carry it out.”

Mary turned the sheet toward the light.

“May I copy this?”

“Yes.”

“What does it say?” I asked.

Thesra translated.

The language was careful.

Preservation.

Stability.

The prevention of further disturbance.

Aurelia was described as an unresolved danger.

Her confinement was to continue until the pantheon could be assured that her influence would not spread beyond its ability to govern.

I listened to the words.

Then looked at our teacher.

“They wrote that about you helping people?”

“That was what they told me,” Aurelia said.

Thesra lowered her head.

“It was not what frightened him most.”

Evelyn leaned forward.

“Then tell us what did.”

For a moment, Thesra looked toward the portrait.

I disliked that immediately.

“Look at us,” my wife said.

Thesra did.

“Before Aurelia, every god had been born divine.”

The room grew quiet.

“Every one?” I asked.

“Yes. We came into being as gods. Some earlier than others. Some stronger. But none of us had lived a mortal life and then become what we are.”

Aurelia rested her hand flat upon the table.

“He told me my ascension was merely unusual.”

“He knew of no precedent,” Thesra said. “Neither did any of us.”

“Then why lie?”

“Because he had already begun considering what it meant.”

I thought of Aurelia as she had been in the memories we had recovered.

A mother.

A queen.

A woman standing among people she had tried to keep alive.

“What happens when another god is born?” Evelyn asked.

Thesra looked at her.

“We diminish.”

Mary’s pen stopped.

Thesra continued.

“Each of us. Every time a new god comes into being, every existing god becomes less powerful.”

“Because people begin worshipping someone else?” I asked.

“No. Before there is a shrine. Before anyone knows a name. The change happens with the new divinity itself.”

“And when Aurelia ascended?”

“We all felt it.”

Nobody spoke for several breaths.

Then I asked, “How much did you lose?”

“Enough to know.”

“Enough that you could no longer help the sick?”

“No.”

“Enough that Othellos could no longer rule?”

“No.”

Aurelia looked at the order.

“But enough that he resented it.”

Thesra’s mouth tightened.

“He feared what might follow.”

“One woman?”

“One woman who had been born mortal,” Thesra said. “Who already had a son. A family.”

My eyes moved toward the door.

Upstairs, Helena was watching the children.

Thesra saw where I looked.

“Yes,” she said quietly.

Evelyn stood.

She did not raise her voice.

“Say precisely what you mean.”

“Othellos was afraid that Aurelia’s descendants could become divine as she had.”

I heard the fire shift behind me.

A small collapse of burning wood.

It seemed absurdly loud.

“Could they?” I asked.

Thesra looked at Aurelia.

Then at me.

“Yes.”

The answer came without hesitation.

“Her line carries that possibility. You carry it, Uriah. So do your children.”

Evelyn’s hand found the back of my chair.

I reached up and covered it.

“They are not gods,” my wife said.

“No.”

“They are children.”

“Yes.”

“What are you telling us will happen to them?”

“Nothing certain,” Thesra replied. “The capacity to become divine is not the same as becoming divine. Descent alone does not complete it.”

I tried to fit that into what I knew of myself.

The power I had brought to Greykeep.

How it had grown.

How much I still did not understand.

“I could become like Aurelia.”

“Yes.”

“And Garrick. Carol.”

“Yes.”

Aurelia closed her eyes.

When she opened them, she was looking at me.

“I did not know.”

“I believe you.”

The words came easily.

They were the only easy thing in the room.

Thesra spoke again.

“A god born among us is an event Othellos understands. Something rare. Something he can prepare for.”

“But people have families,” Evelyn said.

“Yes.”

“Children. Grandchildren.”

“Yes.”

I looked at the seal.

There it was.

A man who had imagined our children’s children before our children had ever existed.

Not their faces.

Not their lives.

Only what their existence might cost him.

“So he was afraid there might be more of us.”

“He was afraid there could be no end to the possibility,” Thesra said.

Aurelia rose.

Thesra became still.

“You told me I was reckless.”

Her voice shook now.

“You told me I would hurt people because I could not bear to let them suffer.”

“I believed that too.”

“And beneath all of it, you were counting what you might lose.”

Thesra did not answer.

Aurelia looked at the order again.

“My son stood before you.”

“Yes.”

“He asked for me.”

“Yes.”

“Did Othellos look at him and see another danger?”

Thesra’s silence lasted too long.

Aurelia stepped away from the table.

Evelyn went to her.

I remained seated because I did not trust myself to stand calmly.

“Is that why you kept her alive?”

Thesra looked at me.

“Why restrain her instead of trying to destroy her?”

“He wanted to understand what had happened. How she had crossed from mortality into divinity. Whether it could be prevented in others.”

“And the rest of you?”

“Some knew more than others.”

“You knew.”

“I knew what he feared. I accepted his claim that restraining her would protect us.”

Mary’s pen moved again.

I was grateful she could still write.

“What does he know about the twins?” Evelyn asked.

Thesra’s expression changed.

“I cannot tell you what he knows now.”

“When did you last speak to him?”

“Before I came to Greykeep the first time.”

“Did he send you?”

“No.”

“Did you tell him what you found here?”

“No.”

I looked at her.

“Does he know Aurelia is free?”

“Yes. Her release could not remain hidden from him.”

Aurelia turned from the window.

“Then he also knows I can answer him.”

Thesra looked up.

For the first time that afternoon, she seemed to see something she had not expected.

We kept the order.

Thesra agreed to leave it with the other records.

Mary took her account of the conversation in which Othellos had explained his fear, then asked her to distinguish his exact words from what she remembered of their meaning.

There were gaps.

We marked them.

There was enough without filling them.

Before she left, I asked one final question.

“What made you bring this today?”

Thesra looked toward Aurelia.

“At Willow Court, Mara asked us not to put her back to sleep.”

She paused.

“I had spent a long time telling myself that the full truth would cause harm. I heard myself preparing to use that excuse again.”

Aurelia said nothing.

Thesra left without asking whether bringing the order had changed anything between them.

Eliza joined us afterward.

So did the Castellan.

We told them what mattered.

The order.

Othellos.

Our children.

Eliza listened without interrupting.

Then she asked whether we had any sign of an approaching attack.

“No,” I said.

“Then we prepare with what we know.”

The Castellan would examine the castle’s wards with Aurelia.

Eliza would speak to the guards and household.

Visitors would continue to be received downstairs.

The children’s rooms would remain for the family and those who cared for them.

Nothing about the arrangements satisfied the frightened part of me.

But when I asked whether we could make the castle entirely safe from a god we had never faced, Aurelia answered honestly.

“I cannot promise that.”

I nodded.

“Then we learn.”

Helena found us before evening.

She looked from Evelyn to me.

Then toward Aurelia.

“What has happened?”

We told her and Garrick together.

My father-in-law listened with his hands resting on his knees.

When we finished, he looked toward the nursery.

“Does this change what they need from us tonight?”

“No,” Evelyn said.

“Then we start there.”

Helena took her daughter’s hand.

For a moment, Evelyn leaned against her as though she were much younger.

I watched them.

Then Garrick rested his hand on my shoulder.

“The horse is finished,” he said quietly.

It took me a moment to remember the little carved toy.

“For the birthday.”

“Yes.”

My throat tightened.

“I finished the boat.”

“Good.”

Aurelia waited until we were alone in the passage.

“I am sorry.”

I turned.

She was looking toward the nursery door.

“If he had never feared my line—”

“He gave an order,” I said. “Thesra obeyed it. You did not ask either of them to do this.”

Her face crumpled slightly.

Then Evelyn stepped close and took her hand.

“You’re still sitting beside them at the birthday.”

Aurelia tried to answer.

My wife squeezed her fingers.

“We have already arranged the chair.”

That brought a small, broken laugh.

We went inside together.

Garrick was standing beside his grandfather’s knee.

Carol sat with the cloth book in her lap.

Someone had brought it out again.

I could not find it in myself to object.

Our daughter lifted the little door.

Closed it.

Lifted it again.

Aurelia sat on the rug beside her.

Garrick saw me and reached out.

I crossed the room and picked him up before he could attempt the distance.

He caught my collar.

There was no terrible revelation in his face.

He wanted to be carried.

So I carried him.

Later, Evelyn and I checked the gifts.

The horse.

The boat.

The finished cloth book, recovered after a brief disagreement with its intended recipient.

My wife ran her thumb along the boat’s smooth side.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“That I want to be angry.”

“You are allowed.”

“And frightened.”

“That too.”

She set the boat down.

“But I also want to see them eat their cake.”

I drew her close.

“We will.”

After a while, she leaned back.

“Beatrice asked whether we still wanted the little table by the window.”

“Yes.”

“And the music?”

“Yes.”

She nodded.

Then wrapped the boat again.

I looked into the nursery before bed.

Both children slept.

Our son lay with his knees drawn up.

Our daughter had one hand open beside her cheek.

I thought about the word divine.

How vast it had sounded downstairs.

How little it told me about either of them.

I knew the sound Garrick made before he laughed.

I knew Carol would search behind my back if I hid her fish.

In two days, they would be a year old.

Tomorrow, there were wards to examine.

An order to study.

A god of order whose fear had already cost our family more than I could measure.

I stood beside the cradles a little longer.

Then I went back to Evelyn, leaving the door open so we could hear them.