The Last Orellen - Chapter 47: Off-letter

 

Kalen spent the remaining hours before dawn trying to figure out how to monitor the attic without looking like he was spying on it. It was no simple task. If he volunteered to clean up there, he’d be too obvious when the letter-collector came. They’d question him. They’d wonder why he hadn’t removed the conspicuous packet from the floor.

Unsafe.

And all the other chores he could do would take him away from the area eventually. He couldn’t just polish the candlestick by that door to the stairs all day long.

Finally, he settled for an activity that was bound to go uninterrupted. Though it wasn’t the most daring or creative idea he’d ever had.

“I might be praying a lot today,” he told Priestess Riat. She was the only person in the church who kept track of him regularly anyway. “For the souls of my family. I feel like I should. So I cleaned part of the cellar last night to make up for it.”

The corner of the cellar he was referring to had been cleaned for ages. It made it easier to practice spells down there.

Once he’d obtained her permission, he sat on his new favorite pew, clasped his hands piously in his lap, and listened with his eyes closed. The attic stairs were noisy. From this spot by the door, he would hear footsteps if he was paying attention.

This will work for today, but if they don’t come, I’ll have to try something else tomorrow.

And when they did come, he’d just take a quick peek to see who it was.

I only have to do anything if it’s Tomas. He was trying to look after me. He won’t tell the others about me. He won’t be too angry that I read the letters I hope.

Actually, couldn’t Kalen get away with claiming he hadn’t read the letters at all? Picking them up and touching the seal didn’t mean he’d read them. Most people couldn’t read. Tomas shouldn’t know whether or not he could.

Maybe nobody will come at all, and I’ve got it wrong. Maybe the Orellens are gone. Or the Acresses did take them away in the night. And now they’re more than gone.

His hands tightened against each other. He listened.

It was strange to pass a morning with your heart pounding and your eyes closed, interpreting the world though nothing but your ears and the occasional stolen glance. Every set of footsteps called his attention, but they never turned toward him and the door he guarded. To calm himself, he pulled together the spell pattern for Startled Bird and then let it fall apart just before it was completed. He did it over and over again.

This is the least calming spell I know how to cast, he admitted to himself eventually. He remembered the way the practice apples had been sliced by blades of wind and thrown with force against the tombs. Ears of the East would be more peaceful.

But he kept practicing the combat spell anyway.

How fast would I have to be to even make use of it? Four minutes is the best I can do after all this time studying it. Would one minute be enough? Half of one? Less?

I guess I could go around with it always half-formed inside my pathways. Always nearly ready to be completed.

He sighed. That sounds like something a mad person would do. And I’d never be able to think about anything else. I’d just go through life in a muddle trying to hold it in—

Suddenly, there was the faint cry of a hinge to his left. Kalen stilled and cracked one eye open. He glanced at the door to the staircase. It was closed.

Was it the side door to the church then? They need to keep that locked. And I need to oil those hinges.

He waited. It wasn’t long before he heard footsteps on the stairs.

I was right. I really was. Someone came for the letters.

He stood and hurried outside. They would find the letters and then exit the church again. They would come out the side door most likely. All he had to do was stand across the street and watch for Tomas.

It won’t be him. It will be some other person, and then all of this will be over. They’ll do whatever they’re going to do. And I’ll…do whatever I’m going to do.

He tried to pretend he didn’t notice the sick feeling in his own stomach. It came on whenever he thought about what he was going to do with himself a month from now. Or after winter ended. Or when there were no more small wrists in Granslip Port without the Acress bracelet on them.

I’ll be fine.

Kalen stood watching the side door from as far away as he could. He was going out of his way to feign an interest in the filthy sludge of snow and ice beneath his feet. He didn’t want to be seen. He didn’t want the Orellen to be Tomas. He had already decided on both of those things.

So he didn’t understand why, when an older man with short dark hair and a close-trimmed beard emerged from the side door, he felt like he’d lost something. The man was tucking a paper packet into the inside of his coat and looking around as if to be sure he wasn’t followed. A frightened look was on his face.

Those are definitely the letters, aren’t they?

The Orellens had their messages now. Kalen’s mistake was uncovered. His part was done.

It’s nothing to do with me from this point on. All I have to do is what I have been all along.

Clean the church. Say nothing. Be Nerth. Hide. Until another answer came along.

Instead, Kalen followed the man.

He berated himself for it with every step he took. He had enough self-control to make himself keep his distance at least. He followed the unknown Orellen from such a long way away that he should, by all reason, have lost him a dozen times over. But the man didn’t seem to know the streets he walked, and every time Kalen finally thought his foolish chase had been ended by fate, the fellow would reappear in the distance looking flustered.

Finally, Kalen stepped out of the path of a plodding donkey and looked to see the man who’d taken the letters entering a house painted the same shade of gray as most of the others on this street. It wasn’t a nice place. You could always tell by the chimneys, if the disrepair of the houses themselves didn’t give it away. In the good neighborhoods, they were burning all the time, filling the air with clouds of smoke that sometimes settled over the city and made Kalen feel like he was choking on every breath.

Here, only a couple of buildings had lit their fires despite the cold.

I know where at least one of them is living now. So what? It’s not like I’m going to do anything with the information.

 

---

 

After midnight, hidden by darkness and his cloak, Kalen took his spying board and left it below one of the shuttered windows at the front of the gray house. It was the only place that would work. The house was built side by side and back to back with other buildings.

This is crazy, he thought as he hurried to place it there with the spell’s anchoring pattern toward the wall. Just leaving something magical right here on the street! On the doorstep of a bunch of practitioners.

I don’t even want to do this, so why am I?

He kicked sooty snow over it so that it was partially covered, then he turned and walked back the way he’d come.

Do I want them to find me? Is that it?

He didn’t think it was. He was terrified that they would. He’d spent only a moment “hiding” the board because he could barely stand the idea of being caught.

He kept looking over his shoulder all the way back to the church. When he was safely in his pitch black closet in the cellar, he sighed.

“What am I doing?” he murmured. “If they’re magicians they probably know a thousand ways to keep people from spying on them. I just wasted the last of my paint renewing the spell circle on the board, and I took a risk for no reason.”

He would see tomorrow. He would go to the graveyard and cast Ears of the East, and he would see that he had been a fool. There would be no voices from the house where the Orellens were hiding.

None.

He was so angry with himself that he barely slept, and he sprang up only a few hours later and nearly jogged through the dark streets until he reached the graveyard. Ears of the East was still the easiest of all the mage spells he’d learned, and he was already pulling his pathways into position for it as he stalked between the tombs to one of his preferred spots. He sat down on the frozen ground, glared up at the stars, and blew a foggy white breath on his cupped palms as he connected the final pathway.

Stupid. You didn’t even check which direction the breeze was coming from.

He felt the familiar, gentle swirl of air in his hands.

Then, he heard a faint scratching noise.

Oh. It’s working. I don’t know what that is, though.

It could have been anything, a rat clawing at the board maybe.

No people sounds. See! You’re behaving all wrong for no reason, Kalen.

He was choosing to ignore the fact that it wasn’t even light out yet, and most people were probably still asleep.

“—point in arguing about it anymore,” a man’s voice said tiredly. “We’ve been at it all night. Either Lizen will come in time, or we will assume she’s gone off-letter. Either the letters have been tampered with, or they have not. We will send again to the Seniors, and ask them to—”

There was a pause.

“Now wait a minute, Rillard,” said the same man’s voice. “There’s no call for that kind of talk. We’ve come this far; we can trust the Seniors to give us good advice even if—”

A thump. A rattle. A sharply in-drawn breath.

This is frustrating. I think only one person is standing close enough for the board to pick up his voice right now.

The spying board had that strangeness about the way it collected sound. Surely if Kalen had been standing beneath the window, he would have heard everyone talking. Or none of them.

But he definitely wouldn’t have heard the sound of swallowing or a person scratching themselves. And he could hear that now.

It was like it only collected and transferred noises that originated a certain distance from the board. But it was wonderful for picking up whispering within that range. And that was what it did now.

“I don’t think we should assume the letters were read,” a voice said. Kalen thought it might be Tomas. “The seal not being there is odd, but if we’re being realistic, then any practitioner talented enough to remove it cleanly would also have been talented enough to put it back. And if they were our enemies, it would have been better for them to simply take the letters or lie in wait for us to—”

There was a startling crash.

A grunt.

“Get off him!”

“Easy for him to say we should all just go along with! He’s one of the ones to be sent off to safety. He’s always going to be—”

“You can’t just—”

“Please, everyone, we can’t fight each other in this kind of situation!”

Stolen story; please report.

“To the hells with Lizen, and to the hells with the Seniors, too! They can’t even keep the letters safe anymore. I’m not going to donate my magic to send of the lucky ones, and then walk across the damn continent with no help from the family at all! The only plan I’m going along with is the original one, and if—”

“The original one requires more power than we have!”

“Matthew, are you all right?”

“Rillard has a point,” a new speaker said. “Of course the boy is one of the ones chosen to go. Why should six of us be sacrifices for the four of you if Lizen doesn’t show?”

There are a lot of them there, Kalen thought. They must all be staying together.

Someone was laughing now. It wasn’t a joyful sound.

“Let’s do it if that’s what you want,” said a voice that was definitely Tomas’s. “Let’s all go off-letter. You can take my place, Rillard, if you’re so sure it’s better than yours. I’ll stay here and power the spell to send you off.”

“Matthew!”

“I’m so tired of this,” he said. “I do what I’m told, but if the rest of you can’t bear to anymore, who am I to fight you about it? I’ve missed an entire night’s sleep. I’m going to bed.”

Footsteps sounded and then cut off suddenly. Such a long silence followed that Kalen wondered if the spell had stopped working.

“The letters are a problem, Wether,” a woman said finally. “Some of the younger ones don’t have the same sense of belonging that we do. They want to break apart, and we’ll never hold them together now.”

A sigh. “I know. If we can’t trust the letters, we can’t trust anything.”

 

#

 

Three days, Kalen thought as he mopped cold gray water from the floor of the church’s entryway and wrung his rag out into a bucket. If their mage comes in three days, they’re supposed to go with the first plan. The one where they all escape together. That will make even the angry ones happy.

Another pair of booted feet marched past, treading snow across the floor that would only melt and make more work for him.

“May you be in the heart of Clywing,” said the workman wearing the snowy boots as he passed.

“May she bless the fruit of your labors,” Kalen said automatically. There were several different responses that were appropriate to give, but he always chose this one. Sometimes if you blessed the fruit of the bedroom, it made people strike up conversations about their children or their lack of them. And blessing fields was almost as bad, since everyone had an opinion about it.

I just…have to tell Tomas the truth. That’s all.

He squeezed out his rag again.

I can spy on the house until he comes out. It’s easy enough.

After listening in on the Orellens arguing this morning, he was even more sure that he didn’t want to introduce himself to just any of them. It sounded like one of them might have struck Tomas. How was Kalen supposed to know which of them were good-hearted and which of them desperate or cruel?

Kalen would tell Tomas. Then he wouldn’t feel even a little guilty about interfering with their secret portal post.

What if he doesn’t ever come out of the house? No…there’s no point in imagining what might happen. I’ll spy on them again as soon as I’ve done enough work for Priestess Riat not to worry about what I’m up to.

Another pair of booted feet entered—high-heeled ones beneath a wool skirt. The owner tossed Kalen a coin. It rolled across the floor and clinked against the side of his bucket.

Oh, he thought, startled from his worries. That’s rare.

A few people had given him coins before when they spotted him going about his work in the church, but he could count the number on his fingers. He pocketed the piece of silver inside his shirt. He was wearing the dirtier, old one for this job, not his finer garments.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, looking up to see who his benefactor was. But she was already past him. He couldn’t see her face, only a mass of pale hair swept up and held with black lacquered sticks.

Another person stomped through the entryway in her wake. He was a tall, fat man with thick eyebrows and clever brown eyes that were fixed on the woman’s back. Kalen went as still as a frightened deer at the sight of him.

Cob Acress. That’s Cob Acress.

The practitioner wasn’t wearing the black robes he’d had on the last time Kalen had seen him. But there could be no mistaking it.

Kalen’s breath was stuck in his chest. He couldn’t move a muscle.

Cob and the woman headed farther into the church without a backwards glance. The Acress man hadn’t seen Kalen at all.

Kalen was out the doors, across the street, and hiding in an alleyway before his thoughts crystallized into something recognizable again. He emptied his bucket of mop water and then sat down on it, taking deep breaths of smokey winter air.

What’s he doing at the church? Is he spying? Is he looking for them? What if he goes down into the cellar and he finds all my things?

There was nothing down there that would tell anyone he was an Orellen. He kept the lucky coin in its bone case with him all the time. And this morning, he’d held the wax seal with the Orellen mark over a flame until it melted away. But there were things among his belongings that would look strange to anyone who knew anything. The crystal skull apprenticeship token from Zevnie. The mage book.

Cob could find those things. He could be interested in the person who owns them.

He felt an urge to take off down the road, run out of the city, and never look back.

But all of his money was down in the cellar except for the coin he’d just been gifted. And he’d need the skull token to gain entry to the Archipelago on his own, since every day, it looked more and more like Zevnie was an awful, lying traitor who’d never passed his letter on to her master.

I have to get it. I have to get anything that might draw attention to me, and move it away from the church. Cob’s not looking for me, specifically, right now. He’s not even looking for suspicious children. He didn’t take a peek at me as he walked by.

He gulped.

He thought it was the right thing to do, but it still took him a while to move himself from his current hiding place.

He only managed to work up the courage at all by starting the spell pattern for Startled Bird. He wove the pathways together as he headed back into the church. He kept his head down, and he gripped his bucket in both hands as he walked through the familiar spaces.

The others who lived and worked here all seemed to be going about their business as usual. They were in the middle of the hours when people could come and pray, and although the chapel wasn’t crowded, there were some folk taking advantage of the warmth.

They’re not here, Kalen thought as he searched the faces. Where did they go?

The painted ceiling seemed to loom closer than usual.

Are they searching the attic? They wouldn’t have just run straight into the church and down to the cellars for some reason, would they?

Should I tell someone Cob is an Acress?

The cramped kitchen at the back of the church was near the cellar door. Kalen heard voices as he approached.

“I’m concerned about the way things are going, and I thought I had to bring it to your attention. I’ve left without the Enclave’s knowledge to talk to you today, so I hope you’ll keep quiet about my visit.”

Kalen stopped so quickly his bucket banged into his knees.

That’s Cob. He hadn’t spoken much to Kalen that day when he shared his breakfast in his courtyard garden, but he had a deep, soft way of speaking that was easy to recognize.

The tired, reedy voice of the high priest answered. “If you seek to end this peacefully, I admire you for it. But so long as your family pursues this anti-Circonian alliance with those monsters to the south—”

“I understand,” Cob said placatingly. “I don’t ask you to change your opinion of matters. Only to quiet it for a time. Standing in the pulpit and accusing us of using our magic to starve the people of Circon is several leagues too far down the road to outright war between church and Enclave. We have enough food in our own stores from seasons past to feed all of Granslip Port, if it comes to it. You’re welcome to come and see the bounty yourself if you don’t believe me.”

The high priest didn’t answer.

Cob sighed. “Even the priests of Yoat won’t stand at your side much longer, and you share the same building. I’ve come to warn you that this is your last chance to use your power to ease tensions in the city instead of stirring them. I know Clywing has never enjoyed our role—”

“The blessing of the crops is hers,” the priest said. “It was always hers. And you practitioners insert yourself to make it your own.”

“Come now! If a god wanted us to stop using magic to strengthen soil and speed growth, I’m sure she could handle us in no time. Don’t let your love for your own power blind you to our usefulness. Your next sermon is in a couple of days. Make it a gentler one. Don’t give our family’s leadership a reason to escalate this, because their next escalation will be one you can’t recover from.”

“What do they plan?”

“They plan to prove once and for all that the dead can be raised, and the Orellens did it. Since the church here has long based its position on the fact that such a thing is impossible, they will prove before the entire city that it is not.”

Kalen pressed a hand to his mouth so that he wouldn’t make a sound as he crept down the passage toward the cellar door, scarcely touching the floor with his toes for fear of his footsteps being heard.

“Blasphemy,” the priest breathed.

Cob groaned. “Don’t tell me you actually believed you were right and every practitioner on the continent was wrong about that? …I suppose we were all shocked, too. We’re still not certain how they managed it. Even if you heal a corpse, it shouldn’t live the way their spares do. But that they have somehow accomplished the impossible is undeniable.”

“I—”

“When we prove you wrong, your own congregants will turn on you. They will say you hide demon-makers in your attic.”

“The portalists once employed by the church are no longer here,” the high priest said quickly. “They left with no warning some time ago. Allow me to repeat your offer from earlier; you may search and see for yourself!”

“There’s no need for that. As I said, I’m not here representing the Enclave today. I’m here representing myself. I am telling you that our elders will not take any more of a tongue lashing from you, and I hope that you, in your wisdom, will not deliver one.”

Something thumped against the table.

“Even if I had come on behalf of the Enclave, I would not need to search,” Cob continued. “The old magicians you’ve been keeping here were never important enough for the drama that has surrounded them. They’re only third circle family members whose faces and names were known to us. If they had any true value, they would not have been left here for so long.”

A chair scraped the floor.

“The Acress Enclave seeks the Orellen children who need protection from a clan turned to dark deeds. And we seek the powerful Orellens, who enacted those very deeds and chose to walk a path no sane or righteous man would walk. And we seek the…blasphemies, as you called them just now.” Cob’s voice was slow and serious. “If you think about it, should we not be allies?”

Kalen didn’t hear anymore. He was too far down the cellar stairs, in the pitch blackness. Startled Bird was almost finished. He’d dropped some pieces of the pattern while he was distracted by the conversation, but he was putting them back together quickly.

He kept at it while he followed the route he’d memorized back to his isolation cell and reached for his sunstone. By its light, he found Swift Wind Magery, the crystal skull, the money, Yarda’s braid, and a few other things.

All the most important things. He stuffed them into his satchel and stood there, spell ready. He imagined the distance. He could only cast Startled Bird at a very specific distance, but he’d memorized it well.

He took a few paces toward the staircase.

Here. Right here. If someone steps down from the bottom step, and I cast, I can hit them from this place. And then I can run and run. I’ve got the skull. I’ve got the money. I can get myself to the Archipelago without Zevnie or Arlade, and I can participate in the tournament on my own and get a master. And they don’t even like continental practitioners there, so nobody will care about Acresses, Leflayns, or Orellens at all.

He tucked his sun crystal away so that he was in darkness again, then he waited. And waited.

He reminded himself that he did not expect Cob Acress or the woman who had vanished from his side to come down here. He’d heard what was said. There was no reason for them to check the cellars. He expected them to walk out of the church without searching it.

So why am I doing this? Why am I standing here weaving and reweaving this pattern as it fails? The pattern for a terrible spell that will hurt someone badly…

Just in case.

Startled Bird was just in case.

He stood in the dark for so long that his legs started to ache. When he finally left the cellar again, the bag full of his things was still wrapped around him. He peeked in the kitchen. It was empty. There were some fruitcake crumbs on the table.

Should we not be allies?

What if the high priest said yes? If not today then someday soon…

Kalen left the church and spent the rest of the day in the graveyard. He sat there alone in the cold, casting Ears of the East and listening to the house where Tomas was. He heard voices from time to time, but they were saying nothing important.

When some people were in hiding, they still worried about steeping the tea for too long. What an odd thing.

Finally, toward evening, the spell cut out.

He’d overused the board. It would have to be re-imbued with magic before he could do it again.

How do I get Tomas to come out of the house? How do I talk to him without any of the others seeing me?

After night fell, he headed toward the neighborhood again. It was a bad part of the city to try to find a hiding spot. The houses with the shared walls, the many residents—Kalen felt exposed standing there under his gray cloak, and much too obvious to try to pick up the board and fix it.

I can’t just knock on the door and ask for him…

But I could knock and pretend I’d gotten the wrong house. And maybe I’d spot him?

They all looked the same. It probably happened on occasion.

“Who are you there?!” shouted a woman’s voice, and Kalen jumped like he’d been scalded. He whirled to see a pale face peering at him through the crack in the door of the house he’d been sheltering beside. “Lurking around for ages in the night like a thief!”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I…my brother was supposed to meet me on this street, but he hasn’t shown up yet. Maybe I’ve got the wrong place.”

“Away with you! Go sneak around someone else’s house.”

She slammed the door.

Pigshit. Now what?

And was he really going to carry all of his things around with him like this? That was more suspicious than anything. Even under the cloak he must look quite bulky.

But now that he’d had the fear of being caught without them, and being unable to run away because of it…

I wish Lander were here to carry it for me.

His cousin would do it. He was always offering to carry heavy things for Kalen. It had started when they were little, and he liked showing off that he was stronger. And then it must have become a habit for them.

He walked down the street and back again several times, hoping that he wouldn’t look so much like he was a lurking thief but afraid it only made him look like more of one. It was night. He had his hood pulled as low as it would go over his face, and he was keeping one eye always on the house where the Orellens were hiding. So it was no wonder when he almost bumped into a man bundled up in a rough brown coat and a scarf.

He was just standing at the end of the street looking up at the sky.

Kalen dodged around him and mumbled an apology.

Then, he realized who it was. He kept walking, glancing back again and again, afraid Tomas would disappear.

What do I say? I wanted to tell him it was me that read the letters, but how do I do it? Do I just go ahead and say it right here?

Tomas hadn’t recognized him when he brushed past, but he had been startled from his reverie. He was heading down the street again toward the house. Suddenly terrified he would lose the Orellen, Kalen spun and dashed after him.

At the sound of his hasty footsteps, Tomas stiffened and looked back.

Kalen stopped in front of him and threw back his hood.

Tomas’s eyes widened. “Nerth? What…what are you doing here so far from the church?”

Kalen stared up at him. He still didn’t know what he was going to say even as his mouth started to move.

“I learned to read.”

Tomas looked confused.

“I learned to read because you told me to.”

Then he stood there waiting.

The older boy’s face went so pale. “You…what do you mean you…?”

“It was me who read them,” Kalen said quickly, and as quietly as he could. His heart was pounding. “I didn’t know what they were until I did, and then I was sorry. But I didn’t know how to put the wax back on. I was scared to tell any of the others so I was hoping to find you…and…here you are.”

Was Tomas angry? Was that why his face was so peculiar?

He leaned down toward Kalen. “You recognize me?” he breathed.

No. But it would take a long time to explain that he’d just reasoned out who the other boy was.

“You’re my first memory,” he said instead. “I think I remember almost everything you told me…you gave me three chocolates to do it, after all.”

And then, to Kalen’s shock, Tomas Orellen hugged him.

Oh. This is…

Hesitantly, he hugged back.

It felt more natural than he had imagined it could.