On the third morning, the sound that woke him was a hundred men being told to hold a wooden sword at arm's length and not complain about it.
Theo found Ser Bram Torrow in the courtyard, drilling the garrison. The soldiers were upright, mostly. They were two years older than they'd been the day before yesterday, and the ones who'd noticed the gray in their beards were pretending not to. Bram walked the line like a man inspecting bread. He was the size of a door and a half and he never raised his voice, which was apparently what made grown men sweat.
"Lord Ashcombe." He didn't stop walking. "Pick up a sword."
"I'm not sure that's—"
"You're the only man in this keep I haven't seen fight. Pick one up."
Theo picked up a wooden practice sword, and the body took over. That was the strange part. His hand adjusted, his feet slid into a stance, his shoulders dropped, and it all came up out of Dain the way a tune comes up out of a piano. The Ashcombe forms: eleven stances, drilled since age six. His body knew them cold. His brain stood at the back of the room holding its coat.
Bram came at him slowly. Theo's feet moved right. His hands moved wrong. The wooden sword spun out of his grip and clattered across the flagstones, and the garrison, to its enormous credit, did not laugh.
"Your feet are a duke's," said Bram. "Your hands are a stockman's."
"Warehouse."
"What?"
"Nothing."
Bram looked at him a while longer. He picked up the fallen sword and held it out hilt-first, and Theo took it. "Harrow,"Bram said. It didn't sound like a word offered for discussion."Four years back. I ran a company of sellswords. Two hundred and twelve men. A lord needed a diversion that looked like a real stand." His jaw worked. "I carry the list. Haven't had to read it off the page in years."
Theo said nothing. He knew about Harrow. He knew the lord's name, and why it had been raining in arc three, and what Bram's hand would do on a hilt. He kept his mouth shut, which turned out to be the right thing.
"You read yours out loud in front of strangers, boy." Bram turned back toward the line. "Don't make me like you."
* * *
Marit was sitting on the keep's back stairs with her boots off, wiggling her toes in the cold air. When she saw him she went rigid, then very quickly began putting them back on."Don't tell the Church."
"I won't."
"It's the first time in a week they've been out." She hauled on a boot. "They like me shod at all times. In case the ground is unholy." She looked up when she was done, and her eyes had the tiredness of someone who'd been awake for most of her life. "Sit. If you want."
He sat, one step down. She didn't speak for a while, and neither did he.
"Do you know what a room full of people sounds like to me?" she said finally. "A kettle. Always. Not words, just the little hiss of things that aren't quite true. I'm fine. It's no trouble. I would never. I've been in a room full of kettles since I was four years old." She turned her hands over in her lap. "You're quiet. You were quiet from the first minute. You left something out, but you didn't lie, and I could tell. It's the first silence I've had in twelve years."
Theo didn't know what to say. He said, "That sounds exhausting."
"It is. Nobody has ever said that to me either." She smiled at her boots. "I'm going to tell you one thing, and it's the only thing I can. I told you it wasn't a curse. A debt is a promise somebody else made on your behalf, before you could say no. I can't tell you who, or what. But it's shaped like that."
"Somebody promised something for me."
"Somebody promised something with you," she said. "It's different. I don't know how." She stood, brushing off her skirt. "Who are you, really?"
"Not telling."
"All right." She seemed to mean it. "I'd like to know when you're ready."
Sorrel, Ledger offered, as she went up. Still ninety-seven.
I know, Theo thought. I don't understand it either.
* * *
Lucan found him on the north wall, at the hour when the ash had thinned and the sky had gone a pale, watery gold. He'd left the sword in its wrapping at his feet and was leaning on the parapet with both elbows, like a boy at a fence. He didn't turn around.
"You can come up," he said. "I won't do anything, you know."
"That's good to know."
Theo came up. Past the wall the Monster Lands began, a dark ragged line of forest running east as far as he could see. Somewhere in it was a lake with something in it.
"The sword's been whispering since the gate," Lucan said.
Theo went still.
"It doesn't use words. It's more like…" Lucan made a vague gesture at his own breastbone. "Like hearing someone in the next room say the same thing over and over until you can't tell if it's them or you. It says you're the thing I was made to kill." He kept his eyes on the forest. "It's said it for two days. When I walk into a room you're in, it's louder."
"Why haven't you?"
"Because I looked at Tobin." Lucan turned at last. His sunburnt face was young and tired and entirely unguarded."I've been doing this a year. A village burns, I find whoever did it. The sword always knows. It hasn't been wrong once. And you're the first thing it's ever screamed at that asked whether I'd eaten." He laughed, short and bewildered. "I don't know what to do with that. Nobody trained me for it."
Theo said carefully, "Are you scared?"
"What?"
"Right now. Are you scared?"
Lucan stared at him. "Everyone expects me not to be."
"I'm scared constantly. Since about nine yesterday morning."
Lucan laughed again, a real one this time, surprised out of him, and he put a hand over his mouth as if it were something that could get him in trouble. When he took it away something in his face had slid loose. "I haven't heard anyone say that in months," he said. "Everyone says I'm fine. The Hero's not allowed to be…" He stopped himself. He looked down at the wrapped sword. "I'm going to ride to Veyra. I'll tell the crown what I saw, and I'll find out why the sword says what it says. It's never been wrong, so either it is now, or somebody didn't tell me something." He drew a breath. "I'll be back in thirty days. If you've lied to me, I'll know."
"Thirty days."
"Is that bad?"
"It's within three days of when the next payment's due."Theo nearly laughed. "You'll be coming back for that."
"Then I'll see whether it's true." Lucan picked up the sword. The moment it touched his hand his shoulders pulled in and a muscle jumped at his jaw. "It's louder when I'm holding it," he said, almost to himself. "I wish somebody would tell me what it wants."
Something is leaning on that blade, Ledger said quietly, when the Hero had gone down the steps. I would like to note that I have used the same word about the register.
* * *
Pell stayed behind. He had asked, in the tone of someone asking to borrow a pencil, whether he could remain as an independent assessor of the circle for as long as it took, and Lucan, who looked like he'd been hoping someone would take something off his hands, said yes. Greaves watched Pell carry his instruments into the courtyard the way you'd watch a stranger move into your house. "He's drawn on the floor," Greaves said, to nobody. "In chalk. Everywhere."
The party left at noon. Tobin stood on the wall with half the garrison, watching four horses shrink down the gray road. Bram didn't look back. Marit did, once, and lifted two fingers in something that wasn't quite a wave. Lucan rode with the sword across his knees like it might bite him.
When the dust had settled, Theo let out a breath he felt like he'd been holding for three days.
Congratulations, said Ledger. You have survived the first of your nine. Register updated. Hale: 58 percent. Torrow: 69. Vandry: 27. Sorrel: 97. I would remind you that these figures describe a visit, not a decision.
"Thanks. Very comforting."
I do not do comforting. I do accuracy. A pause, and then, in the same careful tone: There is something else. I have recalculated the installment.
His stomach dropped. "And?"
The debt has accrued interest. Projected payment on the thirtieth day, split across all current parties: 3.4 years per soldier. 4.9 for you.
"Interest."
You asked for a split.
Theo looked down at the road, at the dust, at the twenty-seven days between him and a number that was already growing. Behind him on the wall, someone started to laugh at something, and then stopped, as if they'd remembered where they were. After a moment someone else picked it up. It sounded rusty. It sounded like a garrison trying out something it hadn't done in a while.
He decided that was worth protecting, and went to find Wren and a calendar.