Chapter 173: What Voldranis Knew
The Void King stood in the doorway and did not come in.
He looked smaller than Ryuji had ever seen him. There was no crown, no heavy cloak, no court around him. There was only a tall man in a rumpled coat with silver at his temples and one hand frozen halfway to the doorframe, as if the air in front of him had turned to glass.
"Come in, Vol," Kaelith said, from the floor. "You are letting the cold in."
He crossed the threshold slowly, like a man stepping onto ice. He stopped at the edge of the glass, where the petals gave way to clear floor, and then he did a thing Ryuji would not have believed if he had not seen it. The King of the Nocthari knelt. He did it with a soldier’s stiffness, one knee and then the other, and his ember eyes never left his wife’s face.
"I did not mean to come in front of them," he said. "The bell rang. I felt it in my end. I ran."
"I know. You are never early for anything but a disaster."
"That is unkind."
"It is accurate."
Something that was nearly a laugh broke out of him and turned into something else. He put his hand over his mouth. Selene, standing between them, made no sound at all, but Ryuji felt her pulse in the thread under his collarbone and it was a fast, hard drumming.
Eighty-eight.
[System Log: Day 172, continued]
[THE KING KNEELS. I HAVE FOUR THOUSAND YEARS OF RECORDS AND I CAN FIND THIS ON ONE PAGE]
[THE WIFE IS NOT SPEAKING. HER NUMBER IS EIGHTY-EIGHT. I HAVE NEVER WANTED SO BADLY TO BE ABLE TO TALK TO ANYONE]
"Say it," Selene said at last. Her voice was soft and very level. "Whatever you are about to say. Say it plainly. I have heard you give nine hundred speeches. I do not want a tenth."
Voldranis drew a breath.
"There is a vault beneath the Void Sanctum," he said. "The lowest one. Below the archives, below the old well. It is built in the shape of this room. I built it in the first month after the night she was struck." His hands were shaking on his knees. "A lock has two ends, little moon. Hers is here. Mine is there. I have held it every night for four hundred years. I have not slept a full night since."
"You sat on the throne."
"Yes."
"You held council. You signed treaties. You held my hand at her funeral."
"I did."
"You stood beside me while I put the first lily in the ground."
"Yes." He did not look away. "And I wrote you eleven hundred letters, and I burned every one."
Selene closed her eyes. "Why?"
It was Kaelith who answered.
"Because the master listens to grief," she said gently.
Selene’s eyes opened.
"It cannot read thoughts. Not through stone. But grief is loud, my darling. Grief has a shape and a sound and a smell, and it carries across the whole world." Kaelith’s thumb moved over the back of her daughter’s hand. "A daughter who truly believes her mother is dead is the best lock I could ask for. The master looked at you and saw a girl burying her mother, and it believed what it saw, because it was true. You were not pretending. That was the point."
The chamber was perfectly silent.
"I was a lock," Selene said.
"Yes."
"I was a decoy."
"Yes. I am so sorry."
"You asked him to do it."
"I asked him for three years before he would agree. He refused. He wept. He threw a chair through a wall." The ghost of a smile touched Kaelith’s mouth. "In the end I made him swear on the one thing he loved more than me."
"Which was?"
"You."
Selene made a small sound, like a stitch giving way.
"I planted lilies," she said, very quietly. "Over every grave I ever stood at. I wept in the dark for four hundred years, and I thought I was alone. I thought no one else in the world was awake at three in the morning counting the days. And you were awake. You were sitting in a vault, holding a lock, and you let me."
"Yes."
"It was useful."
Voldranis’s mouth tightened.
"Yes," he said. "It was useful. And it was the worst thing I have ever done. Both of those are true, Selene. I will not make one of them smaller to comfort the other."
Ryuji felt that one land in his own chest.
Both can be true. Somebody had said that to somebody else, in a kitchen, in another year.
Selene turned her head and looked at him.
It was not a long look. It was only a second. But it was the look of a woman who had just taken a blow and was checking, quickly, whether the person beside her was going to catch it or swing it back.
"Do not defend him," she said, in the common tongue, low and clipped.
"I wasn’t going to."
"You were thinking about it. You have the face."
"What face?"
"The one where you have found a reason." Her voice shook. "You, of all men. You kept two fathers apart in your mouth for a year and called it kindness. You understand it. I can see you understanding it. Do not stand there and tell me my father meant well."
It hit hard. It hit exactly where she had aimed.
The old arithmetic did not come. There was only the wide, bare room in his head, and in the middle of it, one plain fact. She was right. He had done the same thing. Smaller, quieter, with fewer chairs thrown through walls. But the same.
His lips moved before he knew it. Something between a breath and a whisper.
One. Two. Three.
"Are you counting?" Selene said.
"Yes."
"To what?"
"Fifty-three."
She stared at him. Her mouth trembled at the corner.
"My mother told you to do that in six weeks."
"I’m starting early."
"Do not say it."
"You were right," Ryuji said, at forty-nine.
"I said do not." A laugh cracked out of her, wet and furious, and she covered her face with her hand. "You are the worst husband I have ever had."
"I’m the only one."
"That is no defense."
"Wasn’t offering one." He reached out, slowly, and took the hand that was not over her face. "You’re right. I did it. It was wrong, and I did it for the same reason he did. It doesn’t make him right and it doesn’t make you wrong. I’m standing beside you."
She was quiet for a long moment. Her thumb moved once across his knuckles.
"I am still going to be angry at him," she said.
"I know."
"For a very long time."
"I know."
"I am going to be angry at you too. On a smaller scale. For the chair."
"I’ll buy the chair."
"Buy two."
Voldranis was watching them. His face did something complicated and tired. He did not speak.
"Father," Selene said, without turning. Her voice was still hoarse. "I will not forgive you today. I want you to understand that. I may not forgive you in a month. But I am not leaving this room until you tell me the rest of it. What you came to say. Because you came early, and you are not a man who runs."
Voldranis did not answer right away.
He rose to his feet. It took him a while. He put one hand on the glass for balance, and when he straightened, a thin line of black ran from his left nostril down to his lip.
Selene saw it first.
"Father."
"It is nothing."
"It is not nothing."
"It is the lock." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared at the smear of black. "I have been bleeding it for a week. The poison was never the whole of it. Four hundred years of holding the same door will take something out of a man. I let the healers say poison because it was easier than the truth." His voice cracked. "I cannot hold my end past the next full moon. I thought I had more time. The bell tolled and I knew I did not."
Selene was across the glass in two strides.
She did not say a word. She caught him as his knees went, one arm under his shoulders, the other hand pressed to his chest, and eased him down against the edge of the mosaic. She was furious. Ryuji could feel it humming through the thread like a struck wire. And she was holding her father with such careful, shaking tenderness that he had to look away.
"Do not," she said fiercely. "Do not do this to me. I have not finished being angry."
"I will try to wait."
"You are not allowed to die in a vault."
"I will try."
The bell tolled again.
It was louder this time. It came up through the floor, through the roots, and Kaelith flinched as if she had been struck. A thin crack ran down the glass between them. Far below, the white seam flared, and for one second the whole chamber lit like the inside of a lantern.
"It is in the vault," Voldranis gasped. "At my end. I felt it step through the Sanctum’s gate an hour ago. That is why I came."
"The master?" Ryuji said.
"Yes. And it did not come alone."
Selene’s head came up. "Who?"
Voldranis’s eyes found hers, ember and tired and entirely clear.
"It has the one who watches," he said. "The old judge. The guardian from the Threshold. I do not know how it was taken. It is in chains, in the lowest vault, and it is still alive." He drew a shuddering breath. "The master sent a message down the lock. It says that if I do not open my end by dawn, it will take the guardian apart one piece at a time. And it says it will start with the part that remembers where the Architects went."