A Father's Hands

The Cardinal's study had not changed in fifteen years, and that was the worst of it.

Kaelen stood on the threshold with a dead man's ring in his fist and smelled the same smells: beeswax and old paper and the faint resin of cedar from the long chest under the window. The same scuffed carpet, red-brown, worn to the weft by a path from desk to hearth. The same tall bookcase with its glass doors and its rows of leather-backed volumes, and the same low fire in the grate, and the same lamp with its green shade casting a pool of gold on the writing table. He had stood on this carpet at ten years old, filthy and silent, with ash in his hair, and a man's gentle hand had come down on his head and said: You are safe now, my son. No one will ever hurt you again.

He had believed it. For fifteen years he had believed it with the whole of his body.

"Kaelen." Malakor looked up from his desk. "My dear boy. You are bleeding."

It was nine o'clock. The Cathedral bells had just rung the hour, and the air still trembled with it. Through the study's one tall window the sky glowed orange, and a thin smoke drifted past the glass, and far off a great crowd was shouting. The old man laid down his pen. He rose in a rustle of scarlet silk, round the desk, with his hands outstretched, and for a moment Kaelen felt the old bone-deep tug in his chest, the child's instinct, to run into those arms.

He did not move.

"Father," he said. "I need to ask you something."

…

He laid the ring on the blotter.

It made a small hard click against the leather. The silver winked in the lamplight, the six-petaled flower and the rhombus, no larger than a thumbnail. Malakor looked down at it for a long moment. His face did not change. Behind Kaelen, by the door, Lyra stood silent with her hands folded, and Dain waited in the passage with his back to the wall, and the fire popped softly in the grate.

"I see," said the Cardinal.

"We found it on a dead man. At the Archives. He'd just burned Level One and tried to roast the Chief Archivist alive." Kaelen made his voice flat. "He said His Grace will be pleased. He bit a poison capsule and died before we could ask him more."

"And you thought of me."

"I thought of the ring."

"Naturally." Malakor reached out, with his left hand, and picked it up. He turned it in the light between thumb and forefinger. The ring was small and worn, and his long fingers were very gentle. "It is a good copy. Whoever made it had a fine eye. But the rhombus is too narrow and the petals are cut too deep. My jeweler would be ashamed."

"It isn't a copy."

"No?"

"The silver's hallmarked. It's household issue."

"Then it is a stolen one." The Cardinal laid it back on the blotter. "Kaelen. I am sixty-six years old. I have four hundred servants. Last winter, I lost nine rings to thieves, two to a flood, and one, I believe, to a nanny goat." A flicker of rueful humor crossed his face and was gone. "The Cathedral kitchens are lawless. I have been meaning to reform the system for years."

Kaelen did not smile.

"You are asking me whether I ordered the Archives burned."

"Yes."

"Whether I killed Clement."

"Yes."

"Whether I murdered your father and sister and burned your home."

Kaelen's breath stopped.

"Your mother is in the city," said Malakor gently. "I heard it from the gate captain an hour ago. She has said this to you, I think. In the barracks, or the gatehouse, over cold wine. She has had fifteen years to settle on a story, and she has brought it with her on a white horse." His eyes were grave and clear and terribly kind. "I would be astonished if she had not."

"Is it true?"

"Which part?"

"Any of it."

The old man was silent a moment.

"Sit," he said. "Please. You will want to hear all of it. And you, my dear." He turned to Lyra, who had not moved. "I should like you to stay. I should like someone present who has no reason to love me."

Lyra sat.

…

It was a long story, and the Cardinal told it simply.

He told it standing by the fire, with one hand on the mantel and the other, the left, lightly clasped around his rosary. His voice was low, almost conversational. He did not hurry. He did not embellish. Kaelen sat in the wing-chair he had always sat in as a boy, with his hands between his knees, and listened to a story he had never heard.

"Your father wrote to the Pontiff four times. This is true. I have seen the letters." Malakor looked into the fire. "He was a proud man and a clever one, and he did not like what the Church had become. He objected to the tithe. He objected, I think rightly, to the closure of certain archives. In his last letter he went further. He wrote that he had been reading in the lower stacks, and that he believed the Church was concealing a document of the first importance."

"What document?"

"I do not know. I never saw it." The old man's mouth twisted. "But the Pontiff of those days, Anselm the Ninth, was a nervous man. He read your father's letter and he saw a rebellion. The Northern lords had been restless. There were whispers of a league. And Lord Varn was the most powerful of them." He sighed. "Anselm ordered an inquiry. I was a young bishop. I was sent north."

"To Varnhold."

"To inspect the keep. To see whether it was fortified. To report, in short, on Lord Varn's loyalty." The rosary clicked softly. "I arrived at dusk, with an escort of twelve men. I found the walls on fire."

Kaelen leaned forward.

"I do not know who set it," said Malakor. "I wish I did. I have wished it every night for fifteen years. There were men in dark cloaks, riding off through the pines. My escort pursued. I went into the keep." His voice faltered. For the first time it cracked, a hair's breadth, and Kaelen saw a tremor in the old man's hand. "I found the hall. I found them. And I heard a sound from the cellar stair. A child, crying."

"Me."

"You were wedged in the coal chute, with your arms over your head. You had not made a sound for an hour. Then you heard my footsteps, and you screamed." He closed his eyes. "I have never been so afraid in my life. I thought you were one of them. I thought, he will cut my throat. And then I saw how small you were."

The fire popped. Kaelen found that he could not swallow.

"I carried you out through the cellar," said Malakor. "I told you that no one had survived. I told you the mages had done it. That was a lie." He opened his eyes. They were wet. "I did not know who had. But I could not tell a ten-year-old boy that the Church might be involved. I could not tell you your mother had ridden out and might still live. I did not know. I thought she was dead with the rest. I thought: let him have a cause. Let him have something to fight."

"You lied to me."

"I did."

"For fifteen years."

"Yes." The old man took a slow, shaky breath. "I told myself it was mercy. I now think it was cowardice. I should have told you the truth, when you were old enough. I should have found your mother. I did not, because by then you were happy. Because by then you loved the Sun, and I could not bear to take it from you." He lifted his chin. "I have made many mistakes, Kaelen. That was the greatest of them. I will answer for it before the Light."

…

Kaelen did not trust himself to speak.

He sat in the lamplight with his hands knotted and his heart going like a hammer. Everything in him wanted to rise and cross the room and put his arms around the old man. Everything in him wanted to weep. It was a terrible, shameful feeling, and it was the oldest feeling he had.

Watch his eyes, his mother had said.

He watched them.

They were soft, deep brown, creased at the corners, pouched with age and sorrow. They held nothing but grief. No flicker, no slide, no lie. They looked at him as they had looked at him for fifteen years: with love.

I am a fool, thought Kaelen.

Or I am being played by the finest liar in Aethel.

"The raiders wore a jasmine pin," he said.

"Did they?"

"A silver flower. On the captain's collar."

"That is Elowen's evidence?" Malakor shook his head slowly. "A stable boy's, dying of a fever, at the end of a week? My son, half of the Church wears a flower. I am a vain old man and I put jasmine in my window box. It does not make me a murderer." He paused. "If I had wished to arrange a massacre, would I have walked into the middle of it?"

"I don't know."

"No. You don't." The old man's voice gentled. "That is the difficulty with a lie, is it not? It looks like the truth until you hold it to the light. But I have never asked you to take my word. I have only asked you to doubt. Doubt is the first prayer."

Doubt is the first prayer.

Kaelen had heard those words a hundred times. They had comforted him through a thousand nights. He heard them now, and something small and cold stirred at the base of his skull, like a mouse in a wall.

…

"The Archives," said Lyra.

It was the first thing she had said in half an hour. Both men turned. She sat very straight in her chair, with her gray eyes fixed on the Cardinal's face and her hands folded in her lap.

"Master Fenwick," she said. "The Chief Archivist. He told us that Clement meant to open the Sealed Stacks at dawn."

Malakor did not move.

"Did you know?"

"I did." He said it at once, quietly, without any change of tone. "He told me three days ago. He asked for my blessing. I refused."

"Why?"

"Because it would have caused a civil war." The old man's eyes met hers. "The Church holds three hundred years of secrets, child. Some of them are shameful. Some of them are merely dangerous. All of them, if published in a day, would set the realm alight. I counseled patience. I counseled that the Archives be opened by degrees, over years, with care." He sighed. "Clement was an old man in a hurry. He did not listen."

"And then he died."

"And then he died."

"At five in the morning. The same day he meant to open them."

"Lyra," said Kaelen.

"I am only asking."

"I know what you are asking." Malakor held up his hand. "No. She is right, Kaelen. She should ask. Let her." He turned back to her with a look of gentle, tired sorrow. "I did not kill him, my dear. I loved him. We came up through the seminary together. I held his hand at his consecration. If I had wished to stop him, I had a hundred gentler ways." He smiled faintly. "I could have spilled ink on the declaration."

Despite himself, Kaelen almost laughed.

Lyra did not. She regarded the Cardinal for a long moment with an unreadable expression. Then she lowered her eyes.

"Thank you, Your Eminence," she said. "I am sorry to have distressed you."

"You have not distressed me. You have done me a service." Malakor turned to the fire, and stood a while with his back to them. "Go to the Feast. Wear something beautiful. I have given orders that it begin at ten, not nine. The Regency was reluctant, but I persuaded them." He straightened. "The people will want to see the Captain of the Sun Guard at the Coronation Eve. And you, my dear, will sit at the Duke's table. I think that would be wise."

"Wise?"

"Cassian Lorne is planning a coup tonight. Everyone knows. It is the worst-kept secret in Aethel." He glanced at Kaelen. "If anyone is to protect the Crown, it should be you. Keep your friends close. And his closer."

Kaelen rose.

His legs felt strange. He crossed the carpet to the old man and, without meaning to, went down on one knee. The Cardinal's hand settled on his bowed head, light and warm.

"Forgive me, Father," he whispered.

"There is nothing to forgive."

"I should not have doubted you."

"You should always doubt. Always." The hand tightened a little on his hair. "But when it comes to the end, my son, you may trust that I love you more than my own life. That is a truth I would die to prove."

…

They said nothing as they walked down the long corridor.

The Cathedral was strangely quiet. Most of the clergy had gone to the Archives with buckets, or to the Square to calm the crowds, and the great vaulted passage was lit only by a few swinging lamps and the dull red glare through the windows. Dain went ahead, humming to himself, glad to be out of the study. Their footsteps echoed on the flags.

Kaelen felt lighter than he had in a day. The fear had gone out of him, and left a shaky relief. Mother was wrong, he thought. Or mistaken. Or deceived. He would tell her so, in the morning. He would bring her to the Cardinal. They would sit together and heal.

"Kaelen," said Lyra.

"Hm?"

"May I ask you something?"

"Anything."

She was walking beside him with her head bowed and her hands in her sleeves, and in the lamplight her face looked thin and pale and strange.

"Did he ask about Master Fenwick?"

"What?"

"The Chief Archivist. Master Fenwick." Her voice was very quiet. "He was tied to a desk in the cataloguing room, with a broken arm, in a burning building. He's known the Cardinal for thirty years. They dined together every Epiphany. And we told him that we'd found a man at the Archives, and a ring, and a poison capsule." She paused. "Did he once ask if Fenwick was alive?"

Kaelen stopped.

A cold drop slid down his spine.

He went back through the last hour, sentence by sentence. The ring. The jasmine. The story of Varnhold. The Pontiff's declaration. I loved him. The orders for the Feast. The blessing.

He had said nothing of Fenwick. Not one word.

"Perhaps he assumed," he began.

"Perhaps."

"He's seventy. He was worried about the Feast."

"Of course."

"It means nothing."

"It doesn't," said Lyra. "It's only that he asked after the ring, and the Pontiff, and your mother, and the Duke. He asked after everything but the one man in that building who had cause to be afraid." She raised her eyes to his. They were clear, steady, and very sad. "I'm sorry. I know it's a small thing."

"Yes."

"I only thought you should know I noticed."

He said nothing.

Beyond the windows, the sky glowed red. In the courtyard below, the bells of the Cathedral began to ring for the Coronation Eve, and the sound of them rolled out across the burning city like a hymn for the dead.

"Lyra," he said at last, and his voice was very rough. "Is there anything you want to tell me?"

She flinched.

It was a tiny movement. A flick of the lashes. But he had spent fifteen years watching men's faces under questioning, and he saw it as plainly as a flash of lightning.

"Not yet," said Lyra.

"Then I'm done not asking."

"Kaelen—"

"There's an empty chapel at the end of this passage." He did not look at her. "I'll be there in five minutes. You can come, or you can go and dress for the Feast. But I won't walk another step beside a woman who knows my father's hand and won't tell me why."

He turned on his heel, and left her standing in the red light, alone.