Albert Walks In

They gave him the door.

It was the Deacon who told him, in the vestibule, at a quarter to midnight, in a voice as flat and dry as dust. She did not meet his eyes. She stood with her black key in her gloved hand and her face turned to the wall. "The Hand attends the Hearth. When the Seal has entered, the Hand closes the door behind. It is an old courtesy."

"Why me?"

"Because you are the Hand."

"Not Karl."

"Mr. Brandt is not the Hand."

"But he will be."

She said nothing. A muscle moved in her cheek.

"It is a very simple office," she said at last. "You stand beside the door. When the Seal has gone in, you close it. That is all. You are not asked to do anything more."

"I closed one already."

For the first time she looked at him.

Her eyes were pale, and tired, and very sad. There was no accusation in them, and no pity either. They were the eyes of a woman looking at a mirror and not liking what she saw.

"Yes," said Deacon Thorne. "I know."

…

Albert came last.

The Chosen stood in two lines on the nave floor with their candles, gray-cloaked, silver-collared, singing very softly, a sound like wind in dry grass. The red lamp burned over the altar. The Rector waited at the Hearth in a white stole, small and round and smiling, with his hands folded before him. The long white runner led from the great doors up to the black arch of the oven. At its end, on the stone lip, a single red candle had been set.

The doors opened.

He walked in alone.

He wore the white robe. His hair was combed. He had no glasses, and without them his face looked bare and boyish and curiously calm. His feet were bare on the cold floor. He held his hands before him, loosely joined, and he walked up the runner at an even pace, looking neither right nor left. He might have been walking up the aisle of a church to take communion.

Cassian stood by the door of the Hearth with his hands at his sides.

His mouth was dry. His heart was beating slowly and heavily in his throat. He watched the boy approach, step by step, past the rows of candles, past the singing faces, and he thought, This is the second time. This is the second door.

Albert reached the end of the runner. He stopped before the Rector. The old man bent and laid a hand upon his head, and murmured a few words, and kissed him on the brow.

Then he turned his head and saw Cassian.

For a moment, neither moved.

Albert's eyes were wide and gray and clear. They searched Cassian's face. Something passed over his own, a flicker, a question. He looked, Cassian thought, as a person looks who has caught sight of a familiar figure on a crowded platform and is trying to place him.

"Hello," he said, very low.

"Hello."

"You look tired."

"I haven't slept."

"Neither have I." The corner of his mouth lifted. "It's a funny thing. I thought I'd be afraid. But it turns out I'm only sleepy." He glanced at the black arch. "Is it cold in there?"

Cassian could not speak.

"I expect it is." Albert nodded to himself. "Well." He drew a breath. "Thanks for the roof. I didn't say, before. It was nice to have someone to tell."

"Albert—"

"It's all right." He smiled a little. "I mean it. It's all right."

He turned and walked into the dark.

…

The Hearth took him without a sound.

Cassian saw it. He stood beside the iron door with one hand upon the cold edge, and watched the white robe go into the arch, and the black close over it, gently and completely, like water over a stone. There was no struggle. No cry. For an instant he thought he saw, far in, a small pale shape turn and lift one hand, as if in farewell.

Then the dark was only dark.

"The Hand will close the door," said Rector Kell.

His voice was soft.

Cassian did not move.

He stood and looked at the iron. It was black and pitted and old, set on hinges the thickness of his wrist, and it hung open on the cold throat of the Hearth with an air of patient invitation. He thought of another door. A bolt, drawn home. A long slow lean, from the other side. Hand. You have shut the door.

It's the same thing, he thought. It's the same thing. It's only a door.

His hand was on the iron. It was cold, and it would not shake.

"Hand," said the Rector. "If you please."

He closed it.

It swung to with a long, soft, replete click, and he stood with his palm against the metal, and felt, through it, the dark settle. Something heavy turned over, once, in the earth, and was still. Then a sigh. A great, slow, contented sigh, such as a man makes who has dined well and is going to sleep, rolled up through the soles of his feet and away.

The candles stood straight up in their holders.

"It is finished," said Kell.

The Chosen sang.

It was the last hymn, the hymn of thanks. It rose in the red light, slow and sweet and heavy, and Cassian stood in his place by the door and moved his lips. He sang because he had to. He sang as one breathes. And through it, high and thin and clear, from the stone beneath his feet, two voices sang with him.

One of them was a treble, a little flat.

The other, he thought, was new.