The Silver Omen

Eridan had read the proposal twice before Isolde asked where the wells were. He bent over the map, his broad shoulders drawing the cloth of his coat tight across his back. One hand moved through the short dark beard along his jaw. The resettlement ground lay beyond the southern wards, above the flood line and close to a road the army still held. Someone had shaded it green. Beside it, the civil office had drawn twelve neat blocks.

“The existing channel can be extended,” the minister said.

Isolde kept her hand upon the page. A loose wave of brown hair slipped beside her cheek as she leaned forward. She tucked it back without taking her grey-green eyes from the minister.

“Before the families arrive?”

“The engineers will determine the interval.”

“How long?” Eridan asked.

The minister turned to the end of the table. No engineer sat there. Eridan pulled the map closer. He had liked the green ground when he first saw it. He could put soldiers along that road without weakening the river crossing. The families would be beyond the reach of the raids that had burned their stores, and he would no longer need three companies to protect villages with no harvest left to gather.

“They cannot remain where they are,” he said.

“I have signed the evacuation,” Isolde replied. “I have not signed this reception order.”

The minister lowered his eyes towards the two seals waiting upon the table. Eridan’s would release the escort. Isolde’s would open the civil stores and authorise the settlement. The distinction had never looked so much like an inconvenience.

“Tavian has the receiving returns,” she said.

Her brother untied a bundle beside his elbow. Magistrate Tavian Rell had arrived in a travelling coat with dried mud along one cuff. He had his sister’s narrow chin, though his brown hair had been cut close enough to need no pins. He spread three pages over the green blocks.

“The upper cistern is cracked. Two lower wells serve the existing households. Neither has been measured since the dry weather began.”

“Those households possess private stores,” the minister said.

Tavian found the relevant entry with his thumb.

“They have nine days at their present count. They have already taken in people from two villages missing from this proposal.”

Eridan looked up.

“Missing?”

“They arrived without a civil escort. The reception office recorded them as visitors.”

The minister reached for his own return. Tavian passed him the names of the two villages and waited while he searched.

Beyond the high windows, a water cart rattled across the courtyard. Eridan found himself following the sound. There would be dozens more before evening, drawing from the palace cistern to supply the kitchens, baths and stables.

“Bring the engineer responsible for that channel,” he said. “And the receiving officer.”

“The officer is at the site, Your Majesty.”

“Then send someone who can carry her answer.”

The clerk rose. Isolde let go of the proposal. Three shallow dents remained where her fingertips had pressed it against the table.

“We need somewhere for the first families when the escort reaches the city,” she said.

Eridan turned the map and drew the old freight courts towards him.

Captain Seraphina came before the receiving officer’s answer. She remained standing beside his chair, tall and straight-backed, her dark hair drawn into a severe knot. Eridan watched her long, composed face while he described the courts. Then she placed a finger upon the narrow entrance between them.

“Not with both doors in use.”

“There are two roads.”

“There are two doors. The roads meet here.” Her finger did not move. “Your escort brings wagons in while the civil carts try to leave. One axle breaks, and neither can pass.”

The minister sat back. Eridan recognised the expression. He had been wearing it when Isolde asked about the wells.

“One court for arrivals,” Isolde said. “The other for water and food. Families walk between them.”

Seraphina examined the connecting alley.

“The wall opens?”

“It did when I inspected the grain scales.”

“When?”

“Last autumn.”

Seraphina looked towards the clerk.

“Check it now.”

He took a second sheet and left at a run. Eridan rubbed his eyes. When he opened them, Isolde was looking at him across the map.

“You have something to say,” he told her.

“You will object.”

“That rarely stops you.”

“The outer royal storehouse has covered yards. We can receive the first households there while the freight courts are prepared.”

“The army is drawing its southern allowance from that storehouse.”

“From the east door. The yards open west.”

“The same stores feed both.”

“Yes.”

He looked at the road where three companies waited for their next supply. Soldiers who went hungry would take food from the households they were supposed to protect. He had signed enough findings to know how the reports would phrase it afterwards.

“Seven days,” he said. “We reserve the next army delivery before the civilian stores are counted.”

“Fourteen.”

“Isolde.”

“The first carts reach the city tomorrow. Seven days gives them six beneath a roof before another officer begins moving them.”

“You have not heard the engineer yet.”

“Neither have you.”

Seraphina lifted her hand from the map.

“The escort can hold departure until first light. Beyond that, I need fresh companies or a destination.”

Eridan took a clean page. He wrote the southern allotment first, then the amount remaining in the royal stores. Isolde drew her chair beside his. Between them, they subtracted the supplies needed by households already living beyond the wards from the amount someone had assumed was available for the newcomers.

The result bought eleven days.

Isolde read the figures and nodded once.

“The civil office reviews the water works on the fifth day,” she said. “If the ground is not ready, the families stay while we find another site.”

“And the army allotment?”

“Remains upon this page.”

Tavian copied the conditions into the reception order. There were crossings-out all through it now. The receiving officer’s messenger arrived before the ink dried. The upper cistern needed rebuilding, not patching. A crew could put a temporary water station beside the road, but the carts would have to keep supplying it until a new channel was cut. The messenger had brought the engineer’s estimate tied to the officer’s own return. Isolde read it first and passed it to Eridan without comment. He put the estimate beside the three-line proposal. Neither of them would be leaving the room soon.

Lady Merien Aster waited outside when the council finally ended. Eridan saw her beside the window and briefly considered the other corridor. His aunt watched him consider it, one dark eyebrow lifted beneath a sweep of silver hair.

“You used to be quicker,” she said.

“I used to be smaller. There were more places to hide.”

She held out a folded invitation. A silver border surrounded two names Eridan recognised from separate succession petitions.

“Supper,” she said. “Apparently I have neglected both families.”

“Have you?”

“For thirty-seven years. They seem to have noticed together.”

Isolde stopped beside him. Merien’s gaze moved towards her, then back to Eridan.

“They want you at their table?” Isolde asked.

“They want my name beneath a statement before the table is cleared.”

Eridan unfolded the invitation. Courtesy filled most of it. The final paragraph referred to the preservation of lawful descent should the present marriage remain without issue. He read the phrase again. Merien held out her hand for the page.

“I have declined.”

“You might have told me who asked before answering.”

“You are looking at their names.”

“I mean before—”

“I know what you mean. I am old enough to choose my supper.”

Isolde made a sound suspiciously close to a laugh. Eridan returned the invitation.

Merien tucked it into her sleeve.

“They will invite Tavian next.”

“They already have,” Isolde said.

Eridan turned towards her.

“When?”

“Last week. He sent the civil grain return with his refusal. He thought they might as well learn something.”

Merien smiled at that.

Eridan could not.

Eight years had passed since his marriage. A healthy person might live another century beyond his present age. It offered no protection to the signatures beneath the marriage settlement if a horse fell badly or a border wound turned foul. Older members of both branches still remembered promises made before his accession. Their wedding had brought those people into one room. It had not made them forget where they had intended to sit.

“Come to our table instead,” Isolde told Merien.

“Tonight?”

“Whenever Eridan remembers that we eat.”

“Then I shall bring something.”

His aunt left them beneath the window. Isolde touched his elbow, but Eridan kept looking down the corridor.

“We should have settled the collateral order.”

“We tried.”

“We stopped trying.”

“The court rejected your branch’s register. My family rejected the interpretation of the next one. Shall I send for them before supper?”

He heard the tiredness beneath her question.

“No.”

She took her hand away.

“Then please stop looking at me as though I failed to finish it.”

Eridan turned to her.

“I wasn’t.”

Isolde waited. He had meant to say something about the registers. He found he could remember neither the year nor the disputed name.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I know you weren’t trying to.”

A pair of attendants approached with fresh lamps. Isolde asked them to set another place in the small dining room, then continued towards her office. Eridan stayed long enough to watch her close the door.

He found her after the lamps had been lit. The reception order lay finished beside her seal. Tavian had gone back to the courts. On the windowsill, someone’s supper had cooled beneath a folded cloth. Eridan lifted it.

“Merien brought pears.”

“She told me.”

“And a cake.”

“I know. There was less of it when she left my room.”

He set one of the pears beside Isolde’s hand. She rolled it away from the ink without looking up.

“There is still the channel estimate,” she said.

“It will be there after supper.”

She raised her eyes.

Eridan pulled up a chair.

“Yes,” he said. “I heard myself.”

Isolde put down her pen. He cut the pear with the small knife beside her tray, dividing it unevenly because the flesh gave way under the blade. She took the larger piece.

“I was going to give you that.”

“You were taking a long time.”

They ate beside the unfinished estimate. For a little while, neither reached towards it.

“The first time they left us alone,” Eridan said, “you asked whether you would be allowed to keep your own clerks.”

“You said you hadn’t decided.”

“I hadn’t.”

“You decided very quickly after I stood up.”

He remembered the formal sitting room, the two chairs set too far apart and Isolde refusing to sit again until he answered the question she had actually asked. Beyond the door, six relatives had been waiting to discover whether the future spouses could endure an hour together.

“I thought you disliked me.”

“I barely knew you.”

“That was what worried me.”

She looked down at the pear in her hand.

“I disliked everyone who had already congratulated me.”

Eridan set the knife across the empty plate.

“I would have understood if you never forgave us.”

“I didn’t marry the entire council.”

“It attended most of our first year.”

“And you eventually learned to close the door.”

He leaned across and kissed her. She caught his coat before he could draw away, keeping him close for another moment. A shout rose from the courtyard. Eridan stopped with his forehead against hers. A second voice answered, and somewhere below the window a tray struck stone. He was on his feet before Seraphina opened the door.

“Remain inside,” she said.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know yet.”

She crossed to the balcony and checked the courtyard before looking up. Silver light entered the room around her. Eridan followed her gaze.

Above the roofs, a white body burned in the eastern sky. A pale tail stretched behind it, long enough that he could not judge its distance. He searched for the ordinary evening stars and found them almost lost beneath its light. Isolde came beside him.

Below, servants stood among the pieces of a broken tray. People crowded the open windows. Across the palace roofs, watch lamps rose one after another while their keepers tried to decide what signal the sky required. Seraphina sent an officer to stop the alarm bells until someone found a danger they could locate. Eridan remained at the window long after the officer had gone.

By the third evening, five interpretations of the silver comet waited upon Eridan’s desk. He placed them beside the completed water order. The receiving yards had admitted the first families the previous morning. Temporary carts were supplying the southern ground. Those reports told him what work would happen tomorrow. The comet reports disagreed even about yesterday. Preya Dorn, the young archivist assigned to the night copying desk, had arranged the passages by date. The High Priestess had asked for them to be arranged by meaning. Preya had supplied both, with small marks identifying where later translations changed the same words. As she laid down the final sheet, a black curl escaped its pin and brushed her rounded cheek; she pushed it back with the clean side of her wrist.

Eridan ran his finger down a column of marks.

“This passage has been used before.”

“At an earlier accession,” the priest beside the window said. “And during the southern famine.”

“It cannot have promised the same thing at both.”

The priest drew breath to explain. Eridan held up a hand, regretted the impatience and lowered it again.

“Forgive me. The people in the square are asking whether to leave their homes. Do these pages tell you that?”

“No, Your Majesty.”

“Then say so.”

Seraphina waited beside the door with the evening disturbances. Two groups had fought over a market shrine. Someone had demanded the arrest of a woman whose child was born when the light first appeared. Eridan read that entry twice.

“No arrests because of an omen. Protect the family. Anyone accused of violence answers for the violence.”

“And the gatherings?”

“Keep the roads clear. Let people look at the sky.”

He returned the translated passages to Preya.

“Keep the dates beside them.”

After they left, he found Isolde upon the western balcony. The comet was visible above the eastern roofs. Its light reached the stone beneath her hands. She had refused wine at supper again, then left before Merien finished describing the visitors who had suddenly remembered her address.

“Five interpretations before supper,” Eridan said.

“Only five?”

“Preya is still copying.”

He stood beside her. Below them, the palace square held more people than the previous night. A man had brought a stool for his child and was holding it steady among the crowd.

“Do you think it means anything?” Isolde asked.

“I think it is a stone.”

“You looked at it for an hour.”

“It is a remarkable stone.”

She smiled, but her hands remained upon the wall.

Eridan studied her face.

“Are you unwell?”

“I asked Marta to examine me.”

He turned fully towards her.

“When?”

“Before the comet. And again this morning.”

The noise below seemed to recede. He could hear the cloth of her sleeve moving against the stone.

“What did she say?”

Isolde reached for his hand and held it between both of hers.

“I am with child.”

Eridan looked at their hands. He had prepared answers for so many versions of this conversation. A disappointment. Another examination. A request that they stop discussing it with anyone beyond their own room. He could find none of those words now, and had no others ready.

“She is as certain as she can be this early,” Isolde said.

“Are you—”

He stopped. Isolde’s grip tightened.

“I am frightened,” she said. “And happy. I would like to be happy with you before anyone else hears.”

He pulled her towards him. A laugh escaped against her hair, startling them both. She laughed too, then held him so tightly that he could feel the tremor in her hands through his coat. After a while, he asked whether Marta had told her to stand in the cold.

“It is summer, Eridan.”

“The stone is cold.”

“Then take me inside.”

He did. At the balcony door, she stopped him reaching for the bell.

“No one yet.”

Eridan left the cord hanging. In their room, the abandoned supper still waited beneath its cloth. He moved a chair closer to hers and sat down.

Outside, the crowd watched the silver light.