CHAPTER 42 #3
“As you wish,” he said, with a courteous tilt of his head. Guillaume lifted his chin, proud, Avelyn thought, of how much taller he was. Idiot. “But—my lord, how long have you been on this fen?”
“I told you, we don’t know, the sun never rises.”
“But what month is it?”
Guillaume frowned. “Are you drunk? Michaelmas was last week.”
“No. It’s almost Christmas.” Avelyn let his eyes drag on the salt tarnishing on Guillaume’s armour. “Your armour looks like you’ve been here for months.”
Guillaume looked too. “Don’t be stupid,” he said, but there was uncertainty written across his face.
“North is not north. You must have noticed.”
“The—compasses spin, but what has that to do with anything—”
“North is different,” Avelyn said over him, still quiet and low, “and so are other things. You said that you have come back to this castle three times. How sure are you that it’s only been three?”
“It . . .” Confusion clouded him. He did what big, blunt, unpleasant people always did when they felt confused, and doubled down, but at the same time he shot a look towards his men that was full of the fear that only came from affection.
He loved them. He didn’t want anything so horrifying to have happened to them.
“Of course it’s only three times,” he snapped.
“When did you last eat?” Avelyn pushed, taking care to emanate priestly concern. Easy: he was half Guillaume’s size. He could see himself in the knight’s breastplate. He was all wide eyes and soft curls and sharp bones.
“Eat?” Guillaume looked puzzled by the idea. “Well, we . . .” Something in his expression cracked. “I don’t know. For God’s sake, that’s nothing to do with getting away from here.”
“I’m concerned that it is. What year is it?” Avelyn asked.
“What are you—”
“Just tell me, my lord.”
“It’s ten hundred and sixty-seven.”
“No.” Avelyn took the silver camera out of his bag. He took a picture of Guillaume with it and leaned fast to the side when, startled, Guillaume tried to knock it out of his hands. He gave him the picture, which was developing.
“What . . . is that? This is me. How did you put a mirror on paper?” Guillaume looked up properly. “You’re no priest. You’re a witch.”
“I am a priest, and that isn’t witchcraft.
It’s a machine. It was made almost a thousand years after you were born.
You have been here far longer than you think.
” Avelyn looked across the courtyard to make Guillaume look too.
“You haven’t eaten. You don’t remember how many times you’ve come back here.
It’s because you aren’t really here anymore.
None of you are. Look at this courtyard. Really look.”
“You’re insane,” Guillaume said, but his eyes skimmed past Avelyn. “What am I supposed to be looking for?”
“Bones,” Avelyn said, light and soft. “Men. And horses. And old shields, bearing sigils . . . no one knows anymore. You were lost a thousand years ago. You have been trapped in circles ever since. You’re all dead. You just didn’t notice. All you are is an echo of old belief in the magic here.”
Guillaume’s eyes crept past him again, and this time, when Avelyn looked too, there were bones. Rusted armour with no one in it, broken pennants, the bright cloth long since rotted away; it all cluttered the edges of the courtyard, half hidden by snow drifts, but there.
“No,” Guillame said, but he was already coming apart in the wind.
The others saw, and perhaps because seeing is believing, perhaps because they had half suspected something was wrong too, the wind combed them away as well, and Avelyn and Jericho were alone in the courtyard.
Avelyn stood still, watching the new snow cover the hoofprints of the horses that weren’t there anymore, and breathed out slowly.
He had always known he was ruthless. People always said, You never know how you’ll react in a terrible situation until it happens; they said things like, What would you do if a train was about to run over five people on the tracks, but pulling a lever to divert it to a different track would kill someone else?
They always said it as if the point was that no normal human could possibly divert the train because nobody could live with the death on their conscience, even if they saved five lives.
But to him, that had always been a non-problem.
He’d pull that bloody lever, and it would be tough luck to whoever was on the line.
You weren’t supposed to be like that, but he was.
There was a difference between knowing he was that way, though, and having proof.
Jericho came up beside him and towed him inside one of the rooms the knights had broken into. At first it was derelict and cold, but after Jericho had glanced around, a fire crackled into being in the grate.
When Jericho held his arms out, Avelyn stepped into them.
“Thank you,” Jericho said. “I heard what he said.”
Avelyn stayed where he was. He wanted to hang in this second forever.
He didn’t want to go on, or to find the King, or to see whatever happened after that.
It would kill them, one way or another. Either those things following would catch up, or the King would reduce them both to halite.
He wanted to stay just here, like this, thinking of nothing except the bright sorrow of impossible longing.
Jericho was another waystation on the lonely road he had chosen, one he would never be able to stop at.
He could only look through the windows at the light inside and wish.