第 006 Chapter| The Hour of the White Tower

The 25th of the Cold Moon, the stroke of mid-morning, the High Sanctum.

The High Sanctum stood on the south side of the Iron Palace. The King's Guard's authority ended at the bronze door outside the hall; past that door, the place answered to the White Tower Church alone.

Selene came from the Seventh Princess's Court, walked the long gallery of the palace's east wing, and entered the front gate of the White Tower's halls.

To either side of the front gate stood seven divine statues—Ironhart, Ravenfeather, Redmaw, the White Tower's halo, Deepwood's ancient tree, Blacksea's old man, Sangold's hand of covenant—seven kingdoms, seven figures, each for one kingdom's tradition of the divine. Ironhart, where the Holy Seat stood, had the tallest, nine meters; the other six were seven meters each.

The seven statues, Selene looked over each time she entered the White Tower. Today she slowed half a step before Ravenfeather.

The face of the Ravenfeather statue was empty.

She leaned in for a look. The stone was smooth—no eye sockets, no mouth, not even the ridge of a nose. Not the broken edge of something chiseled away, and not worn flat by a few hundred years of wind and snow. The stone had been carved this way from the start, as though someone had been called off halfway through and never come back to finish it.

Selene had walked past the White Tower's front gate no fewer than fifty times. Today was the first time she saw it.

Perhaps she had only ever passed through here in a hurry before. Perhaps the face had once been there and had fallen away since—she could not say which.

She walked in.

---

To either side of the Holy Seat, the heads of the seven great houses took their places in the line:

Ironhart (the seat empty—the old king dead, the head's place vacant, the new king undecided)
Ravenfeather (the Mute March's envoy to Ironhold)
Redmaw (House Redmaw's envoy to Ironhold; Avira herself was still in the Crimson Flame Kingdom)
White Tower (the Church holds a place itself)
Deepwood (House Deepwood's envoy)
Blacksea (House Blacksea's envoy)
Sangold (the Sangold League's representative, Halim Sangold; Selene knew him, and as he walked in he gave her the slightest nod)

In the half-circle below the Holy Seat stood seven princes and princesses:

The first prince (dead of illness, the place empty)
The second prince (fallen in battle, the place empty)
The third prince, Darian (twenty-four, newly shaven, white robe; Selene had not seen him up close in two years)
The fourth princess, Sarelle (nineteen, Selene's younger sister, of the maternal-line church, the Church's creature)
The fifth prince (ten, adopted by one of the late king's consorts, not in the contest for the seat)
The sixth princess (seven, not present; the Church gave out that she was ill)
The seventh princess, Selene (twenty-two)

The third position on the east side of the Holy Seat—Selene noticed now—

—Ion Greypen was there.

Ion wore the formal dress of the Throne Coroner, not the gray robe he usually wore in the Undervault. A dark-brown long robe, a very small bronze-mirror crest on the left shoulder—the mark of the Tomb Hierophants. In seventeen years in his post Ion had worn this dress five times. Today was the sixth.

Ion did not look at Selene.

But Selene knew: Ion's being set in the line was a signal from the Church.

The signal—Lian Silverhall had hinted at it yesterday—"House Greypen is being watched by the Church."

The Pope came out from behind the Holy Seat.

---

The Pope Aurus—white robe, silver halo crest, no crown (the Pope wears no crown, but the silver ring; that is the Church's rule).

He looked round the hall, looked over the man in each place, one by one.

When his gaze reached Selene, it held half a second and moved on. On Ion it held longer. Lower down, when it fell on the third prince Darian, it held longest—long enough that Selene counted two beats in her head.

She marked down the lengths of these three pauses, which the longest, which the shortest.

The Pope spoke.

"The 105th king of the Ironhold dynasty died on the 23rd of the Cold Moon, Year 412 of the Royal Era." His voice was not loud, but the vault carried it far. "By the ancestral law of House Ironhart, a new king must be crowned."

The Pope paused a second.

"Today's Extraordinary Synod, the first matter: the seven great houses to enter the capital at once. Let the heads of the houses arrive at the east hall of the Iron Palace before mid-morning tomorrow."

"Your servants obey."

The six occupied places of the seven great houses (Ironhart's empty) answered as one, the voices not ragged, as if rehearsed—this is the usual state of the Church's line.

The Pope paused a second.

"The second matter: the findings of examination. The Throne Coroner Ion Greypen is to deliver the original of the examination to the King's Guard command before dawn tomorrow. The Church keeps the copy."

Ion stepped out one pace, knelt on one knee, did not speak—ancient law.

The Pope nodded, and Ion withdrew.

The Pope paused a second.

"The third matter—"

The Pope glanced at the third prince Darian.

Darian did not look at the Pope.

"The third matter will be left to the deliberation of succession over the next days," the Pope said.

The whole hall—Selene noticed—drew, with one accord, a very faint breath held.

"The first sitting of the Extraordinary Synod is dismissed," the Pope said.

---

The Pope turned and walked back behind the Holy Seat.

The six house envoys moved first; the princes and princesses followed them out, and the people in the hall thinned away little by little. Ion stood where he was and did not move—ancient law: the Throne Coroner must wait until the Synod is wholly dismissed before he may leave.

As Selene left, she passed Ion.

She did not look at him. As she went by, her left hand—the one inside the cloak—came out, the smallest, smallest movement, and pressed a strip of gray felt-paper—thin, half-transparent, two words written on it—

—into the hidden clasp on the outside of Ion's tool-bag.

Ion did not so much as glance her way, yet that small weight on the outside of the tool-bag, he caught it.

Selene walked on, did not look back.

Out beyond the hall, the snow was a little heavier than before mid-morning.

Lucie met her at the door.

"Your Highness, the service-cart?"

"No cart," Selene said. "Walk the gallery back."

Lucie did not ask why.

The two of them walked the gallery slowly.

Halfway along, Selene stopped and looked at the central spire of the palace—on the spire flew the silver-halo banner of House Ironhart—the banner, in the snow, threw back no light.

"Your Highness?" Lucie asked.

Selene did not answer. The banner only lay along her line of sight, in front; what she truly fixed on was a stretch higher, the length of silver crossbar at the top of the spire where the banner usually hung.

This morning the crossbar had tilted. Not by much—the angle of one finger, not to be seen unless you looked. The snow had been heavy in the night; one iron bar pressed askew was nothing strange. She marked the angle, and did not yet mean to call it the snow.

"Let's go," Selene said.

The two of them walked on.

---

Before noon, Selene returned to the Seventh Princess's Court.

She went into the side room, shut the door, and opened her left hand.

In her left palm was a very small slip of paper—the one Ion, in the High Sanctum, as she passed him on her way out, had pressed back to her with his right hand—Ion's right hand.

The slip was very small, like the tip of a fingernail. On it was only one character.

That character, Selene did not know. But she had heard it.

Yesterday afternoon she had seen the same character on the tongue of her father's corpse. This morning the Pope's gaze had held those two beats longer on Darian. The crossbar at the top of the spire had tilted by the angle of one finger. And what Lian Silverhall had said yesterday, low under his breath—"there are kings who take the Throne, and the Throne does not know them"—she set these few things together in her mind, and they pointed the same way. The character in her hand lay along that way.

Selene tucked the slip into the second drawer of her dressing case, under the paper that held her grandmother's single-strand braid-knot. The two papers lay one atop the other, and she pushed the drawer shut.

Her grandmother had died in her ninetieth year, and before she went she had said one thing to the ten-year-old Selene. At the time Selene had let it pass like wind by her ear.

"Your Highness, if one day you see a character you do not know, but which you have heard—that character will follow you your whole life."

Twelve years had passed. Selene locked the drawer and put the key into the hidden pocket against her body. She knew now that it had not been an old woman's nonsense.

【Ch. 006 End · The High Sanctum → the Seventh Princess's Court · The 25th of the Cold Moon, mid-morning → before noon】