Phelan sat on the floor of the broken tower, surrounded by dusty tomes. There was a threadbare carpet across the stones, almost as ancient as the record books, the first of which had been started during Declan’s time. The forgotten history Phelan held in his hands made him reluctant to abscond with them; he would wait, he decided, for Bayley Wren’s permission. There were over three dozen of them, all fat, every page meticulously lined with precise and mundane detail of the school’s long past: “To Trey Sims, woodcutter, for two wagonloads of wood from the north, and for the labor of it, and the journey ... To Haley Coe for nine casks of ale and five bottles of elderberry wine ... To Gar Holm for six fat salmon from the Stirl and twice as many eel ... Accounts received for room and board of student Ansel Tige from his father, late again ... Accounts received for one night’s lodging from Master Gremmell, and two servants, on their way across the plain ...”
Why Bayley kept his office and his bedchamber within the chill walls of the tower instead of in the comfortably renovated portion of the ancient building, Phelan understood easily. The stewards charted and guarded the history of the school, and the silent walls were steeped in it. Declan himself had lived there, and had left the echoes of the music of the first Royal Bard of Belden. Phelan and Zoe had explored the place thoroughly when they were children. Worn stairs spiraled up and up the curved walls, where apertures scarcely wider than a knife blade eked out miserly glimpses of the city and the Stirl. The steps debouched now and then into a small chamber where the curious leavings of centuries, like remnants from a flood, gathered dust and owl droppings. The steward’s office was as high as it could be without using the sky for a roof. Above it, the walls were jagged with the mysterious violence that had torn through the top of the tower, left the chamber they circled open to the seasons. There, as high as they could climb up the broken steps, the young Zoe and Phelan had sat, singing to the sun and the moon rising over the plain, watching in wonder as the oldest words in the world moved to their stately rhythms by day and by night, oblivious to the busy city crusting the shores of the ancient water.
There, once, he and Zoe had made love under the moonlight on the top of the broken tower. Phelan remembered that with a smile. But they knew each other far too well, which is why the experiment had been both success and failure. They had been grateful for the knowledge but too curious to be content with one another.
“This day by my hand: Lyle Renne, Steward ...”
Phelan considered that. He closed the book, reached for another.
“This day by my hand, Farrel Renn ...”
Intrigued, he put down that book, opened another. And then another. Days flowed through months, years, centuries of detail: a new washtub for the kitchen, half a dozen student robes made by Mistress Cassell, a scullery maid promoted to cook, three bags of flour, a new master hired, a coffin for the death of an elderly master, accounts rendered to a midwife for the birth of the child of a student whose parents refused to take her back. All accounts signed for that day by some variant of Wren. Back and back Phelan looked, amazed, while the writing became awkward; letters changed shape; spelling grew fluid, arbitrary. Ren became Wren, became Renne, became Renn, and then, leaping forward through time, again Wren.
“Wren,” he murmured, and there Bayley Wren was, opening the office door, crossing the room. Phelan gazed at him, this relic of history. With his gray-gold hair and the hollows in his strong face, he did seem balanced on the cusp of forever.
“What?” the steward inquired mildly of Phelan’s expression.
“You’re in here,” Phelan marveled. “All the way back to the beginning of Belden. Like the Peverell kings.”
“There has been a Wren at the school for as long as the school has existed. One in each generation was born with a taste for detail, for order, and for paying bills. It does seem an inherited position.”
Phelan got to his feet, brushing at the dust of centuries and frowning as he contemplated the present generation. “I can’t see Zoe entering accounts rendered in the records.”
Bayley gave his rare, dry chuckle. “Nor can I. I wonder myself how history will find its way around her.” He glanced at the untidy pile at Phelan’s feet. “Something in particular?”
“Yes. Nairn.”
“Ah,” Bayley said softly.
“Also, a certain Circle of Days.”
The steward shook his head over that one. “I haven’t read all of the account books. I do remember Argot Ren’s reference to Nairn. I have no idea what he meant by the Circle of Days. If it involved accounts rendered or received, it will show up in the records somewhere.”
Phelan brooded a moment. “I have to start somewhere. It might as well be at the beginning. May I take the earliest books home with me?”
Master Wren hesitated at that, looking as though Phelan had asked to make off with his fingers. “Those books have never left this tower. If you can persuade them to cross the threshold ...”
Phelan left with the three oldest, pledging his father’s fortune as collateral if he left them on a tram or dropped them into the Stirl. The house was quiet when he came in. Sophy and Jonah were both out, he suspected on wildly different errands on opposite sides of the city. He settled himself on the sofa, opened the first account book, and, within a dozen pages, fell headlong into it.
He surfaced sometime later, at a query from Sagan as to whether he might like a lamp turned on, and would he be dining at home that evening?
“No,” he said dazedly, rolling off the sofa. He collected the books, feeling off-balance in that world, two vastly different centuries clamoring for precedence in his brain. “I’m going out, thanks.”
“Shall I take those books for you?”
“No,” he said again, quickly, having a vision of his drunken father finding them, riffling through his bookmarks and snorting with laughter at the latest moldy turn of Phelan’s paper. “I’ll hide them myself.”
He walked along the river, vaguely aware of the lights flickering on in the twilight, from streetlamps and buildings, streaking the water with their colorful reflections. The evening was warm; market skiffs still plied the waters among the gilded, lantern-lit barges that had rowed out for a meal or a party on the water. He wondered if his mother was on one of them. Jonah was probably sitting on top of a standing stone with a bottle in hand, trying to pick an argument with the moon. Phelan had little idea where he was going; he let his feet lead him. When, a mile or two later, they turned into the city’s oldest tavern on the waterfront, the Merry Rampion, he was not surprised.
The crowd was a noisy mix of students and masters, dockers and fishers on their way home, and well- dressed patrons out on the town. He glanced around for Jonah, was relieved not to find him there. Chase Rampion greeted him genially, brought him beer, and left him alone in the crush, gazing out of the grimy, whorled window at the gulls wheeling above the darkening water.
Something portentous had happened between the time Nairn had first appeared in the records and when his name was no longer mentioned. Exactly what lay between the lines. The first school steward, Dower Ren, must have written his entries with his teeth clenched, so terse were they: “This day accounts rendered to Wil Homely, stonemason, for repairs to what is now the tower roof, and for removing the fallen stones from the school grounds.” A day or two earlier, accounts had been rendered “to Salix, for tending to the minor wounds of the school steward, and to Brixton Mar, carpenter, for a new desk and bed frame for same. Ink and a new pot procured with thanks rendered to Salix, and to the school kitchen.”
The old school tower had apparently fallen in, or blown itself up, or cracked in two, right in the middle of the first bardic competition. Struck by age, by an errant wind, by an earthquake, by an oak tree falling on it? The steward did not say. Whatever happened was beyond the pale of accounts rendered and received.
“Phelan.”
He started. Someone had slipped into the empty chair at his tiny table. Zoe, he saw with relief; at least he would not have to make inane noises.
She had an odd expression on her face. A new one, he realized with surprise, after all those years of knowing her. The tavern keeper came to greet her, carrying a glass of her favorite wine.
“Thank you, Chase,” she said, kissing him; he lingered a moment, puzzling, like Phelan, over the distraction in her eyes and the deep frown between them.
Then someone called him away, and she took a deep breath.
“Phelan,” she said again, very softly, touching his wrist; her fingers were cold.
“What?” he asked abruptly. “Is it your father? Mine?”
“No—it’s Quennel.”
“Is he dead?”
