Cross Chronicle I: The Remembering Eye

The bridge was gone. Kael could still see every stone.

He stopped at the broken edge of the road. Below him, a pale drift of rubble filled the space where the lower crossing should have been. Beyond it stood what remained of Elcadia: a tower on its side, the exposed rooms of a house, a gate that no longer guarded anything.

He remembered the bridge wet. Someone had once walked beside him through the rain, and he had watched water gather in a shallow hollow along the parapet. That hollow returned now, complete and useless. He knew its shape more clearly than he knew the footing beneath him.

In his hand, a silver bracelet caught the light.

He had closed his fingers around it too tightly. When he opened them, a link clung to his skin. He loosened it with the care of a man whose entire attention had narrowed to a single small object. There should have been another hand to take it from him.

He lowered his eyes to the open book. Light gathered between its pages, touching his knuckles without illuminating the dust.

He knew there was a price. Even here, with the city broken before him, his hand hesitated above the opening.

“Lena.”

He reached down.

White filled the space where the bridge had been.

Years earlier, thirteen-year-old Kael stopped reading with three lines left on the page.

Michel noticed.

“What else?”

The boy had come to him carrying the letter in both hands. He still held it that way now, although Kael had taken most of its weight: two small fingers pinched the lower corner, reluctant to surrender even that much.

Around them, the orphanage continued its afternoon. A child dragged a heel through the dust. Water struck the stones outside. The south window cast a strip of light between Kael’s knees, and the paper was thin enough for him to see the pressure of the writing on its other side.

He had no difficulty reading the last three lines.

That was the problem.

Michel leaned closer. He was seven or eight; hunger made the difference hard to judge. His sleeve had slipped over his hand, leaving only his fingertips visible against the paper.

“Is it really from my mother?”

“Yes. Your name’s here.”

“Where?”

Kael returned to the first line and pointed. Michel examined the marks beneath his finger. Then his face brightened, as though locating his name had brought him within reach of the person who had written it.

“Really? There!”

An older child pushed up from the wall.

“Move. I want to see.”

Others followed. Knees and elbows crowded the patch of sunlight. Michel’s fingers loosened; he took a step back and nearly lost his corner of the letter.

Kael drew the page against his chest.

“It isn’t yours.”

The nearest boy stopped. Kael heard the sharpness of his own voice and lowered the paper again, opening a space beside his knee.

“Here, Michel.”

The younger boy came into it immediately.

Kael began once more from a line he had already read. It bought him a little time. He followed the handwriting with his eyes, letting his mouth finish one sentence while he searched the next for somewhere he could safely stop. Michel listened with his head tilted. He looked at Kael whenever a sentence ended, then back at the paper, careful to give his attention to both of them.

They reached the final lines.

Kael’s finger covered the beginning of one.

“She says to eat properly.”

Michel’s head rose.

“And to keep your scarf on when winter comes.”

The sounds in the yard seemed suddenly distant. Kael kept looking at the page. If he lifted his eyes, he would have to see whether the words had worked.

“My mother really wrote that?”

He could still correct himself. He knew exactly how: move his finger, read what lay underneath, explain that he had made a mistake.

Michel touched his sleeve.

“Yes,” Kael said. “Twice.”

The child’s grip tightened.

There was no cautious beginning to the smile. It transformed his face so completely that Kael felt an answering relief, quick and shameful, before he could prevent it. The children behind Michel settled. Someone gave a satisfied little nod. An ordinary mother had sent ordinary instructions to a child who needed them.

Kael folded the paper along the old creases, taking care over the corner Michel had been holding.

“Use these creases. Otherwise it’ll tear.”

Michel copied the movement, pressing along a fold with a dirty thumbnail. One corner slipped out of alignment. He unfolded it and started again, still smiling.

Another letter appeared in front of Kael.

“Mine next.”

He looked down at the ledger across his lap. The light would not last much longer, and the accounts were unfinished. Beside his elbow lay the letters he had already read. One had been folded into a square scarcely larger than a coin; another had lost half its sheet, and its owner kept explaining that the missing part had not contained anything important.

Kael shifted the ledger onto the floor.

“One at a time.”

The next child knelt.

Behind him, Michel tucked his letter carefully inside his tunic, near the place a scarf would cover in winter.

The administrator found him before the light reached the wall.

“The reading boy. There you are.”

Kael finished the sentence in his mouth. He knew as soon as he did it that he should have stopped.

The man looked at the children, then at the letters.

“This month’s accounts. Today.”

He picked up the ledger Kael had set aside and dropped it open beside his knee. Its repaired spine twisted. Kael caught the loose leaves before they slid out.

“My name is Kael.”

He had meant to say it helpfully.

“What?”

The children became still.

Kael’s hand rested on the book. The administrator had heard him; Kael could tell by the way he waited. There was still time to make the exchange small enough to disappear.

“Nothing.”

“You have to earn your food, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

He placed the unfinished letter with the others. Its owner watched it leave Kael’s hand and lowered himself back against the wall.

The administrator stayed until the ledger was open in the right place. Kael found the first line. Oil and damp had darkened the bottom corner of the page. Several kinds of writing crowded it: hurried strokes, a number pressed so hard that it showed on the next leaf, his own neat entries fitted into whatever room remained.

The footsteps went away.

“Later?” someone whispered.

“When I’ve finished.”

The answer quieted them. It did not tell them very much.

Kael dipped his head. Across the room, Michel had taken out his letter again to fix its crooked fold. For a moment Kael wanted to reach over and do it for him.

Instead he put a finger beneath the first account and began to read.

Later that day, on an errand near the edge of the settlement, a blackened patch beside the path made him stop.

It lay between broken stones where grass had begun to return. Kael had passed scorched rubbish before. Burned wood split along its grain; fire spread through whatever would take it. Here the dark edge bent in a way that held his attention. A little tuft of grass remained green beside stems reduced to brittle threads.

There was no smoke. He crouched at the edge of the path. The voices farther down the road continued, ordinary and unconcerned. Nobody called him away. Something under the crust of soil reflected a thin line of light.

Kael loosened the earth with his fingernail. He expected a piece of tile. Then more of the curved edge appeared, and he began brushing carefully with the side of his thumb.

The fragment came free into his palm.

A scale, perhaps.

It fitted beneath his closed fingers. Fine markings ran over its surface, partly concealed by dirt. He rubbed it against his sleeve and turned it toward the light.

Warmth gathered in his hand.

Kael touched the stone beside his knee. Cool. He pressed his other palm against the earth, first where the sunlight lay, then beneath the shadow of the broken wall.

He looked back at the fragment.

He moved it closer to the blackened ground. The warmth became a little more distinct.

“What are you?”

He glanced along the path, embarrassed by the question. No one was watching him.

At the orphanage, anything found in a child’s hand could be taken away for inspection. The inspection might end quickly. Getting the thing back was another matter. Kael had learned to judge an object’s value partly by the trouble of explaining why he wanted it.

He wanted this one before he understood why.

He tucked it beneath his tunic and secured it in the cloth.

The fragment rested against his chest as he stood. He brushed the dust from his knees, checked the path once more, and started walking.

The pain struck a short distance later.

He thought something had blown into his eye. He blinked and raised a hand.

Heat drove deeper.

The road tilted. His knees hit stone before he understood that he was falling. He pressed his palm against his face, trying to hold the pain in one place. His other eye filled with tears.

For several breaths there was no path, no errand, no explanation he could make. There was only the pressure behind the closed lid and the useless effort to pull away from a thing inside him.

A sound escaped him.

He wanted someone to come. He could not think whom to call.

Gradually the pressure eased. Kael remained on his knees. A hard ridge of stone pressed through his clothes. He concentrated on that discomfort while he waited to find out whether the other pain would return. Beside the road, water had collected in a shallow hollow. He crawled toward it.

The first time he leaned over, his reflection shattered in the trembling surface. Dark hair, wet cheek, a pale patch where his mouth should have been. He put his hands farther apart and tried to stop shaking.

“Stay still.”

The instruction was for himself.

The water settled.

One eye looked ordinary.

Inside the other, a faint pattern seemed to turn.

Kael bent closer. The motion of his head disturbed the surface. He blinked. The pattern vanished among the broken reflections, and he could not be sure what he had seen.

But the edge of a stone remained in his sight after the water had blurred it.

He lifted his head.

The edge was still there.

For a moment it lay across the road ahead, a precise shape with no stone beneath it. Then it thinned and disappeared.

Kael stayed crouched until his legs began to ache.

The fragment pressed against his chest when he breathed. His hand went to it. He could leave it here. He could put it back into the ground and walk away.

He did not know whether that would undo anything.

He stood carefully, waiting for the road to shift again. It stayed where it was.

When he began walking, he kept the affected eye partly hidden behind his fringe.

The following afternoon, a sword stopped moving.

Kael could still follow it.

He stood outside the Royal Order’s training yard with a water pail dragging at his left hand. Through a gap in the rails he had watched an instructor demonstrate a single cut: the rear foot turning, weight traveling forward, the blade changing angle just before the finish.

A trainee stepped into the gap.

Kael should have lost the movement.

Instead he saw where the sword had begun. He could follow it to the end and return to the instant before the instructor’s wrist turned. The memory held at that point as clearly as the man himself had stood beyond the fence.

Water struck the side of the pail.

Kael looked down. He had let the handle tilt.

He straightened it, but his attention remained elsewhere. He had watched exercises here before, caught a few movements while passing, and later tried to remember how they went. This was different. The beginning did not grow vague when he examined the ending.

His free hand rose.

He lowered it quickly and looked along the road.

Nobody seemed to have noticed.

The pail went onto a flat stone in the side lane. A dry branch lay beside the gutter. Kael picked it up and broke away a twig that caught his sleeve. It was a poor substitute for the instructor’s sword. It weighed almost nothing. He could see that without knowing anything about weapons.

He spread his feet. Too far. The instructor’s legs were longer. Kael narrowed the distance until he could stand without wavering, then let the remembered movement lead his attention from foot to hip to hand.

The branch traveled through the air.

His wrist turned.

The tip stopped.

Kael stared at it.

The line was right. The ending was right. He could compare them with what remained in his sight, and the comparison did not fall apart when he tried to look more closely.

His shoulder began to hurt.

He lowered the branch.

He wanted to laugh. The urge surprised him so much that he looked toward the road again, as though someone might have heard it before he made a sound.

He lifted the wood a second time.

The shoulder tightened before the turn. In the remembered demonstration, the instructor’s elbow had been lower. Kael lowered his own.

The pull eased.

He finished.

For a moment he simply held the position. Then he went back to the beginning, because reaching the end from halfway through might prove less than he wanted it to.

Foot. Weight. Turn.

Better.

The improvement was small enough to fit inside his own arm. No adult needed to explain it. He could feel the difference.

He began again.

Boots scraped at the mouth of the lane.

“Where did you learn that form?”

The trainee carried a closed manual under his arm.

Kael saw the book before he understood the question. Its spine was firm, its corners intact. The young man tapped the cover twice, looking from Kael’s hand to the branch.

Kael straightened.

The back of the trainee’s hand came down against the wood. Light pressure. The branch lowered.

“I watched the instructor.”

“In the yard?”

Kael nodded.

“How many times?”

There was an answer that would make the question easier. A week of watching. A month. Something that would let the trainee put him among all the other boys who stood outside the fence and imagined themselves inside it.

“Once.”

The young man’s fingers stopped against the book.

From the yard, someone called, “Dion!”

He did not turn.

Kael looked at the insignia on his clothes. The collar was dark with sweat. Across his knuckles lay pale pressure marks, and the cloth beneath his arm had been rubbed by the edge of the manual.

“What’s your name?”

“Kael.”

“Copying something after seeing it once isn’t learning it.”

Kael glanced down at the branch.

He had been trying to learn. That was what lowering his elbow had felt like. He wanted to explain the difference between the first attempt and the second, but Dion was looking at the wood as though the object itself had already answered.

Kael’s shoulder tightened while he stood waiting.

He let the elbow settle.

Dion shifted the book under his arm and stepped away.

Kael moved aside. He gave the trainee enough space to pass without coming near him, then waited until the footsteps returned toward the yard.

Only then did he raise the branch.

The adjustment still worked.

Whatever Dion had decided, the movement had not become harder because he had named it.

Kael put the branch beside the gutter and reached for the pail. His fingers closed over the handle’s old pressure mark. Water rocked against the tin.

He had spent longer here than he should have.

Dion knew exactly where the boy’s branch had stopped.

He had spent weeks trying to keep his own cut from traveling past that point.

The instructor’s correction had been small: a touch beneath the wrist, a change in the angle of the hand. Dion could make it when someone was watching. Keeping it when he was tired had taken longer.

He had stayed after drills. He had repeated the movement until he could feel the mistake beginning before the blade reached the wrong place.

He knew the work had helped.

Then he had turned into a lane and seen a child with gutter wood end the same cut correctly.

Once.

There had been faults. The stance was uncertain. The shoulder carried too much strain. A proper sword would change the exercise; an opponent would change it again. Dion had seen enough to know all that. He had also seen the end of the cut.

He crossed toward the man standing behind the training line.

“Deputy Commander.”

Arten Blakeheart watched the trainees finish their repetition. His silver hair lay above the uniform collar. One gloved hand rested against his other wrist.

Dion waited.

“There’s a boy outside who performed the third form.”

“Anyone can imitate a movement.”

“He hasn’t even seen the manual. His blade path was exact.”

Arten turned.

Dion felt relief and disliked it. He had wanted to report something that required attention. Now he wondered whether he had come to be told it did not matter.

Movement passed between the rails.

“There. That boy.”

Kael was walking along the outside lane, the pail pulling one shoulder lower than the other.

Wood struck wood in the yard.

The boy’s empty hand lifted.

At half speed it followed the cut. His wrist turned, the fingers loosened at the finish, and his attention seemed to return to the hand only after it had moved. He lowered it toward the pail.

Arten stepped to the fence.

“If he comes past again, call me.”

Dion looked at him, waiting for the rest.

The deputy commander kept watching the road.

From the gallery, Erika saw the child try to stop his own hand.

She had been watching the ordered movement of the yard: ranks, intervals, an instructor correcting the places where the pattern broke. The boy outside it belonged to a different task. A pail, an errand, a route along the public road.

Yet the rhythm of the drill had followed him.

His empty hand began to rise. He caught it awkwardly with the hand carrying the pail, shifted the weight, and nearly spilled the water.

“What is that boy’s name?”

Her attendant came nearer the balustrade.

“He’s from the orphanage, Your Highness.”

Erika waited.

Below, the child walked through the gallery’s shadow. He did not look up. His hair caught the light as he emerged, and she saw the concentration still on his face.

The attendant had answered as if the question were settled.

Erika’s gloved fingers curled around the carved stone. She watched until the next stretch of colonnade hid him.

She had been given a place the child came from. She still did not have his name.

The notice outside the main gate offered something Kael had not expected to find that afternoon.

A way to ask.

He passed the heading, took another step, and stopped.

The Royal Order was accepting new trainees.

He had imagined becoming a knight while carrying water before. Usually the thought lasted until the next task. It asked nothing of him because there was no place to take it.

The notice stayed on the wall.

A messenger crossed beneath the arch. Two trainees came out together, one working a shoulder while the other spoke. The stone beneath their feet had been worn by people who were allowed to enter.

Kael set the pail down.

He read the heading again. His fingers still curled where the handle had been.

Inside the yard, an instructor stopped a trainee and shifted the young man’s foot with the toe of his boot. Then he stepped away.

The trainee tried again.

Kael lifted his own empty hand.

At the beginning of the cut, his shoulder tried to rise too soon. He remembered the pain in the lane and lowered the elbow before the wrist turned.

The ending came more easily.

He began to smile.

“You again. Copycat.”

Dion stood beneath the arch.

Kael’s hand stopped halfway back to his side.

“Don’t steal the Royal Order’s forms without permission.”

He looked at the notice, then at Dion.

He had watched a man through a fence. He had picked up wood nobody wanted. The movement now returned whenever he thought about it, but he did not understand how he could have taken anything the instructor no longer possessed.

He wanted to ask what he was supposed to do with that.

Dion’s attention had settled on his shoulder. Kael felt the adjusted posture as intensely as if a hand were touching it.

The warmth behind his eye stirred.

He held still.

In the yard, the trainee made another attempt. The instructor watched all the way to the finish before speaking.

Kael wanted to hear that correction.

The desire was suddenly particular. He wanted someone to see where his foot moved too early. He wanted a sword he could learn to carry without injuring his shoulder. He wanted time to repeat an attempt after it began to improve, instead of lowering his hand whenever somebody called for water.

Dion remained in the entrance.

Kael had no answer that would move him aside. The clothes he wore did not belong in the yard. He could already imagine the first look someone would give him if he said he had come to join.

For a moment he considered picking up the pail before that thought went any further.

The instructor gestured. The trainee reset his feet.

Kael looked once more at the notice.

He would ask.

The decision frightened him. It had room in it for an actual refusal.

He bent and lifted the water. The pail struck his leg, and he adjusted it before beginning the walk home. He had not applied. Nobody had admitted him. By the time he reached the orphanage, he would still have to explain why the errand had taken so long.

He carried the water back.

The question he intended to ask went with him.