Chapter II · Necessary

Maxim came around the front of the truck before Soles could stop him.

Kerr stood beside the passenger door. Beyond his shoulder, a van blocked the workshop entrance; a driver was leaning out to argue with someone in the yard. Soles needed Maxim back behind the wheel. As soon as the van moved, they could leave.

— We know who you are, Maxim said.

Kerr looked at him, then at Soles.

— Does he?

Soles held the phone low against his leg. The investigator’s number was still on the screen. He pressed call again.

— Kale and Mary, he said. Say their names.

Kerr’s eyes moved to the phone.

— Put that away.

— Why?

— Because you’re making a mistake.

The words were ordinary. Soles had heard them over misread drawings and parts ordered in the wrong size. Kerr said them with the same impatience, as though the difficulty here was explaining something simple to him.

— You came through our gate. You shot me beside the kitchen door.

Maxim moved closer. Kerr turned enough to keep him in view.

— We can talk, Kerr said.

— Then talk.

— Without him.

For an instant, Soles wanted it. An explanation he did not have to share, a name spoken low enough that only he could hear. He could almost feel himself opening the door.

Kerr reached through the window for the phone.

Soles pulled it away. The movement dragged across his chest, and his breath caught. Kerr’s hand closed on his shirt instead, high beside the dressing. His fingers smelled of tobacco.

— Give it here.

Maxim caught his wrist.

— Take your hand off him.

He pulled Kerr away from the window the way he would have pulled a pallet, with his whole back and no thought for the man on the other end. Kerr went with the pull, turned and drove his free elbow into Maxim’s face. The impact threw Maxim against the front of the cab. His hand slipped from Kerr’s arm.

Soles pushed the passenger door open to get between them.

He had forgotten how high the step was. His foot found it, his weight followed, and pain folded him over the door. He could not stand straight. Across its upper edge, he saw Kerr reach beneath the tail of his shirt.

A gun.

The same blunt shape. It came out low, hidden from the workshop by the open door.

— Back in, Kerr said.

Maxim straightened with blood beneath his nose.

— Leave him alone.

Kerr swung the pistol toward him.

For half a breath, something in Soles loosened. Not me. The shame came right behind it, hot enough to move him.

He caught Kerr’s forearm with both hands. He meant to pull it down between them. Instead, he found himself stepping into the space Kerr had left, his shoulder behind his hands, his feet braced beneath the truck door.

For a moment, he knew exactly where to stand.

The road was hard beneath his shoes. He felt mud around his ankles. The fear was still there, cold under his ribs, and for one second it did not reach his hands.

Kerr was heavier, and whole. He did not waste time on the arm Soles held. His free hand found the dressing, and his thumb went in beneath the collarbone, hard, the way a man presses down a nail he wants to stay.

It should have ended there. It should have opened Soles’s hands.

They stayed closed.

He felt the pressure. He did not feel the pain. Something held it on the far side of that second, and he did not ask what.

The door. Use the door.

He drove the arm sideways into the edge of the open door. Kerr’s fingers stayed on the grip. Again. The barrel swung past Maxim’s chest, toward the cab. Kerr’s breath came into his face, tobacco and coffee, and with it the yard at home came back so sharply that Soles heard Lucky throwing himself against the kitchen door.

— Kale, he said into that face. Mary.

It was not a question. Kerr’s eyes did not change. He leaned his whole weight in instead. The thumb went deeper, and the barrel began to turn back, a finger’s width at a time, toward Soles’s head.

Soles set his hip against the door and pushed. The edge rang under Kerr’s wrist.

The pistol went off beside his head.

Sound vanished on his left.

He was still holding the arm. The certainty lasted long enough for him to think he could keep it there. Then the second ended.

Everything it had held back arrived at once: the thumb, the dressing, the stitches beneath it, the step he should not have climbed. His chest tore. His knees gave. Kerr ripped the pistol free, and the trigger guard dragged through the flesh beside Soles’s thumb.

He fell against the step.

Maxim hit Kerr from the side. They struck the door together, and Soles pulled his legs clear before it slammed against the cab. Through a high, thin ringing, he saw mouths moving in the workshop entrance.

People had heard.

Kerr drove his knee into Maxim’s thigh and shoved him away. Maxim stumbled but stayed upright. He reached for Kerr again.

— Don’t, Soles said.

He could barely hear himself.

Kerr had the pistol pointed at Maxim’s stomach.

Soles expected the shot. He waited for it with his bloody hand pressed to the step, unable to move quickly enough to do anything useful.

The driver of the van shouted. Kerr looked over his shoulder.

His choice took less than a second. He backed across the road with the gun low beside his leg, then ran through the workshop gate. A man inside sprang out of his way.

Maxim started after him.

Soles caught his pant leg.

It was a poor grip. Blood made the cloth slippery. Maxim could have walked out of it, but he stopped and looked down.

— Stay with me.

Maxim knelt so hard his knee struck the road.

— Where?

His hands hovered over Soles’s chest, searching for the new wound.

— He didn’t hit me. I don’t think—

Soles looked down. The front of his shirt was red beneath his left hand. He could not tell how much had come from the hand and how much from under the dressing.

Maxim pulled a clean cloth from the cab and folded it around his palm.

— Hold that. Hard.

The van driver came over with his phone. Soles could hear him now, distantly, on the right, giving the road name to someone and saying there had been a shooting.

— You saw him? Soles asked.

The driver nodded.

— Give them your name. Please. Don’t go before they come.

He heard how desperate that sounded. A stranger had stood above him at the house too, and for weeks he had tried to recover what he had failed to see. This time someone else had seen the gun.

— I’m staying, the driver said.

Maxim’s nose was swelling. Blood had reached his upper lip, and he kept wiping it with his sleeve without noticing he was doing it.

Soles tried to loosen his grip on the cloth. His fingers shook too badly.

— I had him.

Maxim looked at the red cloth, then back at him.

— You had a gun beside your head.

The words reached him through the ringing. He remembered the weight behind his hands, the second in which the fear had not reached them. It had not felt like his. He wanted it back so fiercely that it frightened him.

A siren sounded somewhere beyond the workshops.

Maxim put an arm behind his shoulders and helped him sit against the wheel. He stayed there, blocking Soles’s view of the gate.

The van moved. The road was clear now.

By the time the investigator reached the workshop, Soles was in the ambulance and Maxim was trying to answer questions through a bag of ice.

The paramedic had washed Soles’s hand. A cut opened between his left thumb and forefinger. Under the shirt, the older dressing had loosened and a little blood had come through. Every time someone touched his chest, he waited to be told that he had undone everything the hospital had managed to repair.

— Can you hear me on this side?

The man stood on his left.

— Some of it.

He moved to the right and repeated the question. Soles nodded.

The investigator stopped beside the open doors. Behind him, police were taking the van driver’s details. Someone from the workshop had brought out the sheet Kerr had signed.

— They know him there, Soles said.

— We’re speaking to them.

— He had a gun. The driver saw it.

— I know.

The paramedic asked the investigator to leave room. Soles leaned forward, trying to keep him there.

— He went through the yard.

The investigator put a hand against the door.

— I heard your message. You gave me the address. You told me who he was. That helped. Now let them look at you.

It was the first thing anyone had said that made going to the hospital feel less like abandoning the search.

Maxim climbed in beside him.

At the emergency department, they checked the old wound, treated the hand and kept him until they were satisfied he could go home. The waiting took most of the afternoon. The new bandage left his fingers free; it did nothing for the ringing. He was given instructions he made Maxim listen to as well, because the words kept disappearing when the nurse turned to his left.

He had no new hole in his chest. He repeated that to himself while they waited for the discharge sheet.

Maxim asked something from his left, and Soles answered the question he thought he had heard. His cousin moved to the other side and tried again. This time Soles understood. The adjustment was so small that Maxim made nothing of it. Soles could think of little else until Varren came through the door.

Varren arrived with Soles’s coat.

— Your cousin says you went out to look at a building.

Maxim looked up from his chair.

— We did.

— You inspected it very thoroughly.

No one laughed. Varren put the coat around Soles’s shoulders and sat down without asking for the story yet.

The investigator called while they were still there. Kerr had left through a rear gate before the first officers arrived. His description and the photograph had gone out. The workshop workers were being interviewed, and the signed sheet was being checked.

— And the man who sent him? Soles asked.

— We haven’t established that anyone sent him.

Soles shut his eyes. The correction was fair. He hated it anyway.

— He’s done this before. He knew what to do.

— That doesn’t tell us who was paying him.

— It tells you there could be someone.

— Yes. It could.

He held on to that small agreement until the call ended.

Varren drove them home. Maxim’s truck had been left at the workshop with permission from the police. Nobody suggested retrieving it that evening.

At the house, Lucky barked until Soles spoke. Mina waited beside the step. He bent toward her and stopped halfway, so Maxim lifted her onto his lap after he had sat down.

— There, Maxim said. Management has arrived.

She put her paws on the clean part of his shirt and sniffed the bandage. Soles rested his good hand along her back.

Varren found the kettle. He made tea, put food on plates and left the plates within reach. Only when Soles had eaten something did he ask what Kerr had said.

Soles gave him the words as he remembered them. The invitation to talk alone. The order to put the phone away.

— He wanted something off the phone, Maxim said.

— Or he didn’t want another call, Varren replied.

The photograph lay on the kitchen table where Soles had left the spare copy. Kerr’s face was unchanged by everything he had done that afternoon.

— I should have stayed in the cab, Soles said.

Maxim put down his mug.

— Yes.

— You should have too.

— Yes.

Soles had prepared an argument. The second answer left it with nowhere useful to go.

Maxim leaned forward, the ice wrapped in a dish towel against his face.

— I thought if I got between you, he couldn’t reach you. Then he did. I don’t need you explaining how stupid that was.

— I wasn’t going to.

— You were taking a breath for it.

Varren carried his plate to the sink, leaving them the space beside the table.

— I nearly went after him, Maxim said. Even after the gun. Then I looked down and you were holding my pant leg like you did when we were little.

Soles remembered a crowded market, his cousin walking too fast, Mary telling them to stay where she could see them.

He had not thought about that afternoon for years.

— You always walked too fast.

— You always stopped to look at things.

Maxim’s voice had roughened. He pressed the towel to his nose again.

— Don’t make me choose between chasing him and finding out whether you’re still breathing.

Soles looked at Mina instead of answering too quickly. Her weight was warm and inconvenient against his chest. He wanted his mother to come in and tell him to put the dog down before the tea went over.

The chair opposite him was empty.

The soldier had called after two men who never turned. Soles looked at the towel against Maxim’s face. His cousin had turned back. Chasing Kerr had not been the only thing either of them could have chosen.

— I won’t go after him without telling you, he said.

Maxim lowered the towel.

— Telling me before. It doesn’t count if I can already hear the gun.

Soles nodded. Varren returned with the kettle and asked who wanted more.

Later, after Varren left, Soles sent Krista a short message. He told her what had happened and that the police had her photograph. He still had the originals she had lent him.

I’ll bring them back when you can spare a few minutes.

Her reply came while Maxim was shutting the curtains.

Tomorrow afternoon. And come to the public entrance this time, not after him.

The next afternoon, Maxim left Soles at the botanical garden’s public entrance and went to collect the truck. They had agreed on the arrangement before leaving home. Soles would return the photographs, speak to Krista and wait at the café until Maxim came back.

It was irritating how much agreement an ordinary afternoon now required.

Krista was waiting beside the entrance with an empty frame under her arm. She looked at his hand, then moved to his right when he asked her to.

— This side is better, he said.

— Since yesterday?

— Yes.

She nodded, without trying to make the answer smaller.

He handed her the envelope. She checked the prints against the loan sheet and put them away.

— They’re all there, he said.

— I know. I still have to sign for them.

They walked toward the café. He kept away from the pavilion path, remembering that she had work to return to. At an outside table, Krista set the frame against the wall and asked what had happened after Kerr reached the truck.

Soles gave her the short version. Twice she asked him to distinguish what he had seen from what Maxim had told him afterward. He found that harder with the gunshot than with anything else.

— You don’t believe me?

— I believe you couldn’t hear. I want to know which part you could see.

He looked at her for a moment, then started that part again.

The waiter brought water. Krista waited until he had gone.

— There is something else I can tell you about Kerr. I wasn’t certain it mattered when you first asked.

Soles put down his glass.

— What?

— A conversation outside the committee office. I was hanging photographs. One man said to Serren, “You vouched for Kerr too. I haven’t forgotten.”

— Serren?

— He’s on the committee. The other man asked him about somebody new, then brought up Kerr. Serren took him inside and shut the door.

He pictured Kerr being invited into a room rather than watched from a truck. Somebody had known him well enough to put a name beside his.

— When was this?

She gave him the date. He reached for his phone, clumsy with the bandage, and she waited while he found the note.

— You remember the date of a conversation?

— I remember the delivery label I was taking off a frame when they started arguing. It was the day the printers sent the wrong size.

— Useful mistake.

— For you. I spent the afternoon cutting backing boards.

She told him which words she was certain of. Everything beyond the closed office door remained beyond it.

— Would you tell the investigator?

— Yes. Send him my number.

Soles wrote the message before another question could crowd it out. He included her exact account and asked him to contact her directly.

— Can we speak to Serren?

— We can ask. But first I’d like to check something we can actually point to.

She explained how members were admitted. Someone already inside recommended the applicant, and a committee recorded its decision. The club also kept albums from its dinners and annual ball.

— I have permission to use photographs for the exhibition, she said. I can ask the archivist whether he’ll let us look at the relevant albums together. A decision about a member may need separate permission.

— You’re already doing enough.

— I haven’t offered to steal them.

The edge in his own voice embarrassed him. She had given him a possible route; he had heard a delay.

— Sorry. Ask him. Please.

Krista took out her phone. While she wrote, Soles looked at the frame leaning against the wall. A small piece of cardboard held one corner square.

— You need the backing cut again?

She followed his eyes.

— The replacement is worse than the damaged one. I’m considering hanging the invoice.

— That corner won’t hold with the photograph in it.

— I had noticed.

— I can show you a fixing that will. You could fit it yourself.

She looked at the bandage before he could promise more.

— That version of help I might accept.

They finished the water. Krista had to return to the pavilion, and he had promised to stay at the café. When she left, he sent Maxim the location instead of following her to ask one more question.

The reply came from the workshop.

Still here. They want a statement about the door. Apparently I damaged it with my face.

Soles laughed once, carefully, and ordered his cousin a coffee.

That night, at home, he told Maxim before closing his eyes.

— I’m going to try the garden again. If you speak and I don’t answer, touch my shoulder.

— And if you start climbing a tree?

— Stop me before I embarrass the family.

Maxim pulled a chair close enough to reach him.

Soles sat with both feet on the floor. He pictured the narrow leaf he had touched before, the grain of the little stone beside it. Cold bark met his hand.

He stood beneath the tree.

The soldier’s plant was still there. Light filled its narrow leaves, and the man beyond them stood with his head lowered. Soles stayed on the path. Yesterday, beside the truck, that same certainty had entered his legs and hands. He wanted to ask whether the soldier had felt the gun too.

There was no answer to a question he had not spoken.

Pressure settled on his shoulder. The tree vanished, and Maxim’s hand was on his shirt.

— You were holding your breath.

Soles drew air in too quickly. He had not noticed the kitchen disappearing, or his cousin trying his name before touching him.

— How long?

— Less than a minute. Long enough to worry me.

He kept his eyes open until they went to bed. Later, with the house quiet and the pillow supporting his chest, he finally let himself drift. He was beneath the tree again when he became aware of standing.

A second light lay farther along the roots.

Soles approached it slowly. The plant had broader leaves, curving back toward a central stem. Yesterday he might have walked through it. Now one leaf caught against his sleeve.

Soles knelt to read the stone.

Decimus.

He touched the edge of the leaf.

— II —

The King watched his crown strike the stone and roll down the steps of the throne. It stopped beside a guard’s boot. Warmth spread beneath his clothes, and he lowered his eyes to the blade in his abdomen.

A round stud stood out near the guard. The hand holding the hilt belonged to a man he had trusted for twenty-two years.

— You…

The man behind him held him upright with his other arm. He had carried the royal seal when the King was ill. Once, he had been entrusted with the King’s son.

Beyond him, the captains remained at their posts. The councilors watched. Beside the eastern columns, the priests had lowered their heads.

The King waited for a sword to leave its sheath.

He tried to turn, and the blade slid free.

The guard stepped back with it. His sword still hung at his hip, close enough to touch.

I don’t want to die.

The thought came from somewhere older than the crown, and it moved his hand before he had decided anything. He caught the hilt at the guard’s hip and pulled.

The steel came a hand’s width and stopped. The guard’s palm had closed over his, pressing the pommel down, not hard, the way a man steadies a frightened horse. The King pulled again with his whole arm. Something tore inside him where the blade had been. The sword did not move.

He knew that grip. He had chosen it himself, twenty-two years ago, for its patience.

— Let go, the guard said quietly. Majesty.

The King let go of the hilt and drove the heel of his hand at the man’s throat. It was a blow a sword master had praised once, in a courtyard, when he was a boy. The guard turned his head. It landed on his jaw without weight.

Behind the guard, steel whispered.

The youngest of the captains had his sword half out of its sheath. His face was white. He was looking at the King as if waiting to be told what he had already decided.

The Chancellor looked at him. Nothing more.

The captain’s hand went still. Then, slowly, as though it belonged to someone else, it pushed the blade home.

The King heard the hilt meet the mouth of the sheath. A small sound. He had waited for it all his life and never once imagined it going in that direction.

His knees bent. He caught the black arm of the throne, gripping the wood while his own men allowed him to fall.

— Which of you?

He searched their faces. Even now he expected someone to look surprised.

— All of you, then.

The Chancellor came forward, narrow shoulders bent beneath his robes.

— Your Majesty—

— Don’t call me that.

The old man stopped. That much still worked.

Blood ran over the King’s hand and dripped from the carved arm. He pressed his palm against the wound. If he could stay upright, they would have to speak to him rather than begin talking over his body.

— Why?

He hated himself for asking. He knew the speeches they would give: the taxes, the executions, the northern war. Men who had approved each levy would explain how much the people had suffered.

— The kingdom cannot go on like this, the Chancellor said.

— The kingdom exists because it has gone on like this.

A murmur passed through the hall.

— When my father died, the dukes were two days from the capital. Some of you had already hidden your families.

He found the marshal among them. The man kept his eyes lowered.

The King had been nineteen. In those first weeks he had hanged a general and sent his own cousins to their deaths. Then he had ordered the western fields burned before the rebels could gather the harvest.

Letters came from the villages afterward. He remembered opening them, looking for news of the enemy. He had read some to the end.

— You were glad enough to be saved.

One of the generals raised his head.

— You saved the kingdom.

— But?

— You saved it so many times that you started to believe it belonged to you.

He had answers for every man in this room. Their names, debts, sons spared punishment, estates left untouched. He could have made the general bow his head again.

His mouth opened. He could not find the words.

He had meant to build roads once the borders were secure. Schools in the poorer provinces. Fewer boys taken from the fields each spring.

There had always been something to settle first. A northern campaign, a rebellious house, a priest gathering followers. Each time he needed another year before he could begin the things he had promised.

Seventeen years without famine. Twenty-nine without a foreign soldier crossing the border.

He held to those numbers. The men before him would leave them out.

The throne arm slipped beneath his bloody hand. He caught it with the other and dragged himself against the seat.

— Who?

The Chancellor leaned closer.

— Your Majesty?

— Who will wear it?

He nodded toward the crown.

The general turned toward the high priest. An adviser had moved nearer the steps; beyond him, two nobles stood watching each other. The King knew those small adjustments. He had spent years making men choose where to stand.

— You haven’t decided.

He tried to laugh. The effort became a cough, and blood wet his fingers.

— You’ll divide the kingdom before I’ve gone cold.

— We will decide, the Chancellor said.

The King looked down at the crown. He had watched men kneel to it for nearly thirty years. From here it looked light enough to kick aside. For once, he felt no wish to put it on again.

He tried to stand. His right leg failed, bringing him to one knee. Several men started forward and stopped.

He recognized the movement. They had helped him rise at the end of councils and long audiences, always ready when he needed a hand. Their hands knew the duty before they remembered what they had agreed to do.

He wanted to ask for his son.

For an instant, the boy was twenty-three again, standing ready to leave for the south. His first command. The King had insisted that an heir must be seen by his people.

They sent him back in a closed coffin.

His wife kept asking why it had been necessary. He gave the same answer until she stopped coming to him with the question.

Necessary.

He had used it so often that it had begun to end arguments for him.

— Was it worth it?

The Chancellor took another step.

— What was?

He could not explain which thing he meant. His son, the crown, the villages whose letters he had put aside. The question had escaped before he knew whom he was asking.

His arm folded. Stone pressed against his cheek.

He had imagined meeting death on his feet. Now he hooked his fingers over the edge of the step, frightened by how quickly he was losing the strength to hold it.

I don’t want to die.

He wanted another minute with the stone under his palm. There must be someone in the hall who could give him that much.

The crown blurred.

He was looking down at the steps.

His body lay beside the throne, the cloak dark where blood had gathered beneath it. He watched for a breath. His chest stayed still.

The King reached for the step again.

He could no longer feel his hand.

❦

On Monday morning, Soles woke expecting stone beneath his cheek.

His pillow was damp. He moved his left hand and found the bandage where it belonged. No blade, no men waiting for him to finish dying. Beyond the bedroom door, Maxim was telling Lucky that a breakfast abandoned for ten seconds was still private property.

Soles stayed where he was until he could hear his cousin clearly.

He remembered wanting another minute. That had belonged to the king. It belonged to him too, whenever he thought of the kitchen before the shooting.

At breakfast, he told Maxim he had dreamed about somebody else.

— Another soldier?

— A king.

— Of course. Ordinary people would be beneath you now.

The answer helped more than Soles expected. He managed some toast before explaining the part about the knife.

Maxim listened, then asked whether he had told the hospital about the dreams. Soles had mentioned the garden. He had not known how to explain dying in somebody else’s body without sounding as though he had decided what it meant.

— Start there, Maxim said. The part about not knowing.

Before leaving for work, Maxim watched him send Krista a picture of the fixing he meant for her frame. Soles added that he could come after lunch if she still wanted him to explain it.

Bring the drawing. I’ll provide the hands.

He showed Maxim the reply.

— See? Someone else believes I can behave.

— She’s known you a few days. Give her time.

The pavilion stood beyond the botanical garden’s bridge. Soles crossed it slowly that afternoon, keeping his good hand on the iron railing. The channel below was narrow enough to make the bridge seem built for somewhere else.

Krista had cleared a table in the exhibition room. Frames leaned against the wall, and sheets of printed text lay beneath a metal ruler. She looked at the folded drawing rather than taking the tools out of his hand. He had brought none.

— An excellent start, she said.

He showed her how a small plate across the back would carry the strain past the damaged corner. She fitted it while he held the drawing flat. When she lifted the frame, the joint stayed square.

— Is this what you do at work?

— Usually with things that make more noise when they fail.

— And you draw everything first?

— The things I want someone else to make correctly.

She looked from the paper to the repair, then asked where the load would go if the other joint loosened. It was a good question. He showed her instead of offering to check every frame himself. For a while, he could be useful without anyone needing to move a chair closer or lower their voice.

— There. Now you can charge admission to that corner.

— I’ll put the sponsor’s name beside it.

She carried the frame to the wall. Soles moved a chair so she could stand on it without reaching sideways. He held its back while she hung the picture.

The photograph showed people beside the same bridge he had just crossed. Water filled the banks beneath them. A boat rested near the steps, its rope loose in a man’s hand.

— That explains the bridge, he said.

Krista stepped down beside him.

— Before they diverted the river. People came in from the landing, visited the garden and left on the next service.

— It looked better with water.

— Here it did.

She brought another photograph from the table. Floodwater stood inside a greenhouse. Broken pots and branches had gathered against a door.

— There was a reason they changed it.

Soles looked between the pictures. The same steps were almost hidden in one and crowded with visitors in the other.

— Are those the people you’re trying to name?

She nodded toward the group by the railing.

— Everyone who opened something gets a caption. The people who kept it alive are usually “staff.”

She said the word with enough dislike to give it a weight of its own.

— My father would have hated being called staff.

— What would he have wanted?

— To be left out of the photograph. Then to complain nobody remembered him.

Krista laughed, and Soles felt the familiar ache of having said something Kale would have enjoyed.

She showed him the proposed arrangement. The flood photograph had been left on the table; the sponsor portraits filled the clearest space beside the entrance.

— Move that one, Soles said.

He pointed to the largest portrait.

— He’s paying for the printing.

— Ask whether he wants to sponsor the flood. It’s larger than his head.

She looked at the portrait, then covered a smile with the back of her hand.

— You can ask him.

— I’m already in trouble with one man from this place.

— Then let’s not make you responsible for my second problem.

She moved the photographs on the table instead, trying the flood beside the workers and leaving space for the donor’s caption. Soles watched her discard an arrangement he had liked because it made the dates read in the wrong order.

— You remembered which year each was taken?

— Yes. The visitors haven’t seen them before. They need the dates where they can find them.

She wrote a replacement label for the printer and set it beneath the ruler. The new arrangement kept the sponsor and made room for the flood.

Her phone rang while they were standing back from it. She listened, confirmed a time and thanked the caller.

— Thursday after lunch, she told Soles. The archivist will see us together. Photographs first. We ask him separately about the admission decision.

Soles took out his phone and sent Maxim the appointment before putting it away.

Krista noticed.

— He worries?

— We’re trying to do it in advance now.

At the public gate, she asked him to send the drawing file so she could repair the other frames without him. He promised, then waited for his taxi rather than following her back with another question.

That night, he fell asleep remembering the king’s hand on the arm of his chair.

In the garden, the broad leaves caught a light he could not find in the sky. Beyond them stood the king, younger than before. Soles touched the broad leaves. Then they were gone, and he was dreaming a council room, a long table, an argument.

— II —

At nineteen, Decimus sat in his dead father’s chair while the council argued about the armies west of the capital.

He wanted a plan they could carry out before the dukes reached the gates. Each proposal ended with someone asking for more time.

There were empty places along the council table. One belonged to the general he had hanged two weeks earlier. The chair remained where it had been, and the men beside it kept their elbows clear.

Decimus pressed his palm into the hollow worn in the chair’s black arm. His father’s hand had rested there for years. The wood was warm.

The marshal stood over the map.

— The western harvest will feed them through a siege. They can stay in the field longer than we can stay behind the walls.

It had not rained for a month. The grain stood dry and ripe, and the reapers had fled.

— Then we attack before they gather it, a general said.

The marshal looked at him.

— With what?

Their army was outnumbered, and some of its commanders had yet to declare whom they served.

Decimus had heard the same arguments before. When a speaker finished, the others turned toward his chair.

— There is another possibility, the marshal said.

He drew a finger across the grain fields and stopped. The treasurer lowered his eyes to the papers before him.

— Say it.

— We burn everything we cannot harvest. Their supplies will last a week. Without the grain, they leave or starve on the road.

— And the villages?

— They’ll burn them after they strip them.

— Not all of them.

The marshal left his finger on the map.

The councilors began talking over one another. Some of the men sent to light the fires might refuse.

Someone mentioned the empty chair.

Decimus tightened his hand against the wood.

— One at a time.

The voices stopped. A stone slipped from the corner of the map; the marshal caught it before it reached the table’s edge.

Decimus watched him put it back.

That’s how he did it.

He could not remember his father moving his hand. He remembered the silence that followed.

— How long? he asked.

— Three days, if the wind holds.

— If we wait for the negotiations?

— We burn closer to the capital. And later.

The fields were drawn in small gold strokes. Between them were names he could have read, villages whose people would need that grain too.

He kept his eyes on the marshal.

— No one here wants to give the order.

— It must come from you, Your Majesty.

— Because you’ll have advised me, and I’ll have done it.

The marshal folded his arms.

— Yes.

The answer left him with the map and the men waiting for his words.

— Then I’ll give it.

The clerk began writing. Decimus dictated what was to be burned and signed the sheet when it was turned toward him.

The phrases were familiar from reports about other provinces. He knew which words the clerk needed. They made the order short enough to fit on a single sheet.

His hand stayed steady. He had expected it to shake.

The councilors rose. Some hurried out; others paused at the heavy door to his left. It creaked each time someone opened it.

The priest was last. He touched the medallion at his neck and turned toward the corridor.

— Stay.

The man stepped back into the room.

Decimus had no question ready. He wanted someone to remain beside the table while the others carried his order away.

The priest waited, hands folded.

— Bless them, Decimus said. The people in the west.

— Which of them, Your Majesty?

— All of them.

The priest inclined his head. He left, and the door creaked shut.

His betrothed found him in the library that evening. He had pulled out reports of another rebellion in his grandfather’s reign. There had been fires then too.

— You haven’t eaten.

— I have.

— The tray came back untouched. The servant asked whether I was angry with the cook.

He closed the report.

She sat beside the window, her hands in her lap. They were to marry in spring. In the dark glass, he could see her reflected beside a young man wearing his father’s coat, altered at the shoulders.

— I heard about the order, she said.

— The whole court heard.

— The clerk was talking outside your door.

He waited for her to tell him what she thought.

— Why?

They had been betrothed for three years. Usually she asked because she wanted to understand before deciding what she thought. He had liked that about her.

She asked quietly. He began putting the explanation together: the dukes’ supplies, the army he could not trust, the grain they would eat while his city starved.

He could tell her all of it. She might ask what happened to the people in the villages afterward. He had asked about them too.

— Because it was necessary.

The word came easily. He waited for another question.

She watched him, then stood.

— All right.

Her hand rested briefly on his shoulder before she left. He would have preferred an argument; he had answers ready for one.

The report stayed closed. He did not sleep.

Toward morning he climbed the western wall and stood between two soldiers, looking past the roofs and the river to the plain.

Red light lay along the horizon.

Dawn was behind him.

The younger soldier kept watching the west. He was no older than Decimus, with a farm boy’s wrists, and his lips were moving. Decimus thought at first that he was praying. Then he caught the same two syllables, again and again, and understood that it was the name of a place.

He did not know which village. He knew which direction.

The soldier turned his head and looked at him.

Afterward, Decimus would remember that there had been time. The spear came around slowly, almost carefully, as if the boy were learning the movement while he made it. Decimus watched it come and did nothing, because nothing in him knew what to do.

Then the point was at his chest, and his hands had found the shaft.

He had never fought. He had fenced with a master who apologized whenever he touched him. This was nothing like that. The soldier leaned in with his whole body, and Decimus went back until the parapet struck him below the ribs, then farther, his heels lifting from the walkway, the stone grinding into his spine. Over his shoulder there was nothing. Air, and far below, the gray roofs of the lower town.

If I let go, it goes in. If I hold, I go over.

He held. The shaft was wet under his palms. The blade shivered a finger’s width from his coat, moving with every breath the soldier took.

The boy was weeping. Not loudly. His face was close enough for Decimus to see that he had not slept either.

— They were in the fields, the soldier said. They’d gone back for the harvest.

Decimus had no answer. The order lay somewhere in the clerk’s box, short enough to fit on a single sheet.

The pressure stopped growing.

It did not ease. It simply stopped, the point resting where it was, and the soldier’s arms trembled with whatever he was refusing to do. Decimus felt that pause as a weight that had not yet fallen. He did nothing with it.

The older soldier struck the boy from behind.

They went down together onto the walkway. The spear clattered along the stones. Decimus slid off the parapet and caught himself with one hand flat on top of it, his legs shaking so badly that he could not let go.

The older soldier knelt on the boy’s back and looked up at him.

He was waiting for an order. Decimus knew what the words would be. He had learned them from the reports that day.

He said nothing.

The older soldier held his eyes a moment longer. Then he hauled the boy up by the collar and took him toward the stairs. At the top step he looked back once, west, not at Decimus.

The silence stayed behind on the wall. Decimus understood that it had been enough. That was how his father had done it.

He stayed until daylight spread across the fields and the glow was gone. The place beside him was empty.

When Decimus turned to leave, he had to lift his palm from the stone. He had been pressing it flat against the parapet, his fingers curved as though it were the arm of his chair.

❦

On Thursday, Krista met Soles at the public entrance after lunch. Their appointment was in the pavilion’s club archive, beyond the rooms being used for the exhibition.

Maxim had a collection to make. Soles sent him a message before they crossed the bridge, then put the phone away.

— No trucks inside? Krista asked.

— He considered applying as a delivery.

— He’d still need a name on the form.

— The truck has been called several.

She laughed and led him along the canal. Across a fenced lawn stood the rear of city hall; a locked gate joined its grounds to the garden. They stayed on the public path and reached the pavilion’s main steps.

The attendant checked their appointment and entered Soles’s name beside Krista’s.

Inside, the archivist rose from behind a desk. He was a small, narrow-shouldered man with sparse hair combed sideways, glasses low on a long face. He had cleared a table by the window and laid out the albums Krista had requested.

— You can look here, he said. Ask before photographing a page.

Soles thanked him. He wanted evidence of who had brought Kerr into the club, something more definite than a conversation through an open door.

Krista chose an album by its date. Soles held the cover while she turned the stiff pages, keeping his bandaged hand out of the way.

The first photographs showed guests on the terrace wearing masks of leaves and polished wood. Waiters moved among them bare-faced.

— The annual Garden Ball, Krista said.

Soles looked for Kerr’s broad face and found none. Some guests had even covered their hair.

— An excellent event for people who don’t want their photographs identified.

— They take them off to eat. We need to follow the clothes.

She pointed to a guest beside a column. Two kinds of wood met diagonally across his mask, with a budding branch along the join.

— The Graft. New members sometimes choose it. A branch joined to an older tree.

— Kerr was new?

— Around this time. That’s why I wanted this album.

The man wore a dark coat with a pale edge at the collar. Krista found the same coat in a wider photograph, then beside someone whose mask bore dark leaves and gold along the temples.

— Serren wore that one the last year I attended. The Autumnless.

— Autumn got at him a little.

She smiled.

— The leaves stay on. Constancy, continuity. He’d explain it for longer.

Soles followed the pale collar through the next pages. He thought he had found it near a doorway until Krista showed him both men in the same picture.

— Different coat, she said.

He let her turn the page. Wanting something to be true had nearly been enough to make him see it.

Inside the main hall, the guests were seated at dinner. Masks lay beside plates. The Graft rested against a glass, and Kerr sat behind it with his napkin folded near his hand.

Soles knew him before he leaned closer.

The man beside Kerr had turned toward him. The gold-leafed mask lay by his plate.

— Serren, the archivist said, coming over when Krista asked.

Kerr appeared to be listening to something amusing. Soles looked at the empty space between their chairs and imagined reaching through it to take hold of him.

— Can we have a copy? he asked instead. With the date.

While the archivist checked the photograph number, Krista kept the album open. Soles photographed the details with permission, then sent the investigator a brief message saying a dated copy was being prepared.

— What do you need to look at next? the archivist asked.

— Kerr’s admission. Krista heard that Serren recommended him. Would that be recorded?

The man took off his glasses.

— It would. That isn’t exhibition material.

— No, Krista said. We need to make the request in our own names.

He explained the consultation log. Soles gave his name first; Krista confirmed that she was requesting access with him. When the book came across the desk, they both signed.

Soles waited while the archivist checked what he could show them. He kept his hands on his knees rather than offering an explanation nobody had asked for.

The ledger was thin. The entry occupied only a few lines: Kerr’s name, the admission date, Serren’s recommendation and approval subject to conditions in a numbered appendix.

Kerr had needed more than an invitation. Someone had written terms for letting him in, and Serren had put his name to the arrangement. Whatever those men had argued about outside the office, there might be a record of it here.

— Conditions? Soles asked.

— They aren’t set out here.

The archivist checked the sheets filed with the ledger, then the list inside its cover.

— The appendix isn’t in this file. You need to request committee documents through the committee office.

Soles looked at the cabinet behind the desk. It was close enough to reach in a few steps. He had no reason to believe the missing sheet was there.

— May I copy the reference?

The archivist turned the ledger toward him. Soles wrote the number and date on his phone. Krista read them back without leaning over his shoulder; the figures matched.

They left with the photograph, its date and the permitted reference. The log stayed on the desk with their names in it.

Outside, children were calling to one another beside the bridge. Soles stopped clear of the path to let them pass.

— We ask Serren for the appendix, he said.

— And why he recommended Kerr.

— You think he’ll tell us?

Krista shifted the envelope under her arm.

— I think we’ll know what he chooses to say. Then we can check it.

Soles sent the investigator the new details before calling Maxim. He told his cousin what they had found, where he was standing and when he meant to leave.

Maxim said he would be there shortly.

Beside Soles, Krista watched a child retrieve a dropped coat from the path. She had work waiting in the pavilion. He could hear himself gathering another list of questions to keep her there.

— Could you come for dinner tomorrow? he asked. You and Varren. We could talk with Maxim about how to approach Serren.

— Dinner first?

He looked up from the photograph.

— Yes. Dinner first.

By Friday evening, Soles had cleared the photograph of Kerr from the kitchen table and put it on the windowsill. He meant to feed the people he had invited before asking them to solve another problem for him.

Varren had agreed to come early and help. Maxim had claimed that his last collection might keep him late, which Soles regarded as an unusually honest assessment of his interest in peeling potatoes.

Krista sent a message asking what to bring.

Dessert, if you want. We have the rest.

Bought or made?

Whichever involves less chance of you changing your mind.

She sent the name of a shop and a time. Soles looked at the message longer than the arrangements required, then put the phone down to answer the door.

Varren had brought a bag of bread and a tray.

Lucky rose against him at the gate. Varren lifted the bread above the dog’s head.

— Do you remember me at all, or just the packaging?

— The packaging has been here more often, Soles said.

Inside, Varren washed his hands and looked at the vegetables Soles had prepared. He took the knife when Soles tried to finish the potatoes with his bandaged hand.

— Tomatoes, he said, passing him the bowl. You can wash these without proving anything.

Soles objected on principle and accepted the tomatoes.

They worked comfortably for a while. When Varren asked what the archivist had said about the missing appendix, Soles pointed toward the window.

— Afterward. I promised dinner first.

Varren looked at him, then nodded and went back to the tray.

Setting the table was harder. Soles reached for the plates on the shelf and took one too many. The extra place lay where Mary would have sat. He could hear her asking why he had put the bread so far from everyone, then Kale telling her it was perfectly reachable if she made an effort.

He stood with his hand on the plate.

Varren moved the bowl of tomatoes clear so he could put it down. He did not ask what had happened.

Soles returned the plate to the shelf and pulled the remaining chairs around the table.

— Here? Varren asked, holding the hot tray.

— That’s where the salad goes.

— Then I’ll hold it and you can eat off me.

He moved the salad.

Krista arrived with a box tied in string. Lucky pressed his nose between the gate’s bars, inspecting it before Soles could let her in.

— You said there were two.

— Mina is checking your references from the steps.

The little dog sat by the door. Krista offered Lucky her free hand and lifted the box when he tried to introduce himself to the other one.

— Dessert is for confirmed attendees.

Soles took it from her. The shop’s name was printed across the lid.

— I was going to ask how hard you worked on this.

— I stood in line. Don’t diminish the effort.

He laughed and showed her where to leave her coat. Inside, Varren greeted her with a kitchen towel over his shoulder, then asked whether she had brought the invoice for the photographs too.

— I’m invoicing only the people who argued with me.

— An excellent business, Soles said.

— It would be, if they paid.

Maxim came through the back door as they were finding room for the dessert. His shirt had a dark mark at the shoulder from a load he had carried. The swelling at his nose had faded enough for him to touch it without thinking first.

He looked at the tray.

— Good. Nobody needs my professional assistance.

— You came in when you heard the oven, Soles said.

— I’ve known you a long time. There are signals.

He washed his hands, changed his shirt and came back with the drinks. Soles handed him plates to carry instead of inviting another opinion about his timing.

His phone rang as he took the last plate. He listened, explained that the collection had been completed and refused to go back for something nobody had put on the sheet. When he ended the call, Soles looked at him.

— I didn’t know you could say no.

— Different rate for relatives. You owe me since we were children.

When they sat down, Maxim turned to Krista.

— Maxim. The cousin. I assume he’s made me sound useful.

— I heard about the statement you had to give about the door.

— Then he’s selected the highlights.

Soles set down the serving spoon.

— He was the reason we found the driver. And the reason I’m here to complain about him.

Maxim’s expression changed before he reached for the bread. Krista took the bowl from Soles so he could sit down properly.

— You work at the same firm? she asked Maxim.

— He repairs things. I bring him fresh examples.

— Mostly the same example, Soles said. Yellow. Very loud.

— Consistency matters in a business.

Varren asked for the bread before Maxim could explain the truck’s virtues. Maxim pushed the basket over.

Krista told them about the new arrangement on the exhibition wall. The flood photograph had stayed. A sponsor had asked why his caption now faced a picture of a greenhouse full of water.

— What did you tell him? Soles asked.

— That his contribution helped us show how much the garden had survived.

Maxim stopped chewing.

— Can you do that for the truck?

— You’ll need a larger wall.

Soles laughed hard enough to regret it. He rested his hand against his chest while Varren turned the conversation toward a delivery where Maxim had spent half the morning waiting for someone to open a gate.

The man responsible had been trapped inside. He had reached the offices on foot and discovered he did not have the gate key.

— So he was already where you were trying to take the goods, Krista said.

— Yes.

— And he wanted you to come through the offices too?

— With the truck, Maxim said.

Krista considered it.

— He had just proved the route worked.

Maxim pointed his fork at her.

— You see the problem immediately. Nobody there did.

For several minutes, Kerr’s photograph lay on the windowsill and no one looked at it. Soles passed the salad, listened to Krista interrupt a detail Varren had remembered wrongly, and found that he was hungry.

When they finished, he collected the glasses before reaching for the photograph.

When Varren brought the dessert, Krista cleared the plates. Soles pointed her toward the sink and carried over the empty glasses with his good hand.

The string around the dessert box had tightened into a stubborn knot. Varren tried to loosen it, then asked for a knife.

— Not worth it, Krista said. I tried too.

— You already ate some?

— I checked what I bought.

Varren cut the string. Maxim pulled his dessert plate closer.

— Very good. Personally, I appreciate quality control.

Maxim noticed the photograph on the windowsill.

— Is that it?

Soles brought it over with the date the archivist had written down. Krista moved the dessert box aside. Maxim found Kerr without help and pointed to Serren.

— And this one recommended him?

Soles explained the ledger entry. Krista supplied the wording about the appendix and its absence from the file. Varren set down his fork.

— So they have an archive they don’t show people too.

— They have documents we haven’t seen, Krista said.

— Doesn’t seem like much of a difference.

— I asked for exhibition material. They had no reason to give me every club document.

Soles checked the appendix number on his phone.

— It still has to be somewhere. Someone has to check whether those conditions were met.

— Maybe it’s at the committee office, Maxim replied. In a cupboard. It doesn’t have to be a room underground.

— I don’t care about the room. I care what it says about Kerr.

He heard his own tone. Maxim had only suggested where to look.

— I could go in with Krista. Talk to Serren, but also find out where the files are. If he knows nothing, at least we leave with more than a photograph.

— Finding out where they are is one thing, Krista said. Starting to search through offices is another.

Varren rested his forearms on the table.

— If the request goes through you, it would be simpler. You already have access for the exhibition. Soles can come to help you.

— With an appendix about a member’s admission?

— You don’t have to start with the appendix. Ask for a few exhibition files, Varren continued. If one lands on the table by mistake, you read it. By the time they check, you have the information.

— And when they check? Krista asked.

— You give an explanation. You’ve mixed up a number before.

Maxim gave a short laugh.

— Nicely divided. We learn what we want, she gives the explanations.

— You’re right, Varren said to Krista. I rushed it.

— I don’t even mix up my own numbers for free, she said.

The proposal had seemed good to Soles until Maxim pointed out whose name would stay on the request. Krista had signed the consultation log. If they questioned another request, she would be the one explaining herself, with her own work still unfinished.

— I don’t want to put you in that position, he said.

— Then tell us exactly what position you do want to put us in, Maxim replied. So we know too.

Varren began saying they need not decide everything that night. Krista asked what Soles intended to tell Serren. Their voices overlapped. Soles could hear one clearly on his right; the other broke apart against the ringing in his left ear. He wanted a moment in which he could hear them both.

He pressed his palm against the edge of the chair.

For an instant, the wood seemed curved and smooth, warmed by a hand that had rested there for a long time. He straightened without thinking. Beyond Krista’s voice came the creak of a heavy door. He turned toward the wall on his left, expecting someone to enter.

The cupboard with the plates was there.

— One at a time, he said.

Varren stopped with one hand above the table. Krista left her question unfinished, and Maxim looked up. Soles had barely spoken above his usual voice. The ease of it steadied him. For a moment, he knew exactly how to proceed.

He had asked for their help. So far, he had only offered ways to do what he wanted. Decimus had sent men out with an order that fitted on one sheet. Krista’s name would fit on one too.

— What would make you stop? he asked.

Krista tilted her head slightly.

— Stop what?

— Helping me. What don’t you want me to ask of you?

Maxim set down his glass.

— Don’t ask me to cover for you when you tell me one thing and do another.

— All right, Soles said. Krista?

— You don’t use my name to enter a place when I don’t know what you’re doing. And I don’t want us using the exhibition as an excuse. The people there still have to work with me after you leave.

— Varren?

— Don’t go to this man alone and make us learn afterward what happened.

Soles turned back to Krista.

— What do we tell Serren before we ask to meet?

— Who you are. That it’s about Kerr. He may send us to the committee office, but if we pretend we’re there for something else, I’ll look as though I brought him into a trap.

— Then we tell him about Kerr. That I’m trying to establish his ties to the club and that Serren’s name appears on the recommendation.

Krista moved the photograph where everyone could see it.

— What do we need when we walk out? Soles asked.

— The appendix, Varren said.

— If he gives it to us, Soles said.

Maxim touched the edge of the photograph with one finger.

— I’d start with the last time he saw him. And what Kerr did for him.

— We don’t know that he did anything, Krista interjected.

— Then how they knew each other.

Soles fetched a clean sheet from the cupboard. He wrote down three questions for Serren: how he knew Kerr, why he had recommended him, and when they had last spoken. He added the appendix number.

— We ask for the document too. If he says he doesn’t have it, we ask who does. If he won’t give it to us, we find out what approval we need.

— And if he lies to you? Varren asked.

Soles studied the page. Serren might lie, but an answer gave them something to check.

— I let him finish. I don’t tell him everything we know at the start.

— But we also don’t assume that everything we don’t like is a lie, Krista added.

— No.

Varren reread the questions while Maxim asked Krista about access to the pavilion. Looking at a ledger with permission did not entitle them to walk into a committee office. Soles let her explain, keeping his own question until she had finished.

Maxim stood and picked up the empty water bottle.

— Do you have another one cold?

— Stay.

The word came out before Soles understood why he had said it.

Maxim stopped beside the chair with the empty bottle in his hand.

Krista looked up. Varren drew his hand back from the paper. The kitchen had gone quiet enough for Soles to hear water dripping into the sink on his right.

He looked at the bottle.

— In the fridge, he said. Sorry. I thought you still had something to add.

Maxim remained where he was for a moment, then went to get the water.

Soles loosened his hand on the chair. The wood was ordinary again, a hard edge with a chip he had meant to smooth before anyone caught a sleeve on it. The broad, warm arm of the king’s seat had gone.

He remembered wanting Maxim to stay. More than that: he had expected his cousin to need permission to leave.

Maxim put the bottle down beside him.

— You all right?

— Yes.

Soles heard how quickly he had answered.

— Something felt strange, he added. Just then.

Maxim glanced toward Varren, who was watching from the other side of the table.

— Your chest?

— No. I don’t know yet.

Krista moved her phone into the middle of the table.

— Shall we finish this another time?

He wanted the evening to continue without anyone looking at him as they had in the ambulance. The wish was strong enough to make another easy answer tempting.

— We can finish the message. Then I’m done with questions for tonight.

She read the draft aloud, seated on his right. They wanted to speak with Serren about Kerr, the recommendation and the conditions attached to his admission. She named Soles and said they would both attend.

No borrowed exhibition request. No invented reason for going through the offices.

— That’s what I want to ask, Soles said.

Krista sent it. The choice felt less satisfying than imagining himself walking out with the missing page. It also left her able to look at her own name on the request without having to explain it to him.

Maxim gathered the dessert plates. He paused over the box.

— Is anyone still responsible for this?

— Take it, Krista said. If it comes home with me, I’ll finish it.

He put the last piece on a napkin and carried it to the counter.

— A restrained decision, Varren said.

— I’m saving myself from standing up again.

Soles laughed. This time the sound came without the strange certainty that everyone was waiting for him.

When Krista gathered her things, he walked her to the gate. Maxim stayed in the kitchen with Varren, arguing over which container could go in the fridge without first being emptied into another container.

Outside, the street had cooled. Krista put on her coat while Soles lifted the latch.

— Did you manage to eat? he asked.

— You were beside me.

— I meant before I put you to work again.

She looked back toward the kitchen window.

— I did. For a while I forgot why we’d arranged it.

— So did I.

He had a question about Serren ready. Instead, he asked whether she had found a place for the flood photograph’s caption.

— Under the photograph. Revolutionary, I know.

— I meant without upsetting your sponsor.

— He’s now mentioned in the introduction. More words, smaller type. Everyone survived.

She smiled and promised to let him know when Serren replied. Soles let her go without asking her to check her phone first.

Inside, he helped dry the glasses while Varren washed them. Maxim carried the trash out and returned for the piece of dessert he had left on the counter.

Soles stopped drying a glass.

— Earlier. When I said to stay. Why did you?

Maxim looked at him.

— I thought I’d missed something.

— Like what?

— Like I was leaving before I was supposed to. Then you said where the water was, and it seemed stupid.

Soles put the glass down carefully.

— It wasn’t stupid.

— You asked me to stay. I stayed. What’s going on?

He could have called it nothing and ended the conversation.

— I don’t know enough to explain it yet. I will tell you when I do.

Maxim waited, then nodded toward the stairs.

— Upstairs, he said, holding it up before Soles could ask. No expedition involved.

He went to the spare room, leaving the door open for Lucky.

Varren turned off the water.

— You wanted to search the offices earlier.

— I wanted something that felt quicker.

— And now?

Soles looked at the sheet of questions.

— I want to hear what Serren says before I decide what he’s hiding.

Varren nodded. He dried his hands, then stayed a little longer when Soles asked him to.

They talked about the pool. Varren described a noise he had begun checking for; Soles explained that it was normal, then made him imitate it because his first description could have meant almost anything. They were still disagreeing about the sound when Maxim called from upstairs that the pump was better company than either of them.

After Varren left, Soles sat at the table again.

There had been a door in the king’s room, to the left of the chair. During dinner he had expected it to open. Here, in the same place, stood the cupboard Mary had painted, its lower hinge still slightly crooked.

He put his palm on the chair. Nothing happened.

He said the word quietly to the empty room.

— Stay.

Lucky stopped licking the plate Maxim had left within reach and looked at him. Soles almost laughed, then put the plate in the sink before the dog could improve the evidence.

He would not ask Maxim to sit down and see whether he could make him stay there. The king had kept the priest because he could not bear to be alone with what he had ordered. Soles could ask his cousin for company. He did not need to discover whether he could require it.

In the bedroom, he left a note on his phone about what he remembered: the chair, the door, the silence and the expectation that his cousin would obey. Then he closed his eyes.

The tree stood above him. Light ran faintly along its grooves. Beyond the broad-leafed plant, the king stood with one hand held low, where Soles’s had been.

Soles moved closer, keeping the leaves between them. He reached past them toward the man’s sleeve.

His fingers went through it.

He had seen that happen with the soldier. Decimus’s gaze stayed on the space beyond him, waiting for someone who was not there. Soles lowered his hand. He had refused to try the command again, but the king could not yet see whom he had refused to command.