Act V — First Fire

Page 35 — The Choice

We did not leave that night.

The ninth night was the night the dark kept for the watch, and the tenth day was the day the lamp went out. We did not leave. The fire was in the center, and the fire was ours. The kept place was by the hearth, and the kept place was for the one who is not here, and the kept place had been empty since the fifth morning, and it had stayed empty, and we had kept it empty. The distance was around the lake, and the distance was ours, and the distance had kept us from the water since the first day. We had kept the four keepings since the first night on the broken coast — the distance, the sending, the fire, and the kept place — and the world had not asked us about them, and we had not asked the world.

The choice of the tenth day was not hard. In the old world the world put the choice in the archmage's hands, and the archmage sold it. Here the choice sat in our own hands, and the hands were the six of us. We had kept the four keepings since the first night, and the keeping had not gone dark, and the fire had not gone cold, and the distance had not closed, and the sending had not stopped down the coast, and the kept place had not been broken into. There was nothing in the keeping that asked for the leaving, and there was nothing in the world that asked it of us, and the world had not once put the leaving in our hands.

The question of the tenth day was the question the world did not ask. We asked it ourselves: did we owe the world the leaving? The world did not answer. The world is not a thing that answers; it keeps, and it does not answer, and the keeping it keeps is the keeping it keeps.

Rumzuck spoke first. He had his hands folded over the grip, and he did not say much, because the ogre does not say much at the fire. He had walked since the third morning, and he had carried the firewood since the first day, and he had kept the watch on the ninth night, and he had kept the fire fed on the ninth night, and the fire had not gone cold because of him. He said: We stay.

Smackage said it the way Smackage says it — with his palm flat on the sand by the wall. He had kept the ground since the first day on the broken coast, and the ground had not answered him, and the ground had kept him, and he had kept it back, and the ground had not once moved under his palm. He said: The ground is ours.

Wreckreate did not say much. He had read the current on the third morning, and the current had said east. He had read the lake on the fifteenth afternoon, and the lake had said the sleep. He had read the ninth night, and the ninth night had said the watch would not come back. He had read the world in the water and in the dark and in the fire, and the world had not once said leave, and the water had not once turned to go. He said: The water does not say leave.

Zahlia said nothing. She kept her hands in her lap, the way she keeps them when the Veil is doing the work. She had held the lie in the air since the night of the telling, and the keeping was the Veil's part in it.

I said it. I said it at the fire, with the five of us around it, and I did not raise my voice. The archmage does not sell a thing he says at the fire. I said: We stay. The fire is ours. The ground is ours. The water does not say leave, and the dark does not say leave, and the gods do not say leave, and the world does not say leave. We stay where the fire is. I said it plain, and once.

The fire took it the way the fire takes everything given to it. The fire did not answer. The staying went into the fire, and the fifth keeping went into the fire on the tenth day, and the four keepings and the fifth keeping were the whole of the tenth day. The world did not ask the answering about the five, and we did not give it.

That was the choice. We made it for ourselves, on the tenth day, with the fire in the center and the kept place by the hearth and the distance around the lake and the sending down the coast. We did not make it for the world, and the world did not make it for us. The world kept the world, and we kept the four, and the two keepings kept the tenth day, and the fire kept the five, and the five kept the fire.