Chapter 23: The Keeper

The Council offered me the crown on the third morning.

They did it in the great hall, with the old councillor holding a circlet of black iron on a velvet cushion.

"Lady of Ravenmoor," he said. "The Court has no Lady. It has a seat, and it would like you in it."

Cassian stood at the foot of the dais, and he did not say a word.

He had promised me he wouldn't.

I looked at the circlet for a while.

"It's very handsome," I said.

"It is," said the old man.

"I'm going to say no."

A murmur went round the pillars.

"I was a keeper for five years, and I lost them, and I got them back," I said.

"I'd like to see what I do with the next ones."

"The glass is cracked from top to bottom, and Tobias is tired."

"I am not tired," said Tobias. "I am merely ancient."

"He is retiring in the spring," I said. "Somebody has to keep that crack from spreading, and I know the glass better than anyone in this room."

The old councillor looked at me over his spectacles.

"You would rather polish a mirror than rule a Court?"

"I would rather it told the truth than be told what to say."

He bowed, with great gravity, and put the circlet back on its cushion.

"The Council accepts," he said. "It also notes that the Court has now been refused by its own Lady-elect."

"It is considering what that says about us."

Tobias made a small dry sound that might have been laughter.

I found Cassian that night on the stairs of the east tower.

He sat on the third step from the top, in his shirtsleeves, turning a silver ring over in his fingers.

It was plain, narrow and old.

"That was my mother's," he said. "She left it in the Hollow when she was Unwritten. The Hollow kept it."

"It's beautiful."

"I'm not offering you a ring."

"No?"

"I'm offering you a question."

He stood up.

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