The Saint's Glass

The Chapel of the Glass is the oldest room in the palace, older than the palace, a small stone cell that the rest of Corvanne was built around like a pearl around grit. Nobody goes there. Nobody prays to the saint whose name has worn off the lintel. You've passed the door a thousand times and never once gone in.

You go in at midnight in a dark cloak with the slate in your pocket like a talisman.

You didn't tell Torsten. You thought about it. You stood at your window with the chalk in your hand and imagined writing someone knows I died, and couldn't. The note said alone. And whoever wrote it knows something no one living should know.

Inside, the chapel is lit by a single lamp. The walls are rough and bare. There are no benches, no saints' faces, nothing except what hangs from the roof beam in the middle of the room.

An hourglass. Taller than you. Two great bulbs of old greenish crystal, bound in black iron, hung on a chain so it can turn. The sand inside is fine and pale as ash, and all of it sits in the bottom bulb, perfectly still.

Except it isn't sand. When the lamp flickers, it glitters faintly, blue-white, like ground frost.

"It's heavier than it looks," says a voice behind you. "Don't touch it."

You spin.

A tiny woman sits on a stool in the corner, so still and so small you took her for a bundle of cloth. White veil, gray habit, hands folded over a stick. Her eyes are milky and wide and fixed somewhere past your left shoulder.

"Sister." Your voice cracks. "You wrote to me."

"I did. Sit, Ava. There's a step there. You've had a long month that hasn't happened yet."

You sit on the cold stone step because your legs don't give you a choice.

"I'm Maudry," she says. "I keep the Glass. My mother kept it, and her mother, back and back. Keepers remember. That's the price and the gift." She tilts her head toward the hourglass. "When it turns, everyone else forgets the time it took back. I don't. I remember the feast, and the cup, and you on the floor in your wedding silk, Ava Merriden. I remember everything that came after, too. That's why I sent for you."

"After," you say.

"You don't know what came after. How could you? You were dead."

The lamp hisses. You grip your knees.

"Tell me."

She's quiet a moment, as if deciding where to begin.

"There's a girl who works for Master Raske," Maudry says. "Red hair. Clever hands. Frightened of her own shadow. In that month, she saw what he was brewing for the prince, and she knew what it was. Widow's-lace. Clear as water, no smell, turns silver black. She was too frightened to go to the king. Who would believe an apothecary's girl over the crown prince? So she did a strange thing. She stole a horse and rode north, to the one man in Aldrain who hated the prince more than she feared him."

Your mouth is dry. "The duke."

"The Duke of the Northmarch." Maudry nods. "She reached Isenwold three days before your wedding. He listened. He didn't ask why a stranger would come to him. He went up onto the glacier above his castle in the night and cut frostbloom from the ice, the little white flower that grows nowhere else, the only thing in this world that undoes widow's-lace. And he rode."

You can't breathe.

"Three days from Isenwold to Corvanne by the Kingsroad. He did it in less. He rode two horses to death under him and took a third from a farmer's field and left his ring to pay for it. He came up the hill in the dark with the bells ringing for your wedding feast. The guards wouldn't let an exile in. He went through them."

"Did he hurt them?"

It's a strange question. Maudry's milky eyes crease, as though it pleases her.

"He knocked down four and hurt none. He came into the Great Hall with snow on him and the vial in his hand. And you were already on the floor." Her voice gentles. "Minutes, child. He was minutes late. He knelt down by you in front of the whole court and tried to put it between your lips anyway. That's how they found him. On his knees, over your body, with a vial in his hand."

The lamp blurs. You press the heel of your hand to your eyes.

"Auberon," you whisper.

"Auberon stood up and pointed at him and said, There is my bride's murderer. And who in that hall would doubt it? The Butcher of Emberfell. The prince's enemy. Holding poison over the dead girl." Maudry's hands tighten on her stick. "They didn't even try him. The prince was grieving. The king was ill. They took him out to the courtyard at dawn and cut off his head."

You make a sound you've never made before. It echoes off the old stone.

"He didn't fight them," Maudry says. "He could have. He had his sword till the last. He looked up at the palace windows the whole way across the yard, as if he were looking for someone. And at the end, when they made him kneel, he said one word. Just one."

You already know. You know before she says it, and it doesn't help.

"Your name."

The tears come then, hot and helpless, and you let them. You sit on the cold step of a forgotten saint's chapel and weep for a man you never once looked at properly in your first life. A man who rode three days for a girl who'd crossed the hall to avoid him.

"Why?" you manage. "Why would he do that? He didn't know me. I never spoke to him. I never..."

"Didn't you?" Maudry says mildly.

You stop. Something stirs, far back, a memory under ice. A courtyard. Chains. A cup.

She doesn't explain. She only says, "His blood ran across the yard and under that door, and into the crack where the Glass's chain is set in stone. And a man who'd given his life for another out of love, with her name in his mouth, asked the saint for one thing." She turns her blind face up toward the great hourglass. "He asked for time. Give her back the month. And the Glass turned."

You look up at it. The pale, glittering sand lies quiet in the lower bulb.

"The saint doesn't turn it for kings," Maudry says. "Not for gold, not for prayers. Only for that. I've kept it fifty-one years and seen it move once."

"He doesn't remember."

"No. Nobody remembers but you and me." She reaches out, unerring, and finds your wrist with dry, cold fingers. "Listen to me now, because this is why I called you. You've done well. You've changed the first thing. But the prince is clever and the month is short, and things that wanted to happen once will try very hard to happen again."

"I'll stop them."

"Maybe. I hope so." Her grip tightens. "But understand what you're carrying, child. He died for you once. He doesn't know it. And the Glass turns only once."