Later histories called that date Relighting Day. The Kandelburgers who lived through it were less genteel. They called it "the day the sun came back," and for many years afterward used it to date every important event.
"My boy was born the year the sun came back." "This house was built two years before the sun came back."
For the Vesper Bureau, however, the first ten days after the sun returned were a campaign more exhausting than the long night: cleaning up.
It took the three parties three days of wrangling to agree on the official account. The Church wanted to say, "The Daystar tested mankind, and the faithful won the dawn." The Crown wanted, "A celestial disturbance, unconnected to human action." Grey threw out both drafts and forced them to sign a third, known to history as the Relighting Proclamation.
Its full text contained only three sentences: The celestial disturbance upon the winter solstice was caused by an evil artifact left by the former dynasty. The competent authorities, acting in concert, have eradicated it. Henceforth, the dreams of all people are restored to them and shall never again be taken.
"The first two sentences can be half true and half false. Not one word of the last may change." At the joint conference, the old inspector knocked his pipe against the table hard enough to shake the room.
"Even if we can't tell them openly who incurred the debt of three hundred years, the whole city must have it in black and white: their dreams belong to them. If anyone tries to collect them again, he'll have to tear up this proclamation first."
The Church could not outargue him. More precisely, at that moment the Church lacked the strength to argue. Of the four senior seats before the archbishop's throne, one had turned to ash, one had "withdrawn behind closed doors to reflect," and the other two were busy severing ties.
Within the Order of the Sacred Flame, the nails the captain had planted before his departure began to speak, and a purge from top to bottom was gathering force. For the first time in three hundred years, the Church discovered that speaking in this city meant first gauging the Vesper Bureau's mood.
Selden remained in the tower.
All forty Stairclimbers descended alive. The tower warden's accounts balanced. The old man's first act was to take Cole to the Hall of Names and spend two full days chiseling flat, one by one, the forty empty name-niches carved in advance. At the last one, he handed the chisel to Cole and had the young man carve a new line into the leveled stone:
No name here. May there never again be one.
His second act was to climb to the summit. The nineteenth Chief Lamplighter and the seventh holder of the tower warden's key spoke for an entire afternoon before the First-Kindling flame. No one knew what was said.
They knew only that when Selden descended, he announced two things. Dawn Tower would keep its lamp lit as before, except that it would now burn dreams freely told to the tower. Their flame was gentle, and one whole dream could burn for years.
And from then on, the tower would no longer require its apprentices to sign a Covenant of Surrendered Names. Stairclimbers would henceforth keep their names.
"His Lordship up there asked me to give you a message." The old tower warden found Sharlo and repeated it without missing a word. "He said: tell old Barnaby—the salted biscuits, still the old shop. He said old Barnaby would understand."
When Sharlo delivered the message to Grey that evening, the old inspector was packing. On hearing it, he stood with his back to Sharlo for a long, long time, his shoulders perfectly still. Then, from the deepest part of a drawer, he withdrew a parcel of oiled paper.
It had lain there for an unknown number of years, and the paper had gone brittle. Inside was half a packet of salted biscuits, hard as stones.
"The day he climbed the tower forty years ago," Grey said in a voice so hoarse it hardly sounded like him, "the three of us split one last packet at the foot. He pushed his share at me and told me to keep them until he came down, then we'd have them with wine." The old inspector touched the biscuits—hard enough to hammer nails—with one fingertip, gently, as if they might break.
"The old bastard. Forty years, and the first message he sends down is about these."
He rewrapped the parcel and placed it solemnly in his travelling bag.
"They're coming with me," he said. "If I pass the old shop on the road to the capital, I'll buy a fresh packet. On the way back, I'll send them up to him. That drink we promised each other—one day, we will make it good."
* * *
To the capital.
The order of transfer arrived on the seventh day after Relighting Day, sealed by the Grand Belfry in the capital at a frighteningly high grade of protocol. Barnaby Grey, Chief of the Kandelburg Branch, was to report to the capital at once and chair the "Special Committee for the Audit of Church Accounts"—a thorough investigation of three centuries of transactions between the Church and "a certain society," extending to the archbishop's own seat.
In the space for accompanying personnel, Grey added two names by hand: Special Consultant Sharlo Vane and Agent Viola Raven.
"This isn't a promotion. It's a scaffold." Grey slapped the transfer order onto his desk and made the situation plain to the two young people. "An audit of Church accounts—in the capital's deep water, the Church, the Crown, Parliament, and all the nails the Dirge Society has planted over three centuries are hoping this committee fails. Preferably with its members buried alongside it. The Grand Belfry chose me because I've just carried off the credit for Relighting Day. My reputation is at its height, and my corpse will have sufficient weight."
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
"And you're still going?" Sharlo asked.
"I am." In Grey's eyes burned the familiar flash of an old blade leaving its sheath. "For the first time in forty years, I have a warrant that reaches the 'seats above.' Sharlo, the Grand Organist's eleven faces, eight missing orphans, the 'dues,' Emery's true body—every trail we followed halfway only to have it break off 'higher up' has its loose end in the capital. This time, I intend to pull them out one by one."
Sharlo looked above the old inspector's head. At the words "the capital," the tangled mass of amber writing churned more violently than ever before. And at the very bottom, the old line he had first glimpsed in the lamplight of Chapter Ten now shone like a fresh wound:
【He will betray everything he is loyal to—in the name of loyalty.】
In his pocket, the gilt playbill felt cold as ice through his clothes.
Leading Player: Barnaby Grey. Location: St. Alden.
"Chief," Sharlo heard himself say. "We'll go. But I have one condition."
"Say it."
"Once we're in the capital, no matter what the investigation finds, no matter how well or badly matters stand—" Sharlo spoke one word at a time. "Every Monday evening, you play a game of chess with us. You've played against yourself for forty years. From now on, someone sits across the board."
Grey stared. "What sort of condition is that?"
"A nail," Sharlo said. "One hammered in across the board from you. Chief, the larger the game you arrange, the more you need someone to remind you once a week: you're not only the chess player; you're also a piece on the board. I told you that before we drew the net tight in Lowtown. You said the old Duskwarden who trained you had told you exactly the same thing. He died in a scheme that calculated every move except his own. Chief, from now on, I'll say it to your face every Monday."
The old inspector stared at him for a long moment, then abruptly laughed until every wrinkle at the corners of his eyes bunched together.
"Agreed," he said. "One game every Monday. The winner washes the teacups."
* * *
On the last night before their departure, the Fogbank district held a dinner whose purpose no one named aloud.
Two tables had been joined together in Mrs. Porter's parlor. Thomas and Cheryl came bearing fine tea from the firm and a fresh tray of honey cakes. Mick wore his best coat and carried dishes in and out, already half the host. Selden made an exception and descended the tower, the old warden bringing a small crock of homemade medicinal liquor which, he claimed, "kept Lamplighters from nodding off." Even the landlady of the Anchor and Bell sent a basket of smoked herring with a note: The one who drinks on credit had better come back from the capital to settle his account.
As usual, no one spoke of cases over dinner. They discussed coal prices, Thomas's promotion to section head, the new counter Cheryl had opened in her silk shop, and Mick's plans to attend night school and learn to read the following month. "Can't have Mr. Sharlo reading the Agency files to me forever."
After the wine had gone around the table three times, Mrs. Porter suddenly set down the soup ladle.
"I'm going to say a few words." The old woman surveyed the table, her voice as loud as ever though her eyes had already reddened. "When old Vane left, this building was cold as a well. Then this lad came downstairs and said, Mrs. Porter, I've got a feeling there's a commission coming today. Rubbish. One look told me he hadn't had a proper meal in three days." Soft laughter passed around the table. "Now the well is warm. Someone lives upstairs, the room downstairs is full of people, and even the bloody—" The old woman stopped and swallowed the profanity. "Even the sun is new."
She raised her cup.
"I don't understand the cases you people handle. I understand one thing: this lad is going to the capital to do necessary work. Raise your cups, all of you—to those who do necessary work."
Her voice held steady. "Finish it, then come home."
"Finish it, then come home!" Cups struck together around the table.
Sharlo drained his cup and, in the instant his head lowered, swiftly wiped one eye. When he looked up, Viola was watching from diagonally across the table. Her glass was empty.
The agent who never drank had made an exception for one cup tonight. She lifted the empty glass toward him, ever so slightly, and her lips moved soundlessly.
He understood. She said: a reunion play.
* * *
The following morning, at Kandelburg North Station, the special steam train for the capital.
White mist rolled across the platform. Grey had boarded half an hour early, claiming he needed to secure a seat facing away from the engine. It was the old inspector's particular custom: his back to the road ahead, his face to the road behind. "When a man is old, he prefers to watch his home recede, not trouble rush at him."
Sharlo and Viola stood at the carriage door for their final farewells. Mick pushed a packet of honeyed ginger into Sharlo's hands for the journey—"Miss Raven taught me the recipe." Selden merely gripped both their hands, and the strength of the tower warden's grasp said everything. Thomas presented them with a handwritten Guide to Prices and Exchange in the Capital, punctilious enough to be absurd and useful enough to be outrageous.
The whistle shrieked.
As the train began to move, Sharlo leaned beside the window and watched Kandelburg recede in the morning light. The canals, Fogbank, the white-stone portico on Iris Street, the blue-green lamps of Lowtown, Dawn Tower dwindling in the distance. At its summit, an almost invisible thread of warm golden light burned quietly, like a person standing between heaven and earth and keeping his promise.
"What are you thinking?" Viola sat opposite him.
"About the day I arrived," Sharlo said. "Three months... no, almost five months ago. I woke in that building with three copper tinders in my pocket, two sets of memories fighting inside my head, and one possession to my name: a pocket watch that stopped at midnight. Back then, I asked myself the same question every day: who am I, and what am I to this world?"
"And now you know?"
"Half of it." Sharlo watched the fields stream backward beyond the glass. The first snow after the winter solstice had fallen. The land lay clean and white, the sky looked newly blue, and the new sun spread light everywhere. "Who I am remains an account in hopeless disorder—the Curtainbreaker, the Worldcrosser, the Daydream Agency's nominal detective, Unclassifiable Number Three. But what I am to this world, I know."
He took the pocket watch from his coat and opened it. The hands advanced steadily. Tick, tock, tick, tock.
"I am its audience," he said. "I've seen its ugliest play, and I've seen its finest. Once you've watched, you can't return the ticket."
Across from him, Viola watched him for a moment, then took something from her luggage and placed it on the little table between them. It was the closing report she had kept at the bottom of her drawer, still lacking only the date beneath her signature. She had brought it with her.
"When we reach the capital," she said, "help me find a brazier. This is out of date. It should be burned. I'll write a new one."
She paused and looked out at the new sun. In the same level tone she used to recite regulations, she said something that was not at all a regulation. "I intend the new one to be rather longer."
The train went south across the snowfields. To the rhythm of wheels striking rails, Sharlo leaned back and closed his eyes.
There was no theatre in the dark, no spotlight, no announcing voice—only the ordinary warmth of a shallow sleep belonging to an ordinary traveller. Yet in the deepest reach of that slumber, immeasurably far away, he faintly heard a sound: a group moving through their marks in a rehearsal room, speaking lines, breaking into laughter, the clapperboard snapping clear—
A play rehearsed through two lifetimes was proceeding steadily toward its opening night inside a lamp three hundred years old.
(Volume I · Love Unmakes the Scarlet Queen — End)
Volume II: Loyalty Unmakes the Plotweaver