At the back door of the Main Stage, the porter was still sitting on that three-thousand-year-old bench.
The bloated figure hunched forward. At the sight of visitors, he rose first, inspected the door hinges, and dusted the threshold. After more than a year on duty, he performed the routine with an old porter's ease. When he recognised the arrivals, his cloudy eyes brightened. Then, not knowing what expression he ought to wear, he merely shifted the bench aside to clear their way.
Sharlo stopped in the doorway, opened the black notebook, and found the page.
"Neither New Year nor festival," he said. "One extra reading."
"Bassoon."
The porter's body swayed. He opened his mouth but still knew only those few words. "Guests—the wind is high at the back door. Come in, quickly." This time, however, he pressed himself close to the door and left an especially wide passage, as though yielding the whole three-thousand-year-old doorway to the man who remembered to read his name every year.
As Tide-Lass passed him, she stopped, looked up at the nameless fat old man, and suddenly gave him a proper bow. "Good day, Grandpa Porter."
The porter froze. For the first time in three thousand years at the Main Stage's back door, a child had called its keeper Grandpa. At a loss, he waved his hands; halfway through, the gesture became one of holding the door. "Dark inside. Child—watch your step."
Not one of the seals on the Thirty-Seven Vaults was missing.
The ink of "Vesper Bureau Overseas Survey Team, Survey Paper No. 7" had remained squarely affixed to the vault doors for three years. The paper had aged at the edges, but the writing had not faded. Sharlo led the others from door to door to verify each seal. Then they performed the first official act of this visit: open the vaults and return what lay inside.
The first door they opened was Homesickness Vault No. 7.
The instant the seal came away, three thousand years of whispering behind the door fell silent as one. Then an aged voice with the accent of a northern fishing village quavered through the panel, asking the same question it had asked three years before.
"...Are those people outside?"
"People," Sharlo said as he opened the vault. "Your families have come. This time, we're not here to put up a seal."
"We're here to take you home."
Viola had drafted the rules for restitution aboard the ship: consignments would be divided by origin; identifiable owners would receive their property in person; property whose owners had died would be entrusted to the Stillwater Society for passage. The first consignment aboard comprised the native accents of towns across the southern continent. Four hundred and ten pawned accents filled six crates to the brim. As each crate crossed the gangplank, whispers sounded continuously through its seams, like six crates of swallows flying home.
Pip counted them aboard, calling out each crate as it came. "Southern continent, native accents, sixty-eight voices—loaded!" By the third crate, the Director of the Maritime Patrol Office was hoarse. He had worked this shipping route for eleven years. For eleven years, he had always carried cargo north. Today was the first time he had loaded it southbound.
"Director," a sailor asked, "what cargo description goes on the manifest for this voyage?"
Pip thought, then took up a pen and entered three words on the Maritime Patrol Office's manifest:
"Passengers Homeward Bound."
During a pause in loading, the Stage Announcer came.
It stood beside the long belt at the cargo hatch and watched crate after crate of "Passengers Homeward Bound" loaded south. It watched for a full quarter of an hour without intervening or speaking. Sharlo went over and stood beside it.
"The Main Stage won't interfere?" he asked.
"It cannot," the Stage Announcer said. "The seals are yours. The regulations are yours. Now even the manifest is yours. For three hundred years, the Main Stage learned only to receive, never to return. There is no precedent for this craft. The Main Stage cannot even draft the proper form with which to stop you."
It paused. Something indefinable entered its dry tone. "Besides, the debt from the second production remains carried on the Main Stage's books. A troupe in arrears that bars a customer's goods by force would become the laughingstock of the profession."
"So your esteemed Stage will simply watch?"
"Watch," it said. "Watching is something the Main Stage knows. Three hundred years, and this is the first time it has seen goods go home. Mr. Vane, I will be frank: this interlude keeps the Main Stage awake more than the two in which you defeated it."
"You don't sleep."
"No, we do not." The Stage Announcer watched another crate of accents cross the gangplank, its seams alive with chatter. "Yet these last few days, the Main Stage has understood for the first time why the title of your play is so troublesome."
"Goods in a vault are 'kept.' Goods going home—" it said. "'Someone Keeps Watch.' For three hundred years, the Main Stage entered those two accounts under the wrong headings."
As before, the lamp room door had no lock.
Sharlo knocked three times. The young, clear voice within answered, "Come in. All of you. There are more today; I've counted."
The lamp room was unchanged: one room, one silver lock suspended in the air, one old mat. The Keeper of the Star Gate sat cross-legged before the lock, white-robed and barefoot. Though his face remained unfinished after three thousand years, his features were easier than on their last visit, like someone who had finally received word that his relief was coming.
He looked first at Cole. More precisely, he looked at the long parcel wrapped in three layers of oilcloth in Cole's arms.
"You brought them," he said.
Cole came forward and knelt beside the mat, unwrapping the oilcloth layer by layer. The black-iron fire tongs emerged. Fused marks like dark glass along their jaws glimmered beneath the silver lamp. Holding the tongs flat in both hands, the boy raised them above his head and delivered, word by word, the message his master had taught him.
"The nineteenth Chief Lamplighter in Dawn Tower's three-hundred-year line of keepers entrusts his apprentice with their return."
"Your tongs, returned. We know how to watch the fire ourselves now."
The lamp room remained silent for a long time.
The Keeper of the Star Gate did not receive them at once. He studied the tongs for ten full breaths before reaching out and taking them with the utmost gentleness. His posture was less that of reclaiming something loaned than of helping an old friend to his feet after a long journey home.
"Three thousand years," he said. "When I lent them, I tossed them to that mortal almost without thought. He was running in such haste. I feared he would reach the edge of the sky empty-handed, and its fire was hot."
"I never expected them to be passed down for three thousand years." He turned the tongs over and ran a fingertip across the layer of fused glass. "Still less did I expect that I would lend out a pair of tongs and receive them back with this added."
"That mark was seared by the sunset he carried," he said. "These tongs have held the fire of a true sun. Of all the iron implements in the world, they alone have earned that distinction."
He laid the tongs across his knees and looked up at Cole. "Thank your master for me. And thank all of you for those words: we know how to watch the fire ourselves now." He paused, and genuine amusement surfaced through three thousand years of exhaustion. "For three thousand years, the keeper of the lock has heard 'hold on.' This is the first time anyone has said, 'We can watch it ourselves now.'"
"Those words weigh more than the tongs."
Cole withdrew to sit beside the mat. Then, remembering something, he pulled a small notebook from inside his coat. "Right. Master asked me to carry a message too. He says the flame in the tower is steadier this year than last. Dreams are being told freely, there's oil enough for everyone, and moss has grown where the forty blank name-niches were chiselled flat. Green moss."
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"He says if you can look south through the keyholes—" The boy relayed the words one by one. "Look once toward Kandelburg. That little flame is what the courage you lent has become, still burning today."
The Keeper of the Star Gate was silent for a long time. Then he slowly turned his head and truly looked through the southern window. Across three thousand miles of sea and a sky full of keyholes, none of them knew whether he saw it. But when he drew his gaze back, he said softly:
"I see it. It burns well."
Sharlo clarified the matter of the dates on behalf of every keeper of the lamps.
"There is an old account whose two sides don't agree," he said. "You say the tongs were lent three thousand years ago, on the day the old sun went out. But Dawn Tower's history says they were passed down within the tower for three hundred years, and the first Chief used them to reclaim the First-Kindling flame. Three thousand years. Three hundred. There is a difference of twenty-seven hundred years."
"There is no difference," the Keeper of the Star Gate said. "The same thing was done twice."
"Three thousand years ago, when the old sun went out, that mortal borrowed the tongs and reclaimed the final armful of light from the edge of the sky. That flame was sealed into White Strand Island's old lamp and hidden with the island. He was the first keeper of lamps in the world. From his hands, the tongs passed generation to generation along the ancient lineage of those who kept the light."
"Three hundred years ago, when the gods finished dying and the red sun ran dry, one branch of that ancient line raised Dawn Tower in Kandelburg as an emergency lamp. The man who raised the tower was its first Chief. From the implements handed down by his ancestors, he brought out these tongs. From the fire preserved by the ancient line, he drew one flame and kindled the sunwick," he said. "The tower is three hundred years old. The tongs are three thousand. The tower's history is not wrong, and neither am I. The tower records its own years. The tongs record the years of the world."
"Then the fire tongs were never handed down by Dawn Tower alone," Cole said softly. "They belonged to everyone who kept watch over fire, from the night the sunset was reclaimed."
"Yes." The Keeper of the Star Gate raised the tongs and studied them in the silver lamp's glow. "Now they have returned. When this performance is over..." His voice lowered. "I'll take them to my sister's stove and tend her fire once. In three thousand years, I've never tended it for her."
Inside the lamp room, Viola settled a personal account of her own.
She stopped three paces before the silver lock and gave the young keeper a Duskwarden's lamp-bearing salute.
"Raven," she identified herself. "The one who did not sleep for six years. You left me a message once: the collection notice was on its way, and the playbill had printed my name. At the time, you advised him to go back and settle the account before returning."
"The account is settled," she said. "I have awakened. I came in person to close this entry and offer my thanks."
The Keeper of the Star Gate looked her over from head to foot. His scrutiny carried no intrusion. It was the look of someone who had kept watch for three thousand years, counting one more thing the human world had won.
"Awake," he said. "I can see it in your colour. For three thousand years, looking down through this window, I've seen one crop after another of people in the human world wear out the night. Of all those who outlasted it, you are the first I watched with my own eyes."
"I wasn't the only one who won," Viola said.
"I know." The Keeper of the Star Gate smiled. "That is what makes it precious. An account won by one person ends when the victory is won. An account won by many..." He tipped his chin toward the notebook in the crook of her arm. "That becomes a regulation and passes down. What is written in your book will save more people than you can count."
He offered the warning of his own accord.
"You measured the seam on your way here," he said. It was not a question. "It has widened. I will tell you why."
"I did not open it. My lock holds the clasp at the centre of the curtain. The clasp has not moved by a hair, and I stake three thousand years upon it." He lifted a hand and pointed vaguely southwest. "But the curtain has four corners. The chain securing its southwestern corner descends beneath the Eye of the Sea. Someone tampered with it three hundred years ago. Their wars, their coin casting, their bell tuning, their collection of homesickness—everything they have done over the years has wound that chain tighter. The tighter it is wound, the higher the corner of the curtain rises. The seam is what opens when that corner lifts."
"They call it setting the stage apron," he said. "By the winter solstice, the apron will be set."
"The winter solstice." Sharlo caught the words. "The same day as the Realmweight Rite, the anniversary of the First King's death, and the day Master Tong went with the bells."
"The same day." The Keeper of the Star Gate nodded. "Every nail planted three hundred years ago was driven into this one date. I can see their list. The Final Curtain Season, seventeen performances. They have checked off even the ones you won."
Sharlo's heart dropped with a thud.
"Checked off? We broke Home with a Full Hold, returned Dreamless Sleep, and withdrew from Never Homeward—"
"The playbill does not care who wins or loses." The Keeper of the Star Gate's voice was brutally level. "It cares only whether the performance took place. Love unmakes the Scarlet Queen—it was performed. Check. Loyalty unmakes the Plotweaver—it was performed. Check. Homecoming ends the Wayfarer—you turned it into a happy event, but it was performed. Check. The Wakebound sleeps without end—she slept and woke again, but the bill marks it performed all the same."
"Two readings belong to your accounting. Their ledger has only one field: DONE." He looked at Sharlo and spoke each word distinctly. "Seventeen performances. Twelve checked. Five remain: the Dusk Colossus, the Daystar, the Dreamwright, the Lord of Falsehoods, and the Worldcrosser. All are scheduled for the winter solstice, closing acts one after another."
"That is what you must understand," the young keeper said. "You win performance after performance, and you win them beautifully. But so long as you perform them on their playbill, each victory merely turns another page. Keep fighting this way, and on the winter solstice, the playbill will reach its end all the same."
"Then how do we fight?" Viola asked, her pen poised.
"Don't ask me." The Keeper of the Star Gate shook his head. "I keep locks. Locking is all I know. But there is one among you..." His gaze settled on Sharlo, then above Sharlo's head. "One who has never appeared on their list from beginning to end. A man without a script is beyond the playbill's reach."
"Its pages cannot turn to you," he said. "Which means you are likely the only one who can close it."
"Close the playbill." Sharlo rolled the words across his tongue. "Not tear it. Not burn it. Close it."
"Yes." For the first time, something almost like hope appeared in the Keeper of the Star Gate's three-thousand-year-old eyes. "Tear up their playbill, and they print another. Burn it, and they can recite it from memory. For three hundred years, people have stormed their performances, struck their stages, and burned their theatres. They tried it all. The playbill remains."
"Because its root is not in the paper," he said. "It lies in the thought, this is a play. While that thought exists, the playbill goes on growing. To close it—"
He paused so long that Sharlo thought he would not continue.
"The whole house must clear in their hearts," he said at last. "How to clear it, I do not know. In three thousand years, I have learned only to lock doors, never to clear a house. This is a lesson—"
"You must teach yourself."
Before they parted, the Keeper of the Star Gate entrusted them with a proper commission.
"Your offices in the human world know the rules of investigation best," he said. "Find a seal. 'Arrived as Promised.' For three hundred years, that seal has been stamped on the last page of every script. Every one of the seventeen performances in the Final Curtain Season bears it."
"No troupe is so grand that its troupe master need not sign off. That seal is the signature. Whoever holds it conceived the Final Curtain. To strike the stage, begin with its master."
"Recorded," Sharlo said. "We'll investigate as soon as we return."
Viola had already opened a case. She turned to a fresh page and wrote the heading in regulatory format: "Seal Investigation. Physical evidence: four-character seal, 'Arrived as Promised.' Known usage: final page of every script in the Final Curtain Season, spanning three hundred years. Line of inquiry: owner of seal." After the heading, she asked an investigator's question. "Is there a rubbing of the impression?"
"There is," the Keeper of the Star Gate said. "Manager Vaal copied the programme for the Final Curtain Season and saw the seal on its last page. His testimony should be in your files. And..." He considered, then offered a place none of them had expected. "The Ashen Compact's pledge vault dealt with the Main Stage three hundred years ago. By the counter's rules, every transaction produced ticket stubs in duplicate. If you want the oldest surviving impression of that seal—"
"Ask Winchell," he said. "The firm is dissolved, but its people remain. Countermen do not burn ticket stubs. Those are their lives."
"The Ashen Compact." Sharlo exchanged a look with Viola. After the long circle they had travelled, the loose end returned to that pawnshop. His uncle's native accent had been pawned there. The pages of Sharlo's violin memories had been cut there. Now even the seal of the Final Curtain would have to be traced to its root there.
"Then our first stop south is decided," he said.
Tide-Lass was the last to say goodbye.
The girl placed a small packet of pomegranate seeds beside the old mat. "Tea from the island. Brew yourself a bowl when keeping the lock gets tiring." She pointed at the fire tongs. "Granny says those tongs once held our island's old light. That makes our island kin to you too."
The Keeper of the Star Gate studied the packet for a long time before solemnly tucking it into his sleeve.
"Kin." He savoured the word, then suddenly winked at the girl. The three-thousand-year-old keeper of the lock looked like a boy who had stolen a sweet. "Accepted. When I go down to see my sister, I'll tell her I found kin in the human world."
"She hasn't heard me bring good news in three thousand years," he said. "This time, I've saved up three pieces: the tongs have returned, there is tea beside the lock, and..."
He gazed beyond the lamp room at the seam widening by the day, and past it toward the sky full of keyholes, and softly completed the third.
"Someone is going to close the playbill."
As they left the lamp room, the keyholes in the sky-curtain went through another round of lighting adjustments.
Row after row of white light warmed, then turned white again. On his first visit, Sharlo had mistaken the display for a lighting test. Now he knew enough to read it. The gaps between lights were becoming more even, and this round of adjustments came closer together than the last. The apron lights had moved from testing into focus. By the procedures of the theatre, once the lights were focused, the next step was blocking rehearsal.
"For the record." Beside him, Viola's pen never stopped. "Sky-curtain lighting sequence, Phase Two. The countdown has advanced another increment."
Sharlo did not answer. He looked back once at the lamp room—a small square chamber with one silver-white window, and behind that window a young man who had kept watch for three thousand years, a pair of fire tongs newly home across his knees.
The keeper of the lock had kept watch until he dared set a date for the first time. The keepers of the lamps had passed their duty down for more than a hundred generations. The Duskwarden had awakened. The porter had someone to read his name. Watch after watch across the world was reaching the hour for a change of guard.
Only the show in the sky still clutched a whole playbill for a performance no one was willing to leave.
"Come," he said. "South. We find the seal."