The Keeper of the Mist

by Rachel Neumeier

  It was a lovely cake, Keri had to agree, privately. And it should taste as lovely as it looked, which not every baker could claim for her confections. Keri had used the best white wheat flour, and chestnut flour for the flavor, and six eggs, and cream whipped so stiff it was nearly butter. The cake should be wonderful. She hoped it would be. She would not be able to taste it herself, because Merin’s mother had not invited her to the wedding.

  On the other side of the kitchen, the door swung back, its bell chiming. Keri turned, surprised, still holding the cake platter with both hands, ready to explain politely that the shop was to the left and that the kitchen was not open to visitors. Tassel slid off the table, ready to be firm herself if she thought Keri was too polite.

  But then they both stood still, silent.

  The newcomers were not confused customers seeking Keri’s baked goods. Keri knew them, of course. Everyone in Glassforge knew them. The man in the front, framed by the doorway, was the Timekeeper himself. He had a bony, colorless face and eyes as pale as though the passing years had worn the color out of them and cobweb white hair bound back with a black ribbon. He wore a tailored black coat with a high collar and gold embroidery on the cuffs and innumerable brass buttons down the front, and black trousers with silk piping down the seams. He carried a large pocket watch, its gold chain looped across his hand and around his wrist. The watch had an ornate gold back and a crystal face. Keri found her eyes drawn to the steady, sharp movements of the watch’s five hands. She looked at the watch because she did not want to meet the Timekeeper’s pale eyes.

  Behind the Timekeeper stood the Doorkeeper. His coat was embroidered with crimson thread rather than gold and its buttons were much larger. The Doorkeeper was heavy-bodied, with a small, tight-pursed mouth, pouchy eyes, and soft hands. He wore rings on every pudgy finger, some plain, but others set with garnets or carnelians. He carried a heavy ring of keys on his belt, which had a buckle shaped like a dragon biting its own tail.

  At the rear, standing diffidently to one side, holding the door for the other two and entering the bakery kitchen only after they moved aside to make room, was the Bookkeeper. She was a thin, pallid woman with straw-colored hair pinned tightly back at the nape of her neck. All her features were narrow: she had squinty, secretive eyes and a sharp nose and a mouth tight as a miser’s purse. She carried a small book bound in black leather and a pen made of polished bone, and wore an elaborate black gown heavily embroidered with blue thread the rich color of sapphires, with ruffled shoulders and lace at the wrists. It did not suit her.

  The Timekeeper cleared his throat, a dry rattling that made him sound consumptive but was probably just meant to compel everyone’s attention. Though she tried to keep her gaze fixed on his watch, Keri’s eyes rose to meet his. He bent his head, masking what little expression he wore. He asked, in a flat tone that somehow made it clear he already knew what answer he would receive, “Kerianna Ailenn, called Keri the baker?”

  “Yes,” Keri said. She meant to say it firmly, but discovered, when she could barely hear herself, that she had whispered. She set the heavy platter on the table without looking; it was more luck than care that the frosted cake did not smash down in ruins upon the floor. Beside her, Tassel was standing perfectly still, the back of one elegant hand pressed to her mouth in a pose that might have looked affected but somehow didn’t. Keri wished her friend would say something—would do something—would break the moment. But Tassel only stared at the Timekeeper, her dark eyes wide and stunned. Almost as stunned, Keri thought, as she felt herself.

  Keri asked at last, when no one else spoke, “Why have you…Why have you come seeking me?” Her throat felt tight, and her voice sounded, even to her own ears, as husky and dry as the Timekeeper’s. She already knew what answer he would give her. She and the Timekeeper had fallen into a ritual, question and answer, and so now he would say—

  “The Lord is dead,” the Timekeeper told her gravely. “This is your hour, Kerianna Ailenn. This is your hour and your day.”

  The sense of inevitability deepened. Keri had imagined this moment, but she had known, she had always known, it would never really come. Now it had, and despite the guiding ritual, the moment was nothing like she had imagined. Keri couldn’t help protesting. “You can’t be—this can’t be right.”

  “I am not mistaken,” the Timekeeper answered. His eyes seemed as flat as a serpent’s. His gaze held Keri’s as a serpent’s gaze might hold a sparrow, so that she thought it would take a physical effort to wrench her eyes from his. But she did not try to look away from him.

  He said with no sign of emotion, “All the signs are clear. It is your hour, and you must grasp it, and hold it, and master it.” Reaching out, the Timekeeper set his gold-and-crystal watch down on the rough kitchen table. It gleamed there, as incongruous on that plain work surface as a polished gemstone among river pebbles.

  In Keri’s daydreams, she had been grimly pleased, coolly determined, ready to step into her high place, ready to master her new duties. Certain that she could run Nimmira much, much better than her father ever had. But now she did not feel like that at all. She was too young, she didn’t know enough, she didn’t know anything. She wasn’t ready.

  She knew that her dreams were not a good guide for her real life. She was abruptly furious with the Timekeeper for showing her so clearly that she could never have been ready. If she said anything, she would say too much, and all the wrong things, and so Keri said nothing. She stood quite still, her eyes fixed again on the Timekeeper’s watch, because if she met his eyes, she would shout at him. The hands of the watch moved: the quick, thin black one, and the steady sapphire one with its blunt tip, and the hour hand of glittering rose-tinted crystal, and the silver one shaped like an arrow that counted off the passing days. And the other one, the slender one inlaid with pearl, which seemed immobile because it counted off the slow years and not mere hours or days.

  “Your time is no longer your own,” said the Timekeeper. His dust-dry voice somehow riveted the attention as a shout could not have. “If a new Timekeeper does not come forward to serve you, and if you wish, I am willing to take back the post.”

  Keri stared at the watch, at its moving hands that ticked away time.

  “Take it,” said the Timekeeper. His voice was quiet, but it was an urgent sort of quiet.

  Keri reached out and touched the Timekeeper’s watch with the tip of one finger, cautiously, as though she were afraid it might burn her. She was afraid of it, but that was not why she was cautious. Then she looked up at last to meet the Timekeeper’s pale gaze. She said after a moment, the line right out of a thousand plays and puppet shows, “I thank you for your service and accept this moment and hour from your hand.” Her voice sounded flat and strange to her ears, as though someone else were speaking. She felt like she was standing outside her own body, manipulating it as a player manipulated a puppet.

  The Timekeeper formally inclined his head and stepped back.

  The Doorkeeper shouldered to the front, giving the Timekeeper—the former Timekeeper—no more than a brusque nod. His round mouth pursed as he looked Keri up and down, as though now that he came to examine her more closely, he was, after all, inclined to believe that his presence in the bakery kitchen, and that of his companions, was indeed an unimaginably peculiar mistake. His said, in a surprisingly beautiful and rather scornful tenor, “Well, well. Who would have thought of this? I always expected it to go to Brann, myself. A little bit of a thing, aren’t you? A mere child.”

  Keri was surprised by her sharp anger at this dismissal. She felt her shoulders straighten and her mouth tighten, and deliberately tipped her chin up to meet the Doorkeeper’s eyes.

  The Doorkeeper either did not see or disregarded Keri’s anger. He let his breath out in a sigh, lifted his shoulders in a weighty shrug, hooked the ring of keys off his belt with a flourish, and said, according to the ritual, “All the doors of Nimmira will open or shut fast at your word. May you always know whic
h locks to turn and which to leave fast shut. But if a new Doorkeeper does not come forward to serve you, don’t send to me. I’m done.” He dropped the keys on the worktable next to the gold watch, his gesture not only of relinquishment but also of disdain. He looked Keri up and down once more, shook his ponderous head in bemused scorn, turned massively without waiting for her to formally thank him for his service or accept the keys, and strode out, letting the door slam behind him.

  The door bounced against its frame, and the bell chimed once and then again. Tassel lowered her hand from her mouth and looked uncertainly in that direction before the former Timekeeper, to Keri’s surprise, put out his own hand and stopped the door swinging. He turned his patient, pale gaze toward the Bookkeeper, who coughed, cleared her throat, and edged forward warily, as though the worn gray wood of the floor might open abruptly up into a pit to swallow her. The woman met Keri’s eyes for a moment, but then her gaze slid aside. Rather than speaking directly to Keri, she said to the air a foot to Keri’s left, “All of your household accounts and the accounts of your Nimmira are in—are in order.” Her voice was scratchy and thin, like the voice of the wind that moved through winter-dry grasses. She added, her gaze still directed to the air, “May all the accounts and records of Nimmira remain orderly in your hands,” and leaned forward to drop the small book and the bone pen beside the massive ring of keys.

  Keri nodded and started to thank the woman with the proper phrases, but the former Bookkeeper darted a glance at the Timekeeper, jerked her gaze back toward Keri, and finished hastily, her thin voice audibly trembling, “If no one—if no new Bookkeeper comes forward to serve you, I’m sorry, but please don’t think of me.” She turned so quickly she half stumbled and then ducked away, through the door and out of sight.

  For a moment, they all stared after her.

  Then Tassel said, “Can you believe that woman? Look, she’s all but got the corner of that book in your cake’s frosting, Keri! How can she have been so careless?” She picked the book up with an oddly tender concern and paused, a strange expression on her face, as though the book were not what she had expected. As though it were somehow too heavy in her hands, or too light. Then she picked up the pen as well and tucked it securely into her hair above her left ear, where it gleamed, ivory and jet, like a decoration.

  “That was quick,” the former Timekeeper remarked in a dry tone. His pale gaze returned to Keri, and he added, “Generally that indicates a good succession and a strong and proper choice, Lady. If—”

  The door slammed open, and Tassel’s cousin Cort came in, moving with a fast, determined stride. What had brought him bursting into her bakery kitchen, Keri could not imagine. Well, he was looking for Tassel, presumably. Though in fact, Cort’s attention passed over his cousin without a pause. His scowl was entirely for Keri, and she realized she might after all be able to guess his news. He was going to tell them the Lord had died, and he’d somehow guessed about the succession coming to her.

  Keri found she was furious Cort. She was angry with her father, who had never noticed her mother after that one night’s seduction and had never acknowledged Keri at all. She was furious with the whole town, which had debated whether Brann or Domeric—or maybe Lucas—would succeed the old Lord and had paid no more attention to Keri than to her mother. Keri the baker, said the townspeople, and never used her other name. But she was angriest of all with Cort because he’d guessed about the succession and had come so urgently to tell her how upset he was about it. She glared at him.

  Cort came to a halt and stared back at her. But then his glance fell on the gold watch and the abandoned ring of keys, and his scowl deepened into a look of frank alarm. “What is this?” he demanded, his big hands closing into fists. His voice was harsh, even intimidating—a voice meant for shouting. Although in fact Cort seldom raised his voice. He seldom had to, because usually he got his way before a disagreement got as far as shouting. He was hardly older than Keri or Tassel, but like all Tassel’s cousins, he had gotten his growth early, and he had grown up fast after the death of his father. Keri had known just what that was like, but she hated how Cort seemed not to have noticed that she, too, had grown up. She hated how he still treated her like a little girl, like Tassel’s little sister.

  Now he said, glowering at the table, “You can’t simply leave those lying there, Keri! Don’t you know how dangerous that is?” He strode forward, passed over the watch as though it were not there, and snatched the keys off the table. Then, as they jangled and clashed in his hands, he stopped, his nonplussed gaze focused on the spiky cluster of keys on the ring.

  “As I said,” stated the former Timekeeper. He gave Keri a scant nod. “A good succession.”

  “Do you think so?” said Keri, sounding angry even to herself. She set her teeth against further words and glared at him.

  Cort blinked and looked up, as though he had noticed the old man for the first time. “Succession?” he said blankly, and Keri realized he had not guessed what had happened after all. So he was only finding out about it now. She jerked her head up and glared some more, daring him to say anything.

  “The succession?” Cort repeated, and stared at Keri. He was a tall young man, almost as tall as the Timekeeper. But save for their height, the two men could not have been more different. There was nothing about Cort that was colorless or spare or patient. He was brown as the earth: hair the russet of oak leaves in the autumn, eyes the rich color of good loam, sun-darkened skin. He moved, generally, with the impatient energy of the earth in the springtide, when life burst forth everywhere, uncontainable. But just at the moment, astonishment seemed to have brought him to a brief pause.

  “Perhaps a third Keeper will find you before the day is past,” the former Timekeeper murmured. His eyes met Keri’s, inexpressive and patient.

  “No,” said Keri, and then wondered why she thought so. But she said again, “No.” She lifted up the watch in her right hand, coiling its gold chain in her left. It was heavy, much heavier than it appeared. She looked down at the sharp, predictable movements of its hands—the thin black hand and the sapphire one, for the other three, of course, moved only imperceptibly. She found herself waiting, beyond reason, to see the arrow-headed hand move. She wished she could wait long enough to see the pearl hand count off the measure of the year. The patience implicit in that desire was, in an odd way, an anodyne against all confusion and anger.

  But, though it was something of an effort to give it up, she held the watch out in both her hands and said in a voice that sounded almost normal, “One among us should know what he is doing.” Then she took a breath and said formally, entering back into the required ritual, “You have given your post into my hands. But no other coming forward, I ask you to take it back. Will you once again take up the charge of the hours, and count off for me the passing years?”

  Cort drew a sharp breath, but he said nothing. Tassel glanced quickly at her cousin and then at Keri, but she didn’t speak, either. Keri was aware of Tassel, of Cort, but her awareness of them had become tangential. She was far more sharply aware of the passing seconds, and of the old Timekeeper, who extended one long, bony hand without comment and accepted once more the weight of the gold watch and the duty it carried.

  Keri, feeling obscurely as though she had been relieved of a heavy burden and had simultaneously picked a different burden up, lowered her hands to her sides. She wondered what she should do, or say, or think. The necessities of the succession had contained them all and carried them forward, she thought, but the familiar ritual had ended now. Her anger had broken with it, somehow. They were all left bewildered, like fish stranded in strange waters by an ebbing flood, to manage their own affairs as best they might. She looked around the bakery kitchen, as though it might contain cues for her about what came next. But the jars of flour and oil and sugar, the little wooden boxes of salt and potash, told her nothing. She found herself gazing at the chestnut cake, with its peach jam hidden behind sugar flowers and swirls of cr
eam frosting. She picked up the platter with both hands.

  “You are no longer a baker, Kerianna,” the Timekeeper reminded her.

  As though Keri needed a reminder. But that husky, desiccated voice concealed whatever reprimand or pity or scorn the Timekeeper felt; it was neither gentle nor stern, neither urgent nor casual. He spoke without any expression at all.

  “You’re the…The Lord is gone?” Cort demanded. His tone was easy to read: he sounded incredulous. He turned toward the Timekeeper. “Keri is…?”

  “Yes,” said the Timekeeper, with a patience that might have been offensive except it was too deep a patience for that. He had seen Lords come and go, that tone implied, and always the succession was attended by confusion and incredulity.

  “But—” said Cort. He stared at Keri. “You are the new Lady?”

  Keri’s anger returned instantly. “Evidently,” she said sharply. “You’ll just have to get used to the idea, whether it was Brann you preferred, or Domeric.”

  “I—” began Cort, and stopped.

  “I thought it might be Lucas,” admitted Tassel, her tone deliberately light. Tassel hated disagreement and disorder and always tried to coax everyone into good humor. “What a waste of perfectly beautiful eyelashes.”

  Cort transferred his incredulous stare to his cousin.

  “I,” murmured the Timekeeper, “suspected it would be some nameless by-blow none of us had ever heard of.”

  “Did you?” said Keri. Though everyone had known her father was the Lord of Nimmira, she doubted that anyone at all had ever expected anything to come of her parentage. Her mother had been too common, too forceful in rejecting any favors from her once lover…and Keri had never shown the dazzling charm of any of her acknowledged half brothers…and she was, after all, a girl, and still very young.

  “How do you know?” Cort asked. He turned to the Timekeeper. “How can you tell? Are you sure?”