Chapter 16

MARCH 21ST

A nnice had given up on anyone buying anything in the shop around two in the afternoon. She was feeling restless - more than restless. After a bit of useless tidying in the kitchen, she decided to go up and at least put a flower or two on Grandad and Nan's grave, and Mam and Da's, too. It was too early for most flowers, of course, but one of the shops had some early wildflowers, and she bought one small nosegay.

She set off up the stairs, of course. That was tradition. Not just the burying of the dead, but a number of the old families kept to that for visiting them, remembering them. Nan had been clear about that mattering, so long as Annice could. It was a lot of stairs, but not too many to manage. She'd made it up past the halfway mark, to where the stairs curved, and there was someone sitting there. At first, the mist made it hard to focus, before she realised it was Griffin.

Who was sitting there, looking like he hadn't moved in a bit, crutches off to the edge nearest the hill. He was looking at her, a little wide-eyed, as if she'd startled him.

"What on God's green and pleasant land are you doing?" The phrase - very much Nan's and her Mam's - came out of her without thinking. "Are you all right?"

The corner of his mouth twitched up. "Sitting. This bit is not, however, terribly green."

It was not Whitby at her most pleasant, either, really, between the mist leaning into becoming a drizzle and a bit of a breeze. Annice put her hands on her hips. "You know what I meant."

Griffin lifted a hand. "I got a carter to bring me up this morning. He never came back." He then shifted to gesture at the crutches. "I'll be all right in a bit, enough to get back down."

"And how long have you been sitting there already?" Annice, well, Annice could understand why someone might go up to the Abbey. But this was foolish. Didn't he know it was foolish? He didn't answer, so then she asked, "Who was the carter?"

"Mrs Urwin - my landlady - arranged it. A nephew of hers, I think? I have been contemplating what to say or not say to her." Griffin shrugged it off, as if this problem was something he hadn't expected, but had experience with.

"He'll lig, soon as anything." Annice snorted. "She ought to have known better."

"Lig?" Griffin blinked at her.

"Um. Laze about." Annice waved a hand. "I— look. It's not right, you out here on your own." He shrugged, and even more than usual, she did not know how to interpret that. "I was going to leave some flowers. The cemetery. I won't be long. Then we can see about getting you back down sensibly." It wasn't like she could carry him. He probably knew the charms to make things lighter, same as she did. But there was no way someone like her - lightly built, six inches shorter, probably - could carry him and have it pass. But if he couldn't move, she could go fetch someone to help, or something.

Griffin took a breath, then nodded. "Of course." He hesitated, and then asked, now very cautiously. "A particular anniversary? The reason?"

It took her a moment, but then she shook her head. "Just the equinox. I wasn't going to, only." She half turned away. "Half an hour, maybe, at most. Probably less."

"Take the time." He pulled one of his feet in closer, and aimed his attention out toward the water, away from her. She waited a moment to see if he was going to say something else, and when he didn't, she kept going up the stairs. A little faster than usual, like some of her didn't want to waste unnecessary time.

She didn't hurry the flowers, though. She put them down on the graves and ran through all the things she wanted to talk to them about, all the things she wished she could, as it came out in phrases and scattered words. Words made the way she carved tiny shapes out of the jet. Her faith wasn't like Nan's or Mam's or even Grandad's, but that didn't matter. She felt better for saying it. When she was done, and done with a proper prayer that could have been said in church with everyone listening, she took a couple of breaths and turned back for the stairs.

Griffin was still right where she'd left him. "There's a bench further down. Just around the bend." She wouldn't tell him it was a coffin bench, there for the pallbearers bringing coffins up the steps to their final home, meant to give a bit more dignity.

"Give me a little more, and I'll try further. Just." There was a resignation in his voice. "You needn't stay."

Oh, now she wanted to call him a name or two. But all the ones she could think of were local words, and it was right foolish to call him names he wouldn't understand. "Can I sit?"

"Sure. Not my steps, are they?" He pulled his coat a bit more tightly around him. Then he took a breath and let it out. "Sorry. I should have planned better."

It made her cock her head and frown. "You had a plan. It's Hannah's wazzock of a nephew who's the problem. Bet he took your money and went to gamble. Or drink. Probably gamble." Then she swallowed. "Can I help somehow? Go fetch someone? Give you an arm?"

Griffin turned his head, looking at her, then he blinked. "You do mean that." He sounded startled.

"Charlus helps you. Why isn't he here, actually?" That had finally caught up with her.

"I sent him off to spend time with his family. I've been doing research. There's only so much he can do to help with that." Griffin shrugged. "And an arm's not much good when I need both hands for the crutches."

She couldn't argue with that. She didn't know enough about it, and she certainly didn't know how to ask for more details. Or dare asking and mess things up more. "What were you going to do if no one came along?"

"Maybe send a note by journal. But everyone I'd ask - I do ask people for help, just, you know. Friends. Family. Charlus, who's obligated to it, but also quite willing." Now he sounded defensive, the way Annice got when other people offered to help her, and that was an uncomfortable mirror right there. "They've got their own plans for the equinox, and I don't want to drag them away if I can manage?"

"And this is what managing looks like?" Annice's voice came out sharper than she meant to. Immediately, before she could think better of it she added, "Are you sure you're not using truth magic on me?" She got the words out, which meant there really wasn't anyone nearby, because the magic of the Pact would have warned her if someone was.

Something in it made him chuckle. "I told you, it won't work for me here. Trellech, now, that's another story." There was a little purr to his voice, saying the name, the way novels wrote about someone talking about a lover. She'd never heard it like that in person before, though she'd heard all sorts of other ways love came out in someone's voice.

"It's awfully uncomfortable. Being truthful. Thinking about being truthful like that." Annice curled her own arms around her.

"They're not meant for all the time. But I..." He considered, looking away from her. "Do you want to hear about it? Most people find my theories about it tedious."

"How long will it take for you to be ready to keep going, try for it, anyway? And how long are the theories?" Annice put it to him like that.

"Short version of the theory, then, and then yes, I will try some more steps. I do appreciate your company, actually. Both, um." He stopped, and she was sure he'd been meaning to say something else. Instead he went on, "If I tumble or something, it's good to know someone would know right away."

"Any decent person would want to help," Annice said firmly. "Theory?"

Griffin took a breath, adjusting how he was sitting a little to twist toward her. "Leaving out a lot of background that's long, I've been fascinated by the judicial magics for ages. Since I knew they existed, I think. My dad had a case in the Courts when I was nine. Nothing he'd done badly wrong, but he had to go and give formal evidence. Mum had to come with him, and they couldn't leave me alone - my sister's a bit older. She was away at school."

Annice nodded cautiously. "That part almost makes sense."

It got a laugh out of him, a warm one, and she liked the sound of it. Not that it mattered if she liked it. But he was talking, and she thought that was probably good for him. "Anyway. I went to Schola, and then straight into apprenticeship. Not something anyone in my family had done, but I loved it. Still love it. But I think that if you're spending your life in the courts, in those particular kinds of magic, you have to think about how it shapes you. Not everyone agrees with me. Some of them are even quite successful and accomplished, professionally speaking." Annice was fairly sure there was some particular person he was thinking of, speaking with the excruciating politeness someone might well use with someone he hated. The way Rob and Cliff talked about each other when they had to.

"And so you, um." She tried to figure out how to put this. "You're always thinking about the shape of it. Like when I'm carving. Everything goes into making the shape."

Griffin nodded. "Exactly. And I built myself around it. Making that shape." He gestured up toward the abbey behind them. "Like that, in miniscule. I think a lot about how the spaces we're in shape us, shape what we do, what is more or less possible."

"A life isn't small. Not over the length of it," Annice pointed out. "You went to the War. You came back. What would, um." She considered. "Were you an officer?"

"A captain, before I was injured." Now his voice was more cautious, with spaces between the words.

"What would your men have said about you?" Men like her da, that would have been. Or from somewhere else, thrown into a war that didn't make sense, with not enough of anything.

"I tried to live so they'd think I took care of them, as best I could. It worked better with some than others. And then I was gone." Griffin looked away abruptly. "I didn't quite break any promises, but it felt like I had. They felt like I had, I think."

"Did they tell you that?" Annice asked. "With words? Directly?"

Griffin kept looking away. "Most of them weren't magical. There was so much I couldn't talk about." Then, suddenly, he pushed himself with his hands, rocking upward. He got the crutch under one arm, his forearm in the curved piece, his hand braced on the handle at the bottom, then the other. "Let's give the stairs a try. Don't foul the crutch, that'd be bad, but if you could keep an eye out, anything uneven or that might catch me up."

She wasn't going to argue. And honestly, she was worried about him sitting out in the cold, even without how the last bit of talking had gone. "Sure." Annice stood, brushing her hands off on her skirt. "A step or two ahead."