Page 147 of Flames and Blood

I run my fingertip down the logs of entries and exits, and my hand goes still on the page.

“There’s more,” he says, flipping back to where he’s bookmarked another section. “Here, and here.” He points out more logs. I look at the second page longer than the first. The entries are in the same column, and they are not in the same hand.

I meet his eye, and he gives a nod.

“This is the gatekeeper’s log,” I say, turning it so the front row can see. “It shows unscheduled entries and exits before my so-called death.” I turn through the pages. “When I got back, that same person signed out for a brief supply run. He came back three days later.”

“Who?” somebody says.

“These are days he can’t account for,” I say, not answering immediately. “No supplies to show for it. Nobody asked him where he’d been.” I close the book. “The week I came back alive, that person went somewhere and lied to the gate about it.”

“And there’s one more thing,” I say. “The succession. A new line of succession was drawn up last spring, while you all believed I was dead. Ask the council whose name stood at the top of it.”

Nobody has to ask. Heads turn all over the hall, and they all turn the same way.

I look across the hall and find him without having to search.

“You were the one, Sereth. You went out again the week I came back. And you were trying to find a way to fake an accident.”

Nobody moves.

“You sold me. You paid for a body my mother would bury with my name on it. Then you pretended to mourn with her.”

He doesn’t panic. He doesn’t reach for anything.

“Kalli,” he says.

That’s all. My name, gently, the way you’d say it to somebody you were worried about. I watch two rows of people stop being sure.

“Have your say,” my mother tells him. “This clan hears both sides.”

“I’m not going to call my cousin a liar,” he says. “I won’t do that to her.”

“Then answer it.”

“I can’t tell you where I was.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“Won’t.” He says it plainly, and half the hall takes that for honesty, because that’s what it’s built to sound like. He turns to face the benches. “I grieved her the same as the rest of you did. You all watched me do it. She was gone. I was here.”

“That’s not an answer either,” I say.

“No.” He looks back at me, and there is no anger in him anywhere. “You came home to a family that had already buried you, and nobody asked how any of it felt for you. I understand why you need to blame somebody, Kalli. I do.”

It works. I watch it work. Doubt comes back into faces I have known since I could walk, and I have nothing left to stop it with.

“I need you to know that I don’t hate you for this,” he goes on. “Finding facts that make it look like I’d do such a thing. Details that can’t be proven in any way.” He looks around at the others. “You’re looking for answers and trying to make them stick to someone. It’s your way of healing.”

“It’s not—” I start, not knowing how to defend myself against this line of reasoning.

Then my mother stands up.

“I buried that body myself,” she says. “I held those hands before they closed the coffin. There was a ring on the left one, and I remember thinking, even through all of it, that it sat wrong.” Her hand closes on the arm of her chair. “I told myself grief was making me imagine things, because I didn’t want to consider the alternative.”

She looks at him.

“You grieved with me, and the whole time, you were the reason I was standing there.”