Circle Three

They buried Sir Aldous Crane at the ford on the third morning, under the beacon he had asked for, and the Duke paid for the stone in sovereigns.

Tamsin kept the Harrow Lantern burning through all three nights of the Mirefold storms, a lesser spell each dusk and cantrips in between, until she could do the lesser without seeing sparks. On the fourth day the sky cleared, the river fell, and a rider came from Harrow with word from the Guildmaster: come back, bring the lantern, and bring the tooth.

She did not ask how Hesper knew about the tooth.

Harrow had changed in four days. The Duke's banners still hung from the guildhall, but there were Haldane men on the bridge now, and Red Ledger men on Coin Street, and the town had the tight, listening quiet of a place that expected something to break. Tamsin went straight to the guild. Hesper Quill was not there. Hesper Quill, the rider said, was at the Red Ledger, and so was everyone else.

Everyone was. The Red Ledger's counting room was full: Duke Rennard at the head of the long table with Edran Vale, his steward, standing at his shoulder; Count Varro Haldane at the foot with Soren and Wren on either side of him; Master Oswin Drake of the Red Ledger behind his own counter looking as if he would rather be anywhere else; and the Lamplighter, Hesper Quill, leaning on the wall by the door with her arms folded. And in the middle of the room, in a chair with a Haldane man-at-arms on each side, sat Edric Vale, clerk of the Red Ledger, with a wooden ledger-box open on the table in front of him.

In the box, on a bed of receipts, lay the Ashcombe signet ring.

"Rook," said Hesper. "Good. Close the door."

Tamsin closed it. Nobody looked at her twice; she was the hedge-mage with the lantern, and the room had bigger things to look at.

"Say it again," the Duke said to the clerk. "For the Guildmaster's girl, who was not here. Say what you told the Count."

Edric Vale's ink-stained hands were flat on the table. He had the look of a man who has decided that the truth is now the cheaper option. "I took the ring," he said. "On the night of the feast. I was in the hall with the Red Ledger's accounts for the innkeeper, and the strongbox was on the Duke's table and open, and I took the ring and put it in my sleeve. I did not take it for myself. I was paid to take it. Ten sovereigns in advance, a hundred when I delivered it. That is more than the Red Ledger pays me in ten years."

"Paid by whom?"

"I don't know. I swear it on the Ledger. The offer came by raven, sealed in black wax with a Haldane raven in it, unsigned. The sovereigns came the same way, in a purse tied to the bird's leg. I was to leave the ring in the beacon pillar at the ford when the Lantern Guild sent its mage out, and someone would collect it. Then the beacon died, and the Warden sent for a mage early, and the mage went out before I could get there, and I panicked and kept it in my box, and..." He stopped. "And the steward came asking about ravens, and I knew it was over."

"The same seal," Edran Vale said quietly, from the Duke's shoulder. "The same black wax, the same raven. The letter that told me where to look was sealed exactly so. Whoever hired this man also tried to lead me to him. I do not know why."

Count Varro Haldane's face was the colour of brick. "I did not send those birds. I have said it to the Hand and I say it to the room. My seal has been copied, or stolen, and I will have the hand that did it."

"Father," said Wren Haldane, "nobody in this room believes you sent them. If you had wanted the Duke's ring you would have taken it in daylight and said so." Soren Haldane, beside her, put his hand on his father's arm, and for once the Count let him.

So that was the question, Tamsin thought, standing by the door with the lantern against her hip. Not whether the Count was lying. Whose hand was behind the raven? Someone with a Haldane seal and a hundred sovereigns to spend and a reason to want the Duke's ring at the ford on the night the beacon went dark. She did not have an answer. Neither, by their faces, did anyone else.

But the ring was found. That part was over.

Duke Rennard reached into the ledger-box and took up the Ashcombe signet and put it on his hand, and the room let out its breath. "Master Drake," he said, "your clerk is a thief and I will leave him to the Count's justice, since this is the Count's town. The ring is recovered and the matter of the ring is closed. The matter of the raven is not. Haldane, you and I will speak of that on the road to Caerlan, because we are both riding there, and because I would rather have you where I can see you."

"Agreed," said the Count, which was the first time in nine years anyone had heard him agree with an Ashcombe.

"And the guild's mage," the Duke went on, and turned, and looked at Tamsin for the first time. "Guildmaster. You told me she was Second Circle."

"She was," said Hesper Quill. "She still is, this minute. Second Circle, three years. Rook, bring the lantern here."

Tamsin brought it. Hesper took it, set it on the counter in front of Master Drake, who flinched, and put her hand over the wick-stone. "Tell the room what you did at the ford."

"I found the break in the current and ran it round the stone with a lesser spell. Then I fed the lantern a lesser every dusk for three nights and cantrips between."

"A lesser spell, held steady, three nights running, in a storm, by a mage who was sick after the first one and not after the third." Hesper looked around the room. "That is the Third Circle, as the guild counts it. The Third Circle holds a lesser steady and begins the greater workings. The Second Circle shapes cantrips and reaches for a lesser. She has stopped reaching. I have been Guildmaster of the Lantern Guild for twenty-six years and I know the difference when I see it."

She lifted the brass token from Tamsin's neck, the Second Circle token, and put in its place another on a fresh cord. It was brass too, but there were three rings cut into it instead of two.

"Tamsin Rook," said Hesper Quill, "hedge-mage of the Lantern Guild, you are of the Third Circle. Circle Three. Say it."

"Third Circle," Tamsin said. Her voice came out stranger than she meant.

"Good. Now you cost me four crowns a month instead of three, and the Duke can stop asking me whether you are the best Harrow has."

The Duke, to her astonishment, laughed. It was the first time she had heard him do it. "Then I will put it another way, Guildmaster. Sir Aldous Crane is dead, and the ford has no Warden, and the law says a Knight must hold it. A mage may hold a title up to Count. May a mage be a Knight?"

"A mage may. The law says above Count, not below."

"Then I will ask the King for a Knight of the Ford who can light her own beacon. I ride for Caerlan in two days with the Count and the Hollow Crown to think about, and I would like the Lantern Guild's Third Circle mage with me when I get there, lantern and all. Will the guild lend her?"

Hesper looked at Tamsin, and for a moment the Lamplighter was only an old woman who had lost a friend at a ford. "The guild will lend her," she said. "The guild wants her back."

Tamsin went out onto Coin Street with a Third Circle token on her neck and the Mire Hound tooth still in her sleeve, and realised she had not thought about Sir Aldous Crane for nearly an hour, and then thought about nothing else all the way home.