He came back two days later with Ronald and Tamsin.
Ronald’s mother lived four streets from the market, so Ronald had a reason to be on Earth. Tamsin didn’t need one. When Mav told her that his father’s papers might be under a bed in the foundry district, she had her coat on before he finished the sentence.
Abel Finch was waiting for them at his door under the stair. He looked at Ronald, who had to bend almost double to get through it, and then at Tamsin with her slate.
"The big one I know," he said. "He bought two shovels from me on the day that he was Awakened. He paid too much for both of them." He nodded at Tamsin. "You’re the one who reads."
"Yes," Tamsin said.
"Good. Your father couldn’t read his own handwriting," Abel told Mav. "Nobody could, except me and your mother."
He knelt by the bed and pulled up a board from the floor. Under it, there was a flat tin box, wrapped in oiled cloth and tied with string. Abel lifted it out with both hands, the way that a man lifts something that he has carried for years. He put it on the table and untied the string. Then he stepped back.
"Go on," he said. "It’s yours."
-----
The box was full of paper.
Some of it was old and yellow, folded many times. Some of it was newer, on cheap gray paper from a shop. Most of the pages were lists: long columns of names, with dates beside them and two letters after each name.
On top of everything, there was a single sheet in a different hand. The letters were big and fast and leaned forward, as if the man who wrote them had always been in a hurry.
Mav knew that handwriting.
He hadn’t seen it in eight years, not since a note on the kitchen table that said, Back late, don’t wait for me. But he knew it at once, the way that he would have known his father’s voice. For a moment, he couldn’t touch the page, and he couldn’t speak.
Tamsin put her hand on his arm. She didn’t say anything. After a while, he nodded. She picked up the sheet and read it to him.
It was short. It explained what the rest of the box was.
Every black stone of the Bestowal wrote two letters, Corwin had written. It showed one in the hall, where everyone could see it. It wrote the other in a book that nobody saw, kept in the Concord Hall, behind the Homegate square. For the children of the houses, the two letters were always the same. For everyone else, the letter in the hall was one lower than the letter in the book.
It happened every year, in every school.
"A clerk in the Concord Hall showed him the book," Abel said into the silence. "An old man, even then. He copied the pages for your father every year. When your father died, he went on copying them for me. To this day, he leaves them under my cart once a year, wrapped in a newspaper." He shrugged. "He’s afraid every time, but he does it all the same. I think that it’s the only brave thing that he’s ever done, and he can’t stop."
Tamsin was already turning the pages. Her face had gone very still, the way that it did when she was reading numbers that she didn’t like.
"These are names," she said. "From this city. From every school hall in the city, for..." She turned more pages. "For 14 years."
"Six years of his, and eight of mine," Abel said.
Tamsin’s finger stopped on a page near the top of the pile. It was one of the newest, on gray paper, from last year. She looked at Mav, and then she turned it so that he could read it.
Maverick Silkborn. The school hall of the foundry district. E. D.
Mav read the line many times.
He had known that something was wrong with his letter. His potential had risen to D on the night that his World reached rank E. Then to C, at rank D. Quill had said that it almost never happened, and he had believed that his talent was the reason. It probably was, but the D had been there from the start. The stone had looked at him, a boy of 18 with a dead traitor’s name, and it had taken one letter away before anyone could see it.
His E had never been real. He felt a cold, slow anger, worse than anything that he had felt in the ruin.
"Mav," Ronald said in a strange voice.
Ronald had picked up the same page. He was holding it very close to his face, the way that he held things that he couldn’t read well. His finger was on a line a little further down.
Ronald Brown. The school hall of the foundry district. B. A.
-----
For a long while, Ronald didn’t move.
His ears went red, the way that they always did when he was too happy to know what to do with himself. Then the red went out of them, and his face went pale. He put the page down on the table very carefully, as if it might break.
"A," he said.
Nobody answered him.
"My mother cried, when the stone said B." Ronald’s voice was low. "She cried all the way home. She said that a boy from the foundry district with a B was the best thing that had happened on our street in 20 years. She told the neighbors and the man who sells coal." He looked at Abel. "It was a lie?"
"It was a lie," Abel said. "A very old one."
Ronald laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. He put both of his big hands over his face and laughed into them. Then he stopped laughing and sat down on Abel’s bed so hard that the frame cracked.
"But why would anyone do that?" he said through his hands.
"Because a commoner who thinks that his World stops at D will sell it cheap," Abel said. "He signs a contract for half of his yield, because it’s the best that he’ll ever get. Then he swears to a house, because he thinks that he can’t stand alone. Nobody pushes against a wall that he thinks is there." Abel’s pale eyes were very hard. "And the houses read the book. They know which commoners are worth buying. They buy them young, before the boy knows what he is."
Mav thought of Bram Hollis in his rings, on the Row, offering him a roof and a little training for a third of everything that he would ever make. He thought of Pell, with his tired eyes and his mended coat. My potential is E, so my World stopped growing a long time ago.
How many Pells were on these pages?
"Your Status says what the stone told it," Abel went on. "But your World doesn’t know that. Feed it, and it will grow past the letter. When it does, your Status will write a new one, and you’ll think that it’s a miracle." He looked at Mav. "Your father’s stone said C. His World went to rank B. That was his proof, standing on its own two feet, and that’s why they killed him."
-----
Tamsin hadn’t said anything for some time.
She had gone through every page of last year’s list while the others talked, line by line, the way that she read everything. Mav watched her finger move down the columns. He saw it stop on one name, and then on another. She was finding Brann, and then Nell, one letter higher than the stone had said.
Then her finger stopped again, near the bottom of the last page, and stayed there.
She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t move on either.
Mav leaned over her shoulder.
Tamsin Bell. The school hall of the canal district. D. C.
He looked at her. Her mouth was trembling. She was laughing, very softly, and at the same time, tears were running down her face and falling onto the gray paper. She didn’t wipe them away. She didn’t know which one she was doing.
"I always thought that I was the weak one," she said. "In every room. I made myself useful, because I thought that useful was all that I could be." She laughed again, and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "I’m sorry. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry."
"Do both," Ronald said from the bed.
So she did.
When she was calm again, she went back to the first page of the oldest list, and she began from the beginning. It would take hours, but nobody stopped her. Abel made tea on his small stove. Ronald sat with his face in his hands, and Mav stood at the window, watching the rain. Tamsin turned the pages one by one, for 14 years of Bestowals, until she reached the last name.
There were 4,000 names.