Three

Sorrel came back from the Court at dusk on Wednesday and dropped out of the hedge onto the path with her weight on both feet at once, which meant she was tired.

"Nobody sent me," she said. "I went." She said it to Grizel, and not to Lady Pettigrew, who was on the stool ten feet from the gate, not listening in the way that hears everything.

She had gone to the wall of the garden where things flower on purpose, and said at the gate of it that the hollow's envoy had sent in a report fifteen days ago, and would like to know whether it had arrived. After a wait she declined to describe, a fliskie had come out to her along the top of the wall.

"It had a collar on it the size of a daisy. Sufficient. Bottom of the Table. It stood there and read off a leaf, and it didn't look at me once. 'The Court has received the report of its envoy.'"

"And?" said Grizel.

"And then it stopped."

"It went in?"

"No. It stopped. It stood there holding the leaf up, for about as long as it would've taken to say a great deal more. So I'd know the nothing that came next was the Court's own nothing. Official. With a seal on." She flexed a sore wing. "Then it went in."

"They said nothing," said Grizel, writing.

"They said nothing again. They had somebody say it this time. It was louder with somebody saying it."

Down at the stool the collar had not gone still. If anything it had gone very slightly out.

"The Court has acknowledged receipt," said Lady Pettigrew, to the green. "That is a great deal, from the Court. That is very nearly a reply." There was a pause, which the ledger found short. "A Sufficient."

Whether the Court had sent its lowest rank to say nothing to its second lowest as an insult, or because that was all it could spare, was a question she had settled in her own mind and was not sharing. The ledger has begun a count in the margin beside the Table of Precedence. It says two, and there is room.

Sorrel had one more thing to report. She gave it to Grizel in the same flat voice she had used for the rest.

"I came in over the Stair. Over the back steps, low, I was tired. There was somebody on them."

The pen stopped.

"On the third step. Sitting on it. With her back against the fourth, and her hands in her coat, looking up at the rest." Sorrel considered. "There's seven. I counted on the way over. She'd done three."

"How long had she been there?"

"Couldn't say. She had frost on her."

Kit came in at the gate a little after dark. Mungo said "Nobody comes in," and she said "I know," and came up the path, and found the two of them at the table, not looking at her in a way that took some effort.

"Go on, then," she said.

"You said you were going up to ask," said Sorrel. "A week ago. In front of everybody."

"I did go up."

"Three."

"Three's up." Kit sat down on the end of the bench. She looked, for once, about as young as she is. "The steps are as high as I am. You have to climb each one, it's hands and a knee. And you get to the third, and you look up, and there's four more, and then a door the size of a wall, and then..." She stopped. "I didn't know what I'd say. I got that far and I found out I'd never worked out what I'd say. I've never asked anybody for anything. I just watch till I know."

"That's not a plan," said Sorrel. "That's a habit."

"I know what it is."

Nobody spoke for a bit. Then Sorrel, who does not do this, sat down on the bench beside her, not close.

"It's my roof they're cutting," she said. "Next time you go, tell me. I can't carry you. But I can sit on the fourth one and look down, so there's somebody up there you know."

Grizel had the pen over the page headed "Spring," where Kit's promise is written down in the words it was said in.

"Shall I put three?" she said.

"Put three," said Kit. "It's what happened."