The Guest List

There were three things every mortal at the Frost King's court was permitted to know about themselves.

The first was their given name.

The second was the name of the village they had been born in.

The third was the day they had crossed the Frozen Gate, and the bargain they had struck, and the terms of that bargain.

Beyond those three things, every mortal was, at the moment of their crossing, permitted to leave behind whatever else they did not wish to bring. The King's Sundering — the long thin instrument of white bone that sat on the council table in the throne room — would take whichever memory the mortal pointed to, and unmake it, and hand back to the mortal the empty shape where the memory had been, sealed at the edges, so that the mortal would never know what had been taken.

Most mortals chose to forget a single grief.

Isolde Marrow had chosen, on the day of her crossing eight winters ago, to forget all but the three permitted things.

She had been given her three things by the Sundering itself, in the King's own voice, that morning: Isolde Marrow. Marrowmoor on the southern marches. The eighteenth day of the eighth winter month, in the year of the broken hawthorn.

She had repeated them.

She had repeated them in the kitchens that night, and in the under-library the morning after, and on the high terrace where she had stood for the first time, alone, looking up at a sky she did not yet know how to read. She had repeated them every morning for eight winters since. Isolde Marrow. Marrowmoor. The eighteenth day.

She did not, on the morning of the eighth Council, know why she had given the Sundering everything else she had.

She knew only that, eight winters ago, she had walked through the Frozen Gate of her own will, and she had asked for the Sundering, and she had pointed at the inside of her own head, and she had said, very calmly, to the King, take all of it except those three.

And the King — who had not, his court would later tell her, ever before complied with such a request, who had stood for a long minute looking at her, with his white frost moving very slightly along the edges of his cloak — had, eventually, complied.

—

The guest list was nailed to the door of the council hall on the morning of the eighth Council.

This was the custom. The list was painted in iron-gall ink on a sheet of pale bark that had been peeled, by the King's own hand, from a particular tree on the north grounds that grew only when the High Court was about to reconvene. The list was nailed up with eight iron nails. The list named the eight who would sit at the King's table that winter.

The eight had been the same eight for seven winters.

Lord Athelric, Master of the South Gate. Lady Maeve of the Quiet Wood. Bran Carrow, Captain of the King's Wolves. The Witch Annaleigh. Lord Sarrow of the Iron March. The Ambassador of the Bee-Queen. The High King of Winter. Isolde Marrow, Court Astronomer.

She had walked, on the morning of every Council since her fourth winter, to the council-hall door, to read her name there. She had read her name in iron-gall ink on the pale bark on the white door, and she had touched her name with her right forefinger — the one with the small grey ink-stain that would not, no matter what she scrubbed it with, come out — and she had taken her place at the table.

She walked, this morning, to the council-hall door, in the same dove-grey robe she always wore on Council mornings, with the same plain silver pin at her throat that the King had given her on the morning of her third winter, and she looked at the door.

She read the list.

She read it again.

She read it a third time, very slowly, from the bottom upwards.

Then she put her left hand flat against the wood of the door, because she had, very suddenly, lost her balance.

—

The list, this morning, read:

Lord Athelric, Master of the South Gate. Lady Maeve of the Quiet Wood. Bran Carrow, Captain of the King's Wolves. The Witch Annaleigh. Lord Sarrow of the Iron March. The Ambassador of the Bee-Queen. The High King of Winter.

And at the bottom, in the same iron-gall ink, in the same hand the King used to draw up every list in his hall, the eighth name had been changed.

It was not Isolde Marrow, Court Astronomer.

It was, in the same place, where her name had been written for seven winters, a different name.

The different name read:

Isolde Tamsin Marrow Drosse, of Marrowmoor on the southern marches, who entered the Court on the eighteenth day of the eighth winter month of the year of the broken hawthorn and is owed, on the eighth winter of her keeping, the answer to her own question.

Isolde took her hand off the door.

She read the name again.

The name had three things in it she had not known about herself an hour ago.

Tamsin. A middle name. Drosse. A surname that was not Marrow. And — at the end of the name, in iron-gall ink, in the King's own clean and patient hand — who is owed, on the eighth winter of her keeping, the answer to her own question.

Isolde Marrow, who had been told by her three permitted things that her name was Isolde Marrow, that her village was Marrowmoor, and that she had crossed the gate on the eighteenth day of the eighth winter month, in the year of the broken hawthorn — Isolde Marrow stood on the threshold of the council hall in the morning light, and she did not, at first, do anything.

Then, very slowly, she took the silver pin out from her throat, and she pressed the tip of it against the soft pad of her left thumb until a single bead of blood, dark and surprising, rose to the surface.

She watched the bead.

It did not move.

It did not, as the blood of mortals in the King's court was sometimes known to do, turn pale.

The blood was, very ordinarily, red.

She had needed to know that.

She closed her thumb. She pinned the silver pin back at her throat. She turned, in her dove-grey Council robe, and she walked along the corridor towards the King's antechamber.

The Council would begin in an hour.

She intended to be in the antechamber, alone, with the King, before it did.

—

The antechamber of the King was a small, square, plain room with a single high window of clear glass and a single chair. The chair was carved of white wood, almost as pale as the bark of the council-hall door. There was nothing else in the room except the King.

The King was sitting in the chair.

He was not, when she came in, surprised.

The King — who in eight winters had not yet, by anyone Isolde had spoken to, been surprised in the antechamber — looked at her, and folded one long pale hand over the other, and waited.

The King of Winter was a man of perhaps four hundred years' age, but he wore the body of a man perhaps thirty-five. His hair was the colour of a frozen river at dusk. His eyes were the colour of the deepest part of the ice in the long pool below the throne room, a blue so blue it was almost the blackness underneath blue. His shoulders, even seated, were the shoulders of a man who had carried a great many things very quietly for a very long time.

In eight winters at his court, Isolde had spoken to him eleven times.

Eleven was, by court reckoning, an excessive familiarity for a mortal.

Isolde said, 'You altered the list.'

The King said, 'I did.'

Isolde said, 'You wrote a name on it that I have never been told.'

The King said, 'I did.'

Isolde said, 'You wrote on it that I am owed the answer to a question, on the eighth winter of my keeping, that I have not asked.'

The King said, 'You have not asked it. But you will, today. And when you do I will answer it. I had hoped you would ask sooner. The list was an inducement.'

Isolde said, 'My name is Marrow. Marrow is the name on every piece of writing in your library that mentions me. The novice rolls. The astronomy logs. The supplies ledger. The Sundering itself spoke me into being as Isolde Marrow on the morning of my crossing. There is no Drosse anywhere in this court.'

The King said, very gently, 'Isolde.'

It was the first time he had used her given name without a title.

She had not realised, until he said it, how much she had been waiting for the title to be dropped.

The King said, 'There is no Drosse in this court because I did not put any there. I take from each of my mortals what they ask me to take, and I do not put it back without their permission. Drosse is the name you arrived with. Drosse is the name you set aside, at the gate, with everything else you set aside. Drosse is your husband's name.'

—

There was, for a long second, no sound in the antechamber.

The high window let through a pale flat morning light.

In the part of Isolde Marrow's mind that had, eight winters ago, been emptied and sealed, something — for the first time — moved.

It moved like a fish moving under ice. It did not break the ice. It did not show itself. It moved, slowly, along the underside of the ice, in a direction that was not yet a direction she could name, and she felt it move, and her left hand reached out without her permission and found the back of the white wooden chair to hold onto.

The King watched her hand.

The King said, very quietly, 'You did not ask me, on the morning of your crossing, why you had come. You only asked me to take what you brought.'

Isolde said, 'Why did I come.'

The King said, 'Ah. There. That is the question.'

He did not, this time, smile.

He looked at her — across the small square plain antechamber, with the pale flat morning light coming in through the single high window, with her hand on the back of the chair and the silver pin at her throat and the small bead of dark blood on the pad of her left thumb under the silver pin where she had pricked herself in front of his council-hall door — and the King of Winter said, very calmly, the way he had said Isolde Marrow. Marrowmoor on the southern marches. The eighteenth day of the eighth winter month, in the year of the broken hawthorn, eight winters ago:

'You came to kill me, Isolde Tamsin Marrow Drosse. You came as the third of three sent by your husband. You crossed the Frozen Gate on the eighteenth day of the eighth winter month in the year of the broken hawthorn, with a small knife of iron sewn into the lining of your dress, and you walked into this antechamber, and you stood where you are standing now, and you asked me to take from you every memory that you had, except your name, your village, and the day of your crossing, so that you would not, when you came at last to the moment of doing the thing your husband had sent you to do, remember that he had sent you, or that the iron was in your dress, or that you had ever, in the life you no longer had, loved him.'

He paused.

He said, very quietly, 'You then refused to use the knife. I have never known why. The knife is in the drawer of the writing desk in your tower, second from the bottom, wrapped in the silk handkerchief I gave you for your fourth winter. It has been there for eight years. I have not touched it. I have not, in the course of those eight years, asked you what made you set it aside. I am asking you now.'

Isolde Marrow — who eight winters ago had walked into this room with a knife in her dress and had walked out of this room without it, and had been the Court Astronomer of the Frost King ever since, and had read the sky for him on twenty-eight thousand nine hundred and twenty consecutive nights, and had repeated to herself, every morning of those nights, Isolde Marrow. Marrowmoor. The eighteenth day — Isolde Marrow looked at the King for a long time.

Then she said, very softly, 'I do not remember.'

The King said, 'I know.'

Isolde said, 'You will tell me. Now.'

The King said, 'I will. That is what the eighth winter is for. That is why your name is on the list, and not the other name, and that is the question you came in here to ask, and I will answer it now.'

He stood from the chair.

He came to where she was standing, and he was very tall, and he was, at this distance, the same temperature as the deep part of the ice in the long pool below the throne room — and Isolde Marrow, who had not in eight winters been within a hand's breadth of the King's frost, did not, this time, step back.

The King said, very gently, 'Listen, Isolde.'

She listened.

He told her.

And outside, on the long terrace where the Court Astronomer had stood, alone, every night for eight winters, looking up at a sky she now understood why she had needed to learn — outside, in the iron-gall morning of the eighth Council, the bark of a particular tree on the north grounds, the tree that grew only when the High Court was about to reconvene, very quietly began, for the first time in eight years, to flower.