These are original writings of the Order. Their men walk the stair beneath the city and cross the water where unfamiliar stars shine. The tales consider the bonds they form and the choices they make.
Read them as tales. Bring what you recognize, question the choices their characters make, and leave room for another man to understand them differently.
TALE I
The Man At The Threshold
At the foot of the stair, a cursed man sat with his hands beneath his arms. He had reached the Order before nightfall. Through the doorway he could see a fire and the knees of men seated around it.
He stayed outside, preparing what he would say.
He could account for the work he had lost. He had brought a folded drawing to show that his hands had once served him well. The matter of the woman would take longer. He had turned that part over during the descent, searching for an account in which he neither excused himself nor appeared unworthy of a hearing.
A man carrying an armful of wood found him there.
The traveler began with his trade. The other man shifted the wood against his hip and asked him to take the door.
Inside, someone moved a stool toward the fire. A woman returning from the far shore set a cup beside it before continuing up the stair. The traveler held the cup between his hands and watched a split in the clay fill with tea.
He tried again to speak. His voice would not settle.
An older man sat across from him, mending the lining of a cloak. One eye had closed beneath an old scar. He looked up, then reached for the pot beside the fire and filled the traveler's bowl.
The drawing grew damp inside his coat. He took it out and laid it on the floor, where it opened beneath his boot.
Someone asked whether he wanted more light to look at it. He shook his head. He was listening to the men discussing a journey one of them would make in the morning. They spoke of the weather and a place to stop along the road.
He ate. For a while, he watched the older man work the needle through the lining. He had meant to explain how he had come to such a condition, but the heat reached his legs and he fell asleep with the bowl in his lap.
For a season, two cursed men met at the western fire whenever they could. One brought accounts he could no longer bear to open alone. The other read them beside him, sometimes drawing a line through a sum and sometimes sitting until his companion could begin.
Their conversation widened. They spoke about a woman who had once laughed at a funeral, and about a dog one of them still expected to hear at his door. Some evenings they argued until the men at the next fire objected.
Then the man with the accounts stopped coming.
His companion waited through two gatherings before climbing to the city. He found him in a room overlooking the roofs. The accounts lay in a neat pile, tied with a strip of cloth. A little money had come in. He had paid what he could and arranged time for the rest.
"There was nothing for you to do," the man said.
His visitor put down the bread he had brought.
The man looked at it and began to explain that he could afford food. He opened a cupboard to show what he had bought.
"I wanted your company," his visitor said.
For several moments, the man stood with his hand on the cupboard door. He had prepared for offers of help and for questions about his absence. He had even imagined a complaint about ingratitude. He had nothing ready for this.
They ate at the window. Across the roofs, a woman shook rain from a sheet before drawing it inside. His visitor told him something foolish that had happened on the stair. He laughed with his mouth full and had to set down his cup.
At their next meeting, the accounts remained tied in their cloth. The two men sat beside the western fire, disputing a story neither could remember well enough to settle.
The wealthy visitor arrived while the Order was sharing its evening meal. He had given money to repair the stair, and several men rose to greet him.
One brought a chair with a back. Another took the bowl from a man who had been sitting near the fire and asked him to move a little farther along. The man obeyed. He had come in from the rain, and water gathered beneath his sleeves as he stood waiting for somewhere to sit.
The visitor removed his gloves. He was accustomed to this movement around him and scarcely noticed it.
At the edge of the room, a cursed man watched the man with the wet sleeves look from his empty place to the chair they had brought. Then he crossed the floor and took the visitor's chair back to the wall.
The room fell quiet.
He put the displaced man's bowl beside his old place and found another stool for the visitor. Its legs stood unevenly on the stone. The visitor steadied it with his boot.
Someone began to explain the money he had given.
"We thanked him for it," the cursed man said. "I helped carry the stone."
The visitor looked toward the stair. He remembered deciding to pay for the repair. He had known little of what followed: the days of carrying stone, the man who had lent his cart, the woman who had fed the workers. Now he could see that the man with the wet sleeves had scraped knuckles and mortar caught beneath a nail.
He asked whether that man had worked on the stair.
"No," the man said. "I came tonight."
The visitor looked down at his gloves. After a moment, he put them inside his coat and asked for a bowl.
The conversation resumed before anyone had found a wedge for his stool.
The keeper of the grain asked a young man of the Order to help record what they used. Winter had narrowed the roads above them. They needed to know how long their stores would last.
At first, the young man made a mark beside each name when he filled a bowl. Then a stranger came down the stair, and he opened a fresh page.
The stranger had worked his way along the coast until an illness left him weak. He could offer no work that evening. He hoped someone might know a place where he could sleep.
The keeper brought him food.
"How shall I enter him?" the young man asked afterward.
The keeper looked at the names.
"Six bowls tonight," he said. "A little more than a measure of grain."
The young man showed him the other column. He had intended to record what each person gave back. Some men taught, and others carried supplies. The stranger had said he could do neither.
The keeper drew up a stool. He explained how much grain they had and which roads might reopen before they ran short. He needed the young man to count with care. Tomorrow they would ask those who could contribute whether they could help replenish the store.
Across the room, the stranger had fallen asleep with his head against the wall. One hand lay open on the floor.
"He may leave before he can give anything," the young man said.
The keeper nodded. "He may."
The young man returned to his page. Beside the stranger's description, he had left a space for something owed. He looked at the sleeping man, then turned the leaf and began an account of the grain.
Before he went to bed, he carried a blanket across the room. He had to move the stranger's bowl to keep from stepping into it.
The Order kept a boat on the water beneath the city. On clear nights, the oars passed over stars that no one had seen in the sky above.
A cursed man tended the boat for many years. He knew where the submerged stone rose near the shore and which winds would leave a traveler stranded among the roots. The men who crossed with him trusted his judgment.
He began to keep the lamps in a locked chest.
At first, he asked where a traveler meant to go so that he could judge the weather along the passage. In time, he asked why the journey mattered and what the traveler had done to deserve the risk. Men rehearsed their answers on the stair. Some turned back before reaching him.
One evening, a man came to cross to the eastern shore. His daughter lived above it. He had promised to visit her that night.
The keeper asked what had brought him to the Order. The man said he did not wish to tell that story.
The water lay still. The keeper closed the chest.
Other men found the traveler sitting on the landing. They listened to him, then asked the keeper to join them at the fire. He spoke for a long time about the crossings they had never seen him make, the cold he had endured, and the men he feared he might one day fail to bring home.
They listened until he had finished. They asked him to show them the weather signs and the dangerous places, and to explain the refusal he had made that evening.
He returned to his years of service.
The men took back the key they had entrusted to him. They arranged for others to learn the crossing and share the watch. He could attend that work, and they would still seek his knowledge of the water.
For several nights, he stayed away. He expected them to come asking for his help. Instead, two men came to ask how he was managing without the work that had occupied so much of his life.
He returned to the landing a week later. A woman from the eastern shore was helping a new boatman find the right depth for his oar. The former keeper sat beside a passenger and listened to them disagree about the current. Before they pushed away, he pointed out the low stone near the roots.
He returned to the Order wearing a ring he could not stop touching.
An inheritance had changed the cursed man's circumstances. He bought a house above the city, found care for his mother, and paid debts he had hidden from his friends. At their first meal together, he brought enough food for those present and for several who could not come.
The men were glad for him. He still woke in the dark expecting the old knock at his door. Sometimes he came down to the water and sat until morning.
Because he now had dry storage, he offered to keep the winter grain. They agreed which part belonged to the shared store and recorded what each person brought. He kept an account and gave others access to it.
Later, he asked them to stop coming without notice. Then he said that keeping the grain had become an inconvenience. At the next gathering, he announced a charge for drawing from it.
A man who had carried three sacks down from the hills asked when they had agreed to that charge.
The wealthy man looked at his hands and remembered receiving food from them. He found the memory humiliating. He spoke of effort, judgment, and the burdens that men without property could not understand.
Someone brought the account they had made together. Much of the grain had gone to feed workers on his own estate.
The men asked him to return what remained and replace what he had used. He accused them of believing they owned him because they had once helped him.
"You may keep your inheritance," said the man who had carried the sacks. "The grain belongs to the people who brought it. You offered to keep it dry."
They heard his explanation, compared the records, and ended his custody of the store. He could give an account of what he owed and propose how to restore it. Several men went with him to collect the remaining sacks.
He stayed away for a season.
The next time he stood at the threshold, the keeper of the meal gave him a bowl. After he had eaten, the men responsible for the grain sat with him to discuss the missing portion. He had hoped the welcome meant they would let the matter pass. He turned the ring beneath his thumb while they waited for his answer.
The cursed man had written poems that no one would hear to the end.
He remembered the rooms, the listeners looking past him, the laughter at a line he had meant in earnest. A teacher whose judgment he once valued had written two words across a page. He kept that page folded inside a book, though he no longer knew why.
At the Order, men sometimes asked him to read. He grew accustomed to finishing a poem while someone still listened.
One night, a younger man brought verses of his own. His voice faltered. There were lines the poet thought clumsy and others he wished he had written himself.
He interrupted at the weakest line.
The younger man tried to explain it. The poet imitated his manner of speaking, and several men laughed before they saw his face. He shut the book and left the circle.
The poet went on talking. He said that tenderness would not improve bad work. Later, in his room, he opened his own book and found the page he had kept. Beneath the teacher's two words, he could still see the pressure of his pen where he had tried to revise the poem.
He slept little. By morning, he had composed an explanation of his own hurt that would have taken an hour to tell.
He found the younger man at the shore and began with the imitation and the laughter. He named what he had done. He offered to say the same in front of those who had heard it.
The younger man asked whether he still thought the line was bad.
He said he did. He explained what he had heard in it and asked whether the man wanted to discuss it. The man said he would think about that.
At the next gathering, the poet described what he had done and withdrew the excuses he had given afterward.
Several gatherings passed before that man brought his book again. He sat beside someone else and asked her to listen. The poet remained where he was, holding his place in a book he had brought to read.
Beyond the northern shore, a road of the Order passed through the dreams of sleeping strangers. A cursed man who had traveled it for many years offered to guide two companions along it.
He knew how a field might appear between two rooms and how the sound of water could follow them for a day without a stream in sight. He had learned to mark their passage by things they could each describe.
Near the end of the journey, they reached a grove he remembered. He said they would find an opening beyond it and come out above the city.
The companion in the weathered cloak saw the trees of an orchard where his father had worked. He shielded his remaining eye to see between the trunks. The other saw a stand of birches beside a house she could not remember entering. They stopped to compare what they saw.
The guide urged them on. He could already imagine the relief with which they would greet the city, and he wanted to hear them speak of the skill that had brought them there.
His companions asked him to describe the opening.
He could recall a gate, though he had once lived in a house with such a gate. He remembered a voice beyond it. He had heard that voice in his own sleep for years.
He began to give an answer that would have settled their doubts. He stopped before he finished it.
"I cannot tell where I have walked from what I have dreamed," he said.
They sat beneath the trees. He disliked the silence and the time they were losing. Neither companion could say how far they had left to go. After discussing what each could recall, they agreed to return to the last place all three recognized.
They came home late. Someone had kept food warm for them and asked whether the northern road had changed. The guide described the grove and where his memory had failed him. His companions added what they had seen. A man at the fire brought over his own account of that passage, and the four of them stayed to compare it with theirs.
The Order had a broken step near the upper end of the stair. A cursed man who knew how to set stone offered to mend it before the rains.
He pictured the work as he made the promise. He had tools above the city and knew where he could obtain a sound piece of stone.
During the weeks that followed, he found it difficult to leave his room. He made plans there and sometimes spoke about them at a gathering. He discussed the care men owed one another and found words that several wished to hear again.
He passed the broken step on his way home, turning his foot to avoid it.
One evening, a woman coming down with food lost her footing. She caught the wall and dropped what she carried. He found her sitting above the broken place, gathering pieces of a bowl into her skirt.
She asked whether anyone intended to mend the step.
He told her he had offered to do it. He helped collect the spilled food and carried her basket down. At the fire, he said that the work remained unfinished and that he needed help carrying the stone.
The man beside him asked when he could manage it. They settled on a morning and named what each would bring. He kept wanting to explain what the past weeks had been like. They listened when he chose to speak, then returned to arranging the work.
Rain came before the appointed day. He lay awake, considering whether to send word that he could not come. Near morning, he dressed and went to fetch his tools.
Two men helped him carry the stone. Rain darkened the older man’s cloak. When he bent to lower his end, the mason saw the scar above his missing eye. Another man held a light while the mason set the stone. He discovered that he had forgotten part of the work and asked a companion to check it with him.
They ate together after they finished. On the way home, he put his full weight on the step and stopped to examine the joint. He made a note to return after the rain and see how it had held.
The cursed man told the Order he would be leaving at the end of the month. He meant to live beyond the eastern shore, where someone he loved had made a home. He wanted time to discover what they could make of it together.
He had begun to describe his life in words he had not used before. Some evenings, he still called himself cursed. Other evenings, the word did not occur to him.
The man who had first welcomed him took the news badly. He remembered long nights at his side and mornings when he had climbed to the city to find him. He asked whether those things counted for so little.
The departing man sat with him after the others had gone. He named what the friendship had meant to him. He asked whether they might still meet at times, and his friend said he could not answer that evening.
During the following weeks, he returned tools he had borrowed and finished an account he had offered to keep. Someone asked whether he would return the coat they had given him in his first winter.
Its giver objected. He sat with a needle in the lining of his own weathered cloak, his remaining eye narrowed against the smoke. He had given the coat to a man who was cold. He helped replace a button before the man left.
On his last evening, they shared a meal. Several people asked him about the place he was going. A few remained distant. He felt the loss of things he had expected to keep, even as he wanted the life ahead of him.
At dawn, he took the stair. His first friend met him near the top and walked with him as far as the eastern road. They spoke about where they might meet after the thaw.
Years later, they found each other in a crowded market. His friend had grown a beard he would once have mocked. He had brought his daughter to buy cloth, and she wanted to know how the two men knew one another. They began telling her about their first winter below the city. She listened while they disagreed about who had found whom on the stair.
