“So why aren’t there any keepers who are girls?” Juliah asked.
“Women are keepers of a different sort.”
“What do you mean?” Juliah frowned.
“Women are keepers of children. Keepers of the clans.” Ghost spoke again, like she was repeating something she’d heard.
Dagmar nodded. “Through the ages, women have been needed elsewhere. We men were more expendable. We are still more expendable.”
“What is expendable?” Dalys asked. At six, much of the conversation flowed over her head, but they were all beginners. None of them knew how to read. None of them knew how to write. So they would all be taught together, regardless of the difference in their ages.
“Expendable means not as . . . precious.”
“What is precious?” Dalys asked.
Dagmar smiled but Juliah groaned, impatient to ask her own questions.
“Precious means there are very few. Precious means special. You are all . . . precious.”
“Why did we have to cut our hair?” Elayne asked softly. Of everyone, she had not recovered from that loss.
“We shave our heads to show we are separate from the world, but we wear robes of the same hue to show we are one with each other,” Dagmar answered her, his eyes compassionate.
“Why do you put black around your eyes?” Juliah asked.
“It is symbolic.”
“Of what?”
“Of our own . . . lack of vision and understanding.”
“Master Ivo blackens his lips as well,” Juliah reminded. “But you don’t. None of the regular keepers do.”
“As the Highest Keeper he has great power, more power than any other man, but next to the gods and the Norns he is nothing. He is flesh. He is subject to fate and death and evil. So he blackens his lips to show his words are not the words of a god. He blackens his eyes to signify his sight is not omniscient.”
“What is aw-awm-ni-shunt?” Dalys asked, struggling over the word, and Dagmar stood, clasping his hands, signaling an end to the inquisition.
“It means all-knowing. None of us are all-knowing. Not the Highest Keeper. Certainly not me. There will be time for more questions tomorrow, and the day after that. For now, let us just try to get through the next few hours.”
Master Ivo slowly began including them in keeper life, molding the pattern of their days into a likeness of the brotherhood. They had their own quarters, and they played more and prayed less than the keepers. They did not go into the sanctum but were schooled in their own hall, often by a rotating gaggle of grumpy keepers who took turns instructing them in various dry subjects in unvaried, dry tones. Keeper Dagmar was their favorite, and he seemed to enjoy teaching them too, though Ghisla caught him watching Ghost sometimes, a peculiar expression on his face. It looked like fear and fondness, an odd combination. Mayhaps it was fear of fondness, which Ghisla understood. It was better to not get too attached; she’d learned that lesson well.
Ghost was their constant companion and caretaker. She slept in their room and ate at their table and sat through all their lessons. Ghisla was surprised to learn that she did not know how to read either. Nor did she know how to make or use runes, and no one—save mayhaps Dagmar and Master Ivo—knew her story or how she’d ended up on Temple Hill living among the keepers. She was as quiet about her past as they all were and offered only the barest of histories.
“I was left in the woods as a babe,” she said. “An old woman found me. She was almost blind and didn’t realize I looked as I do. She was lonely, and her children were all grown. I stayed with her until I was five. When she died, her son made me a servant in his house. I’ve been in many houses since then . . . but I’ve never lived in a temple.”
They’d all been afraid of her at first, especially when she darkened the area around her eyes like the keepers did. Ghisla suspected she was trying to be one of them, to blend in, but it just made her all the more terrifying to behold.
But little by little, the daughters relaxed around her, and she around them. The little girls clung to her, especially at bedtime. They moved their beds closer to hers and followed her like little ducklings.
Ghisla kept her bed where it was. She slept on the end nearest the door. Each night she planned to use it, to creep out