Off the record. Swift Kael. A waystation at the edge of the Shimmering Expanse, between runs. He had four hours and gave me three of them. My own notes, made at the time, are in brackets.

(Kael answered my first question with a question, as Saltmarch people do, and then answered it properly anyway.)

Scholar: Do you place the same three in every child?

Kael: Do you want the answer we give, or the answer?

Scholar: Both. In that order.

Kael: The answer we give is that every child is different, so we fit the opening steps to the child, like a decent pair of boots.

(He was pouring for both of us, and didn't ask whether I wanted any.)

Kael: That's true, as far as it goes.

Scholar: And the whole shape?

Kael: There's one we place first, and it's the same in everybody. Then the other two are boots.

Scholar: So one of the three is fixed.

Kael: As fixed as anything gets in a House that lies for a living.

(He grinned at that, and then took it back with a wave.)

Kael: That's a joke. We don't lie, and people find that funny about the desert House. Yes. Same thing in every Saltmarch child, and it goes in before the other two.

Scholar: Which of the three is it?

Kael: That's your question, not mine.

(He seemed to be enjoying this.)

Kael: You keep wanting to know whether it's a body one or a mind one. I've heard you ask Mira the same thing, and I heard what she said back. It's keeping, and it doesn't fit any of your categories.

Scholar: Why first?

Kael: Because if that one doesn't take, we need to know while there's still time to do something useful about it.

Scholar: What is it, exactly?

Kael: Keeping.

(He said it as if I should already have guessed.)

Kael: It's more of a disposition than a technique. You end up built around holding on to a thing you said you'd hold on to. That's what goes in at seven. Everything else about a courier is boots.

Scholar: And if it doesn't take?

Kael: Then they're no courier.

(He turned his cup round.)

Kael: They can be a great many other things. Half the Expanse isn't couriers, and they can be extremely happy. They just don't carry the Code, and that's decided early, by the thing itself rather than by anybody in a room.

Scholar: How often doesn't it take?

Kael: Rarely. We've had a long time to get good at it.

(He stopped there, which he hadn't done all hour.)

Kael: But it can go later. Nobody outside the Expanse knows that.

Scholar: Go how?

Kael: It changes, the same as the other two change when someone turns out to be something we didn't expect.

(He turned his hand over.)

Kael: Only when that one changes, sometimes what it changes into has stopped being keeping. It's still a good form and it'll serve them well for fifty years, but it isn't what the Code needs.

Scholar: What happens to them?

Kael: They're released.

The part he asked me to sit on

(He asked me to wait a week before deciding what to do with this. I waited the week, and I've put it here rather than in anything meant for publication.)

Kael: Released isn't a punishment. Put that in your notes first, because I know how the word sounds, and I know what Sablemire would make of it.

Scholar: How does it actually work?

Kael: Somebody sits down with them, usually somebody who's been through it themselves. We're careful about that.

(He'd stopped joking.)

Kael: They're told what's happened. They're told it isn't a failure, and they're told why. Then they're let go of the Code, formally. There are words for it, and it takes about a minute.

Scholar: And afterwards?

Kael: They're still Saltmarch. Still family, still get the good seat, still get told everything. They just don't carry.

(He drank.)

Kael: It doesn't sound like much. For them it's the biggest thing that ever happens.

Scholar: Do they know it's coming?

Kael: Years ahead, mostly. That's the cruel part. We've tried to find a way round it and there isn't one.

(He refilled my cup without being asked. I've noticed he does that when he wants a moment.)

Kael: You feel it going. What you were built around slowly stops being yours, over about four years, and you keep running deliveries the whole time, because what else would you do?

Scholar: Why tell me at all?

Kael: Because you're going to write that the foundations are the deepest thing a person carries, and you'll be right. Somebody reading that should know that even that can change.

(He put the jug down.)

Kael: People come through it. Most of them are fine, and some of them are better than fine, so don't make a tragedy of it. I've sat with four of them. It's the only part of this work I'd hand to somebody else if I could.

Scholar: Last thing. Does what you place have any relationship to the child's Source?

Kael: None whatsoever.

Scholar: And that doesn't strike you as extraordinary?

Kael: It's convenient.

(He laughed.)

Kael: Think about the alternative. I'd have to establish what every child in the Expanse was joined to before I could teach any of them anything. Nobody has that kind of time. The desert's big and there's mail to carry.

Scholar: Do you know why it works?

Kael: Not a clue. Hollowglass has theories.

Scholar's note

Kael is the fourth to confirm Source-independence and the fourth to find it unremarkable, and none of them are surprised by it, which I find interesting in itself.

Release is the first evidence I have that a set of foundations can move away from its purpose as it moves towards the practitioner. Every House has framed mutation to me as an improvement in fit. Saltmarch is the only House that has counted what that costs the institution, and it has built something to look after the person it happens to.

I asked him for the word at the end. He said, "You've been asking everybody that," and poured himself another, and talked about the weather until my hour was up.