The Keeping

The Code is held by no court, no charter, and no signature. It is held by its keepers, and by six quiet mechanisms.

A sponsor stands for each new keeper and answers for them afterwards, which is why no one is brought in lightly. A whisper, never an alarm, is how a breach is spoken of, once, from one keeper to one other, until in time a circle simply knows.

The withdrawal is the rest of it: greetings not returned, invitations that stop, the courtesy reserved for strangers offered to someone who was not one. For the gravest breaches there is the marker, a sign raised without a name, and beyond it the ruin, spoken of rarely and seen perhaps once in a generation.

There is also, for the withdrawn, a long tradition of the lost years: seven of them, kept faithfully and unrecognised, after which a keeper may in time be welcomed back. No one alive is known to have returned by that road. Some believe it has happened. Some believe it is a story the Code tells itself.