The Code
The Seven Tenets
The Code is old, and most of what holds it is unwritten. What can be set down is set down here: seven tenets, spoken once at a swearing and kept for a lifetime.
Six of them may afterwards be discussed between keepers, written in private correspondence, invoked when needed. The seventh is never spoken again. Each keeper carries it from the night they are sworn and does not name it, even to another who carries it too.
They are principles before they are rules. Read plainly, they are a way of living among others: discretion, invitation, consent, the keeping of one life clear of another. Read by a keeper, they are the whole of the Code.
- Tenet IThe DoorWhat passes within does not pass without.
- Tenet IIThe WelcomeNo threshold is crossed uninvited.
- Tenet IIIThe CupWhat is offered may be taken; what is refused is not pressed.
- Tenet IVThe VeilOn one side we are known; on the other, kept.
- Tenet VThe SignWe are seen by those who have learned to see.
- Tenet VIThe ReckoningThe Code keeps those who keep the Code.
- Tenet VIIThe Spoken OnceThe seventh is not written here, nor anywhere.
The story moves through this world. Begin Chapter One →