Chapter 435: The Boring Parts

Lethan was awake.

He was always awake when I came, these days. Liora said he had begun to sense it, the way some patients learned the sound of particular footsteps in the corridor. She said he had been awake most of the past sixteen nights.

She did not say why.

She did not need to.

His eye found me the moment I came through the door.

Road?

“I'm back.”

Tell.

I pulled the chair to the bed and sat down. Liora took the other chair, the one by the window, where two lamps were burning on the sill.

“Where do you want me to start?”

The frost formed slowly beside his hand.

Boring.

I laughed.

“All right,” I said. “The boring parts.”

So I told him about the river country.

About the inn at the edge of the foothills where the cook served porridge so thin that Kaedra held her bowl up to the light and asked whether it was meant to be soup. About Merek's boots, which had begun leaking on the second day and which he refused to replace because they had belonged to Harlon.

About the sheepfold at the base of the pass, where Tavros spent twenty minutes explaining the correct way to stack stones in a dry wall while the rest of us sat in the snow waiting for him to finish.

About Melody's list, and the single line on it.

Lethan listened.

His eye did not leave my face. Sometimes the frost moved beside his hand, but only to form a single word.

More.

Or:

Why.

When I told him about Tavros and the wall, the bell rang.

“You want to hear about the wall?”

One blink.

Yes.

So I told him about the wall. All of it. Tavros had been very thorough. I had not realized how much I remembered until I started repeating it.

When I finished, Lethan's mouth moved.

Not a word. Not yet.

The corner of it. Upward.

Liora, by the window, put down the cup she was holding.

I told him about the summit.

The wind. The cairn. The valley spread out below, with the road running through it and every shelter dark.

The light at the far end.

Lethan's eye had gone very still.

I told him about Hollin's End. About Gwen and her grandmother Mairi who sang the hymn badly. About the jars of lamp oil in the cupboard, made every year for forty years for shelters nobody could reach.

About walking the road, and finding ourselves back at the waystation.

About lighting forty-one lamps.

About the stone house, and the door, and Bram.

I told him all of it. Even the parts that were not boring. Even the parts I had not told anyone yet, because I had only finished living them the day before.

When I reached the part where Bram knocked, Lethan's hand moved.

Not to the bell.

To the edge of the blanket. His fingers closed on it, slowly. Holding on.

When I reached the part where Anwen stepped out into the snow, his eye closed.

I stopped.

Liora leaned forward.

After a long moment, his eye opened again.

The frost formed.

Go on.

So I went on.

When I finished, it was nearly dawn.

Liora had fallen asleep in her chair by the window. The lamps on the sill had burned low.

Lethan had not slept.

He lay looking at the ceiling for a long time after I stopped talking.

Then his eye turned toward me.

His mouth moved.

The sound that came out was rough and quiet and barely more than breath. But it was a sound. Shaped. Deliberate.

“Good,” Lethan said.

One word.

Out loud.

I sat very still.

His eye held mine.

His mouth moved again.

It took longer this time. I could see the effort in his face. In the tightening of his jaw and the faint tremor in the hand that held the blanket.

“Road,” he said.

Then, after a long pause, so quietly I almost missed it:

“Mine. Too.”

I did not understand.

I sat beside him in the gray dawn light and turned the words over and over.

Road. Mine. Too.

Then I looked at the window.

At the two lamps on the sill. One for Teren, the singer who had three daughters. One that Lethan had asked Liora to light for him on the night of the observance.

At the road beyond the window, running out of Greykeep toward the north.

Toward the river.

Toward the camp above the river where a man named Teren had sung badly while another soldier pretended to sleep.

“You want to walk it,” I said slowly. “Your road. Back to the river.”

One blink.

Yes.

“Someday.”

His eye held mine.

His mouth moved one more time.

“Someday,” Lethan agreed.

Liora woke when I stood up.

She looked at me, then at Lethan, then back at me.

“What happened?”

I could not answer.

Lethan's eye moved toward her.

His mouth moved.

“Good,” he said.

Liora stared at him.

She did not say anything. She sat in her chair by the window with her hands in her lap and stared at him, and her face did something complicated and slow, and then she put both hands over it and bent forward until her forehead nearly touched her knees.

Lethan watched her.

His fingers loosened on the blanket.

Moved, very slightly, across the inch of space between his hand and the edge of the bed.

Toward her.

I left them there.

Garrick did, in fact, have a great many feelings about the rolling over.

He told me about them at breakfast.

At length.

“He just did it,” Garrick said. “Nobody told him he could. He was on his back and then he was on his front and he didn't even ask.”

“Did he need to ask?”

Garrick looked at me as though I had said something unforgivably stupid.

“He's very small,” he said. “He could have hurt himself. He could have rolled off the bed.” He paused. “He didn't. But he could have.”

“That's true.”

“I told him,” Garrick said darkly. “I said, you have to ask first. I said, name first, then what you want. Like Rysa says.” He looked across the table at his brother, who was lying on a blanket on the floor beside Adriana's chair, kicking his feet in the air. “He didn't listen.”

“He's a month old.”

“He should still listen.”

Carol, beside him, rolled her eyes.

“You didn't listen when you were a month old,” she said.

“I don't remember being a month old.”

“Exactly,” Carol said.

Garrick opened his mouth.

Then closed it.

Then looked at Roderic on the floor, who had stopped kicking and was now trying very hard to roll over again and failing.

Garrick slid off his chair.

He went and lay down on the blanket beside his brother.

“Like this,” he said. “Watch me.”

He rolled over.

Roderic watched him with great concentration.

Then tried again.

Failed.

Tried again.

Succeeded.

Garrick sat up and looked at his brother with an expression of profound and deeply reluctant pride.

“Fine,” he said. “But next time, ask.”

Merek left for Whitebrook two days later.

He had waited for me to come back. He had not said so. But he had been in the infirmary garden every evening while I was gone, Liora told me, sitting under Harlon's lamp in the pear tree. Fenrir had sat with him.

He came to find me on the morning he left.

He was dressed for the road. Not Harlon's boots. New ones, which Perrin had made for him and which he wore with an expression of faint guilt.

He was carrying a sack.

“Bones,” he said, when I looked at it. “From the kitchen. Wenhild picked them out. She says they're the best ones.” He paused. “For the dogs.”

“Three dogs.”

“Three dogs,” Merek agreed.

He looked down at the sack.

“I don't know what to tell her,” he said quietly. “Tavia. About Harlon. About the orchard. About how he died.”

“The truth,” I said.

“The truth is that he was running toward the evacuation road with a binding on his throat. And someone stopped him.” Merek's jaw tightened. “Avarn stopped him. Avarn's here. In this castle. Training your son with a wooden sword.”

I did not say anything.

“I'm not angry,” Merek said. “I want you to know that. I was. For a while.” He looked out toward the practice yard, where Avarn was showing Garrick how to stand. “But I was running too. That day. With the same binding. And if someone had stopped me before I reached the evacuation road—”

He stopped.

“I don't know what I'll tell her,” he said again.

“Then tell her his name,” I said. “Tell her we wrote it down. Tell her it's on the list of the dead at Rillcross, beside the soldiers who died holding the bridge. Tell her he's not forgotten.”

Merek looked at me for a long time.

“And then?”

“And then give the dogs their bones,” I said. “And let her decide what she wants to know.”

Avarn came to the gate to see him off.

I had not asked him to. Neither had Merek. He simply walked across the practice yard when he saw Merek standing by the gate with his sack of bones, and he stopped a few paces away, and he did not say anything at all.

Merek looked at him.

Avarn looked back.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

Then Avarn reached into his coat and took out something small.

A piece of carved wood. A dog. Three of them, actually, carved together on a single block, sitting side by side.

He held it out.

Merek stared at it.

“I carved it,” Avarn said quietly. “Last week. While you were in the garden.” He paused. “I'm not very good at it. Perrin helped with the ears.”

Merek did not take it.

“Why?” he asked.

Avarn was quiet for a long time.

“Because I threw a sword at a man running toward the evacuation road,” he said. “And I didn't know his name until afterward. And I've been carrying that name every day since.” He looked down at the carved dogs. “I can't give it back to her. But I can give her this.”

Merek looked at the carving.

At the three small dogs sitting side by side.

Then he took it.

He held it very carefully in both hands.

“She'll want to know who carved it,” he said.

“Then tell her,” Avarn said.

Merek nodded slowly.

He put the carving in the sack with the bones.

Then he turned and walked out through the gate onto the north road, and did not look back.

Avarn stood watching until he was out of sight.

Then he went back to the practice yard, and picked up his wooden sword, and pointed it at Garrick.

“Again,” he said.

Saelis found me that afternoon.

He was flying properly now. Evelyn had examined his arm and his back and pronounced him healed enough to fly, provided he did not do anything foolish.

He had asked her to define foolish.

She had given him a list.

It was quite long.

He landed on the battlements beside me where I was standing looking north, and changed, and stood there for a moment with feathers in his hair and his black coat draped over his shoulders.

“There are three,” he said.

I turned.

“Messages,” Saelis said. “That have nowhere to go. I can feel them. I've been feeling them for years, but I never knew what they were.” He looked out over the city. “Anwen's was one. Now there are three.”

“Where?”

“That's the problem,” Saelis said. “I can feel them. I can't find them. Not exactly. It's like hearing a voice in another room and not knowing which room.”

“Halemar,” I said slowly. “Distance.”

Saelis looked at me.

“And the Keeper,” I said. “Roads.”

We met in the garden that evening.

Not the map room. Saelis said the map room had too many walls. He needed sky.

So we sat in the garden beside the old fountain, where Lirien had sent her two words across a mountain range. Saelis sat on the edge of the fountain with his hands resting on the stone. Halemar sat beside him on a bench, wrapped in a blanket, with Vaust on his other side.

I knelt on the cold ground and put my bare hand flat on the earth.

“It's Uriah,” I said. “We need help.”

The warmth came up at once.

“I know,” the Keeper said. “Saelis has been trying to send me something for an hour. He doesn't know how.”

Saelis looked startled.

“I've been—”

“Listening,” the Keeper said gently. “And trying to show me what you hear. It's very loud. And very confused.” A pause. “Let me help.”

I do not entirely understand what happened next.

Saelis closed his eyes. Halemar closed his. Vaust laid his hand on Halemar's shoulder, steadying him.

The fountain grew warm.

Then warmer.

Then the water began to move. Not rippling. Flowing. In slow circles, around and around the basin, the way water moves when it is being drawn toward something.

Saelis gasped.

“There,” he said. “There. The first one.”

“Where?” I asked.

Halemar answered.

His voice was quiet and distant, as though he were speaking from very far away.

“North,” he said. “Along the coast. Where the cliffs meet the sea. A road that used to run between the fishing villages before the storms took them.” A pause. “Three hundred and four miles.”

“And the message?”

Saelis's face tightened.

“A number,” he said. “The same number. Over and over. Every night.” He swallowed. “Eleven hundred and six.”

Nobody spoke.

“Days,” Halemar said quietly. “That's how long they've been there. Counting.”

“The second,” Saelis said.

The water in the fountain changed direction. Flowing the other way now. Slower.

“South,” Halemar said. “Marsh country. A causeway road across the fens, built on wooden pilings. Most of it's sunk now.” His voice tightened. “One hundred and eighty-two miles. But the road's folded. Badly. Every mile feels like five.”

“The message?”

Saelis was quiet for a long time.

“There isn't one,” he said finally. “Not words. Just—a feeling. Someone holding up a lamp. Every night. Not saying anything. Just holding it up.” His voice dropped. “As though they've forgotten what they were going to say.”

Vaust's hand tightened on Halemar's shoulder.

“And the third?” I asked.

The water stopped moving.

The fountain went still.

Then, very slowly, it began to turn again. Not in circles this time. In a single direction. Westward.

Toward the river.

Toward the ford where Surtr's army sat on the far bank.

Halemar's eyes opened.

He was staring at nothing.

“Across the river,” he said. “In Surtr's country. A road through the burned forests. Two hundred and forty miles.” His voice was very strange. “It isn't folded. It doesn't need to be. Nobody would walk it anyway. Not through his army.”

Saelis had gone white.

“The message,” I said. “Saelis. What's the message?”

Saelis did not answer at once.

When he did, his voice was barely a whisper.

“A name,” he said. “Every night. The same name. Not their own.” He opened his eyes and looked at me. “Someone else's. Someone they're waiting for.”

“Whose name?”

Saelis looked past me.

Across the garden.

To where Brannoc was sitting on the bench beneath the pear tree, under Harlon's lamp, with Kaedra beside him and Mireth on his other side.

Brannoc had heard.

He was standing up.

“Whose name?” Brannoc said.

His voice was very quiet.

Saelis looked at him for a long time.

“Yours,” he said.

The garden had gone utterly silent.

Brannoc stood beneath the pear tree, enormous and scarred, with his hands hanging at his sides.

“Mine,” he repeated.

“Every night,” Saelis said. “For—I don't know how long. Since Carrow Tor. Since the bridge.” His voice cracked. “I thought it was the nets. When they took Faelan and Corra and Dun. I thought they'd gone to the basin. To the hall. Behind his doors.”

“They didn't,” Brannoc said.

“Not all of them,” Saelis said. “Not—” He stopped. “Brannoc. It's Corra.”

Brannoc did not move.

“Corra,” he said.

“She's saying your name,” Saelis said. “Every night. Across the river. In a stone house on a road through the burned forest.” He swallowed. “She's saying it the way Anwen said Lirien's. Like she's holding it up to the window.”

Kaedra had stood up too. She was holding Brannoc's arm.

Mireth was staring at the fountain with both hands over her mouth.

Brannoc looked at the fountain.

At the still water.

At me, kneeling beside it with my hand on the ground.

“Corra,” he said again, very quietly.

Then he turned around and walked out of the garden.

Kaedra followed him.

So did Mireth.

I stayed by the fountain.

So did Saelis, and Halemar, and Vaust.

For a long time, nobody said anything.

Then Halemar spoke.

“Three,” he said. “North. South. And across the river.”

“Three,” I agreed.

“The northern one's furthest. The southern one's folded worst.” Halemar's voice was tired. “And the third one's in Surtr's country. With an army between us and it.”

I looked down at my hand, flat on the cold earth.

At the Crown, faint against my palm.

“Keeper,” I said.

The warmth stirred beneath my fingers.

“I'm here.”

“Can you reach them? Any of them?”

A long pause.

“I can feel the north,” the Keeper said slowly. “Faintly. The coast road was mine once. The fishing villages kept shelters along it. Some of the stones are still there.” Another pause. “The south is harder. The causeway was never mine. It was built by people who didn't know me. There are no shelters on it.”

“And the third?”

The warmth wavered.

When the Keeper spoke again, her voice was very quiet.

“Surtr burned every shelter in that forest,” she said. “Years ago. When he first came. He knew what they were. He knew what they meant.” A pause. “There's nothing left for me to stand on. Not one stone.”

I closed my eyes.

“Then how does Corra's message reach Saelis?”

The Keeper was silent for a long time.

“I don't know,” she said finally. “It shouldn't. There's no road for it to travel on. No shelter. No stone.” Her voice wavered again. “It's reaching him anyway.”

I found Brannoc on the battlements an hour later.

He was standing at the western wall, looking toward the river.

He did not turn around when I came up beside him.

“She was the goddess of autumn,” he said.

I waited.

“The turning of the year. Harvest. Falling leaves.” His voice was rough. “She used to say that autumn wasn't about things ending. It was about things being gathered in. Brought home. Before the winter.”

He was quiet for a long time.

“We fought together for a year,” he said. “The Unbound. She was always the one who made us stop. After a raid. After a fight. She'd make us sit down and eat Wenhild's food and talk about something that wasn't the war.” He swallowed. “She said if we didn't, we'd forget what we were fighting for.”

“And at the bridge?”

“At the bridge, I was holding the line,” Brannoc said. “Fifty paces back. Faelan was on the bridge itself. Corra was behind him. Pulling people across. Getting them to safety.” His hands tightened on the parapet. “The nets came out of the trees. I saw them take Faelan first. Then Corra turned around to help him, and they took her too.”

He looked down at his hands.

“I couldn't reach her,” he said. “Fifty paces. I've thought about those fifty paces every day since.”

I did not say anything.

“And now she's saying my name,” Brannoc said. “Every night. Across the river. In Surtr's country.” His voice broke. “Waiting for me to come.”

He turned to look at me.

His scarred face was wet.

“Avarn told me,” he said. “At Carrow Tor. Sometimes holding the gate isn't the same as protecting what's behind it.” He looked back toward the river. “I can't hold a gate for her. There's no gate. There's an army and a burned forest and two hundred and forty miles of road with no shelters on it.”

He was quiet for a long moment.

“What do I do?” he asked.

I thought about it.

About the eleven at the receiving yard. About Marta Quill walking into the courtyard with bread in her arms. About Bram, knocking three times on a door he had sealed himself.

About Dunstan, the first time I asked him.

What would you do, if you were trying to get them out?

“What would Corra do?” I asked.

Brannoc stared at me.

“If it were you,” I said. “In a stone house across the river. Saying her name every night.” I paused. “What would she do?”

Brannoc did not answer for a long time.

When he did, his voice was very quiet.

“She'd make everyone sit down,” he said. “And eat. And talk about something that wasn't the war.” He looked at me. “And then she'd find a way. She always found a way. Not through the fight. Around it.”

“Then that's what we do,” I said. “We sit down. We eat. We talk about something that isn't the war. And then we find a way.”

Brannoc looked at me for a long time.

Then, slowly, something in his face eased.

“Wenhild's making supper,” he said.

“I know. I can smell it from here.”

Brannoc almost smiled.

He turned away from the western wall.

He did not look back toward the river.

But as we walked toward the stairs, he said, very quietly, almost to himself:

“Corra.”

As though he were holding it up to a window.

As though, somewhere across the river, in a stone house on a burned road, someone might hear him say it back.