Chapter 448: What the Serpent Brought Home

Thor told Loki at noon.

Not in the morning, as she had promised. In the morning, she had sat on the low wall beside the shelter with Mjölnir across her knees and watched Mireth and Caldris pull the last strands of silver wire out of Jörmungandr's coils, and she had not moved, and when I asked whether she wanted me to send word to Concordia, she had shaken her head.

“I'll do it,” she said. “I said I would.”

So at noon, when Elyan came down from the relay station with mud on both boots and a message from Evelyn asking whether we were all alive, Thor stood up from the wall and handed Elyan a folded piece of paper.

“Concordia,” she said. “Loki. Nobody else reads it.”

Elyan looked at the paper.

Then at Thor.

Then at the vast black ring of scales still coiled around the shelter, with Fenrir lying beside its head and Ada sitting cross-legged in front of its golden eye, explaining something to it with great seriousness.

“What does it say?” Elyan asked.

Thor was quiet for a moment.

“That I know where he is,” she said.

Ada had decided that Jörmungandr was hers.

Nobody could quite work out when this had happened. Sometime in the night, while the rest of us were sleeping or not sleeping, she had slipped away from her father and her sisters and gone to the edge of the ring where the serpent's head lay, and sat down in front of him.

When Teren woke and found her gone, he had panicked.

He had found her a few minutes later, sitting in front of the World Serpent's golden eye with her chin in her hands.

“He's hurt,” she had said, without turning around. “Mireth's helping. I'm keeping him company.”

Teren had tried to speak. The binding had caught. He had stood there with his mouth open and his face white.

Jörmungandr had opened his eye and looked at him.

“She asked,” the serpent said. “Before she sat down. She asked whether it was all right.” A pause. “Nobody has asked me whether anything was all right in a very long time.”

Teren had looked at his daughter.

At the serpent.

Then he had sat down beside Ada in the road and put his arm around her.

He had not moved since.

Halemar slept until midday.

When he woke, Vaust was beside him, and Hollis was sitting on the wall above him with her lamp in her lap.

Halemar looked up at her for a long time.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“For what, child?”

“The fold.”

Hollis smiled.

“You kept me safe,” she said. “I told you.”

“I didn't know I was keeping anyone.”

“No,” Hollis agreed. “But you did it anyway. And now you've unfolded it.” She looked at the empty air above the trough, where the crease had hung. “That's twice you've done something for me without knowing.” Her lined face softened. “I'd like to thank you properly. When you're well. Over soup.”

Halemar stared at her.

“Soup,” he repeated.

“Soup,” Hollis agreed. “That's how it's always done.”

The hosts went back up the climb in the afternoon.

Not all of them. Marta Quill went, with Tam beside her. Odric and most of the masons. The bakers. The water carriers.

“The ovens,” Marta said, when I asked. “Somebody has to light them. And the courtyard lanterns.” She looked north toward the basin. “There are still people inside. Behind his doors. In places we can't reach.” Her jaw tightened. “The least we can do is keep the bread coming.”

“He'll know,” I said. “That you were here last night.”

“He knew before,” Marta said. “He's known since the courtyard.” She shifted her basket on her arm. “He hasn't done anything about it. Not yet.” She looked at me. “Hesketh says it's because he can't. Not without breaking his own hall. The courtyard's a shelter now. The east wing's guest rooms. If he burned the bakeries, the whole outer settlement would walk out by morning, and he'd have nobody to feed the people he's still keeping.”

“Is that true?”

Marta shrugged.

“I don't know,” she said. “But Hesketh's been right about most things.” She turned toward the climb. “And it's my bakery. I'm not leaving it to someone who doesn't know how much honey goes in the bread.”

The three riders stayed.

Dellan Marsh, and the two who had sat down in the road beside him. They did not ask to stay. They simply did not leave. When the hosts started up the climb, Dellan looked after them for a long time, then turned around and sat down on the wall beside Hesketh.

“I don't have anywhere to go,” he said.

Hesketh took his pipe out of his mouth.

“Neither did I,” he said. “Once.” He looked at the trough. At Hollis's lamp hanging beside his blue lantern. “Pipe needs fixing. North side. Where the ice cracked it last winter.”

Dellan stared at him.

“I don't know how to fix pipe.”

“Neither did Oren,” Hesketh said. “He learned.” He put the pipe back in his mouth. “Oren.”

Oren appeared from inside the shelter with his broom.

“Show him the pipe,” Hesketh said.

We left for Greykeep the next morning.

Jörmungandr came with us.

Not on the road. He was too large for the road. He went alongside it, through the fields and the scrubland and the bare winter woods, moving slowly, his great torn body sliding through the frost-stiff grass. Fenrir walked beside him.

Ada rode on his head.

Teren had tried to stop her. The binding had caught on the first word. He had stood there with his mouth open and his face red, and Ada had looked down at him from between the serpent's golden eyes and said:

“He asked if I wanted to.”

Teren had looked at Jörmungandr.

Jörmungandr had looked back.

“I won't let her fall,” the serpent said.

Teren had closed his eyes.

Then he had nodded.

He walked beside the serpent's head the entire way to Greykeep, with one hand resting on the black scales just below where his daughter sat.

Lethan rode in Dunstan's cart.

Liora sat beside him. The three lamps still hung from Perrin's iron hook, unlit now in the winter daylight. Ada's lamp had a loaf of honey bread beneath it still, wrapped in a cloth, though Marta had left it there two days ago.

Nobody had eaten it.

Nobody seemed to think anyone should.

On the second day, somewhere past the relay station, Lethan sat up.

Not propped. Not supported by cushions.

Sat up.

On his own.

Liora was looking the other way. She was watching Jörmungandr's coils slide through a field of frosted stubble, and when she turned back, Lethan was sitting upright in the cart bed with his hand on the rail and his eye on the road ahead.

She did not say anything.

She did not move.

Lethan's head turned. Slowly. Toward her.

His mouth moved.

“Road,” he said.

Not a whisper. Not quite a voice either. Somewhere between.

“Mine,” Lethan said. “Too.”

Liora put her hand over her mouth.

Dunstan, on the driver's seat, did not turn around. But he slowed the mules to a crawl, and steered around every rut and stone, and when Lethan swayed slightly on a bend, Dunstan stopped the cart entirely and waited until he was steady.

He did not say anything either.

But I saw his shoulders shake.

Evelyn met us at the eastern gate.

She saw Jörmungandr first. Of course she did. It was difficult not to. He came over the last rise before the city like a black river flowing uphill, his golden eyes catching the afternoon light, with a ten-year-old girl sitting on his head.

Evelyn stopped walking.

She looked at the serpent.

Then at Thor, riding at the front of the column with Mjölnir on her shoulder.

Then at me.

“Uriah,” she said.

“It's a long story.”

“I gathered.”

“He saved everyone on the road. When the riders came.”

Evelyn looked back at the serpent.

At Ada on his head. At Teren walking beside him with his hand on the scales.

At the silver wire Caldris had pulled from his wounds, still tangled in a bundle on Mireth's shoulder.

“He's hurt,” Evelyn said.

“Yes.”

Evelyn was quiet for a long moment.

Then she walked past me.

She walked straight up to Jörmungandr's head, where it had stopped at the edge of the road outside the gate, and she stood in front of his golden eye.

She was very small beside him.

She laid her hand on the black scales of his jaw.

Gold and blue light rose.

Jörmungandr went very still.

“Hold still,” Evelyn said. “This will take a while.”

It took the rest of the afternoon.

Evelyn would not stop. She walked the length of Jörmungandr's body with Mireth and Liora beside her and Aurelia following, laying her hands on every wound. The light rose and faded and rose again.

People came out of the city to watch.

Not crowding. Standing along the walls and the road, the way they had stood for the eleven. Watching their queen heal the World Serpent in the fields outside the eastern gate.

Carol and Garrick came.

Helena brought them, holding each by the hand, and they stood at the edge of the road and stared at the vast black coils sliding through the frosted grass.

Garrick's mouth was open.

Carol's eyes were very wide.

Ada slid down off Jörmungandr's head and walked over to them.

The three children looked at each other.

“Who are you?” Carol asked.

“Ada,” Ada said. “Who are you?”

“Carol. This is Garrick. He's my brother.”

Ada looked at Garrick.

Garrick looked at the serpent.

“Is he yours?” he asked.

Ada considered this.

“He's his own,” she said. “But he lets me sit on his head.”

Garrick turned to look at her with an expression of profound and desperate longing.

Ada considered him.

“You have to ask,” she said. “First. Name first. Then what you want.”

Garrick's whole face lit up.

Loki came through the Concordia gate at sunset.

He did not walk. He ran.

I had never seen Loki run. He was a god who strolled, who sauntered, who arrived at councils after everyone else had sat down and took the windowsill because the chairs were beneath him. He did not run.

He ran through the eastern gate and down the road and out into the field, and he did not stop until he was standing in front of Jörmungandr's head.

Then he stopped.

The serpent opened his golden eyes.

Loki stood in the frost-stiff grass with his dark coat flapping and his silver buckles catching the last of the light, breathing hard, looking up at his son.

Neither of them spoke.

Thor stood a little apart, Mjölnir on her shoulder. Fenrir lay beside his brother's head. Evelyn had stepped back, her hands still glowing faintly.

Loki took one step forward.

Then another.

He reached out and put his hand flat against the black scales of Jörmungandr's jaw.

He did not say anything.

His shoulders shook.

“Father,” Jörmungandr said.

Very low. Very quiet. Like stone grinding at the bottom of the sea.

Loki pressed his forehead against the scales.

“I looked,” he said. His voice was muffled. Broken. “Every council. Every report. I asked everyone. Whether anyone had seen you. Whether you were still with him.” He did not lift his head. “Nobody knew. Nobody cared.”

His shoulders shook harder.

“I thought he had you,” Loki said. “Othellos. I thought you were in a cage somewhere, like your brother. I thought I'd never—”

He stopped.

Jörmungandr was silent for a long time.

“He nearly did,” the serpent said. “Surtr was going to hand me over. In exchange for a house. For a place to keep the autumn goddess.” His golden eyes moved past Loki. To Thor. “Then the autumn goddess walked out. Carried by Surtr's own giants. And Othellos threatened to bind every giant who stood in a river.”

“And Surtr burned his officers,” Loki said, still against the scales.

“And Surtr burned his officers,” Jörmungandr agreed. “And told me to run.”

Thor went very still.

“Surtr told you to run?”

Jörmungandr's eye moved to her.

“He came to me,” the serpent said. “The night before the depot burned. Alone. Which he never does.” A pause. “He said Othellos had made a bargain he couldn't keep. He said he'd never meant to keep it. He'd only meant to take the house and give nothing back.” His voice dropped. “He said Othellos had grown too greedy. That a god who wanted to own every other god would come for him next.”

“So he broke with him,” Thor said slowly.

“He burned every officer in his camps,” Jörmungandr said. “Every rod. Every frame. Every net.” His eye held Thor's. “And then he pulled his army back from the river, east, into the burned forest, and told the giants who wanted to leave that they could go.”

“Why?”

Jörmungandr was silent for a long moment.

“I don't know,” he said. “I asked. He didn't answer.” A pause. “But he looked at the buds. In the ash. Around his feet. Where your king put his hand on the ground.”

He looked at me.

“He looked at them for a long time,” Jörmungandr said. “Then he told me to run. And he walked back into the forest without another word.”

Nobody spoke.

Loki had lifted his head from the scales. He was staring at his son.

Thor was staring at me.

I did not know what to say.

“Surtr,” Thor said finally. “Looked at buds.”

“Yes.”

“In the ash.”

“Yes.”

Thor turned to look east. Toward the river. Toward the burned forest beyond it, where pale green buds were opening on every blackened stump.

“He burned that forest,” she said quietly. “Six years ago. Every tree. Every shelter. Every road.” She shook her head. “He wanted nothing to grow there. Ever again.”

“And then something did,” Jörmungandr said.

Loki stayed with his son until full dark.

Nobody asked him to leave. Nobody asked Jörmungandr to come inside the walls either. He was too large. He coiled himself in the field outside the eastern gate, on the frosted grass beside the river road, and laid his head on the stone of the road itself.

Facing the gate.

Facing the city.

Facing the lamps that were lighting, one by one, in every window of Greykeep.

Loki sat beside his head.

Fenrir lay on the other side.

Thor sat on the low wall at the edge of the road, Mjölnir across her knees.

I stood at the gate.

After a while, Loki looked up at Thor.

“You could have let them catch him,” he said quietly.

“Yes.”

“You had every reason.”

“Yes.”

“The prophecy.”

“Yes.”

Loki looked at her for a long time.

“Why didn't you?” he asked.

Thor was quiet.

She looked out at the field. At the black coils. At the golden eye, half-closed, watching the city lights.

“Because he put his body around a ten-year-old girl,” she said. “And turned Othellos's weapons back on him.” She looked down at Mjölnir. “And because Aurelia told me the Keeper doesn't put a lock on the inside. Not because everyone deserves a shelter. Because nobody can tell, from outside, who does.”

Loki stared at her.

“Aurelia said that?”

“The Keeper said it,” Thor said. “Aurelia told me.”

Loki was silent for a long time.

Then he laughed. Very softly. With something cracked in it.

“I've spent a thousand years being told I couldn't be trusted,” he said. “That nobody should open a door for me. That I'd steal the silver and burn the house down.” He looked down at his son. “And now my children are lying in a garden and a field outside a city full of lamps.”

“You're in Concordia,” Thor pointed out.

“I'm in Concordia,” Loki agreed. “On councils. Arguing with Mary about forms.” He shook his head. “Nobody's thrown me out yet.”

“Mary's thought about it,” Thor said.

“Mary thinks about everything,” Loki said. “It's one of her finest qualities.”

Teren brought Ada back to the castle at nightfall.

She did not want to go. She wanted to stay with the serpent. Teren had tried to explain why she couldn't, and the binding had caught on every word, and finally he had simply picked her up and carried her.

Ada had protested.

Then she had stopped protesting and put her head on his shoulder and fallen asleep before they reached the gate.

Nell and Bryony walked beside him.

Lethan's cart came last.

Dunstan drove it through the eastern gate at a walk, steering around every stone, with Liora sitting in the back beside Lethan and the three lamps on Perrin's hook lit now in the dusk.

At the infirmary, Lethan did not want to be carried.

He sat up in the cart and looked at the infirmary door.

At the stairs leading up to it.

At his own hands.

“Walk,” he said.

Liora stared at him.

“You can't.”

Lethan's eye held hers.

“Try,” he said.

It took a very long time.

Dunstan lowered the tailboard of the cart. Liora took one of Lethan's arms. Teren, who had come back from the nursery after putting Ada to bed, took the other.

Lethan put his feet on the ground.

His legs shook.

He stood.

Not straight. Not steady. Leaning heavily on both of them, his whole body trembling with the effort of it.

But he stood.

On the road outside the infirmary door.

He looked down at his own feet.

At the stones beneath them.

His mouth moved.

“Road,” he said.

Then he took a step.

He took four steps before his legs gave out.

Teren caught him. Liora caught him. They lowered him gently onto the bottom stair of the infirmary, and he sat there, breathing hard, with his face gray and his hands shaking.

But his eye was bright.

He looked up at Teren.

“Four,” he said.

Teren laughed. It came out without sound. The binding held his voice like a fist.

But his face—

He sat down on the stair beside Lethan, and put his arm around him, and the two of them sat there together in the dusk, two soldiers who had been in a camp above a river once, one singing badly and one pretending to sleep.

Neither of them said anything else.

They did not need to.

Evelyn found me on the battlements near midnight.

She stood beside me at the eastern wall, looking out at the field where Jörmungandr lay coiled in the frost with his head on the road. Loki was still beside him. Fenrir was asleep against his brother's flank.

“He's healing,” Evelyn said. “Faster than I expected. The wire was the worst of it. Once it was out, the wounds started closing on their own.”

“Good.”

“Mireth says he'll be well in a week.” She paused. “Mireth says she's never seen anything heal that fast.”

“Why is it?”

Evelyn was quiet for a moment.

“I don't know,” she said. “But I think it's the road.”

I looked at her.

“He's lying on it,” Evelyn said. “The river road. With his head on the stone. Facing the gate.” She looked down at the field. “Hollis said the Keeper's strong when people travel. When shelters are kept. When doors open for whoever arrives at night.” She shook her head slowly. “I think the road's healing him. The way the pear tree healed Corra.”

I thought about that.

About Jörmungandr, who had made roads that only went one way.

Lying on a road that went both.

Evelyn put her hand on her stomach.

She did not say anything about it. She only rested her hand there, lightly, the way she had begun to do without seeming to notice.

“Hollis told you something,” she said. “At the shelter. I saw your face when you came through the gate.”

I did not answer at once.

Then I told her.

About the goddess who sent me. About the Keeper telling her where. About Greykeep being the only place left in the world that still knew how to wait up for someone.

Evelyn listened without speaking.

When I finished, she was quiet for a long time.

“You never asked to come here,” she said finally. “You asked for a place to call your own. For the power to protect your people.”

“Yes.”

“And the Keeper chose this place.”

“Yes.”

Evelyn looked down at the city. At the lamps in every window.

“Then she chose well,” she said quietly.

The rider came at dawn.

Castellan woke me.

“There is a rider at the northern gate,” the castle said. “Under a white pennant.”

I was awake at once.

“Whose?”

“Unknown. Gray coat. Silver at the throat.” A pause. “He has asked for you by name. He says he carries a message from the Hall of Accord.”

Evelyn was already sitting up.

So was Adriana.

I dressed quickly. Thor met me in the corridor. She had not slept either. Mjölnir was on her shoulder.

“Othellos,” she said.

“Probably.”

“Under a white pennant.”

“Yes.”

Thor's jaw tightened.

“He's never sent anyone under a white pennant,” she said. “Not once. Not in all the years.”

The rider was waiting outside the northern gate.

He was young. Very young. Barely older than Wendel Sallow. He sat a gray horse with a white pennant fixed to a lance beside him, and he did not look at the gate wardens or the walls or the soldiers gathering on the battlements.

He looked at the road.

At the shelter a mile out from the gate. The one with the carved lantern above the door and the lamp burning in it.

He looked at it for a long time.

When I came through the gate, he turned to face me.

He did not dismount.

He held out a letter.

Sealed. With a seal I had never seen before. A door, drawn open.

“From the Hall of Accord,” the rider said. His voice was very steady. “For Uriah Grey. King of Greykeep.”

I took the letter.

I broke the seal.

It was short.

Written in a hand I did not recognize. Not a clerk's hand. Something older. More deliberate. Every letter shaped as though it had been carved.

Uriah Grey.

You have taken my guests from my courtyard. You have unfolded my roads. You have opened my houses. You have turned my officers, my giants, and my serpent.

You have lit lamps on every road between your castle and my hall.

I am told that in your kingdom, a shelter has no lock on the inside.

I am told that anyone who arrives at night is received, without being asked who they are or what they have done.

I would like to test that.

I will come to Greykeep in ten days. Alone. Unarmed. Under a white pennant.

I will knock on your gate.

I am curious whether you will open it.

The letter was not signed.

It did not need to be.

I read it three times.

Then I handed it to Thor.

She read it once.

Her face did not change.

She handed it back to me.

“He's coming here,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Alone.”

“He says.”

“As a guest.”

“Yes.”

Thor looked out at the road. At the shelter a mile from the gate, with its lamp burning in the morning light.

At the field beyond it, where Jörmungandr lay coiled in the frost with his head on the stone.

“It's a trap,” she said.

“Probably.”

“He wants to see if you'll break your own law.”

“Yes.”

“If you refuse him, you're no better than he is. Every shelter. Every lamp. Every door you've opened. It all becomes a lie.”

“Yes.”

“And if you open the gate—”

She stopped.

I looked down at the letter.

At the seal. A door, drawn open.

I am curious whether you will open it.

Behind me, the young rider was still sitting his gray horse, holding the white pennant.

He had not moved.

He was still looking at the shelter.

“What's your name?” I asked him.

He turned to look at me.

He seemed startled. As though nobody had asked him that in a long time.

“Callan,” he said.

“Callan,” I repeated. “Do you want to come in? It's cold. There's food in the kitchen. A goddess of hearths is probably making bread.”

The rider stared at me.

Thor stared at me.

Callan looked at the gate.

At the lamps in the windows above it.

At the road behind him, running north toward the Hall of Accord.

He did not answer for a long time.

Then, very slowly, he dismounted.

He leaned the white pennant against the gate post.

He walked through the gate.

Nobody stopped him.

Nobody asked who he was or what he had done.

Thor watched him go.

Then she turned back to me.

“You realize,” she said, “that he's going to report everything he sees here.”

“Yes.”

“Everything.”

“Yes.”

“To Othellos.”

“If he goes back,” I said.

Thor looked at me for a long moment.

Then she looked at the gate. At the lamp in the shelter a mile up the road. At the black coils of the World Serpent lying in the frosted field with his head on the stone.

“Ten days,” she said.

“Ten days,” I agreed.

She put Mjölnir on her shoulder.

She did not say anything else.

But as we walked back through the gate together, I heard her mutter something under her breath. Something I would not have expected from the goddess of thunder, on the morning she learned that her oldest enemy was coming to knock on our door.

“Wenhild's going to need more bread.”