Chapter 136: The Third Promise

It was a beautiful garden, but massive stone walls surrounded it on every side. Very few people in the entire Empire even knew that this place existed, and fewer still knew how to reach it.

A man sat at the edge of the garden in the late afternoon, his hands resting loosely on his knees as he watched a girl playing on the grass about thirty paces away.

She was perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old, although it was difficult to tell.

It was only now, after so many years, that she had finally started walking without help.

There was a creature with her.

It was about the size of a cat, although it was certainly not a cat. It had far too much fur, far too many legs, and an alarming number of eyes for something that small.

It was also extremely stupid and completely harmless.

The girl had given it a ridiculous name within a day of meeting it.

At the moment, she was trying to teach it how to fetch.

It was not going well.

She was laughing about it, though, and had been laughing for most of the hour.

The man on the bench watched her without moving.

He had done this on most afternoons since autumn.

He had a great deal of work waiting for him. There were people who would have told him that he did not have time to sit in a garden and watch a girl play.

None of those people said it out loud.

They knew that no work in the world was more important to this man than watching his daughter finally play to her heart’s content.

There had been a time when he had wondered if he would ever see her do this.

For years, the garden had been quiet except for nurses, physicians, and servants moving carefully around her. Now there was laughter in it. She could walk. She could play. She could fall down, get back up, and try again.

He had learned to consider that a miracle.

Then, without warning, someone was standing beside him.

There had been no sound and no movement at the edge of his vision.

The man on the bench did not turn his head or change his position.

He already knew who it was.

In thirty-one years, there had been exactly one person permitted to enter this garden that way.

"You would not do this for a small thing," he said.

"No."

"Then tell me."

"The Watcher has asked me to relay a message."

The man finally turned his head.

Crescent held out a folded piece of paper.

It was not sealed.

There was only one line written on it, and it was not in Encrid’s hand. Encrid had only sent a message through her. He had not entrusted her with another letter.

The man took the paper and opened it.

He read the single line.

Time to keep the third promise.

Out on the grass, the girl had caught hold of the creature and was now trying to explain the concept of fetching to it directly, face to face, with remarkable patience.

The creature stared back at her with all of its eyes.

The Reaper of the Blue Moon read the message twice.

"He waited a long time before asking," he said. "I gave him the opportunity to ask me for a favor, and he took this long to use it."

"Mm."

He folded the paper along the crease somebody else had already made and slipped it into the front of his coat.

"What is at the Wall?"

"Ten thousand Roamers and something the Far-Watch will not put a level on. They have between ten days and a fortnight." Crescent’s voice did not change. "He has written five letters, and I have sent all of them. I do not believe he expects any of them to arrive in time."

"But he sent them."

"He sent them, and then he sent this."

The man remained on the bench for a while longer.

Out on the grass, the girl eventually gave up on teaching the creature to fetch. She sat down in the middle of the lawn, and the creature immediately climbed into her lap and went to sleep.

It appeared to be the only thing it was actually good at.

The girl looked up and saw him watching.

She smiled and waved.

He raised one hand in return.

"Eleven years," he said.

Crescent remained silent.

"Eleven years, and there was not a single physician on this continent who could tell me what was wrong with her. Not one."

He looked at the girl.

"I took this Empire apart joint by joint. I paid for information with things that could not be given a price, and after all of it, a twenty-four-year-old young man known as the Scoundrel of the North wrote the answer on three sheets of paper."

"I remember."

"And when I asked him what he wanted for it, he asked me for a man’s address, a promise to answer a letter, and my silence."

He stood.

He was not a large man, nor was he particularly impressive. There was nothing about the way he moved that would have made anyone in a street look at him twice.

"I offered him a great deal more than that," he said. "I would have given him almost anything. He understood that perfectly well, and he took three small things and left the rest on the table."

"He is like that."

"Yes. I noticed."

He looked at the girl on the grass for another moment.

Then he turned away from her.

Something about him changed.

It was subtle enough that another person might not have noticed.

Crescent did.

She had known him for thirty-one years. She had taken the hardest work he had ever given her and had never once been frightened of him.

Yet this time, she took half a step backward before she had even decided to move.

The man did not look at her.

"I suppose," said the Reaper of the Blue Moon, "I need to repay my benefactor."

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