Chapter 663: The Longest Night

The wind stopped over Aelstrom at sunset on the longest night of the year, and everyone in the city knew what it meant.

They came out onto the terraces to watch, Palace children and Holloway children side by side, Father Cray among them with Edda Marsh holding his hand. The glass panes on every tower in the city hung still. In the silence, Vane could hear the sea breaking on the rocks hundreds of feet below, and then, very faintly, footsteps on a stair.

Thessaly came down from the Ninth Spire.

She came slowly, on foot, a thousand steps, and when she reached the bottom and walked out onto the bridge to the Hall of Wind, she was leaning on Sarai Vell’s arm. She was even smaller in the open than she had looked beside her loom. The whole of Aelstrom watched her cross the bridge in silence, as though they had forgotten she was real.

Behind Vane, he heard Isole draw a long, unsteady breath.

The Hall of Wind had been made ready. The long pale table had been taken away, and in its place stood a ring of chairs, one for each power that had once sat at the Accord, set out in a wide circle under the open sky. Lamps burned between them. In the center of the ring, on a low stand, lay a single thick book bound in grey: the Meridian’s log of the shore.

They came in one by one, and Valerica wrote them down.

She had been given a small desk just outside the ring, a pen, and a great deal of paper, by Thessaly’s own instruction. Someone ought to keep the record who can’t be bribed or bored, the old woman had said. I’m told she’s both. Valerica had looked as though she had been handed a crown.

Isaac came first, for Boreas, and sat very straight and very pale with the ice falcon on his shoulder. Its faceted head turned slowly round the ring, and Vane knew that someone very far away in the north was looking through it.

Bastien Oro came next, for Oruth, carrying his own chair. It was made of black glass and was much larger than the others. He set it down in the space left for him, sat in it, and grinned around the circle as if he had already won something.

Ilario Thane came for the Meridian, with his hourglass, and sat with his clouded eyes turned up at the stars.

Ysra came up from the sea. She had made the journey in the Lark, with Sarai Vell, and she walked into the Hall of Wind leaning on her coral staff and blinking at the lamps, and the whole room went quiet for her. She sat down in a chair that had been empty for three hundred years.

A young woman came for the Thornwood, a Palace Vane had never seen, with leaves woven into her dark braids and a quiet, watchful face. Her name was Maelis, and she bowed once to Thessaly and sat without a word.

The chair of the Silent Palace stayed empty.

So did the chair of the Kingdoms of the East, the one beside it, though not quite: someone had left a letter on its seat. It was sealed in black lacquer, and Valerica, reading the outside without touching it, wrote down only what it said there. From the Sovereigns of the East. The East does not sit at a table where the Throne has a chair.

Then Anastasia came in, for the Throne.

She wore no crown, only her riding coat and her blade. She sat down in the chair that had stood empty since her great-great-grandfather’s time, laid her father’s paper on her knee, and looked around the circle with an expression of icy composure. Vane had seen that face before. He had seen it on her father.

Last of all came the Church.

The High Saintess walked in alone, in white, with her hands folded at her waist, left over right. She did not look at Thessaly, or at the Drowned Court, or at the open log on its stand. She looked once, briefly, at the place outside the ring where her daughter was standing beside Vane, and then she sat, and arranged her robes, and gazed at a point somewhere above everyone’s head.

Isole did not move. Vane felt her hand find the back of his coat and hold on.

Thessaly sat down last, in the chair of Aelstrom, and looked around the ring.

"Three hundred years," she said. Her voice was the voice from the Hall of Wind, old and quiet and carrying everywhere. "Three hundred years since we last sat like this. Most of you weren’t born. Some of your grandmothers weren’t born." Her mismatched eyes moved around the circle. "I was. I sat in this chair then. I’d like to see us do better this time."

Nobody spoke.

"The Court beneath the water has terms," said Thessaly. "Ysra."

The old woman from the deep did not stand. She simply lifted her head, and spoke in her soft, dry voice, and laid out the terms Valerica had written at a table of white coral: the voices freely given, by grown men and women, for terms of years and not of lives; the hands sent with them; the first clause, written twice. No children. Ever.

When she had finished, there was a long silence.

"Oruth agrees," said Bastien Oro at once. "I’ll send the first voice myself. One of my smiths sings when she thinks no one is listening. She’s terrible. The deep will love her."

"The Meridian agrees," said Ilario Thane.

"The Thornwood agrees," said Maelis quietly.

Isaac looked at the falcon on his shoulder. The falcon looked back at him. Then he said, in a clear, steady voice, "Boreas agrees. My mother says she’ll send hands to the Court as soon as someone sends hands to her ice."

"Done," said Bastien Oro. "I’ve already sent twenty."

"She knows," said Isaac. "She says to tell you they’re very loud."

The Cinder Lord threw back his head and laughed.

Thessaly turned her eyes to the Church.

The High Saintess was silent for a long moment. Then she said, without looking at anyone, "The Church of the Eternal Light has no objection."

Isole’s hand tightened on Vane’s coat.

"And the Throne?" said Thessaly.

Every head in the ring turned to Anastasia.

She did not look at the paper on her knee. She looked at Thessaly, directly, and her voice when it came was perfectly level.

"The Throne agrees to the terms of the Court," she said. "And the Throne has a message for the Accord, from the Emperor of Aurelia, in his own words." She paused. "He says he is not going to stop hunting. He says if the Accord wants him to stop, it may come to the coast and try. And he says to tell Thessaly hello."

The silence that followed went all the way round the ring and back again.

Bastien Oro stopped laughing. Ilario Thane’s hourglass stopped running.

"Hello," she said at last, very softly. "Yes. That’s very like him." She looked around the circle. "There is nobody at this table who can stop the Emperor of Aurelia. Not one of us. Not all of us together. I’d like that written down too, Valerica, so that nobody pretends otherwise later."

Valerica wrote it down. Her hand was perfectly steady.

"So," said Thessaly. "We sing, and we hold, and we hope he finds what he’s looking for before it finds us." She drew a breath. "Is there any other business?"

Vane stepped forward into the ring.

He had not planned to. He had not told anyone, not even Valerica, though he thought from the way her pen had stopped that she had guessed. He walked out between the chairs into the lamplight, past the open log on its stand, and stood in the middle of the Accord with the whole of it looking at him.

"Yes," he said. "There’s a chair missing."