Chapter 58: Birthdays

Io’s birthday present occupied most of the sitting-room mantel.

Four painted panels stood inside a frame Julian had helped make. There were flowers, a horse, an enormous sun, and a supper table crowded with people whose heads grew smaller as the available space diminished.

In Ignatius’s picture, Io had six fingers.

Lexander had asked about that once.

“The hand holds more,” his son had explained.

Lexander had accepted this as sufficient artistic justification.

Now, several weeks after the twins’ first birthday, Ignatius stood beneath the mantel and pointed up at his work.

“Higher.”

“It is already quite high,” Io said.

“See from door.”

Lexander looked from the picture to the doorway.

“He has a point.”

“He usually does. That doesn’t mean we should rearrange the room every time he discovers one.”

Seraphina approached carrying her wooden dragon. Its paint had worn smooth along the back from being held.

“Mine middle.”

“Your picture is in the middle,” Io told her.

Seraphina studied the four panels.

Then she pointed to the other middle.

Loki, passing the open door, stopped.

“I see the court has reached constitutional questions.”

Io gave him a look.

He continued walking.

The children were learning words faster than their parents could become accustomed to hearing them. Some mornings, Lexander woke expecting the soft babble of the nursery and found Ignatius explaining a disagreement about a chair.

Their bodies were changing too.

The birthday clothes had already been put away.

When they spent several days in Greykeep, the measurements seemed to move more quickly. Lisbeth kept careful notes. Aurelia compared them with the observations being made of Carol and Garrick.

But the children still became tired without warning.

Still reached for familiar hands when a room grew too loud.

Still needed someone to remind them that knowing the word for a thing did not mean they were ready to use it.

Seraphina had learned the word knife.

This had caused a difficult breakfast.

Io lifted her onto her hip.

“You may choose which book we read. The pictures are staying where they are.”

Seraphina considered the exchange.

“Dragon.”

“A surprising choice.”

Ignatius reached up for Lexander’s hand.

“Papa read.”

Lexander sat down.

For ten minutes, the kingdom waited.

The report from Havenreach arrived while they were halfway through the dragon’s second unsuccessful attempt to find somewhere comfortable to sleep.

Fifty-eight workers had been brought out alive from the enemy’s river crossing.

The crossing itself had been disabled.

Thor’s party and Uriah’s intervention had prevented the captives from being lost beneath the machinery they had been forced to build.

Lexander read the number again.

Fifty-eight.

He had learned to distrust the way numbers could make suffering look tidy.

Every one of them had a name.

Every one had somewhere they had been taken from.

“What else?” Io asked.

He passed her the report.

“Wagons moving east. Guarded. The scouts couldn’t identify all the loads.”

“Troops?”

“Some. Equipment too.”

She read to the bottom.

Then looked toward the children.

They were on the carpet with Fulla, discussing whether a painted dragon could fly out of a book.

Ignatius thought it should try.

Seraphina appeared willing to help.

“Will you go?” Io asked.

“If Atreyu has something we can reach without leaving the city exposed.”

She nodded.

There was no point asking him not to help.

He would no more ask her to stop going to the receiving halls.

“Then come back with more than a torn sleeve.”

“I’ll endeavor to preserve both.”

“Lexander.”

He put down the report and took her hand.

“I know.”

Atreyu had three maps spread across the study table.

One showed the failed crossing.

Another showed the roads east of it.

The third was a map of Concordia’s southern districts, including an old quarry road that had not appeared in the first two reports.

Mara pointed to it.

“A smaller convoy separated from the main column yesterday. Six wagons. Mounted guards. They’re avoiding the larger settlements.”

“Destination?” Lexander asked.

“An abandoned stone yard. There’s a walled loading ground and a road wide enough for heavy carts.”

Loki examined the marks.

“What’s in the wagons?”

“The scouts saw iron fittings. Timbers. At least one covered cage.”

Thor stood beside the window.

“A cage for what?”

“We don’t know.”

Bruni had remained in the courtyard because the study door was too narrow for him in armor. His face appeared beyond the open terrace.

“How big?”

Mara gave him the dimensions the scouts had estimated.

He stopped smiling.

Thor noticed.

“What?”

“Big enough.”

“For a giant?”

Bruni nodded.

Lexander looked at the map again.

Reports from the wider war had brought too many new uncertainties. Dragons under hostile command. Beastfolk, elves, and dwarves forced to labor or fight. Giants among Surtr’s forces. Other creatures whose names had once belonged to old stories arriving in military dispatches.

Some served willingly.

Some wore chains.

From a distant hill, it was not always easy to tell which.

“We look first,” Lexander said.

Thor glanced at him.

“Yes.”

He waited.

She sighed.

“Before breaking things.”

“Thank you.”

They left before midday.

Atreyu remained in Concordia. Io had the council and the household. Baldr, Lisbeth, and Aurethar stayed within reach of the palace.

Uriah received the intended route and the expected time of their return through the gate.

He sent back an offer of help and a warning about pursuing anyone toward prepared crossings.

Lexander folded the note.

“He’s beginning to sound like you,” he told Thor.

“Excellent. Someone has to.”

Bruni traveled by the old road outside the villages, accompanied by two scouts who had grown accustomed to finding routes for someone who could not duck beneath ordinary branches.

Loki rode beside Lexander.

The ravens followed.

They were no longer the damp, indignant creatures that had hatched in a warm room above the gardens. Their feathers had darkened to a glossy black, and their opinions about food had become more forceful.

They could fly.

They could steal.

They could distinguish the people who objected to theft from the people who merely complained while offering more.

Lexander was still learning what else they could do.

One settled briefly on a fence post ahead of him.

A sudden impression brushed his mind.

A pale road.

His own head seen from above.

Then the bird tilted sideways to investigate something in the grass, and Lexander’s stomach lurched.

Loki watched him grip the saddle.

“Still adjusting?”

“Yes.”

“Try remembering which body has the horse.”

“Helpful.”

“I’m full of practical advice.”

Thor looked back.

“That’s what you call it?”

They reached the observation ridge in the afternoon.

Mara was waiting beneath the trees.

Below them, the old stone yard stood inside a broken wall. The covered wagons had been brought through the gate and arranged around a central loading space.

There were guards.

More than the scouts had first counted.

A shed on the eastern side showed recent repairs. Smoke rose from a small stove near its door.

Lexander studied the ground.

“Can we see the cage?”

“Only one corner,” Mara said. “The canvas is tied down.”

Bruni crouched behind the ridge.

Even then, the scouts had chosen their position carefully to conceal him.

The giant stared at the nearest wagon.

One thick hand closed around the edge of his shield.

Lexander looked toward the ravens.

They sat together on a branch, apparently indifferent to the urgency beneath them.

He held out his arm.

One hopped down.

Its claws settled through his sleeve.

“All right,” he murmured. “Let’s try something useful.”

Loki became quiet.

Lexander did not order the bird.

He pictured the yard.

The wagons.

The stretch of covered canvas.

The raven turned its head.

For a moment, he felt nothing.

Then it launched itself from his arm.

Seeing through another creature did not resemble looking through a window.

There was movement first.

Too much of it.

Wind lifted one wing. The ground swung beneath him. Light flashed across broken stone.

Lexander caught the trunk beside him.

Mara moved closer.

“I’m all right.”

“Convincing,” Loki said softly.

Lexander closed his own eye.

That helped.

The raven descended.

A wagon roof passed beneath it.

Then a wheel.

Then the narrow gap between the canvas and the cage beneath.

A hand lay against the bars.

Enormous.

Gray with dust.

One finger bent at an angle Lexander did not like.

The bird landed on the wagon.

Inside, someone moved.

A giant had been forced into a space too small to sit upright. Iron bands circled his wrists. A broad collar pressed into the thick muscles of his neck.

A chain ran from it through the cage.

Beyond the wagon, a man stood beside a waist-high iron frame fitted with a turning wheel.

He moved the wheel.

The captive’s hand clenched.

His shoulders jerked.

Then he began pushing against the bars as though trying to stand where standing was impossible.

Lexander broke the connection.

He opened his eye.

Bruni was watching his face.

“There’s someone inside,” Lexander said.

The giant nodded once.

“Alive?”

“Yes.”

Bruni put his shield down very carefully.

They watched for another quarter of an hour.

Long enough to understand the guards’ movements.

Long enough to see two ordinary wagons unloaded.

Long enough to see a prisoner brought from the shed and struck when he stumbled.

Thor’s jaw tightened.

Lexander felt the old anger rising with his own.

Power offered such satisfying answers.

Lightning through the yard.

A broken wall.

Men who would never hurt anyone again.

But there were prisoners in the shed.

A giant in a cage.

And a wheel connected to something none of them yet understood.

Mara crouched beside him.

“My people can reach the rear wall. There are three guards between the shed and the gate.”

“Take the shed,” Lexander said. “Get the prisoners clear.”

Thor pointed toward the iron frame.

“I can break that.”

Loki shook his head.

“We don’t know what happens to the collar if you do.”

“Then I break the person holding it.”

“That is a more promising distinction.”

Lexander looked at Bruni.

“Can you reach the cage from the western wall?”

“Yes.”

“Wait until Thor moves.”

Bruni’s eyes remained on the wagon.

“Yes.”

Loki rose.

“I’ll take the wheel.”

Lexander caught his arm.

“No improvising alone.”

The trickster looked down at the hand.

Then up at him.

“An accusation disguised as an instruction.”

“A well-supported one.”

After a moment, Loki nodded.

The first sign the guards saw was a horse without a rider.

It came through the outer gate at a nervous trot, reins dragging.

One man swore and went to catch it.

Another turned toward the road.

Then thunder struck the far wall.

Thor landed in the yard with Mjölnir in her hand.

“Put them down.”

Three guards dropped their weapons.

The others made worse decisions.

Lexander entered behind her.

A spear came toward him from the left.

He turned it aside, stepped close, and struck the man beneath the jaw with the butt of his own weapon.

The movement was clean.

Practiced.

He did not stop to admire it.

Across the yard, Mara’s people had reached the shed.

Loki appeared beside the iron frame.

The operator saw him and hauled the wheel around.

The caged giant screamed.

Lexander felt the sound in his ribs.

Loki caught the man’s wrist.

Too late to prevent the turn.

Not too late to stop another.

The man reached for a knife.

Loki put him on the ground.

“Lex!”

Lexander ran.

A chain snapped taut behind the frame.

The wagon rocked.

Bruni came over the western wall.

For one impossible moment, the two giants faced each other through the bars.

Then the captive drove both arms outward.

Iron bent.

A section of cage tore loose.

Bruni caught it before it struck the men escaping from the shed.

“Back!” he shouted.

The captive climbed from the wreckage.

His head struck the wagon’s crossbeam.

He did not seem to feel it.

The collar shone.

He turned toward Thor.

“Don’t hit him,” Bruni said.

Thor backed away from a fist large enough to break a horse.

“I noticed!”

The captive swung again.

Bruni caught his forearm.

The impact drove both of them sideways into an empty cart.

Wood shattered.

Lexander reached the frame.

Loki had one hand on the wheel and the other gripping a lever beneath it.

“It tightens when I release this.”

“Can you stop it?”

“I am stopping it.”

The captive giant strained against Bruni.

His eyes were open.

Terrified.

Lexander followed the chain.

It did not run directly to the collar.

There was a second fitting beneath the cage, half hidden by the torn canvas.

A short iron shaft.

Two locked catches.

The same assembly appeared on the rear of another wagon.

He looked up.

One raven circled overhead.

The yard flashed through his mind again.

From above, the arrangement was clear.

The chain from the collar passed through the fitting beneath the wagon before reaching the wheel.

Something there held the tension.

“Under the wagon,” Lexander said.

Loki followed his gaze.

“I can’t leave this.”

“I know.”

Lexander dropped to his knees.

He crawled beneath the broken axle while dust fell around him.

The fitting was warm.

A line of dull red light ran through the iron, brightening whenever the giant tried to move.

Lexander drew his knife.

For a moment, a memory rose.

Old runes.

An oath pressed into a shape meant to hold another’s strength.

He knew enough to recognize the cruelty.

Not enough to trust himself to cut it.

“Thor!”

She appeared at the wagon’s edge.

“What?”

“Can you hold the chain still?”

She looked beneath it.

Then toward Bruni.

“Yes.”

She set Mjölnir down, seized the chain with both iron-gloved hands, and pulled.

The fitting lifted.

One catch loosened.

Lexander drove the knife beneath it.

The blade bent.

He reached for the fallen length of a guard’s spear and used the broken iron head instead.

“Now,” Thor said through her teeth.

He forced the catch upward.

Something cracked.

The red line went dark.

Bruni felt the change first.

The captive’s strength did not vanish.

His resistance did.

One moment he had been trying to tear free.

The next, his knees buckled.

Bruni lowered him as carefully as he could.

Thor held the chain until Loki confirmed the wheel had gone slack.

Lexander crawled out from beneath the wagon.

His hand was bleeding.

He barely noticed.

The giant lay against the broken cart, breathing in harsh, uneven pulls.

Bruni knelt beside him.

“No more wheel.”

The captive stared at him.

Bruni repeated it.

“No more.”

The giant lifted one trembling hand to his collar.

Loki approached slowly.

“I need to look at that.”

The hand froze.

Loki stopped.

“I can wait.”

For a long moment, the captive watched him.

Then he lowered his hand.

Behind them, Mara counted the people brought from the shed.

Nine.

Alive.

Thor stood guard over the prisoners who had surrendered.

The yard grew quiet enough for Lexander to hear the raven land on the wagon above him.

Its head tilted.

He looked up.

“Yes,” he said, breathing hard. “That was useful.”

They did not bring the wagons through Concordia’s gate.

The iron fittings remained outside the city until they could be examined. The captured guards traveled separately. The rescued workers went ahead with Mara and the healers summoned from the nearest post.

The giant could not ride.

Bruni stayed with him.

They moved slowly.

A field shelter was prepared outside Concordia’s walls, close enough for help and far enough from crowds that waking would not mean finding a city staring at him.

Lisbeth met them there.

So did Io.

Lexander saw her notice his hand.

Then the dried blood on his sleeve.

He lifted it slightly.

“Both sleeves are technically present.”

She gave him a look so calm that he immediately regretted speaking.

Lisbeth took his wrist.

“Sit.”

“There are others—”

“There are other healers.”

He sat.

Io remained beside him while the wound was cleaned.

“How many?”

“Nine from the shed. The giant.”

“Do you know his name?”

“Not yet.”

Beyond the canvas partition, Bruni was speaking quietly.

The voice that answered was faint enough that Lexander could not distinguish the words.

Then Bruni called out.

“Hadrun.”

Io turned.

“His name?”

Bruni nodded.

“He says Hadrun.”

Lexander repeated it to the clerk standing nearby.

The clerk wrote it down.

Only then did Lexander lean back and let Lisbeth finish.

Uriah arrived before evening.

He came through the gate with a healer and two people who understood the captured workings better than Lexander did.

He listened to the account without interrupting.

When Lexander described the wheel, Uriah’s eyes grew colder.

“Another way of making someone’s body answer before they can.”

“Yes.”

“Did the operator know who was receiving the convoy?”

“Mara is asking.”

Uriah glanced toward the covered fittings.

“We’ll compare these with what was found at the crossing.”

They had stopped one road.

The enemy had opened another.

But now there were surviving witnesses.

Intact machinery.

Orders among the guards’ belongings.

Something more useful than a field of burned wreckage.

Uriah looked at Lexander’s bandaged hand.

“You went under the wagon.”

“It seemed the quickest way.”

“Was it?”

“Eventually.”

His friend gave him a familiar expression.

Lexander sighed.

“Don’t. Io already did.”

“I’m learning from her.”

“A terrible development.”

For a moment, they stood together beneath the shelter’s eaves.

Then Uriah said, “Ten people.”

Lexander looked toward the partition.

“Yes.”

They let that be enough for a breath.

Lysandra found her brother in the sitting room after supper.

Cassia came with her.

Both carried college cases.

Both had the expression of people who had intended to be casual and abandoned the effort on the way.

Lexander looked up.

“I’m all right.”

Lysandra pointed at his hand.

“That is generally when you say it.”

Cassia glanced at the bandage.

“Was the wagon moving?”

“No.”

“Was the giant?”

“Yes.”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“Then that was worse.”

“Thank you.”

Lysandra sat opposite him.

For a moment, the old difference between them returned.

His little sister.

The person he wanted to keep beyond the reach of everything frightening.

Then she opened her case and placed a page on the table.

“We had a lesson about emergency housing.”

Lexander looked down.

The page held a plan for a group of temporary dwellings around a shared water point.

Corrections covered one corner.

“What happened there?”

“I put the kitchen where the drainage should go.”

“An ambitious arrangement.”

Cassia smiled.

“Mine put the storehouse so far away that everyone would hate me by winter.”

“Did the teacher say that?”

“More politely.”

Lysandra watched him read.

“We can help with the receiving work on the afternoons we’re free. Mistress Teren said observing what happens to our drawings would improve them.”

Lexander lifted his eyes.

Their offer had been carefully phrased.

Real work.

Limited hours.

No abandoned lessons.

He could almost hear Mary’s influence.

“Speak to the steward tomorrow. He’ll find someone you can work beside.”

Lysandra smiled.

Then she reached across and touched his uninjured hand.

“Next time, don’t go under the part holding the giant.”

“I’ll put it in the plan.”

“Do.”

The children were still awake when Lexander entered the nursery.

That was unusual.

Io sat beside the low table while Ignatius arranged wooden blocks into a structure that appeared to require all the blocks and most of the floor.

Seraphina looked up first.

“Papa.”

She came toward him quickly.

He crouched and caught her with his good arm.

Her eyes went to the bandage.

“Hurt?”

“A little.”

Ignatius left his building.

He stood beside them, looking at the white cloth.

A faint warmth gathered around his fingers.

Lexander saw Io begin to move.

He shook his head slightly.

Then he took his son’s hand in his own.

“Lisbeth has already helped.”

Ignatius looked uncertain.

“Can help.”

“I know.”

Lexander brought the small hand to his cheek.

“Stay with me a moment. That helps too.”

The warmth faded.

Ignatius leaned against him.

Seraphina pressed closer on the other side, apparently unwilling to permit an unequal distribution of her father.

Io sat down beside them on the carpet.

Nobody spoke for a while.

At last Seraphina said, “Big man sad.”

Lexander looked at Io.

“She saw Bruni when he came for clean blankets,” Io explained. “He told her his friend was hurt.”

Lexander nodded.

“Yes. He’s sad.”

Seraphina considered this.

Then she went to the toy basket.

She returned carrying her wooden dragon.

“For big man.”

Lexander looked at the worn paint beneath her fingers.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded.

“Till better.”

He accepted it carefully.

“I’ll take it to him in the morning.”

Ignatius disappeared beneath the table and emerged with the little wooden cart.

Io closed her eyes briefly.

Lexander knew why.

There were things the children could do that frightened them.

There were other things no prophecy had prepared them to witness.

He took the cart.

“Thank you.”

Bruni was asleep beside the field shelter when Lexander arrived at dawn.

He sat with his back against the outer support, shield across his knees.

One hand rested near the opening.

Hadrun was awake inside.

The collar had been removed during the night.

A deep mark remained.

He watched Lexander approach and began trying to sit upright.

“You don’t need to,” Lexander said.

Hadrun stopped.

His eyes moved toward the bandage.

Then to the toys in Lexander’s other hand.

“These are from my children.”

He set the dragon and cart on the low table beside the bed.

“They thought you might like them while you recover.”

For a moment, Hadrun looked entirely lost.

He touched the cart with one finger.

Its wheels moved.

“They know?”

“Only that you’re hurt.”

Hadrun withdrew his hand.

“I carried stones for them.”

Lexander waited.

“Broke gates.”

His voice was rough from the collar.

“People behind the gates.”

The room seemed to grow smaller.

Lexander pulled a chair closer.

He sat where the giant could see him without turning his injured neck.

“There will be time to tell us.”

Hadrun stared at the little cart.

“Will you listen?”

“Yes.”

Outside, Bruni stirred.

Morning reached the edge of the shelter.

Hadrun touched the wooden dragon next.

His finger covered most of its back.

“I had a little one,” he said.

Lexander remained very still.

“A girl.”

The words came slowly.

As though they had been kept somewhere he no longer trusted himself to open.

“She liked the river.”

Lexander looked toward the clerk’s empty chair near the doorway.

There would be names to record.

Places to search.

No promises he could honestly make yet.

“What is her name?” he asked.

Hadrun closed his eyes.

Then told him.

Lexander listened.