Chapter 106: The Cost

I woke up on the third morning because something was sitting on my chest.

It was little Uriah. He'd been put down on the bed beside me, Seraphina told me afterward, for one minute, while she went to the door to take a tray from Helena. And in that one minute he'd crawled up the quilt and sat himself down on my breastbone, square in the middle, where the seeds are, and put both his fat hands flat on my face, and said, very loudly and with great satisfaction:

"Up."

So I opened my eyes.

* * *

He was the first thing I saw. A red, round, extremely pleased face about four inches from mine, with Seraphina's eyes and my father's chin and a little blue-and-gold crackle running around his fingers, the way it does now when he's excited. The crackle tickled.

"Up," he said again, to make sure.

"I'm up," I said. My voice came out like something dragged over gravel.

He looked at me very seriously for a moment, as if checking. Then he lay down flat on my chest, with his ear over my heart, and put his thumb in his mouth, and went to sleep.

* * *

Seraphina was in the doorway with the tray.

She didn't drop it. She's never dropped anything in her life. But she stood there for a long time holding it, very still, with her eyes on my face, and the white-gold came up at the edges of her eyes and stayed there.

Then she put the tray down on the chest of drawers, carefully, and came and sat on the edge of the bed, and didn't say anything.

"How long?" I said.

"Two days," said Seraphina. "And a night. And this morning." She looked at the baby on my chest. "He woke you. Of course he did. Nobody else could. Your father tried. Carol tried. Aurelia sat with her hands on your forehead for an hour." She swallowed. "He crawled up and sat on you and said up, and you opened your eyes."

"He's very persuasive."

"He's yours," said Seraphina.

And then she put her face down on the quilt beside my arm and stayed there for a while, with her shoulders shaking, and I put my hand on her hair, and little Uriah slept on my chest, and none of us said anything at all.

* * *

After a while she sat up and wiped her face with the heel of her hand, the way she does, impatiently, as if her own eyes had done something without permission.

"You fell down," she said.

"I know."

"In the chapel. On the stone floor. You were smiling. You said good." Her voice had an edge in it now. "And then you went down like a tree, Garrick, and I was in the doorway, and I couldn't get to you before your head hit the floor."

"Is my head all right?"

"Your head is fine. Aurelia saw to your head. Your head isn't the point." She took a breath. "You didn't ask."

I looked at her.

"You asked Meriel," said Seraphina. "You asked Carol. You asked Ruan, in the cave. You ask everyone. May I. Borrow. You can say no." She looked at me steadily, with the white-gold still at the edges of her eyes. "You didn't ask me. Whether I minded watching you pour yourself out on a floor for an hour and forty minutes until there was nothing left. You didn't ask whether I'd like to be closer than the doorway."

I didn't say anything for a long time.

"No," I said at last. "I didn't. I'm sorry."

"I'd have said yes," said Seraphina. "That's the stupid part. I'd have said yes. I'd have said go on, grow it back, she needs it. I just wanted to be asked." She looked down at our son. "Next time, ask. And let me sit beside you. Not in the door."

"Next time," I said. "I promise."

She nodded. Once. And then picked up the tray and put it on my knees, on the other side of the baby, and said, "Helena says you're to eat all of it or she's coming up herself," and that was the end of that.

* * *

The tray had Helena's porridge, with cinnamon, and honey, and a slice of bread cut exactly the width Helena cuts it, and a cup of tea. And beside the cup, folded small, a piece of paper.

I unfolded it. Two hands, one after the other.

Eat the bread. H.

She's been up every night at four. So have I. We take turns at the kettle. S.

I looked at Seraphina.

"Selvane," she said. "She's been sleeping in the little kitchen. On the bench by the fire. So she's there when Helena comes down." Something almost like a smile. "Benjamin's been sleeping on the floor of the passage outside. He says it's so he can hear if anybody needs anything. Helena steps over him every morning on her way to the stove. In her sleep. She's never once trodden on him."

* * *

They came in ones and twos, after that, once word went down the stairs that I was awake. I won't write all of it. Some of it's mine.

Carol first. She didn't knock. She never does, on my door; she just comes through the middle. She sat on the end of the bed and looked at me and said, "You idiot," very tenderly, and then, "Don't ever do that again," and then, "You'll do it again, won't you," and I said yes, and she said, "I know," and put her hand on my foot through the quilt and left it there.

My mothers. My mother checked my pulse without asking, because some things a healer never stops doing, and then kissed my forehead. Adriana stood in the doorway with her arms folded and said, "Twenty-three years old and you still fall down when you've been told not to run on the stairs," which I didn't understand at all until Seraphina explained later that I'd done exactly that at four, and cut my chin, and Adriana had held the cloth.

My father came last. He stood at the foot of the bed in his socks and didn't say anything for a long time.

Then he said, "Nine hundred and fourteen."

"What?"

"That's how far I got," said my father. "Counting. Before you woke." He looked at the baby on my chest. "I've never had to go past six hundred before."

* * *

Aurelia came in the afternoon.

She sat on the chair by the bed where Mary had sat for two days writing, and put her hands in her lap, and looked at me for a long time with her old, kind, careful face. And I knew before she said anything that she was going to tell me something I didn't want to hear.

"You know what you did," she said.

"I grew it back."

"Yes. And do you know what you grew it from?"

"The seed. Meriel's seed. The one Carol and I kept."

"Put your hand on your chest," said Aurelia. "Under the breastbone. Where the baby is. Move him a little; he won't wake. And feel for it."

I moved little Uriah, very gently, onto the pillow beside me. He didn't wake. He put his thumb back in his mouth and sighed.

I put my hand flat on my chest. And felt.

* * *

They were all there. The warm stones. The whole pocketful. Lorn's slow river. Imme's bright spring. Corra's first cold morning. Soren's light in a window. Faelan's bridge. Damar's stone. Hundreds of them. Every god Varrick ever took and Carol and I ever gave back, a little bit of each, half in me and half in her.

All of them.

Except one.

Where Meriel's had been, the small steady candle in the quiet chapel, there was nothing. Not a hole. Not a tear. Just a smooth, empty place, like the hollow in a pillow where a head used to be.

* * *

"It's gone," I said.

"Yes," said Aurelia.

"I used it."

"You grew her back out of it," said Aurelia. "You didn't take it out and plant it. You planted it where it was, and it grew into her. It's in her now. That's where it lives." She folded her hands. "It's the strongest part of her. It's the join. And it's not in you anymore."

I sat with that.

"So if they tear her again," I said slowly.

"Then there's no seed to grow her back from," said Aurelia. "Not hers. Not ever. You get one."

* * *

The room was very quiet.

"There's more," said Aurelia. "And I'd rather tell you now, while you're too tired to do anything stupid about it." She looked at me steadily. "You know how long you slept."

"Two days."

"When you were three," said Aurelia, "and you and your sister gave back every domain Varrick ever stole, on that hall floor, all of them at once, hundreds, you fell asleep in my lap afterward." She smiled a little. "For an afternoon. You woke up at supper and wanted bread and butter."

I stared at her.

"Hundreds of gods," said Aurelia, "in an afternoon, at three. And one goddess, at twenty-three, cost you two days and a night." She leaned forward. "It's getting worse, Garrick. Not better. Every time you give something of yourself to grow something else, it takes more than the time before. I've watched it. Since the iron room. You ended six links and your fingertips stayed gray for a week. You grew one goddess back and slept two days."

* * *

"Why?" I said.

My voice wasn't steady.

"I'm getting bigger," I said. "Everyone says so. You said so. In front of the whole Council. They're stronger than him. I can feel Pim's lamp from the east wall. I folded four people from Ternhollow to here in one step. I'm bigger." I looked at my hands. "So why does it cost more?"

Aurelia was quiet for a while.

"Because you are bigger," she said.

I looked at her.

"When you were three," said Aurelia, "you were a small jug. You gave back hundreds of gods, but you weren't giving yourself. You were only handing back what was already theirs. It passed through you like water through a pipe. It cost you nothing but an afternoon." She reached out and put her hand on my chest, over the smooth empty place where Meriel's seed had been. "This time, you didn't hand back. You grew. Out of yourself. You poured yourself into her. And the more of you there is, the more there is to pour." She paused. "You emptied a very big jug, Garrick. You didn't know how big it was. Neither did I. That's why it took two days to fill again."

"And next time?"

"Next time it'll be bigger still," said Aurelia. "And you'll pour more. And it'll take longer." She took her hand away. "Unless you learn to stop before it's empty. Which you have never once in your life done for anything. You or your sister."

* * *

Iselle came at four, with Roderic. She knocked three times and waited for me to say come in, and then stood just inside the door with her hands open at her sides.

"I can't grow anything," she said, before I could say hello. "I want you to know I thought about it. All two days. Whether I could have done it instead. Whether it would have cost me less." She looked down at her hands. "I can't. I tried, on a cut flower in Helena's window. Nothing grew. It just stopped being held up by the vase and fell over."

Roderic, behind her, made a small noise that might have been a laugh.

"But I've been thinking," said Iselle. "About the cave. About Ruan." She took a breath. "He was holding it. Wasn't he. Meriel's voice. Holding on so hard he wore it away." She looked at me. "If they tear another one. If one of the Choir has it in its lap, holding on. That's a held thing. That's mine." Her hands closed, a little, and opened again on purpose. "I could make it let go. Before it wears thin. So there's more left to put back, and less for you to grow."

I looked at her for a long time.

"It'd cost you," I said.

"A bootlace cost me three hours," said Iselle. "A harbor cost me fourteen. I don't know what a piece of a god would cost." She lifted her chin. "But it would be my cost. Not yours. And then it wouldn't all be on you and Carol."

"You can say no to this," said Roderic quietly, to me, not to her. "She asked me to tell you that. She said you'd forget it applied to you too."

* * *

Halemar was still out on the western sea. Selvane said, when she brought my supper up herself, that she still couldn't feel the Patience anywhere in any of her harbors. Nine days now.

"He's past my edge," she said. "That's all. Past the last harbor I've got. He'll be in Kethran water." She set the tray down. "Ferrymen are very good at coming back. It's the whole of what they do."

* * *

Faelan came in at five with his ledger.

He's ten. He's Adriana's second son, my brother, with her dark hair and his grandfather Roderic's chin and enormous serious gray eyes. He collects gods. He has for years, in an old green laundry ledger he took from Mary's cupboard: three questions per god, What is your name, what do you do, what is your favorite thing, and the gods answer him, every one, because he asks properly.

He'd been busy while I slept.

"I've counted," he said, and sat down on the end of the bed beside Carol's hand, which was still on my foot. "Aurelia asked me to. The ones with seams."

He opened the ledger. There was a new page at the back, ruled very neatly in Mary's style, in columns.

"Every god you and Carol gave back," said Faelan. "From the war. I asked them all. Over the last two days. I went through the Concordia gate and the Lyradon gate and down to Havenreach and I asked everyone I could find." He ran his finger down the page. "Two hundred and twelve. In the Accord. That I could find. Who've got a seam."

Two hundred and twelve.

"Soren's one," said Faelan. "And Corra. And Lorn. And Imme. And Brannoc." He looked up at me. "And Halemar. And Ilyra. And Morning. And nearly everybody who was in the hall at Westmere."

* * *

Nobody said anything.

Two hundred and twelve seams. Two hundred and twelve places where the Hollow Choir could get its fingers in, if the god was doing the thing they were for, at the wrong moment. Two hundred and twelve gods who might go silent mid-sentence, or go cold mid-river, or go dark mid-crossroads, and be carried off down some coast to a cave.

And two hundred and twelve seeds under my breastbone and Carol's. One each. One chance each.

And every time I used one, it would cost more than the last.

"I can't," I said. Very quietly. "Can I. Not two hundred and twelve. Not if each one is two days. Three days. A week."

"Not alone," said Carol, from the end of the bed.

Her hand tightened on my foot.

"Not alone," she said again. "You're not the only one with seeds. Half of every one of them is mine. You did Meriel. I'll do the next." Her chin came up. "And we'll find out how to stop before the jug's empty. Together. The way we find out everything."

* * *

My father had come back in, at some point. He was standing in the doorway again, in his socks.

"Not two hundred and twelve," he said. "Not one at a time. That's what he wants. Kessavel. That's the whole shape of it." He looked at Faelan's ledger. "He doesn't need to tear all two hundred and twelve. He only needs to tear enough that you two pour yourselves out on chapel floors growing them back, one after another, until you're too tired to do anything else." His voice was very quiet. "Until you're too tired to cross a sea."

Nobody breathed.

"He can't beat you," said my father. "Aurelia said so in front of the whole Accord, and she was right. So he's trying something else. He's trying to make you spend yourselves." He looked at me. "Don't let him."

"Then what do we do?"

"We find the Choir before they find the seams," said my father. "And we find out what Kessavel wants with the pieces." He turned to go. Then turned back. "And you eat that bread. Helena's watching the stairs."

* * *

That night, when everyone had gone and the baby was asleep in his cradle and Seraphina was asleep beside me with one hand on my arm, I lay awake again. Not long. I was too tired for long.

I put my hand on my chest and felt the warm stones.

Two hundred and eleven now. A whole pocketful. Lorn, and Imme, and Corra, and Soren's light in a window, and Halemar's ferry somewhere out on the western sea, and Ilyra's quiet, and Brannoc's wall.

And the smooth empty place where Meriel had been.

I didn't feel sad about it. That surprised me. I'd thought I would. But it didn't feel like losing something. It felt like the place on a shelf where you used to keep a jar of seeds, and now there's a garden instead.

You do a row, Helena said.

I'd done one.

I went to sleep.

* * *

Mary wrote it at midnight, at the kitchen table, with Selvane on the bench by the fire, asleep, and Benjamin on the floor of the passage, asleep, and the kettle on the hob, ready for four.

Garrick woke on the third morning. Little Uriah sat on his chest and said: up. He opened his eyes. Nobody else could wake him. Uriah counted to nine hundred and fourteen.

Seraphina: you didn't ask me. Next time ask, and let me sit beside you. Not in the door. He promised.

Helena and Selvane took turns at the kettle every night at four. Benjamin slept in the passage. Helena stepped over him in her sleep and never trod on him.

Aurelia: the seed is gone. It grew into her. It's her join now. You get one. One per god.

At three he gave back hundreds of gods and slept an afternoon. At twenty-three he grew one back and slept two days. It is getting worse, because he is getting bigger. A bigger jug, poured out.

Faelan counted. Two hundred and twelve gods in the Accord with a seam.

Carol: not alone. I'll do the next.

Iselle: if one of the Choir is holding a torn piece, that's a held thing. That's mine. I could make it let go before it wears thin.

No word from Halemar. Nine days. Selvane: ferrymen are very good at coming back.

Uriah: he can't beat you, so he's trying to make you spend yourselves. Don't let him.

Garrick: it feels like a garden instead of a jar of seeds.

And under that, in a round, careful, ten-year-old's hand, very neat, the way Mary taught him:

Faelan. 212. I asked them all. Every one said they'd rather he didn't fall down again.