Chapter 130: Ignatius Realizes

There was a light in the north tower.

I saw it at twenty to five on Saturday morning, crossing the inner court on my way down to the tilt yard. Avarn had said five, and Roderic had said that five to Avarn means a quarter to, and that a quarter to means you'd better already be there. So I was early. And it was still full dark, and cold, with the stars hard and small over the roofs. And at the very top of the north tower, in the little round room with the windows all around, there was a lamp lit.

We'd put it out. I remembered doing it. At midnight, before we went down to the nursery, my father had pinched the wick himself.

I stood in the court for a moment with my breath smoking.

Then I went back in and climbed the ninety-one steps.

* * *

The door was open. Not wide. A hand's width.

Ignatius was sitting on the floor of the round room with his back against the leg of the table, in his old green coat, with his knees up. The lamp was on the floor in front of him. He'd lit it again; I could see the new flame standing up very straight and still from the black end of the old wick. And he was looking into the bottom of the glass, where the ash was.

He didn't look up when I came in.

"You burned something in it," he said.

I didn't answer straight away.

"Last night," said Ignatius. "Late. After the four of you came up here and left me at the bottom of the stair." His voice was perfectly ordinary. That was the worst thing about it. "Somebody wrote something down on a scrap of paper. And then somebody else took it and held it in the lamp until it was gone." He tilted the glass a little, so the gray flakes in the bottom slid. "Your father, I think. He burns things the way he does everything. All at once. Very thoroughly."

"Iggy."

"Fire doesn't forget what it eats, Garrick." He finally looked up at me. "You know that. You've had my fire since you were two."

* * *

He was right. I had written it down.

After Marra had signed the six lines the second time, I'd been so frightened of getting a single word wrong that I'd pulled a scrap of paper out of my pocket and written them out in pencil, small, on my knee, and held them up for her to check. She'd read them. Nodded. Touched one word and made me change it: open, not opens. And then my father had taken the scrap out of my hand, very gently, and held it in the lamp flame until it curled and went gray and fell into the bottom of the glass.

Not anywhere, he'd said.

I'd forgotten Ignatius can read ash.

* * *

"All six?" I said.

"All six." He set the lamp down on the floor between us. "It took me most of the night. Paper's hard. It goes too fast. It doesn't have time to remember properly." He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "But it was pencil. Pencil's slower. It holds on."

I sat down on the floor across from him, with the lamp between us.

"I'm sorry," I said. "About the stair."

"Carol asked me to wait." He shrugged. "She had her reasons. She always does. And I could see your faces when you all came out of the Council. I knew it was something about him. About the little one." He looked at the flame. "I didn't come up here to read it because I was angry, Garrick. I came up because I couldn't sleep. And I sat down. And the lamp was here. And it was still warm." He was quiet for a moment. "I'm a fire god. When a lamp's still warm and something's been burned in it, I can't not read it. It's like asking you not to hear somebody say your name."

* * *

"So you know," I said.

"About the half made whole? Yes." Ignatius nodded slowly. "I'd guessed that much a long time ago, actually. The night Lexander sent Muninn to sit on the cot rail. Sera told me about it after. She told me about Father's face." He almost smiled. "You don't grow up with Odin for a father without learning what his face does when he's remembering something he'd rather not."

"Then what—"

"That isn't the part that kept me up," said Ignatius.

He leaned forward. In the lamplight his face looked very like Seraphina's, all at once, the way it does sometimes, the same line of the jaw, the same way of going very still before saying something that matters.

"The flame that was first," he said. "Garrick. It wasn't one flame."

* * *

I didn't say anything.

"You heard what Muninn remembered," said Ignatius. "Odin's oldest memory. The First Flame, when it was new, before anyone had a word for it. Broken in two by a closed hand. Into the half that mends and the half that cuts." He held up his right hand, open, and a little flame came up out of his palm, low and gold and wavering, the color of a hearth late at night. Warm. It made the cold round room warm all at once, the way a kitchen does. "Seraphina got the cutting half. Sharp enough to go through stone." He looked at the flame in his palm. "And I got this one."

"The mending half."

"The mending half." He closed his hand gently. The flame went out. "Everybody always says Seraphina, who carries the First Flame. Malachar's letter said it. The one who carries the First Flame. Severin said it. The Kethran ledgers say it. Never me." He shrugged again. "I used to be a little offended. Then I worked out why. Half a fire that only mends things doesn't look like much, to a man who wants a weapon. Nobody's ever come across the sea for a healer."

"Iggy—"

"But the saying doesn't say the fire that cuts," said Ignatius. "It says the flame that was first. And I'm half of that, Garrick. I always was."

* * *

The lamp flame between us stood very straight and still.

"And somebody broke it in two," said Ignatius, very quietly. "Didn't they? Long ago. A closed hand. So it couldn't ever be whole. So nobody could ever do the thing in the saying." He looked down at his hands. "And then my sister married you. And you held a gift of the gods. And you had a son. And the two halves of the first fire went back together in him, and it's whole. Asleep in a cot downstairs, with Helena's knitting on the floor."

"Yes."

"And the one who broke it is still out there." Ignatius looked up at me. "He went to all that trouble. All those years ago. To break it in two so it could never be whole again. And it's whole. In a baby. Who says ta to the cat." His voice cracked, just a little. "What do you think he wants now, Garrick?"

I didn't answer. I knew. I'd known since Marra's hands said it, in this room, six hours ago.

He wants to hold him shut.

"He wants all of it back," said Ignatius. "Every piece of the first fire. The whole one, in the cot. And both of the halves. Sera. And me." He spread his open hands. "I'm not the one he wants most. I know that. But I'm on the list." He breathed out. "I'm a target. I never was before. And now I am."

* * *

"That isn't what kept you up either," I said.

Ignatius looked at me for a long time.

I've known him since I was two. Since before I can remember. He was the first person outside my own family I ever borrowed anything from; my mother says I sat in his lap at a Council dinner in Concordia and asked for his fire in a voice so small nobody else heard, and he said Take before he even knew what he was saying, and the candles all along the table flared up and Lexander spilled his wine. He's been my brother in everything but blood for twenty years. And he's been Carol's for longer than that, and then, one summer, not her brother at all.

"No," he said. "It isn't."

* * *

"The one who holds a gift of the gods," said Ignatius. "Is joined to the flame that was first."

He said it very slowly. Like a man reading out a bill he can't pay.

"Carol holds a gift of the gods," he said. "The same as you. You were born holding it together. And I carry the flame that was first. Half of it. And she and I have been—" He stopped. Started again. "We decided not to marry. Years ago. You know that. We didn't want a wedding to be the thing that made it real; we wanted it to just be real. And it is. Every day." He looked at me. "But joined doesn't say married, does it? It just says joined."

I understood, then. All of it.

"You think it could happen again," I said. "With you and Carol. Another whole one."

"I don't know," said Ignatius. "Nobody knows. That's the trouble. The saying doesn't say once." His hands were shaking, very slightly. He put them flat on the floor to stop them. "And if he thinks it might, then it isn't just me on his list, is it? It's her. More than she already was. Not just because she says no to Malachar. Because of me. Because of what I am. Because I'm standing next to her."

He swallowed.

"I sat here all night," he said. "With the ash. And by about three o'clock I'd decided I ought to go away. Home. To Concordia. To my mother's palace on the hill. Far away from Carol. So that whatever's coming for the flame doesn't come here, to her, to him." He breathed in. "I've packed. My bag's at the bottom of the stair. I was going to tell you, and then go."

* * *

I looked at him for a long moment.

Then I said the thing my sister would have said, because she wasn't there to say it, and because it's the first rule either of us ever learned.

"Did you ask her?"

Ignatius closed his eyes.

"Iggy. Did you ask Carol?"

"No."

"Then you can't go." I leaned forward over the lamp. "You don't get to decide that for her. Nobody does. Not you. Not Father. Not Malachar, not Ovaren, not anybody. That's what she's been saying since she was seven. Ask me. That's the whole of it. That's what this whole war is about, if it's about anything." My voice was louder than I meant. "You don't leave someone to keep them safe without asking them first. That's not keeping them safe. That's just deciding for them, very kindly. And it's the same thing he does."

Ignatius opened his eyes.

"He decides for people," I said. "Malachar. Very kindly, sometimes. With his hand closed." I held my own out, over the lamp, open. "We don't. In this house we ask."

* * *

He looked at my open hand for a long time.

And then, from the doorway, a voice I'd have known at the bottom of the sea said:

"That's my son."

* * *

My father was standing on the top step with two mugs of tea in one hand and a third balanced on top of them, which is a thing only my father can do. He was in his shirt and his socks, the old gray ones with the darned heel. He'd been there, I think, for a while.

"I walk the forty steps," he said. "Every night. Kitchen to nursery. Nursery to kitchen. Sometimes twice." He came in and set the three mugs down on the table. "And at the end of the passage there's a window that looks up at this one. And there was a light in it." He looked at Ignatius. "So I made tea. I always make tea. I don't know any other way to go up a staircase in the middle of the night."

He didn't sit. He never does. He leaned against the table, very big in the little round room, and picked up his mug.

"Your bag's at the bottom of the stair," he said to Ignatius. "I nearly fell over it."

"Sorry."

"I'm not." My father drank his tea. "I put it back in your room. On the way up. I hope you don't mind." He looked at Ignatius over the rim of the mug. "I didn't unpack it. That's your business. But I thought it should be somewhere it could change its mind."

* * *

Ignatius didn't say anything. His throat moved.

"I made you wait at the bottom of the stair last night," said my father. "That was wrong of me."

"Carol asked me to—"

"Carol asked you to wait," said my father. "I should have asked you up. That's different." He set the mug down. "You're one of mine, Ignatius. You've been one of mine since you were three and set fire to my boots with my feet still in them, and then healed the blisters before I'd even finished yelling. You've sat at my table more nights than you've sat at your father's. Everybody in this house who ever needed mending, you mended." He looked at the lamp on the floor. "And last night I left you at the bottom of the stair like a guest. I'm sorry. Next time, you're at the top."

"There'll be a next time?"

"There's always a next time," said my father. "That's what having a family is. It's mostly next times." He reached down and picked up the lamp, carefully, and looked at the gray ash in the bottom of the glass. "So. You read it."

"All six lines."

"Then you're in the room," said my father simply. "Five heads now. And one pair of hands."

* * *

Ignatius looked up at him.

"I'm a target," he said. "Sir. I'm half the first fire. And if he thinks Carol and I—"

"I know," said my father.

"Then shouldn't I—"

"No," said my father. "You shouldn't." He set the lamp back on the table, very gently. "Nobody in this house leaves to keep anybody else safe. That's my job. Standing in front. And I'm not leaving either." He looked at Ignatius, and his face was the one I'd seen on the palace wall at Concordia, at midnight, four nights before. "You're a target. So is Seraphina. So is Carol. So is my grandson. So, as it happens, am I, and so is everyone who ever slept within forty steps of my kitchen. And the answer to that isn't to scatter. It's to stand closer together." He paused. "And to ask Carol what she thinks. Before you go anywhere at all."

* * *

At ten to five the three of us went down the north tower stair together, ninety-one steps, with the mugs, and out across the inner court in the dark toward the tilt yard.

And on the low wall at the end of the yard, under the one lantern, with her chin on her knees and her back to the paddock, beside an old gray man with a staff, sat my sister.

* * *

She didn't get up.

She looked at Ignatius. Then at me. Then at our father, with his three empty mugs. And she knew. Of course she knew. She always knows.

"You packed a bag," said Carol.

Ignatius stopped at the edge of the lantern light.

"How—"

"I've been awake since three," said Carol. "I felt you decide something. I can always feel it when you decide something; you go warm and then very cold, like a stone taken out of the oven." She didn't move off the wall. "And then I went down to the stair to see where you'd gone. And I found the bag. And I sat on it for an hour, actually. And then Father came along and picked it up with me still sitting on it and carried us both back to your room and put us down and said Go to the tilt yard and wait for him there. So I did." She looked at Avarn, beside her. "He doesn't talk much."

"No," agreed Avarn.

* * *

"I was going to go to Concordia," said Ignatius. Very quietly. "To keep you safe."

"I know."

"Because of the saying. Because of what I am. Because if he thinks you and I could—"

"I know," said Carol. "I was in the room when Marra said them. I've got all six." She looked at him across the frosty yard. "And I lay awake for two hours being frightened. And then I felt you decide. And then I was furious."

"Carol—"

"You don't get to go away to keep me safe, Ignatius." Her voice rang off the stable wall. "Nobody gets to do that. Not ever. I said no to an emperor. I said no to a god in a doorway. I'll say no to you." She stood up off the wall. "And if you go anyway, I'll follow you. Over the sea, if I have to. Up the outside of your mother's palace. You know I will. I'll climb in your window at Concordia every night until you come home just so I can stop doing it."

Ignatius made a noise that might have been a laugh.

"You would," he said.

"I would." She crossed the yard to him. Stopped in front of him. Held out her hands. Open. "So ask me."

"Ask you what?"

"Whether I want you to go." Carol's eyes were very bright. "That's all. That's all you ever had to do. Ask me."

* * *

He looked at her open hands for a long time.

"Carol Clara Grey," said Ignatius. "Do you want me to go?"

"No," said Carol. "I want you to stay. And I want you to sit outside the nursery door at night with Thor, because a healing fire ought to be near him, and Thor eats all the walnuts. And I want you to stop packing bags at three in the morning." She took his hands. "That's my answer. That's a real one. You can hear it."

"Heard," said Ignatius.

And he put his forehead down against hers, in the middle of the tilt yard, in the frost, under the one lantern, with the stars going pale over the stables.

* * *

Avarn cleared his throat.

It was the loudest noise I'd ever heard him make.

"It's five o'clock," he said. "In my yard, it's five o'clock." He looked at Ignatius. Then at Carol. Then at me, and at my father with his empty mugs. "The healer can stay if he likes. Healers fall over less. They know where the bones are." He stood up, knees cracking like kindling, and threw me the staff. "You."

I caught it. Badly.

"Again," said Avarn.

* * *

My father watched from the wall for the whole two hours.

He didn't say anything. He sat where Carol had been sitting, with the three empty mugs lined up beside him, and his hands open on his knees, and watched me fall over. Nine times, that morning. Two fewer than the day before. Roderic, arriving at a quarter past five at a dead run with his collar inside out, counted them all out loud. Ignatius mended a split knuckle for me on the fourth fall and a turned ankle on the seventh, without being asked, and without anybody saying anything about it. Carol sat on the wall beside our father with her shoulder against his arm.

And when the kitchen bell rang at seven, and Avarn said tomorrow, my father stood up.

"Avarn," he said.

The old god turned.

"Thank you," said my father. "For my sons."

Avarn looked at him for a long moment. Two gray men in a cold yard. One very big, in socks. One lean and old, with a carpenter's hands.

"They're not good," said Avarn.

"I know," said my father.

"They're patient." Avarn turned away toward the paddock gate. Then stopped. Then, without looking back, added: "The big one's getting less bad. Tell him that. Don't tell him I said it."

And went.

* * *

Mary's book. Saturday. In Mary's hand, and then, below it, in a hand that writes very upright and very neatly, the way a healer writes a dose:

Saturday, before five. Ignatius in the north tower, reading ash. He read the six lines out of the lamp. Fire doesn't forget.

He packed a bag at three. Uriah carried it back upstairs with Carol still sitting on it.

Ignatius asked Carol. She said no. He said heard.

Garrick fell over nine times. Two fewer.

From tonight, the nursery door: Thor and Ignatius. Thor says he can't have any of the walnuts. He says he'll bring his own.

And under that:

Ignatius. The mending half. Present. Asked, this time, and answered. I'd like it noted that I'm unpacking.