Chapter 137: Westmere Burns

The Regent said sunset. Three days.

He lied.

* * *

Sunday and Monday went the way the days before a war go. Too slowly and too fast at once.

The gods of the Accord came and went through the lower hall at Greykeep in twos and threes, to look at maps and argue and go away again. Lexander moved pieces on his king's-table board until the small hours. Brannoc filled four pages of his little leather book. Merova of fighting withdrawals walked the whole length of the Westmere coast on Sunday afternoon, alone, with her hands behind her back, looking at every cove and cliff path and fishing stair, and came back at dusk and said, "There are eleven ways off that beach, and nine of them are good," and went to bed.

At Westmere, the nine thousand Kethran sailors ate Helena's bread and slept in the empty houses of people who'd gone through the Hold gate three nights before. Tamar went among them all day Sunday with Goss and the ledger, asking names. Edric fished. Selvane and Benjamin sat on the old stone at the end of the south mole. And the frozen wave hung over the abandoned fleet, a mile out, taller than the castle, all down the coast, glittering, not melting at all.

My father slept for most of Sunday. Fourteen hours. My mother sat beside him the whole time and wouldn't let anyone into the room, not even me.

On Monday he got up and ate four eggs and went down to the tilt yard and fell over once, which made Avarn so pleased that he said tomorrow twice.

* * *

On Tuesday, at a quarter to five in the morning, the Castellan spoke.

Not to anyone. To the whole of Greykeep at once, in every room, from every wall. The way it does when something's wrong with a gate.

"Westmere," said the Castellan.

That was all. Just the name. In a voice I'd never heard it use. Not dry. Not old. Sharp, like a dog that hears something in the dark.

* * *

I was halfway across the inner court on my way to the tilt yard, with the little oak sword under my arm.

I reached for Westmere. The way I always do. The way you reach for your own pocket. A fold is just knowing where a place is and being there instead of here. I know Westmere. The north pier and the Hold and the harbor wall and the stone where Pim stands.

The fold didn't open.

Not wouldn't. Couldn't. It was like putting your hand out for a door handle in the dark and finding a smooth wall where the door used to be. I reached again. Harder. And something cold and flat pushed my reach back at me, the way a window pushes back a bird.

Locked.

* * *

"Westmere Hold gate," said the Castellan. "Closed. From the far side." A pause, very short. "Not by me. Not by Eleanor. By a key I do not know."

I was already running.

* * *

The lower hall at Greykeep has six arches. The big gate to Concordia. Lyradon. Havenreach. Orselle. And at the end, the smallest, the Westmere gate, the one Eleanor warded with salt, that comes out in the lower court of the Hold.

When I came down the stair into the lower hall, the Westmere gate was dark. Not gray. Not shimmering. Dark. The brass plates on the pillars had gone dull, like pennies left in vinegar. And there was something across it, in the space where the shimmer should be. You couldn't see it. You could feel it. Flat and cold and absolute.

Eleanor was already there. In her coat over her nightgown, with her tuning fork in one hand, pressing her ear against the Westmere gate's left pillar, her face white.

"It's a lock," she said, without turning around. "On the far side. On the sky, I think. Over the whole of Westmere. Every way in." She took her ear off the stone. "It's Kessavel's. I'd know his work anywhere. He's been reading my plates from the wrong side for a year." She swallowed. "And it's still closing, Garrick. It isn't finished. It's like ice coming in from the edges of a pond. Every gate that goes there, one by one. And then every road. And then every fold."

"How long?"

"A minute. Perhaps less."

"Is there any gate still open?"

She shut her eyes and listened. Not to the stone. To something further off.

"Havenreach," she said. "The south harbor arch. There's a fisherman's gate from there to the old salt steps at Westmere, under the south mole. I put it in years ago, for the herring boats. Nobody's used it in a decade." She opened her eyes. "It's still open. Just. But you can't get to Havenreach from here. That arch is—"

* * *

"Havenreach arch," said the Castellan. "Closing. From the far side."

I didn't wait for the rest of it.

* * *

I went through the Concordia gate.

It's the big one. The oldest. It goes to the gate square at the top of the harbor quarter, and I came out on the platform in the gray dawn with the fish market just opening below and a gull screaming at me from the customs house roof. And I turned, without stopping, to the second arch on the platform, the little one on the east side that goes to Havenreach's north quay. The one the dwarven merchants use.

"Concordia," said the Castellan in my ear, faint, from very far away. "The Havenreach arch here is closing. You have ten heartbeats."

I went through it in four.

* * *

Havenreach. The north quay. Fog on the water and the smell of forges and somebody's breakfast frying. The dwarves on the quay looked up at me, and one of them dropped a crate.

Eleanor's fisherman's gate is at the far end of the south harbor wall. Half a mile away. I couldn't fold there; the fold was fine inside Havenreach, but the moment I reached for the salt steps at Westmere on the far side of it, the cold flat lock pushed back.

So I folded to the far end of the south harbor wall instead. Inside Havenreach. Which was allowed.

And there was the gate. Tiny. Two stone posts no higher than my shoulder, green with weed, with Eleanor's brass plates gone dark with salt and age. Between them, the faintest gray shimmer, like breath on a cold window.

Getting fainter. While I watched.

* * *

I didn't think. I didn't ask anything. There wasn't time to ask.

I took the little oak sword out from under my arm. Never in your hand unless you mean it. And I pushed it into the shimmer, point first, the way you'd jam a stick in a closing door. And I opened my other hand and let Iselle's opening go out of it, all of it, everything I'd kept, into the wood.

The shimmer stopped closing.

Just for a moment. Just long enough. The oak sword held it, the way a stick holds a door, and the lock on the far side ground against it, and I felt the wood start to creak in my hand.

I went through.

* * *

I came out on the old salt steps at Westmere, under the south mole, on my hands and knees on wet weedy stone.

And behind me, the gate shut. With a sound like a door slammed in a cellar.

I still had the sword. I looked at it. There was a long fine crack down the length of the oak blade, from the hilt nearly to the tip. But it was whole.

"Westmere," said the Castellan. Very faint. From very far away. From the other side of something. "Garrick Grey. Inward. By the salt steps." A pause. "Three gates in a minute." Another pause. And then, so quietly I almost didn't hear it: "The way is shut behind you. I am sorry. I cannot see you anymore."

And then nothing. No Castellan. For the first time in my life.

* * *

I stood up.

And looked up.

* * *

Westmere was burning.

* * *

Not the town. Not yet. The sea.

The frozen wave, a mile out, the wall of ice my father had made, was lit up red from inside. As if somebody had poured fire into the bottom of it. You could see the flames moving behind the green ice, the way you see a fire through a frosted window, and where they touched it the ice was going soft and black and sliding down in great slow sheets with a hiss I could hear from the harbor. Steam was going up off the whole length of it in a long white curtain into the dawn.

And the abandoned fleet was burning. All of it. Two hundred and forty long black ships and the ten tall ones, frozen in the ice, and every one of them was on fire, mast to keel, the black wood going up like kindling with a roar like a forge. The smoke came in over the harbor in a black wall and the light came through it red and the whole sky was red and black and roaring.

And through the gaps in the burning fleet, coming in across the ice from the open sea, more ships.

Red ships. Like the herald's. Low and sleek, with red sails. Forty of them, perhaps. Fifty. And on the bow of every one of them, chained to the stem-post like a figurehead, something that burned.

* * *

Not fire. Something in fire. A shape. A person, or almost. Standing in the flames on every bow with its arms spread and its head thrown back, and the fire pouring off it in front of the ship, onto the ice, across the ice, so that every red ship came in on a road of flame that burned on the frozen sea as if the ice were oil.

"Cindrel," said someone behind me.

* * *

It was Benjamin. My great-grandfather. He'd come down off the end of the south mole onto the salt steps behind me, very fast for a man who held a door for two hundred and twenty-two years, and Selvane was with him, with her lamp.

"Cindrel," said Benjamin again. He was looking at the shapes on the bows. "A god of wildfire. The kind that runs on the surface of water, on oil spills, on marsh gas. Kethran sailors have prayed against him for a thousand years." His face was very grim. "He's one of the Chained. And there's one of him on every ship."

"There's only one Cindrel," said Selvane quietly. Her voice was shaking. "Kessavel's cut him into pieces. And chained a piece to every bow." She held her lamp very tight. "He's screaming. Can't you hear it? Every piece of him. Screaming."

I could, now that she said it. Under the roar of the burning fleet. A high thin sound, everywhere, all at once.

* * *

"The sky," said Benjamin. "Look at the sky, Garrick."

I looked up again. Past the smoke. Past the red.

There was something over Westmere.

You couldn't see it, exactly. But the dawn light came down through it strangely, as if through very old glass. And at the edges, out to sea, and inland over the hills behind the town, and north and south along the coast, the light bent. The way light bends at the edge of a bowl of water.

A dome. Over all of it. Over the town and the harbor and the Hold and the sea and the burning fleet and the red ships coming in.

"He's locked it," I said. "The whole of Westmere. Nobody gets in. No gate. No fold."

"And nobody gets out," said Benjamin.

* * *

"The deserters will be fetched," I said slowly. "That's what the Herald said. Every one. Their names are known."

I looked along the harbor. At the town. At the empty houses with nine thousand Kethran sailors asleep in them, who'd walked across a mile of ice with their hands open three days ago. At the Hold on its rock, with the gate in its lower court locked dark from the far side.

"He didn't come to fight us at sunset," I said. "He came to fetch them. At dawn. While we were waiting for sunset." I looked up at the dome. "And he locked the door so we couldn't come and stop him."

"You came," said Benjamin.

"Just me."

"Just you," said my great-grandfather, "is not nothing."

* * *

Tamar's bell started ringing.

Not the watch bell. The other one. Three and three and three. The bell that tells the town to wake up and come to the Hold.

And the town woke up.

* * *

I ran along the south mole and up the harbor steps and through the streets, and everywhere doors were banging open and Kethran sailors were coming out of the houses in their shirts with their gray sea-coats over their arms, and looking up at the red sky and the black smoke and the burning sea, and going white.

They knew what it was. They knew better than I did.

"Ashes," one of them said to me in the street, a big red-bearded man with a boy beside him, the boy from the frozen deck who'd sat on the coil of rope with his hands over his face. The man grabbed my arm. "Prince. That's the Regent's fire. That's Ashes. That's what they do to a city that says no twice." His grip was shaking. "They don't take you. They burn the place you ran to. And then they take you out of the ashes."

* * *

Tamar was on the harbor wall.

He was standing at the top of the steps by the harbor office, where the wall runs out to the north pier, with his watch coat on over his nightshirt and the long brass spyglass in his hand, looking out at the red ships coming in across the burning ice. His square jaw was set. He's a few years older than me, Tamar, and he's not a big man, and he's never in his life wanted to be anything except the steward of a small harbor where nothing ever happens. His father handed it to him three winters ago. He told me once he'd rather have been a chandler.

He saw me coming up the steps. And for one moment, his whole face changed. Like a man in deep water seeing a rope.

"Garrick. How did you—the gates are—"

"Three gates in a minute," I said. "The Castellan counted. And now they're all shut, and I'm the only one who got through." I stopped beside him, out of breath. "Tamar. My father can't get in. Nobody can. It's locked. The whole of Westmere."

Tamar looked at me for a long moment.

Then he put the spyglass to his eye again and looked out at the red ships.

"How many?" he said.

* * *

Caitlin wasn't there to count. So I counted.

Not the way she does. Badly. Slowly. On my fingers, like a child.

"Forty-six," I said. "Red ships. Each with a piece of Cindrel on the bow. And on the decks—" I narrowed my eyes through the smoke. "Gray. On every deck. Standing in rows."

"Hushed," said Tamar.

"Hushed," I said.

Hundreds of them. Maybe more. Standing in their rows on the red decks, coming in on the roads of fire across the burning ice. Gray coats. White masks with no mouths. And their hands.

Even from the harbor wall I could see their hands.

They weren't open. They weren't even fists, the way the Hushed on the parade ground had been, the way the seven on the stair had been before I opened them.

They were chained. Every hand. Wrapped around and around with short lengths of black chain, binding the fingers into the palm. Locked shut. With little black padlocks. So that nothing could ever open them.

Not Iselle. Not me.

Kessavel had learned.

* * *

"Right," said Tamar.

He lowered the spyglass. He was very pale. But his voice was steady, the way a man's voice is steady when he's decided not to let it shake.

"Goss," he said, without looking around. "Ledger. The Hold. Every name inside the Hold, as fast as you can, and close the doors behind them. Women and children first. Then the old ones. Then everyone else." Goss, who'd come up behind him in his nightshirt with the ledger under his arm, nodded and ran. "Dunmore. Your men. The harbor wall. From the office to the end of the north pier. Bring the boathooks. Bring anything long." Dunmore, at the foot of the steps, already had a boathook in his fist. "Father."

Edric had come up too. With his fishing line.

"You'll want me on the wall," said Edric.

"I want you in the Hold," said Tamar. "With the children. Telling them about fish."

Edric looked at his son for a long time.

"You've grown up," he said.

"Yesterday," said Tamar. "I'll tell you about it later."

* * *

Then he turned to the Kethran sailors.

There were hundreds of them by then. Thousands. In the streets below the harbor wall, and on the wall, and on the steps, in their shirts with their coats over their arms, looking out at the red ships and the burning sea and the chained gray shapes on the decks coming to fetch them.

Tamar stood at the top of the harbor steps and looked down at them. A small, square, frightened man, who'd rather have been a chandler, in his watch coat over his nightshirt.

"Harbor-right," he said. His voice cracked. He cleared his throat and said it again. Louder. "Harbor-right. Old coast law. Older than the Hold. Any vessel in distress that comes and asks gets the harbor." He swallowed. "You asked. Three days ago. I said yes. That means the harbor's yours. As long as I'm standing on this wall. Nobody fetches anybody out of my harbor." He looked out at the red ships. "So anyone who wants to stand on this wall with me can. And anyone who'd rather go up to the Hold with the children can. And nobody will think less of you either way." He gripped the spyglass. "That's all. That's everything I've got. I'm not a soldier. I'm a harbormaster's steward. I count boats."

* * *

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Then the big red-bearded sailor, the one who'd grabbed my arm in the street, pushed his boy toward the Hold and climbed the steps. And stood beside Tamar on the harbor wall. With his hands open.

Then another. Then ten. Then a hundred.

And then I stopped being able to count them.

* * *

I looked out at the burning sea.

The first of the red ships was a quarter of a mile out. The piece of Cindrel on its bow was screaming. The road of fire in front of it was burning across the ice toward the harbor mouth. And on its deck, the Hushed had begun to move. Down the sides. Onto the burning ice. Walking through the fire as if it weren't there, because they don't feel anything, not cold or tired or afraid or burned. Toward the harbor. With their chained hands held out in front of them like clubs.

I took the little oak sword out from under my arm. The one with the crack down the blade.

Never in your hand unless you mean it.

I'd never meant anything more.

* * *

And then, overhead, the sky cracked.

* * *

Not the sky. The dome. Kessavel's lock. High up over the town, over the Hold, there was a sound like a mountain splitting. And a light. White-gold. So bright it threw every shadow in Westmere straight down at once, and the smoke lit up from above like a lantern full of fog.

Lightning. One bolt. Out of a clear sky, from the east. From Greykeep.

It struck the dome.

And stopped.

* * *

It hung there. On the outside of the lock. I could see it. A great white-gold spear of lightning, as tall as the Hold, pressed against the invisible curve of Kessavel's dome like a hand pressed against a window, with all its light pouring down on us and none of it getting through. Crackling. Pushing. And the whole dome rang under it like a struck bell, so loud that every Kethran sailor on the harbor wall put his hands over his ears.

It didn't break.

The lightning drew back. Gathered. Struck again. The dome rang again.

It didn't break.

* * *

And through it, through the ringing and the roar of the burning fleet and the screaming of the pieces of Cindrel, faint and far and furious, I heard a voice I'd have known at the bottom of the sea.

"GARRICK."

My father. On the other side of the lock. As lightning. With no way in.

* * *

I looked up at the white-gold bolt pressed against the sky.

And I did the only thing I could. I lifted my free hand. Open. Up toward it. The way he'd lifted his toward Malachar across a mile of ice.

I'm here.

The lightning flared. Once. Very bright.

I know.

And then it began, slowly, very slowly, to push.

* * *

"How long?" said Tamar, beside me. He'd seen it too. He was looking up at the lightning on the dome with his mouth open.

"I don't know," I said. "It's Kessavel's lock. He built it for my father. He's been building it all year." I watched the bolt grind against the invisible curve. "An hour. A day. I don't know."

Tamar looked out at the first wave of chained Hushed coming in across the burning ice. Then at the thousands of Kethran sailors along the harbor wall with their hands open. Then at me, with my cracked wooden sword.

"Then we'll have to hold till he gets in," said Tamar.

"Yes."

He took a breath. A small square man in a watch coat over a nightshirt, who'd rather have been a chandler.

"Heard," said Tamar Vale.

* * *

Mary's book. Tuesday. Greykeep. She wrote it at five in the morning, at the foot of the stair in the lower hall, in front of six dark gates, while Eleanor held her ear to the stone and my mother held my father's coat and Carol stood in front of the Westmere gate with both her hands flat on the cold pillar, very still, listening through the middle for me.

Tuesday. 4:45. The Castellan said Westmere.

The Westmere gate closed from the far side. Then Havenreach. Then Concordia's little arch. Kessavel's lock. Over all of Westmere. Eleanor says on the sky.

Garrick went through three gates in a minute. Concordia, Havenreach, the old salt steps. He was the last one through. The Castellan says it cannot see him anymore.

5:10: Uriah went as lightning. He has not come back.

Carol says Garrick is all right. She says he's on the harbor wall with Tamar. She says he's frightened.

She says he's got his sword in his hand.

And under that, in Carol's hand, two lines, written fast and crooked, the pen dug in so hard it tore the page:

Carol. I can feel him. I'm coming. I'd like it noted that I don't care how.