Chapter 140: Phoenix Fire

They came over the eastern hills at half past eleven.

At first it was just the light. Gold and red, low on the skyline, the way a town looks from far off at night when every window is lit. Then it rose. And spread. And came on, over the hills behind Westmere, over the empty farms and the cliff paths and the long white crack in the sky where Kessavel's dome had been. And it wasn't a light anymore.

It was birds.

* * *

Hundreds of them. More. The sky above the town was full of them, so full that the gray morning went gold, and the smoke from the burning fleet went gold, and every face on the harbor wall turned up and went gold. They came in long ribbons and wheeling spirals, like sparks going up from a bonfire, only coming down. Old ones the color of embers, dark red and deep gold. Young ones bright copper. And the sound of them was like nothing I've ever heard. Not a song. A sort of rushing crackle, like a great fire breathing.

Phoenixes. Every phoenix in Avarra.

The Kethran sailors on the harbor wall fell on their knees.

* * *

Two came ahead of the rest.

One was Serevan. I knew him. He's come to Greykeep more times than I can count, to sit on the fountain rim in the inner court and bow to the Castellan and to Helena and to whoever he decides deserves it, precisely as far as he intends. Eagle-sized, gold and copper and red, every feather moving like flame.

The other was bigger. Much bigger. Old, the way the Hold is old. Her feathers were so dark a red they were nearly black at the edges, like a coal that's been burning all night, and when she moved, the light underneath them came up through the dark the way the light in a forge comes up when you work the bellows.

Ashenne. Eldest of the aeries. Hatched from one of the five eggs that a small harbor goddess carried across the sea in a lamp, three hundred years ago, ahead of a wall of water.

She didn't come to the harbor wall. She didn't come to my father on the north pier, or to Aurethar asleep beside the bollard, or to the dragons on the water.

She went straight out along the south mole, low over the stones, to the old stone at the end of it.

* * *

Selvane was standing up. She'd stopped singing. She had the lamp in both hands, held out in front of her, and her face was wet.

Ashenne landed on the old stone in front of her. Close. Close enough that Selvane's plain dress steamed a little where the heat of her came off.

And bowed.

* * *

Not the way phoenixes bow. Not precisely as far as she intended. All the way. Her great dark wings went out flat on either side of her on the wet stone, and her head went down between them until her beak touched the water at Selvane's feet.

And behind her, over the harbor, in the air, every phoenix in Avarra did the same. Hundreds of them. Wings out. Heads down. Hanging in the sky over Westmere like a ceiling of fire, bowing to one small woman on a stone with a lamp.

* * *

"We are all her lamp," said Ashenne.

Her voice was very old and very dry, like the rustle of ash settling in a grate. It carried across the whole harbor without being loud.

"Every one of us. Every phoenix that has ever flown in Avarra came out of one of the five eggs she carried. We have tried to thank her for three hundred years. We could never find her. And when we found her, we could never reach her, because she was across Draum's water, and nothing that flies crosses Draum's water." She lifted her head, slowly. "And then she sang. And asked."

Selvane was crying so hard she couldn't speak.

"You never asked us for anything," said Ashenne. "Not once. In three hundred years." Her old black eyes were very gentle. "Ask now. Whatever it is. We are yours."

* * *

Selvane turned. And looked out past the harbor mouth. At the forty-six dead red ships. At the forty-six thin pale men chained to forty-six bows, with their heads on their chests.

"Him," she said. Her voice cracked. "Cindrel. He's in pieces. Kessavel cut him up and chained a piece to every ship and made them burn. The dragons took the fire out. But he's still in pieces." She held the lamp out toward Ashenne. "You come back from ash. Whole. Every time. Can you do it for him?"

* * *

Ashenne looked out at the red ships for a long time.

"He's fire," she said at last. "Of a kind. Wild. Not like us. Not like the dragons." She turned her head. "But fire. And fire that's been scattered can come back. If it lets itself go all the way down first."

"All the way down?" said Carol. She'd come out along the mole behind me. "What does that mean?"

"Ash," said Ashenne simply. "Every piece of him has to burn all the way down to ash. Not be put out. Not be banked. Burned. Down to nothing. And then we gather the ash. And then we sit on it." She looked at Selvane. "That's how it works for us. It's the only way we know."

"Will it hurt him?"

"Yes," said Ashenne. "Briefly. It hurts us every time." She paused. "And every piece has to agree. You can't burn a thing down to ash that's holding on. It won't go all the way. It stops at cinders. And cinders don't come back."

* * *

"Then we'll ask," I said.

Ashenne turned her head and looked at me. She'd met me once before, in her cave above Greymere. She'd bowed to me then, a little. She looked at me now for a long time.

"You're the one who asked them," she said. "If they wanted to stop."

"Yes."

"We heard. All the way from Greymere. Forty-six pieces of a fire god screaming, and then a young man's voice asking each one if it wanted to stop, and the screaming going quiet." She bowed her head to me. Not all the way. But further than she had in her cave. "Then you ask again. But this time, they have to hear each other. Every piece thinks it's alone. That's the cruelty of it. Kessavel cut him into forty-six people who each think they're the only one left."

She spread her great dark wings.

"We'll sing," said Ashenne. "So each piece can hear the others. And then you ask."

* * *

So the phoenixes went out over the red ships.

Forty-six of them. One to each bow. They landed on the stem-posts above the thin pale men, delicately, with their talons on the black chains, and folded their wings. And the rest of them, the hundreds, circled overhead in a great slow ring of fire.

And they sang.

It wasn't like Selvane's song. It was lower. It went down into your chest instead of up into the air. And under it, after a while, I began to hear something else.

Voices. Very faint. Forty-six of them. All the same voice.

Is someone there?

Is anyone else—

I thought I was the only—

There's another. There's—

Oh. Oh, there are so many.

It's me. They're all me.

* * *

On every bow, forty-six thin pale men lifted their heads at the same moment and looked at each other across the black water. Ship to ship. Bow to bow.

All the same face.

And for the first time since Kessavel cut him into pieces, Cindrel saw himself.

* * *

I went down onto the last step of the south mole, at the water's edge, where the first piece could see me. The one I'd asked first, at six o'clock that morning, before the dragons. The one who'd said thank you.

"Cindrel," I said. To him. To all of them. "Do you want to be whole?"

All forty-six heads turned toward me.

"It'll hurt," I said. "The phoenixes say so. You'd have to burn all the way down. To ash. Every piece of you. And let go of everything. And then they'd sit on the ash, and you'd come back. One. Not forty-six. One." I swallowed. "You can say no. If you'd rather stay like this. Nobody will make you."

* * *

There was a long silence. Even the phoenixes stopped singing.

Then the first piece, the one I'd asked first, said something. Not out loud. The way the pieces said things. A word that wasn't a word.

And then the second piece said it. And the third. And then all of them. Forty-six voices, all the same voice, all at once.

Yes.

* * *

The phoenixes on the forty-six bows spread their wings.

And burned.

* * *

Not like Cindrel's wildfire. Not running, not spreading. Straight up. Forty-six columns of gold and red fire, each one standing up off a stem-post like a candle flame, so bright that the whole harbor went white and three thousand sailors put their hands over their eyes. And inside each one, a thin pale man with no hair, with his head thrown back. Burning.

He didn't scream. That was the thing I noticed. Forty-six pieces of him burning all the way down, and none of them screamed. Not once.

It took a long time. Longer than you'd think. Long enough that I sat down on the step. Long enough that Carol sat down beside me and took my hand.

And then the columns of fire went down. Slowly. Like candles burning to the bottom.

And went out.

And on every bow, where a man had been chained, there was a little heap of gray ash. And a loose black chain lying in it. And a phoenix standing over it with its wings folded, smoking very slightly, perfectly whole.

* * *

They brought the ash in.

Every phoenix picked up its little heap in its talons, carefully, the way you'd carry eggs, and flew in across the harbor. Not to the south mole. To the north pier. To the very end of it. Where my father was standing beside the sleeping dragon and the Lockwarden's key, with his hands open at his sides.

Forty-six phoenixes set forty-six handfuls of ash down on the black stones at the end of the north pier, in one heap. Where Pim stands.

All but one.

* * *

The forty-sixth phoenix, the one from the first red ship, didn't go to the north pier. It flew to the south mole, to the step where I was sitting. A young one. Bright copper. It landed on the stone beside me and looked at me with its head on one side.

And held out its talons.

There was ash in them. Gray and warm.

"He wants you to carry his," said Ashenne, from the old stone. "The first piece. The one you asked first." She looked at me. "He says you asked him before anybody else did. He'd like you to be the one who brings him the rest of the way."

* * *

So I took the ash.

It was warm. Like bread just out of the oven. It sat in my two cupped hands, very light, gray and soft, and I could feel something in it. Not alive. Not yet. Waiting.

I got up. And walked. Along the south mole, and up the harbor steps, and along the harbor wall past three thousand Kethran sailors standing in silence, past Tamar sitting on the cobbles with his ankle out, past Goss with his ledger, and out along the north pier. Past the heap of netted Hushed. Past the sixty frost statues with their feet lifted mid-step. To the end.

My father stepped aside to let me through.

I knelt down on the black stones beside the heap of ash where Pim stands, and opened my hands, and let the first piece of Cindrel join the rest of him.

* * *

Ashenne came down out of the sky.

She landed on the heap of ash. Very gently. And folded her great dark wings over it, the way a hen folds her wings over eggs. And settled.

And burned.

* * *

It wasn't like the columns on the bows. It was quieter. A low steady glow, gold and red, coming up through the dark edges of her feathers like a forge when you work the bellows. Warm. So warm that the frost on the nearest of the Hushed statues began to drip. So warm that Aurethar, asleep with his chin on the bollard, opened one eye and looked at her and made a small approving noise and went back to sleep.

My father sat down on the stones. I sat beside him. Carol came along the pier and sat on his other side.

We waited.

* * *

"I've never seen this," said my father quietly. "In all my life. I've heard about it. Never seen it."

"Neither have I," I said.

"Do you know what Helena did?" said my father. "Twenty years ago. After the war. She made a tin. For Birds. Cinnamon bark and dried apricots and, for special occasions, black pepper. She's kept it on the top shelf of the larder ever since, and filled it every spring, and thrown out the old, in case one of them ever came to tea." He looked at Ashenne, glowing on the ash. "One of them did, in the end. And Helena had the tin ready. Twenty years."

He was quiet for a moment.

"That's what this house is," said my father. "That's all it's ever been. Having the tin ready."

* * *

It took an hour.

And then Ashenne stood up.

And there was a man on the ash.

* * *

He was lying on his side on the black stones, curled up, the way you sleep when you're very cold. Thin. Pale. But not the thin pale man from the bows. Something else. He had hair now. Red, short, standing up a little, the color of a fire just caught. Eyebrows, not burned black. His skin was warm. You could feel it from where we sat, like the warmth off a hearth.

He had a link of black iron chain on his left wrist. Just one. Like the Lockwarden's.

He opened his eyes.

They were the color of the inside of a candle flame. Blue at the bottom and gold at the top.

He looked up at Ashenne, standing over him with her wings half open. Then at the heap of gray ash under him. Then at me, kneeling beside it.

"Which of you asked?" he said.

* * *

His voice was rough. Like smoke. But it was one voice. Only one.

"Him," said Ashenne, and bowed her head toward me.

Cindrel looked at me for a long time.

"You asked first," he said. "At six o'clock. Before the dragons. You stood on a step and asked a piece of me if it wanted to stop." He sat up, slowly, looking at his own hands as if he'd never seen them. "Nobody had ever asked me that. Not when Malachar asked me the first time, and I said yes because I was tired of running. Not when Kessavel took the chain. Not when he cut me." His voice cracked. "Nobody ever asked if I wanted to stop."

"I'm sorry," I said. "That nobody did."

Cindrel looked at the link on his wrist. Then at the forty-six loose black chains lying on the bows of the forty-six red ships out past the harbor mouth. Then at the dragons, asleep on the water, full of his fire.

"They can keep it," he said.

* * *

"Your fire?" said Carol.

"All of it. The running kind." He looked at Aurethar. "It's safer in them than in me. They don't want to go anywhere. I always did. Over everything. On top of the water, on the oil, on the marsh. That's what I was." He looked down at his hands. "I don't want to be that anymore. I want to be the kind that stays in one place."

"A hearth," said my father.

Cindrel looked at him.

"Yes," he said. "That."

* * *

Ashenne made a sound. A low dry rustle, like ash settling. I realized after a moment that she was laughing.

"The aeries," she said. "Our cliffs above Greymere. The eggs." She bent her great head toward Cindrel. "Phoenix eggs are coals. They have to be kept hotter than a forge, all season. If they go cold for an hour, they never hatch. We take turns sitting on them, every one of us, day and night, all spring, and still we lose some. Every year." Her old black eyes were very bright. "A fire that wanted to stay in one place. Under the nests. In the rock. Warm, all season. So no egg ever went cold again."

Cindrel stared at her.

"You'd have me?" he said. "After what I was?"

"You're ash," said Ashenne. "Like us. We don't ask what ash used to be." She tilted her head. "We only ask what it wants to be next."

* * *

At three o'clock, the phoenixes went home to Greymere.

Most of them. Serevan stayed on the fountain rim at Greykeep that night, Helena told me later, and ate four apricots from the tin and a pinch of black pepper, because she said it was a special occasion. And a great many of the young copper ones stayed in Westmere for a week, sitting on the chimney pots of the empty houses, keeping them warm until the people came back through the Hold gate.

Cindrel went with Ashenne. Walking, at first, slowly, along the north pier and up through the town, barefoot, in a borrowed coat of Dunmore's, looking at everything. The phoenixes walked with him, hopping, the way birds walk. And then, at the top of the town, at the edge of the hills, he turned around and looked back at Westmere. At the harbor. At the forty-six red ships with their loose chains. At me.

He lifted his hand. Open.

Then the phoenixes lifted him, somehow, between them, a dozen of them with their talons in the borrowed coat, and he went up into the sky in a ring of fire and away north over the hills, laughing, like a boy on a swing.

* * *

Ashenne didn't go with him. Not yet.

She stood on the end of the north pier, beside the cooling heap of ash, and looked out to sea. West. Past the dead red ships. Past the burned black fleet. Past the long green wall of the frozen wave, melting now in great slow sheets. To the open water beyond it. Draum's water.

"Is he there?" she said. To my father. "Under it?"

"Behind a door," said my father. "At the bottom. The Lockwarden locked it. He has to knock to come out."

Ashenne was very still for a long time.

"Then it's just the sea," she said.

* * *

She spread her wings.

Behind her, along the harbor wall, on the chimney pots, on the masts of the dead red ships, every phoenix still in Westmere turned and looked at her.

"Three hundred years," said Ashenne softly. "Nothing that flies has crossed that sea. Not since the islands went under. Not since the mothers sat on their eggs and the wall came over them." Her voice was very dry and very quiet. "My mother put me in a lamp at the seventh island and I have never once in all my lives gone back to see where it was."

She looked at my father.

"May I?" she said.

My father looked at her. A huge old phoenix the color of a coal at midnight, asking a barefoot man on a pier for leave to fly over the sea.

"It isn't my sea," said my father gently. "It isn't anyone's. Not now."

"I know," said Ashenne. "I wanted to ask anyway." She bowed. Not all the way. Exactly as far as she intended. "It's what this house does."

* * *

And she went.

Out over the harbor mouth. Over the dead red ships. Over the burned fleet. Over the frozen wave, its green curl lit gold underneath as she passed. And out, beyond it, low and steady, over the open sea. West. Toward where twelve islands used to be.

And one by one, along the harbor wall and on the chimney pots and the masts, the young copper phoenixes who'd stayed rose up and followed her. Ten. Twenty. Fifty. A long gold line going out over the gray water, getting smaller and smaller, until it was just a thread of light on the edge of the world.

Crossing Draum's water. For the first time in three hundred years.

* * *

Selvane watched them from the end of the south mole. She'd stopped crying a long time ago. She was just standing there, with Benjamin's arm around her and the lamp in her hand, watching the line of light go out across the sea she'd run across in the dark ahead of a wall, with five eggs in a flame.

She was smiling.

* * *

Mary's book. Tuesday. Written on the north pier at Westmere at sunset, by Mary herself, who'd finally put down the pears.

Tuesday. 11:30. Every phoenix in Avarra. They came because Selvane asked. Ashenne bowed to her all the way down. All of them did. We are all her lamp.

The phoenixes sang so the pieces of Cindrel could hear each other. Garrick asked if they wanted to be whole. All forty-six said yes.

They burned to ash on the bows. They didn't scream. The phoenixes carried the ash to the end of the north pier. Garrick carried the first piece himself. Ashenne sat on it for an hour.

Cindrel. One. Red hair. He asked who asked. He's let the dragons keep his running fire. He's gone to Greymere to keep the phoenix eggs warm. He says he wants to be a hearth.

Uriah says this house is having the tin ready.

3 o'clock: Ashenne asked Uriah if she might cross the sea. He said it isn't anyone's. She asked anyway. She's gone west, over Draum's water, with the young ones. First time in three hundred years.

And under that, in a small round careful hand, like a child's, the hand of someone who learned to write very late and only recently, with the letters going a little uphill:

Selvane. They came when I asked. I'd like it noted that I'm not tired anymore.