Chapter 144: Loki's Fleet

The phoenix came back at four.

One of the young copper ones. One of the fifty who'd gone west with Ashenne over Draum's water the day before. It came in low over the harbor mouth, flying badly, the way a bird flies when it's been in the air a night and a day without stopping, and it didn't land on a chimney pot. It came straight down onto the North Sands, into the snow, at Selvane's feet, and lay there panting with its beak open.

Selvane knelt and put her lamp beside it, and it leaned into the flame like a cat into a fire.

"Ashenne sent me," it said. Its voice was very young. "We found the islands. Under the water. You can see them, if you fly low, when the sun's on the sea. Like rooms in a house with the roof off." It shut its eyes. "That's not why. On the way back. There are ships."

* * *

Everyone on the beach went still.

I was sitting against Mirrow's side in the snow, because she was warm and she'd asked me to, and because my legs still didn't do what I told them. My left eye was still gray. Carol was asleep with her head in my lap and Mary's blanket over her and a crust of Mary's bread in her hand.

My father had been asleep too. Sitting up, against the black rib of an old wreck, with his chin on his chest and the frost hammer across his knees. He wasn't asleep anymore.

"How many?" he said.

"Lots," said the phoenix. "I can't count that high. I'm only two." It opened its eyes. "Blue sails. Not red. Not black. Blue, with a gold hand on them. Ashenne says to tell you it's the Throne's own fleet. Not his. The Regent's. Out of the golden city." It took a breath. "They're not coming here. They're going south. Ashenne says south and east. Fast. She says to say they'll be off the coast by dawn."

South and east of Westmere there is only one coast that matters.

"Concordia," said Thor.

* * *

She'd been lying flat on her back in the snow beside Sabrenne with her arms out and her eyes shut, like a child making angels. She sat up.

"Concordia," she said again. "And I'm here. And the wall guard's here, half of them, because I brought them. And Lexander's got the city watch and a lot of very good intentions." She stood up, all of her, armor and soot and red braid. "Blast."

"Loki's in Concordia," said my father.

"Loki's on his way here," said Thor. "With every ship in the harbor. Because I told him to." She looked south down the coast with an expression I'd never seen on her face before. Thor doesn't really do worried. It doesn't fit her. "They've sent the Throne's fleet at the one city with no ships in it. On the one morning I'm not there." She looked at my father. "Who does that?"

"Somebody who can count," said my father quietly. He looked east. At the empty sky where Kessavel had gone, at the end of his chain. "Somebody who watches."

* * *

Loki came at sunset.

You saw him before you saw him, if that makes sense. That's how Loki arrives anywhere. First the whole southern horizon filled up with sails. Hundreds. White and gold and green, the colors of Concordia, a forest of masts coming up the coast in the red evening light, so many that the sea between them was hard to see. Tall ships, war galleys, fat merchantmen, little fishing smacks, a great golden barge with a dragon's head on the prow. The dragons along the North Sands lifted their heads to look.

"That," said Gorrow, "is a great many ships."

"No, it isn't," said Thor, and folded her arms.

And as the fleet came around the south mole and into the harbor mouth, it began to go away. Not all at once. Ship by ship. The golden barge went first, dissolving into the evening air like breath on a cold window. Then the war galleys. Then the merchantmen. One after another, they thinned and wavered and went out, until what came into Westmere harbor at last, in the last of the light, was nine ships.

Nine. Small. Battered. A Concordian patrol sloop, four fishing boats, a ferry, two coal barges, and a pleasure yacht with a striped awning.

On the bow of the pleasure yacht stood a thin man in a crooked coat with his hands in his pockets.

And beside him, chewing the awning, was a goat.

* * *

"I came quick," Loki called across the water.

"You said every ship in Concordia," Thor called back.

"That was every ship in Concordia," said Loki. "Everything else was out fishing. Do you have any idea what time it is?" He jumped down onto the north pier as the yacht bumped it, and the goat jumped down after him, and immediately ate a mooring line. "Also I brought these."

Something very large surfaced in the harbor beside the yacht. A long dark back, green-black, wider than a road, scaled like a pine cone, rising out of the water and going on, and on, and on, out past the harbor mouth and around the frozen wave and off into the dusk, and still not ending. And a head came up beside the pier, with eyes like two golden lamps, and the water ran off it in sheets.

Hello, said Jörmungandr. I felt it through the planks of the pier, through the sand, through my teeth. There are roads here. In the sea. All of them. I'd forgotten.

And up the harbor steps, gray and enormous and grinning, came Fenrir, who walked straight past Loki, straight past Thor, straight past my father, straight down onto the North Sands, and lay down in the snow beside Gorrow with a long contented groan, as if he'd been waiting his whole life to find snow on a beach.

Gorrow looked at him.

Fenrir looked back.

"Huh," said Gorrow. And put his chin down next to Fenrir's, and that was that.

* * *

Loki came down the beach with his hands in his pockets and his crooked coat flapping and looked at everything. The eight dragons. The frost statues along the harbor. The forty-six red ships. The empty place in the harbor mouth where the white ship had sunk. Thor, sooty. My father, leaning on a hammer. Carol, asleep.

Me.

He crouched down in front of me, the way Thor had, and looked at my left eye for a long time. Loki's eyes are very green and never quite still.

"Who did that?" he said. Not joking.

"I did," I said. "Folding dragons."

"How many?"

"Seven."

Loki was quiet a moment.

"Idiot," he said, very kindly, and put his thumb very lightly on my eyebrow, the way you'd check a horse's eye, and stood up. "Right. Somebody tell me why Thor has that face on. She only has that face on when I've done something, and I haven't. Yet."

* * *

The phoenix told him.

Loki listened with his head on one side and the goat leaning against his leg. When the phoenix said blue sails, with a gold hand, his hands came out of his pockets.

"The Throne's fleet," he said. "The real one. Not Kessavel's chained lot. Ordinary Kethran sailors. Conscripts, most of them. Farm boys from the river towns who've never been to sea." He looked south, down the darkening coast. "How many?"

"Lots," said the phoenix apologetically.

"A hundred and twenty," said Selvane. She was holding her lamp up, looking into the flame. Her face was very still. "I can hear them. On the water. A hundred and twenty ships. A great many people." She swallowed. "They're frightened. All of them. They don't know why they're going."

"And they'll be off Concordia by dawn," said Thor. "And the city's got the watch, and the Lyradoni, and Lexander, and nine fewer ships than it had this morning."

"Eight fewer," said Loki. "I left the dredger."

* * *

I don't know how to explain what happened next, except to say that my family argues the way other families breathe.

Thor wanted to go back. Now. As lightning. She'd land on the lead ship's deck and break it in half, and then the next, and the next, and keep going until there weren't any more.

"A hundred and twenty," said my father. "Before dawn. On your own."

"I've done more."

"Not without killing anyone."

Thor opened her mouth. Shut it.

"Farm boys," said Loki quietly. "From the river towns."

My father could go. My father could go as lightning to the Concordian coast in the time it takes to say it, and freeze the sea in front of a hundred and twenty ships, the way he once froze the whole western sea. Everybody knew it. Nobody said it, because everybody could see him leaning on the hammer, and the gray in his face, and the way his hands shook when he thought nobody was looking. He'd held a wall of ice over a whole town all morning. He'd held sixty frozen Hushed all night. He'd held the wave. He hadn't slept since Monday.

"I can go," said my father.

"You can," said Loki. "And then you'll fall over. And then who holds the statues?"

* * *

"We don't have to stop them," I said.

Everybody looked at me.

I was still sitting against Mirrow. I hadn't said anything all evening. I'd just been watching. Watching Loki's fleet go away ship by ship in the harbor mouth. Watching the dragons lift their heads to look at it.

"We don't have to stop them," I said. "We just have to make them turn. They don't want to go. Selvane says they're frightened. They don't know why they're going. So give them a reason to go home."

Loki looked at me. His green eyes went very bright.

"Oh," he said softly. "Oh, I like him."

* * *

Here's what you need to know about Loki's fleets.

They're the best illusions in the world. They have wakes. They have smoke. They smell of tar and wet canvas. If you stand on the deck of one, you can hear the sailors swearing. Last winter, Loki and I built a whole false Carol out of folded space and borrowed signals, and Malachar himself leaned on it and believed it.

But they have one problem.

"They don't weigh anything," said Loki. He was drawing in the wet sand with a stick, ships, lines, the coast of Concordia. "A real fleet pushes water. You can see it. A real fleet makes the sea go up in front of it and down behind it. Any sailor who's been at sea a week can tell. Mine just sit on top of the water like paper boats on a pond. In the dark, at a distance, fine. Close up, at dawn, with a hundred and twenty ships' worth of lookouts all staring at it?" He threw the stick away. "Somebody on one of those ships has been at sea longer than a week. Somebody always has."

"And it's eighty miles," said Thor. "You can't throw a fleet eighty miles."

"I can throw a fleet across a room," said Loki. "Across a harbor. Up a coast, if I'm sailing with it, which takes all night and I'd get there after them." He looked at me. "I can't throw it eighty miles. Nobody can."

"I can fold it," I said.

* * *

Silence.

"You can't fold a teacup," said Carol, from my lap. She wasn't asleep after all. She hadn't opened her eyes. "You said so. I heard you."

"I can't fold a teacup," I said. "A teacup's real. It's heavy. It makes a hole in the world." I looked at Loki. "His fleet doesn't weigh anything. That's the whole problem with it. You said so." I swallowed. "So it doesn't make a hole. So I can fold it anywhere."

Loki stared at me.

Then he started to laugh. Not his usual laugh, the one that sounds like a door creaking in a joke. A real one. Delighted. He sat down in the snow and laughed until the goat got worried and climbed into his lap.

"A picture weighs nothing," he said. "You're going to fold me a picture."

"A hundred and twenty miles of picture," I said. "Put it in front of them. Right in their path. At dawn."

* * *

"It still won't push water," said Thor.

Something very large moved in the harbor.

I'll push water, said Jörmungandr.

We all felt it through the sand. Under us. Deep, and slow, and pleased. I'm long enough. I'll lie under the picture. When their lookouts look at the sea in front of the false ships, it'll go up. Behind, it'll go down. They'll see wakes. Real wakes. A pause. There are roads here. I'd like to use one.

Loki stopped laughing. He looked out at the dark harbor, where his son's back went on and on into the dusk.

"Are you sure?" he said. Very quietly. Not like Loki at all. "It's a long way. And it's the open sea. You've been in a lake for a very long time."

I'd like to, said Jörmungandr. You can say no.

Loki looked at me. Then at my father. Then at the water.

"No," he said. "No. I'd like you to. Go on."

* * *

"It'll still be dawn," said my father. "With the sun coming up behind it. They'll see straight through it. Light goes through illusions."

He'd stood up while we were talking. He was leaning on the hammer. He looked out to sea, west and south, where the light was going out of the sky.

"Not through fog," he said.

"Uriah—" said Thor.

"Fog isn't hard," said my father. "Fog's just winter that hasn't made up its mind." He smiled a little. The tired smile. "I can do fog lying down. I might have to."

* * *

We did it from the end of the north pier.

All of us. In the dark, at three in the morning, with the stars out and the frozen wave dripping and the young phoenixes on the chimney pots for lamps.

My father lay down. I mean it. He lay down flat on his back on the stones of the north pier with his head on Thor's folded cloak and the frost hammer on his chest and his eyes shut, and he breathed out, and the fog went out of him. Out across the harbor, out past the wave, out over the whole dark sea, west and south, low and white and thick, rolling over the water for eighty miles toward the Concordian coast. It was the gentlest thing I've ever seen him do. Like a man breathing on a window.

"There," he said, without opening his eyes. "Fog."

* * *

Then Loki made his fleet.

I'd seen him make one at sunset. That was nothing. That was a fleet for showing off. This one he made sitting on the end of the north pier with his legs dangling over the water, with his crooked coat off and his sleeves rolled up and his tongue between his teeth, like a man doing a very fiddly sum. It took him an hour.

And it was terrible.

Not ugly. Terrible. Like the old stories. Three hundred warships out of every age of the world, rising out of the fog in the harbor in a long dark line. Concordian galleys with their oars out. Greykeep frost-ships I'd never seen, white as ice, with my father's banner on the masts. Lyradon longboats with painted eyes. The black ships of Draum's fleet, burned, with their charred masts rebuilt, flying gray cloth. The forty-six red ships, free, with their chains hanging loose on their bows. And at the front of it all, enormous, gold, with a dragon's head on her prow and a hundred oars on each side and sails like the wings of Aurethar himself, a flagship I didn't recognize.

"What's that one?" I said.

"Oh, that one's made up," said Loki. "I've always wanted one."

* * *

Then it was my turn.

I sat down on the end of the pier beside Loki. Carol sat down on my other side and put her hand flat on my back, between my shoulder blades, where she always puts it. I could feel her in the middle. Not giving me anything. She didn't have anything left to give. Just there.

"Borrow?" I said to Loki.

He looked at me sideways.

"You know," he said, "you've never asked me before. Not once. You just watch me and take it. Ever since you were eight and I did the trick with the eggs."

"I know," I said. "I'm asking now."

Loki looked at me for a long moment. And then he did a thing I'd never seen him do. He took his hands out of his pockets and held them out, both of them, palms up, open, with nothing in them. No tricks. No eggs.

"Take," said Loki.

* * *

I folded a picture eighty miles.

It weighed nothing. I'd been right about that. It was the lightest fold I've ever made in my life. Like folding a sheet of paper. Like folding a breath. I reached out over the fog with Loki's fleet in my hands, all three hundred ships of it, every oar and every banner and every swearing sailor, and I moved it, gently, the way you'd move a sleeping child from one bed to another, south and west down the dark coast, eighty miles, into the fog in front of a hundred and twenty blue sails.

And under it, in the dark water, a very long shape followed. Pushing the sea up in front. Letting it down behind.

Roads, said Jörmungandr happily, very far away.

* * *

The sun came up at a quarter to seven.

We couldn't see it from Westmere. Not the fleet, I mean. It was eighty miles away. But Loki could. He sat on the end of the north pier with his eyes shut and his hands open on his knees, and he told us. Everything. In a low quick voice, like someone reading a letter aloud as fast as they could.

"Fog's lifting. Their lookouts can see a little. Two hundred yards. Three. Here they come. Blue sails, gold hands. Very neat. Lots of rowing. Oh, they're young. Look at them." His voice changed. "That one's crying."

Selvane, beside him, was holding her lamp. Her face was wet.

"There. They've seen it. Lookout on the lead ship. He's—oh, he's dropped his spyglass. Good lad. That's the gold one he's looking at. Of course it is. I told you. Everybody looks at the gold one."

* * *

"They're not turning," said Loki.

Silence on the pier.

"The admiral. Old man, blue coat, white beard. He's on the lead ship's rail with a glass and he's looking at the water. Not the ships. The water." Loki's hands closed a little on his knees. "He's been at sea longer than a week. He's looking for the wakes."

They're there, said Jörmungandr. Faint. Very far away. I'm pushing.

"He sees them," said Loki. "He's not sure. He's—he's sending a boat. One boat. Six men. Rowing out into the fog toward my front line. To touch it." He laughed, short and unhappy. "To touch it. That's what I'd do."

My father, flat on his back with his eyes shut, said, "Let them."

"If they touch it, their hands go through it," said Loki. "And then the whole fleet's a picture, and he knows it, and he comes on."

"Let them," said my father again. "Garrick."

* * *

I knew what he meant.

I don't know how. I just did. Maybe because he's my father. Maybe because I'd been watching him all my life.

Not all of Loki's fleet was false.

"Selvane," I said. "How far are the red ships from the boat?"

She looked into her lamp.

"They're not," she said. "The red ships are here. In the harbor. Moored."

"The real ones are," I said. "Loki, which ship in your line is the boat rowing toward?"

"One of the red ones," said Loki. "Second from the left. Why—"

I didn't answer. I looked across the harbor at the forty-six red ships, sitting at their moorings with their sails hanging and their black chains loose on their bows. I looked at the second one from the left.

It was real. It was heavy. It would make a hole in the world the size of a ship.

I'd folded seven dragons yesterday. I couldn't fold a teacup.

"Carol," I said.

I haven't got anything, she said in the middle.

I know. I just want you there.

Her hand on my back. Flat. Warm. Between my shoulder blades.

I'm here.

* * *

I folded one red ship.

Just one. Empty. Eighty miles. Into the gap in Loki's line, exactly where its picture had been, a hundred yards in front of a little rowing boat with six frightened Kethran farm boys in it.

I felt my nose start bleeding again. I felt something go in my left ear, a pop, and then that side of the world went quiet. I felt Carol's hand on my back press hard enough to bruise.

And eighty miles away, Loki said:

"They've touched it."

A long silence.

"Six farm boys," said Loki, "rowing a boat into a fog, reaching out with their bare hands to touch a fleet that isn't there, and the very first ship they touch is wood. Real, wet, red-painted Kethran wood. With a Kethran chain hanging loose off its bow. Their own chains. Their own ships." His voice cracked into a laugh. "One of them's knocking on it. Like a door. Knocking."

* * *

"He's turning," said Loki.

Very softly.

"The admiral. He's lowered the glass. He's looking at the boat coming back with its six boys all shouting at once. He's looking at three hundred ships in the fog. He's looking at the gold one. He's—he's put his hand up."

"Signal?" said Thor.

"No," said Loki. "Just his hand. Open. Up in the air. To the fog. To nobody." He swallowed. "He's turning. They're all turning. North and west. Away from Concordia. Away from the coast. The whole line, one ship after another, coming about, very neat." His eyes were still shut, and wet. "Going home."

* * *

Thor sat down on the end of the pier very suddenly, the way I'd sat down when I was three.

My father, on his back, breathed out, and the fog began to thin over eighty miles of sea.

Jörmungandr, far away, said Oh, that was nice. Can we do it again?

And Loki opened his eyes and looked at me. My nose was bleeding. I couldn't hear out of my left ear. I couldn't see out of my left eye. I was leaning on Carol, and Carol was leaning on me, and neither of us could have stood up for any money.

Loki took his crooked coat off the stones, and shook it out, and put it around my shoulders.

"There," he said. "Now you look like somebody."

* * *

By noon the red ship came back.

Not folded. Sailed. It came around the south mole at Westmere under a scrap of sail with nobody on her but Jörmungandr, pushing her very gently from underneath like a boy pushing a toy boat across a pond. And she had something new on her bow, beside the loose black chain.

A knot of blue cloth. Torn from a sail. With a gold hand on it.

Somebody in that little boat had tied it there before they rowed back. Somebody who'd knocked.

Tamar, at the harbor office door on his crutch, looked at it for a long time.

"Harbor-right," he said at last. "If they want it." He looked at me. "They asked, didn't they? Sort of. That's what knocking is."

* * *

Mary's book. Thursday. She'd come through the Hold gate at five in the morning, because she said if Loki was going to do anything it would be at dawn, and she wanted to have seen it with her own eyes. She wrote it on the end of the north pier, with the goat eating the corner of the page.

Wednesday, 4 p.m. A young phoenix from Ashenne. The islands are under the sea like rooms with the roofs off. And the Throne's own fleet, blue sails, a hundred and twenty, going for Concordia. By dawn.

Sunset. Loki. Nine ships. Fenrir. Jörmungandr. The goat.

Garrick said we don't have to stop them. Only make them turn.

3 a.m. Uriah lay down on the pier and breathed fog over eighty miles of sea. Loki made three hundred ships. Garrick asked Loki Borrow. First time ever. Loki said Take. Garrick folded the picture. Jörmungandr pushed the water underneath.

Dawn. The admiral sent a boat to touch it. Garrick folded one real red ship into the line. They touched it. They knocked.

The admiral put his hand up. Open. They all turned for home.

Garrick can't hear out of his left ear now. Loki gave him his coat.

Noon. The red ship came home with a blue knot on her bow. Tamar says that's asking.

And under that, in a hand that changes every few letters, as though three or four different people were taking turns with the pen, slanting one way and then the other, with a very neat bite out of the corner where the goat had signed too:

Loki. It was my idea. (It was the boy's idea.) (I'd like it noted that I said so.)