Chapter 150: Dwarven Iron

I caught Alistair's sword nine times out of twenty on Tuesday.

On the ninth, he lowered it, and leaned on his stick, and looked at me for a long time with his good eye and his clouded one.

"You're nearly there," he said.

"Nine out of twenty isn't nearly anything."

"Not the sword," said Alistair. "You." And then, before I could ask him what he meant, he turned to Eliza and said, "Stair," and she took his arm, and they went.

Avarn didn't say anything. But he didn't say Again either. He just looked at me the way my grandfather looks at a joint when it's almost square, and nodded once, and went in to breakfast.

* * *

The dwarves came through the Lyradon arch at eight.

I'd never seen so many at once. Eleven of them, and a cart, and a pony with a very bad temper. The ones Eleanor uses for the hard stone at Greykeep, the deep foundation work, the gate pillars. Short and broad and bearded, men and women both, in leather aprons scorched brown, with hammers on their belts and their beards tucked into their collars so the sparks wouldn't catch.

At the front, Master Bodvar. Master of the forges at Concordia. Gray-bearded, with a burn scar down one side of his face like a river on a map, and a voice like a bucket of gravel being poured slowly.

And behind him, carrying a bag of tools nearly as big as himself, Hosk. Fourteen. Bodvar's apprentice. The one who'd once streaked twenty sea-wall braces blue as a jay and flooded the Concordia market with cabbages.

"Stonehand," said Bodvar, to Eleanor.

"Bodvar," said Eleanor.

"You said ships."

"I said ships."

"Dwarves don't do ships," said Bodvar. "Ships float. Iron doesn't. It's against nature." He looked down the North Sands at the forty-five red ships at their moorings, and Surtr asleep along the forge-bed with the small boy from the Hold street on his shoulder, and thirty-three sets of rings laid out in rows on the sand, gleaming. He was quiet for a while. "Whose rings?"

"Surtr's heat. Garrick Valewood's hammer. Kessavel's chains."

Bodvar walked down the sand to the nearest ring and picked it up, and held it to the light, the way my grandfather does. Turned it. Sighted along it. Put it down.

"Hm," said Bodvar, which in a dwarf is the same as it is in a dragon. "Right. Where do you want the keel beds?"

* * *

And behind the dwarves, through the Lyradon arch, with a stick in one hand and her other hand on Julian's arm, came Queen Mirelle.

* * *

My grandmother Mirelle isn't really my grandmother. She's Adriana's mother. Roderic's and Faelan's and little Mirelle's grandmother. But she's never once in my life let that make any difference. When Carol and I were small she was Grandmother Mirelle the same as Helena was Grandmother Helena, and she gave us apples from the Lyradon terraces and told us to stand up straight, and once, when I was seven and had been very rude to a stable boy, she made me go and apologize to him and then muck out his stall while she sat on an upturned bucket and watched.

She's white-haired. Thin. She uses her stick mostly for pointing. She came to Greykeep in the war with nothing, her husband dead on the bridge at Lyradon, her kingdom burned, three children with her and the clothes they stood up in, and asked my father for shelter. And then she went home when the war was over and planted a fruit tree for every family that came back, and is still planting the upper terraces for the ones who didn't.

She came down onto the North Sands and stopped and looked at everything. The dragons. The red ships. The Knock, at the end of the north pier with the Castellan's little lamp in her stern. Surtr asleep on the forge-bed.

"Hm," said Grandmother Mirelle. "Well. That's new."

Then she pointed her stick at me.

"Garrick. Your eye."

"Mother says she'll know tomorrow."

"Then I'll pray tonight," said Grandmother Mirelle. "Which I don't, as a rule. You should feel honored." She looked past me. "Where's little Ignatius?"

* * *

Ignatius was at the kettle.

He'd been there since Friday. Every day. In the lower court of the Hold, at the end of my grandmother Helena's benches, with his sleeves rolled up and his healer's bag open and a long line of Westmere sailors and Kethran sailors and freed Hushed waiting to see him. Broken wrists. Burns. A collarbone. A child with a cough. A Kethran farrier with a crushed foot from Monday, when a red-hot ring slipped. One by one. Taking their hands. That low gold warmth coming out of his palms like the warmth off a kitchen hearth.

He's not loud, Ignatius. He's never been loud. He just sits there and holds your hand until it's better.

Grandmother Mirelle stood in the gate of the lower court and watched him for a long time. Then she watched me, coming up behind her. Then she looked back at Ignatius.

She didn't say anything. But I saw her face. And I didn't understand it until that evening.

* * *

The dwarves built all day.

I'd thought the hard part was the rings. It wasn't. The rings were the beginning. A red ship isn't built to have a stone hanging in its keel. You can't just cut a hole in the bottom and drop one in. You have to open the keel and build a bed for the stone. An iron cradle, strapped and riveted, with bearings for Davren's three rings, strong enough to hold a block of cut stone the size of a cart steady through a storm, and tight enough that not one drop of sea gets in around it.

Dwarves are very good at tight.

They hauled the red ships up onto the North Sands two at a time, with Green and Calder lifting and Jörmungandr pushing from underneath and Surtr, when Julian woke him up, holding them steady on their sides like a man holding a boat for painting. And then the dwarves went in. Into the keels. With their hammers and their rivets and their little forges that ran off a coal from Surtr's bed carried in iron buckets. And the noise was like a hundred clocks being wound at once.

Bodvar walked up and down the beach with his hands behind his back, saying "No" and "Again" and, once, "Hm."

Hosk set one rivet blue. Nobody knew how. Bodvar looked at it for a long time and said, "Leave it. For luck."

* * *

My father spent the day with them.

Not doing much. He still didn't have much to do it with. But every time the dwarves finished a cradle and needed the iron set, the rivets cooled fast and hard so they'd hold, they'd call, and he'd come down the beach and put his hands on the iron and breathe out. A little frost. Just enough. The iron would hiss and go gray and set.

"That's useful," said Bodvar, after the fourth. "Where's he been all my life?"

"Greykeep," said Eleanor.

"I'm moving there," said Bodvar.

By noon he was calling my father lad, which nobody in the world has ever called the King of Greykeep, and my father was letting him.

* * *

Julian worked on the frames with my grandfather.

That's what Julian does. He doesn't talk. He doesn't fold anything or freeze anything or burn anything. He just takes a piece of oak and makes it into exactly the shape it needs to be, so it fits against the next piece and the next, so that the whole thing holds together and doesn't creak. My grandfather taught him, when he was a boy at Greykeep in the war. He's the only person my grandfather has ever said was better than him at anything.

"Dovetails," my grandfather said once, when I was small. "Julian cuts a better dovetail than I do. Don't tell him. It'll go to his head."

It never has. Nothing ever goes to Julian's head. That's one of the things about him.

* * *

Here's another thing about Julian.

When Carol and I were small, and Ignatius and Seraphina came through from Concordia every week, the four of us grew up together faster than children are supposed to. We were running at a year. Talking at a year and a half. Asking questions at two. And when you're asking questions at two, and your father's the King of Greykeep and your mother's a healer and they're both very busy, and Ignatius's father is the King of Concordia and his mother is Io, who's even busier, there's only one person in the world who has time to answer them.

Julian was thirteen when Lyradon burned and he came to Greykeep with his mother and his sisters. He stayed six years, while they rebuilt. Six years in my grandfather's workshop, learning to cut oak.

And Ignatius and I followed him everywhere. Carol called him "Juli".

* * *

Everywhere. Into the workshop. Out to the woodpile. Up the ladders when he was mending the stable roof. Down to the river when he went to look at the water-lift. Two small boys trotting along behind a tall quiet young man with sawdust in his hair, asking him questions.

Julian, why is the sky blue?

Julian, where does the wind go when it stops?

Julian, how does a hinge know which way to open?

Julian, why do fish not drown?

Julian, why does the moon follow us home?

Julian, what's a king for?

And he answered. Every one. Every single time. He'd stop whatever he was doing, put down his plane or his chisel, crouch down so his face was level with ours, and think about it. Properly. As if it were a real question that deserved a real answer. And then he'd tell us. Sometimes he didn't know, and he'd say so, and then he'd go and find out, and come back the next day and tell us. Once he spent three days finding out why fish don't drown.

Carol says that Ignatius and I thought Julian knew everything in the world. That we thought he was where answers came from. Like a spring.

She's right. We did.

* * *

Grandmother Mirelle said it at supper.

In the lower court of the Hold, under my grandfather's roof, at my grandmother Helena's long trestle tables, with the kettle going and the lanterns lit and three hundred people eating. My family at the end table. My father and my mother and Adriana. Carol and Ignatius. Seraphina, who'd come through the Hold gate at dusk with my little brother asleep on her shoulder. Roderic and Iselle. Lexander and Io, who'd come through from Concordia to see the dwarves. Julian and Elowen and little Roddick. My grandfather and both grandmothers.

She didn't stand up. She didn't tap her glass. She just put her spoon down, and folded her hands on top of her stick, and said, in an ordinary voice:

"Julian. It's time."

* * *

Julian looked up from his soup.

"Time for what, Mother?"

"You know what for," said Grandmother Mirelle. "I'm seventy-nine. I've been queen of Lyradon for fifty-three years. Thirty of them with your father, and twenty-three without. I've planted every terrace in the valley but the top three. I'm tired, and my knees hurt, and I'd like to sit in the orchard in the afternoons and tell the gardeners they're doing it wrong." She looked at him steadily. "It's time you were king."

* * *

Nobody said anything. All along the end table. My father put his spoon down too.

Julian went very pale.

"Mother," he said. "I make handrails."

"You make the best handrails in the world. Ask Surtr. Ask him." She pointed her stick down the court at my grandfather, who put his hands up. "And you've run Lyradon for ten years while I sat in the orchard and pretended to. Everyone knows it. Elowen knows it. The council knows it. The goats know it." She tapped the stick on the stones. "I'm not asking you to do anything you don't do already. I'm asking you to let them put a crown on it."

"Why now?" said Julian. His voice wasn't steady. "Why tonight?"

* * *

Grandmother Mirelle looked at me.

Then she looked at Ignatius.

And then she looked back at Julian, and her voice went quieter, and a little rough.

"Because I've been watching those two boys today," she said. "I watched Ignatius at the end of Helena's benches, holding every hand in Westmere until it stopped hurting. Two hundred people, since Friday, and every one of them walked away better. And I watched Garrick on the beach. I watched him walk between a dragon and Surtr yesterday, and I watched him today, and every time somebody didn't know what to do, a dwarf or a sailor or a Kethran girl who can only talk with her hands, they came and asked him." She stopped. "That's what a king is, Julian. The one people come and ask."

She put her hand flat on the table.

"Uriah won't say it. Lexander won't say it. They're fathers. Fathers never think it's time. But I've buried a king and raised one, and I can see it. A year. Two, perhaps. And those two boys will be kings. Greykeep and Concordia." Her voice cracked. Just a little. "And they cannot be kings before you."

* * *

"They followed you everywhere," said Grandmother Mirelle. "Do you remember? You were fifteen. They were two. You couldn't go to the privy without the pair of them sitting outside the door asking you why the moon follows people home. And you answered. Every time. You never once told them to go away." She looked at him. "They thought you knew everything in the world. They still do, a little. Look at them."

Julian looked at us.

I didn't know what my face was doing. I looked at Ignatius, across the table, and his face was doing the same thing.

"They can't be kings before their big brother," said Grandmother Mirelle. "It wouldn't be right. It would be like a house with the roof on before the walls." She picked up her spoon again. "So. It's time. You can say no. But you won't. You never have."

* * *

Julian got up from the table and walked out of the lower court.

Not angry. Not fast. He just stood up, very carefully, the way he does everything, and put his napkin down beside his bowl, and walked out through the gate and down the hill toward the North Sands. Elowen started to get up, and Grandmother Mirelle put her hand on her arm.

"Let him," she said. "He'll want somebody. But not us."

She looked at me again.

And at Ignatius.

* * *

We found him at the forge-bed.

Surtr was asleep along the stones with the heat banked down to embers, and Julian was sitting on one of my grandfather's bollard-anvils at the end of it with his hands between his knees, looking at the red glow in the cracks. He didn't look up when we came. He knew who it was. He always did. When we were small and followed him into the woodpile, he'd say Hello, Garrick. Hello, Ignatius before he turned around.

"Hello, Garrick," said Julian. "Hello, Ignatius."

We sat down on the sand at his feet. The way we used to. I don't think either of us decided to. It's just where you sit when it's Julian.

* * *

"I'm not my father," said Julian, after a long time.

"No," said Ignatius.

"He was a king. He held the bridge. He stood on the bridge at Lyradon with forty men against the end of the world and he held it for a whole day so that my mother could get the three of us out over the pass. And then it fell. With him on it." He looked at the embers. "I was there. I was thirteen. I watched from the top of the pass road. I watched it go into the river." He swallowed. "That's what a king is. I've always known that. A king is the one who stays behind on the bridge."

I'd never heard him talk about it. Not once. Not in six years at Greykeep, not in the seventeen since. Neither had Ignatius. I could see it on his face.

"I can't do that," said Julian. "I'm not brave. I make handrails."

* * *

And I remembered.

It came back all at once, the way old things do. The workshop at Greykeep, in summer. The big door open and the light coming in across the shavings on the floor. Julian at the bench with a plane. And me, five, maybe, sitting on an upturned crate with my oak sword across my knees, and Ignatius beside me with a wooden duck. And I'd asked him.

Julian, what's a king for?

And he'd put down the plane. And crouched down so his face was level with mine. And thought about it, for a long time, the way he always did. And then he'd told us.

* * *

"You told us," I said.

Julian looked at me.

"In the workshop. I was five. I asked you what a king was for. And you said, A king is the one who stays behind to make sure everyone else got out." I swallowed. "And then you stopped, and you thought about it some more, and you said there was another part. You said, And then he goes back, and builds the bridge again."

Julian didn't say anything.

"Your father did the first part," I said. "You did the second. You went back. You built it again. Iron. With oak handrails. You sat on the broken stones with the one who knocked it down and asked him what he wanted until he knew." I looked at the forge-bed, at Surtr asleep along it with the red in his cracks. "And now he's here. On our beach. Melting Kessavel's chains into rings. Because you asked him, twenty years ago, and then you waited."

* * *

Ignatius leaned forward.

"You told me the moon follows people home because it's lonely," he said. "When I was three. And then the next day you came back and said that wasn't true, it's because it's very far away, and you'd been up half the night finding out, and you were sorry you'd told me the wrong thing." He smiled. That small, warm, hearth-colored smile. "I've told that to every frightened child I've ever healed. Both parts. The wrong one first. They like the wrong one better."

Julian laughed. A short, cracked sound. He put his hand over his eyes.

"I was fifteen," he said. "I didn't know anything. I was making it up as I went."

"Yes," I said. "That's what she meant. That's what a king is."

* * *

Julian sat with his hand over his eyes for a long time.

Down the beach, along the forge-bed, Surtr stirred in his sleep. The red in his cracks went gold for a moment. Just a moment. Then dark again.

"He's awake," said Ignatius quietly.

"He's always awake," said Julian, behind his hand. "He pretends. So people will talk." He lowered his hand. "Surtr."

"Yes."

"You heard."

"Yes."

"Well?"

A long, slow, rumbling silence. Like a hillside thinking.

"You asked me," said Surtr, without opening his eyes. "What I wanted. On the stones. All night." A pause. "Nobody else would have. Only a king would."

* * *

Julian looked down at the two of us, sitting at his feet on the sand. The way we used to sit outside the workshop door. The way we used to sit at the bottom of his ladder, asking why.

"Ask me," he said.

Ignatius and I looked at each other.

"Ask me," said Julian again. "The way you used to. One more time. And I'll answer."

So we did. Together. Without deciding to. The way we used to, when we were two and three and four, and everything in the world was a question, and he was where the answers came from.

"Julian," we said. "Will you?"

* * *

He didn't answer straight away. He never did. He thought about it. Properly. As if it were a real question that deserved a real answer. The way he always had.

Then he put his hand on my head. And his other hand on Ignatius's. The way he used to when we were small, to make us stop asking for a minute so he could think.

"Yes," said Julian.

* * *

We walked back up the hill together, the three of us. At the top, in the gate of the lower court, Grandmother Mirelle was standing with her stick, waiting. She didn't say anything. She just looked at Julian, and he looked at her, and she nodded once.

"Midwinter," she said. "In the orchard. Under the first tree. The one I planted for your father."

"Midwinter," said Julian.

And then Grandmother Mirelle looked past him at me and Ignatius, and pointed her stick at us.

"And you two," she said. "Not yet. Do you hear me? Not until he's had a proper go at it. And not until your fathers are tired. Which will be a long while, if I know them."

"Yes, Grandmother," we said.

* * *

My father was waiting at the end of the court.

He didn't say anything until we'd come all the way across. Then he put his hand on my shoulder. On the right side. Where I could see it.

"She's right, you know," he said quietly.

"I'm not ready."

"No," said my father. "Nobody is. That's how you know." He looked down the court to where Julian was standing with his mother and his wife, with little Roddick asleep against his leg, and Grandmother Mirelle had her hand on his arm. "I wasn't. I was nineteen. I'd never been in charge of anything bigger than a bicycle. I walked into a ruined castle that nobody else wanted. And then people started coming and asking." He smiled. "You don't decide to be ready. You just look up one day and realize they've been asking you for a while."

* * *

I didn't sleep much that night.

Not because of Julian. Not because of what Grandmother Mirelle said. Because of what my mother had said that morning, in the yard, when she'd looked at my left eye in the light from the kitchen door and pressed her warm thumbs either side of it and said nothing for a long time.

Tomorrow, she'd said. I'll know tomorrow.

* * *

Mary's book. Tuesday. Written at the end table in the lower court of the Hold, after everyone had gone, with the kettle cooling and the lanterns out but one, and Melody asleep on the bench with her head on Mary's knee.

Tuesday. 5 a.m. Garrick 9 out of 20. Alistair said you're nearly there. Not the sword. You.

8 o'clock. Bodvar and eleven dwarves and a pony through the Lyradon arch. Bodvar says dwarves don't do ships. Then he picked up a ring and said hm. 12 keel cradles by dark. Uriah set the rivets with frost. Bodvar calls him lad. Hosk set one rivet blue. Bodvar says leave it, for luck.

Queen Mirelle came with the dwarves. She watched Ignatius at the kettle and Garrick on the beach.

Supper. Mirelle: Julian. It's time.

She said Garrick and Ignatius will be kings in a year or two. She said they can't be kings before their big brother. She said they followed him everywhere and asked him everything and he answered every time.

Julian walked out. Garrick and Ignatius found him at Surtr's forge. Julian said a king is the one who stays on the bridge. Garrick told him what Julian told him when he was five: a king stays behind to make sure everyone got out, and then he goes back and builds the bridge again.

Surtr was awake. He said only a king would have asked him what he wanted.

Julian said ask me. They asked. Julian, will you? He said yes.

Midwinter. In the orchard. Under King Roderic's tree.

Mirelle told Garrick and Ignatius: not yet.

Evelyn says tomorrow, about Garrick's eye.

And under that, in a thin, upright, very elegant hand, a queen's hand, the kind they taught in the old Lyradon court before the war, with every letter perfectly made and one small blot at the end where the pen had been pressed down a moment too long:

Mirelle, Queen of Lyradon, for a little while longer. I'd like it noted that I was right. I usually am. Ask anyone.