Chapter 154: Planning the Siege

Iselle drew it on Saturday morning, on the long table in the harbor office, on a clean sheet of Eleanor's drafting paper with the brass weights on the corners.

She drew it from memory. Not the shape. The steps.

She started at the thumb. A small square for the gate under it. Then a line. Then she stopped, and closed her eyes, and her lips moved, and she drew another line. And another. Counting under her breath in Kethran. Turning corners where she'd turned them at twelve years old, walking behind a priest in gray with her hand closed.

It took her an hour. Nobody spoke. Roderic stood behind her chair the whole time with his hand on the back of it, not touching her. Caitlin sat at the other end of the table with her blue book open, writing down every number Iselle said aloud.

When she'd finished, she put the pencil down and opened her eyes and looked at it.

"Two hundred and twelve," she said. "From the gate under the thumb to the edge of the palm. Two hundred and twelve steps."

"Two hundred and twelve," said Caitlin, without looking up. "I counted with you."

* * *

My sister Caitlin is nineteen. She doesn't talk much. She counts things. Everything. Stairs, bells, birds, the chairs in the Council Hall, the steps in a stair that's had one stolen out of the middle of it. She's never once been wrong. She can count things that can't be counted, my mother says. Things that aren't there yet. Things that were there once.

She'd counted the steps on the stair at Concordia, when the seven Hushed came, and found the one that was missing. She'd counted the padlocks on the cobbles at Westmere, and the names, and written them in her ledger.

Now she looked at Iselle's drawing for a long time. Then she turned the page of her blue book and drew a line down the middle and started a new column.

* * *

"The gate's no good," said Iselle. "Not to go in by. Everything that goes through it goes under the thumb. And he'll be on the thumb." She put her finger on the drawing. "But here."

The palm. The great courtyard in the middle of the fist. And at the back of it, on the far side from the thumb, where a real hand would join the arm.

"The wrist," said Iselle.

She drew it. A little square at the base of the palm. A line going down from it. Steps. Going down into the rock.

"Every one of his houses has it. The priests use it. It goes down through the rock from the back of the palm to the water. A stair. In a cave." She looked up. "On Harl, it'll come out on the north side. Away from the sea gate. Where nobody looks."

"How many steps?" said Caitlin.

Iselle hesitated.

"I don't know," she said. "I never went down it. I only saw them come up out of it. The priests. At night. With lamps. Out of the floor of the palm, behind the brazier, as if they'd come up out of the ground." She swallowed. "Forty. Maybe. It looked like forty."

Caitlin wrote 40? in her column, with the question mark very small.

* * *

"It'll be locked," said my father.

He was standing at the window with his back to us, looking out at the harbor. He'd been standing there since Iselle started drawing.

"It'll be locked," Iselle agreed. "Everything is. The whole island is under his lid. The wrist door's under it too." She put her hand flat on the drawing. "But it's a door. A real one. For coming and going. And a lock that has to let people through has to have—"

"A keyhole," said Eleanor, from the end of the table. She'd taken her spectacles off. She was rubbing her eyes. "Every lock does. Even his. Even the dome over Westmere. It had to let his own people out. There's always a place where the lock knows how to open." She put her spectacles back on. "What's the key?"

Iselle didn't answer for a moment.

Then she held up her right hand. Open. And turned it over. On the inside of her wrist, very faint, where you'd never see it unless you knew to look, was a mark. Small. Gray. Like a bruise that had never healed. The shape of a closed fist.

* * *

"The oath," said Iselle. "The one I swore at twelve. The small one." She looked at the mark on her own wrist. "The wrist door lets the sworn through. That's how the priests come and go. They're sworn too. Every one of them. The lock knows them. It opens for them, because they're his."

Nobody said anything.

"I can go through," said Iselle. "I'm still his. A little. On the inside of my wrist." She put her hand down on the table. Open. Very deliberately. "I've hated that mark for eight years. I've tried to burn it off. Ignatius tried to heal it off. It doesn't come off." She looked up at my father's back. "So I might as well use it."

* * *

"No," said Roderic.

Iselle turned in her chair and looked up at him.

"Not alone," said Roderic. His voice was very steady. I didn't know my brother's voice could be that steady. "You're not walking back into one of his houses alone. Not ever again."

"I won't be alone," said Iselle. "There's a rule. In the oath-houses. A sworn person can bring one through with them. A servant. Someone carrying their things." Her mouth twisted. "The priests bring boys. To carry the lamps."

Roderic was quiet for a moment.

"I can carry a lamp," he said.

"Roderic—"

"I've carried your shawl for a month," said Roderic. "I can carry a lamp."

* * *

My father turned around from the window.

He looked at Roderic for a long time. And then at Iselle. And then at me.

"One," he said. "One servant. That's all she can bring."

"Yes," said Iselle.

"So two people," said my father. "Inside his lock. On their own. With three hundred Hushed in the fingers and two hundred soldiers on the walls and a priest at the brazier and Kessavel on the thumb." He didn't raise his voice. My father never raises his voice. "And then what?"

"And then I open the wrist door," said Iselle. "From the inside."

* * *

Everybody looked at her.

"His locks face out," said Iselle. "All of them. They're built to keep things from getting in. They're very, very good at that." She turned her right hand over on the table, palm up, open. "They're not built for someone already inside who frees things. Nobody's ever been inside one of his houses who could. He never thought he'd need to build for it." She looked at my father. "I open things. It's what I am. I can't open the lid. It's too big, and it's his whole will. But one door, from behind, with my hand on it? I can open one door."

"And then?"

"And then I open the gate," I said.

* * *

I hadn't meant to say it. I'd been sitting at the end of the table beside Caitlin, watching Iselle draw, and turning my head to listen, and thinking. And it had just come out, the way the right thing sometimes does before you've decided to say it.

"Up the wrist stair," I said. "Once Iselle's opened it. A few of us. Quiet. Across the palm, two hundred and twelve steps, to the sea gate under the thumb." I held up my own right hand and opened it. "It's a lock. A fist. I've opened his fists before. On the stair at Concordia. On the dragons. I borrowed it from Iselle and I kept it." I looked at my father. "If I'm inside, I can open the sea gate. And then everyone else comes in."

"And I'm coming with you," said Carol, from the windowsill.

"No," said my father.

* * *

That was the first time in my whole life I ever heard my father say no to Carol about something she wanted to do.

Carol has stood on the north tower in thunderstorms since she was three. She went through the middle into a locked town on her own. She sat on a dragon with no saddle. My father has never once told her she couldn't. He's said be careful. He's said come back. He's never said no.

He said it now. Quietly.

And Carol, on the windowsill, looked at him, and didn't argue.

She just waited.

* * *

"I can't come in," said my father, after a long time. "That's the thing. Isn't it." He looked down at his own hands. "He's built the lid exactly one hair harder than I can hit. I tried. It rang. I can't go through it." He looked up. "So I'll be outside. On the other side of a wall. While my children walk into his house."

Nobody said anything.

"I held Westmere for two hours from the outside of his dome," said my father. "Pressed against it like a hand on a window. Watching Tamar in the street. Watching Garrick go through three gates in a minute. And I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even see most of it. I didn't know if you were alive." His voice didn't change. But his hands did. They closed. Just for a moment. Then he opened them again. "I won't have all three of you inside and me out here, blind."

* * *

"Then I'll be your eyes," said Carol.

She came down off the windowsill. She came and stood beside me. On my left.

"The middle goes through his locks," she said. "It went through the dome at Westmere. It's not a road. It's not a gate. It's just where Garrick and I meet. Wherever we are." She looked up at our father. "So I'll stay outside. With you. On the Knock, beside Caitlin. And Garrick will be inside. And everything he sees, I'll see. And everything I see, I'll tell you." She paused. "You've always let me be a lightning rod. Let me be a window."

My father looked at her for a long time.

"You'd stay out," he said.

"I'd stay out," said Carol. "If you asked me. You didn't tell me. You asked." She smiled, a little. "That's the difference. That's always been the difference in this house."

* * *

I got up from the table and went over to him.

I don't know why. I just did. I stood in front of my father by the window of the harbor office at Westmere, with the whole room watching, and I looked up at him. He's taller than me. He always will be.

"And you be the wall," I said.

He looked at me.

"That's what you told us," I said. "In the yard. When Avarn was teaching all three of us, before the fleet came. You said you didn't want to be a storm. A storm goes everywhere. You wanted to be a wall." I swallowed. "So be the wall. Outside. Between the fist and the ships. Between the fist and Westmere. Between the fist and everyone who isn't inside it. Hold the sea. Hold the soldiers on the walls. Hold the blue ships in the lee of the thumb. Carol will tell you the moment the gate opens. And you'll be right there. And you'll come in."

My father didn't say anything for a long time.

Then he looked across the room.

"Adriana," he said.

* * *

Adriana was in the doorway. She'd been there since the beginning. She hadn't said a word.

She looked at Roderic for a long time. Then at Carol. Then at me.

The same look she'd given me last night. You're his big brother. Stand where he can see you.

"Yes," said Adriana.

That was all. One word. And then she turned and walked out of the harbor office and down the stairs, and I heard the door at the bottom close very quietly, and my father closed his eyes.

* * *

After that, it was just planning. Which is mostly arguing.

Thor wanted to go in through the gate the moment I opened it, first, with the hammer. Avarn said Thor could go in second. Thor said why second. Avarn said because he was going first. Brannoc, who'd come through at noon and hadn't said a word, said, very quietly, that he was going first, because he was the shield and that was what shields were for, and Thor and Avarn both looked at him and then at each other and agreed that Brannoc was going first.

Siriel wanted her thirty longbows on the rails of three ward-ships, standing off the island to cover the gate. Kell Dunnet said the shoals around Harl would rip the bottom out of any ship that didn't know them. Tamar said he knew them. Every Westmere fisherman knew them. Tamar said he'd pilot the Knock himself. My mother said Tamar wasn't piloting anything with that ankle. Tamar said he'd pilot it sitting down.

Grenna said the wolves would hold Sallow Point and the coast, in case anything came ashore. She said it very carefully. She said it wasn't a raid. She said they'd been asked to guard, and they would guard, and when they were asked to do the other thing, they'd do that too.

* * *

And then I said the thing I'd been thinking all morning.

"Nobody kills a Hushed."

The room went quiet.

"Three hundred of them," I said. "In the fingers. In the dark. Every one of them came from somewhere. Every one of them had a mother. We found two hundred and fifty-nine names in ten days." I looked around at all of them. "I don't want anyone in that fist to swing at a Hushed. I want them named."

"There's three hundred," said Thor. "In a fortress. In a fight."

"There were two hundred and sixty walking into the sea at Westmere," I said. "And eleven hundred Kethran sailors named two hundred and forty-eight of them in two hours." I turned to Grenna. "And your young ones found eight more by smell. Off a serpent's back."

Grenna looked at me with her yellow eyes for a long time.

"You want us on the ships," she said.

"I want to ask you," I said. "You said you'd like to be asked."

* * *

Grenna's old face did something I'd never seen it do. It went soft. Just for a moment. Around the scar on her throat.

"Asked," she said. "Yes."

"And the Kethran sailors," I said. "Whoever wants to come. Corran Hale. Lisbet. Kell. Anyone. Every one of them knows faces from somewhere. And the freed ones." I looked at the door, where Marra was standing with Ada, the two of them signing at each other too fast to follow. "Marra knows faces. Ada knows mill-talk. And Sigrun has every village in Kethra in her ledger now. Every smell. Every name."

"You want to take an army of people who recognize each other," said Loki, from the windowsill, very slowly, "into a fortress full of people who don't."

"Yes."

Loki looked at me for a long moment.

"That," he said, "is the most ridiculous plan I've ever heard. And I've heard all of mine." He grinned. "I'm in."

* * *

The last thing was Caitlin.

She'd been writing all morning. Every number. Iselle's steps. The towers. The soldiers. The Hushed. The ships. The days. Her blue book was full of columns. She hadn't said a word.

When the room finally went quiet, she looked up.

"The lid," she said.

Everybody looked at her. Caitlin almost never speaks in rooms full of people.

"Iselle and Roderic go through the wrist," said Caitlin. "Iselle opens it from behind. Garrick goes up the stair. Garrick opens the gate. Brannoc goes first." She turned a page. "But the lid's still there. Over all of it. Even with the gate open, the lid's on the island like a bowl. Father can't come in under it. Neither can the dragons. Neither can the ships. Only through the gate. One at a time. Under the thumb." She looked up. "Under him."

Nobody had thought of that. I hadn't thought of that.

"So the lid has to come off," said Caitlin.

* * *

"It can't," said Eleanor. "I've been trying for a year. He reads every ward I cut and lays a bigger one over it."

"Yes," said Caitlin. "Because you cut them. You make new lines. He counts them and makes more." She put her pencil down. "I don't want to make lines. I want to take his away. One at a time. From the outside." She looked at Eleanor. "A lock is made of lines. Like a ledger. Every one of them goes somewhere. Every one of them is counted. If you count them all, you can find the first one. And if you take the first one out, the second one doesn't have anything to hold onto."

Eleanor stared at her.

"Like unpicking a seam," said Caitlin. "You find the knot. Then it all comes out."

"How long?" said my father.

Caitlin looked at her blue book. At the columns.

"I have to see it," she said. "From close. From a ward-ship. Off the island. Where I can look at the lid all night. Every line." She thought. "Three nights. Maybe four. To count it. And then one more, to pull."

* * *

My father looked at the calendar on the harbor office wall. Tamar's grandfather's tide table, with the moon drawn in little circles along the top.

Saturday. Eight days to the dark of the moon.

"Four nights to count," said my father. "One to pull. That's five. Then the morning after."

"The day before the dark," said Iselle.

"The day before the dark," said my father. He looked at Bet Harker, on the bench by the door, with her rope hands in her lap. "Can your boy sing for seven more days, Mrs. Harker?"

Bet Harker didn't even look up.

"He'll sing for a month if he knows we're coming," she said. "He's stubborn. He gets it from me."

* * *

That night I found Roderic on the end of the north pier.

He was sitting with his legs over the edge, looking out to the northwest, where the sea went black and the stars came down to meet it. He had his sword across his knees. The real one. Avarn's lessons. He'd been practicing with it every morning at five for a month.

I sat down beside him. On his right. So he'd be on my good side. And so I'd be on his left.

We didn't say anything for a while.

"I'm frightened," said Roderic.

"I know."

"I said I'd go. In front of everyone. In front of Mother." He turned the sword over on his knees. "And now I'm sitting here, and I'm so frightened I can't feel my hands."

"I know," I said. "That's how you know you mean it."

He looked at me.

"Avarn's sword," I said. "The wooden one. Never in your hand unless you mean it." I swallowed. "If you weren't frightened, you wouldn't mean it. You'd just be going."

* * *

Roderic didn't say anything for a long time.

"Will you be there?" he said. "Inside. When I need you."

"I'll be coming up the stair right behind you," I said. "The minute Iselle opens the door." I looked at him. "Stand where I can see you, Roderic. That's all you have to do. Just stand where I can see you. And I'll come."

He looked at me with his eyes very bright in the starlight. My little brother. Twenty years old. Who couldn't refuse anyone anything, and whose temper brought the weather, and who'd carried a girl's shawl for a month without being asked.

"All right," said Roderic.

And somewhere out over the sea, very faint, very far, a little wind came up, and blew warm, and went away again.

* * *

Mary's book. Saturday. The new one. Green leather, the color of the ivy on the east wall, with Mary on the cover in Melody's stitching. It came through the Hold gate at four o'clock with a note: I know it isn't the day. You filled the other one early. M.

Saturday. Iselle drew the inside of the fist from memory. 212 steps from the thumb to the palm. Caitlin counted with her.

The wrist. A priests' stair down through the rock to a cave on the north side. Maybe 40 steps. The wrist door lets the sworn through. Iselle has a mark on the inside of her wrist from the oath she swore at 12. She's hated it 8 years. She says she might as well use it.

She can bring one servant. To carry a lamp. Roderic says he can carry a lamp.

Iselle opens the wrist door from the inside. His locks face out; he never built for someone inside who frees things. Garrick and a few go up the stair, cross the palm, and open the sea gate. Brannoc goes first. Thor and Avarn argued. Brannoc won.

Uriah said no to Carol. First time ever. She didn't argue. She offered to stay outside on the Knock and be his window through the middle. He asked. She said yes. Garrick told him: be the wall. Adriana said yes. One word.

Garrick: nobody kills a Hushed. Name them. Wolves on the ships, asked. Kethran sailors. Freed Hushed. Sigrun's ledger. Loki says it's the most ridiculous plan he's ever heard and he's in.

Caitlin will unpick the lid from a ward-ship. Like a seam. Four nights to count. One to pull. Then the morning before the dark of the moon.

Bet Harker says Davy will sing for a month if he knows we're coming.

And under that, in a small, perfectly even hand, every letter exactly the same height, every line exactly the same distance from the next, as though ruled with a straight edge that wasn't there:

Caitlin Grey. 212 steps. 40 (?). 5 nights. I'd like it noted that I counted it twice, and that I'll count the lid three times, and that I'm not frightened, because I've counted that too, and it comes out smaller than you'd think.