Chapter 157: Caitlin's Wards

"Two thousand nine hundred and seven," said Caitlin.

She said it at dawn on Thursday, to the lid, in exactly the same voice she'd used for every other number all week. Then she closed her blue book, put her pencil in the spine, folded her hands on top of it, and fell asleep sitting up on her bucket.

Carol caught her before she went over.

* * *

She'd been awake for four nights. Not four nights in a row of staying up late, the way Roderic and I used to when we were boys and thought it was brave. Four nights of sitting on an upturned bucket in the bow of a ship with her eyes on a gray lid over an island, counting lines nobody else could see, without once looking away.

My father carried her below. She didn't wake up. He laid her in the little cabin where Linus Carr had sat in a blanket on Monday and put his own coat over her and stood looking down at her for a long time with one hand on the back of his neck.

"She's done this since she was three," he said. "Counted until she fell over. Evelyn used to find her asleep on the stairs with her finger still on a step."

"Evelyn's going to be furious," I said.

"Evelyn's going to be here at noon," said my father. "And then she's going to be furious. We should both be somewhere else."

* * *

Evelyn came at noon on Calder, with Iselle and Roderic, and was furious.

She wasn't furious at Caitlin. She went below and sat with Caitlin for an hour and came back up with her face smooth and her mouth very straight, and she was furious at my father and me, and at Carol, and at Tamar for letting her sit on a bucket, and at the bucket.

"She sleeps until dark," said Evelyn. "She eats when she wakes. Two bowls. And then she can do whatever she's going to do."

"Yes," said my father.

"I'm staying," said Evelyn.

"Yes," said my father.

"Don't yes me, Uriah."

My father opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again. Evelyn looked at him. Then, unexpectedly, her mouth twitched.

"I married a man who agrees with everything I say when I'm angry," she said. "It's very tiring."

* * *

The rest of them came out through the afternoon.

The two other ward-ships had been sitting off the south side of Harl since Tuesday, out of bowshot, with Siriel's longbows on their rails and Brannoc on one and Thor on the other. Now they came around and anchored in a line with the Knock, a mile off the north side, close enough to call between.

Behind them came the red ships. Three of them, the ones Loki had sailed in, with Kethran crews and patched sails. Corran Hale was on the first, with Brede Oller beside him. Marra was on the second. Ada was on the third, beside Lisbet Fane, practicing mill-talk with her hands in her lap.

And on every one of them, lying on the decks in the thin sun with their chins on their paws, were wolves.

Sigrun came across to the Knock in a jolly boat with her ledger under her arm. She'd copied it out three times over the week, she told me, so there'd be one on every ship. Every village the wolves had ever smelled. Every name anybody had ever said on the north pier. Every face Marra remembered from the golden city.

"Two hundred and sixty-one names," she said. "And smells for a hundred more." She looked at the island, at the four finger towers curled over the palm like the fingers of a fist. "And three hundred people in there. So."

"So we'll ask," I said.

"So we'll ask," said Sigrun.

* * *

Caitlin woke up at dusk.

She came up the companionway with my father's coat still around her shoulders and two empty bowls in her hands, because Evelyn had been standing over her, and she put the bowls down on the deck and went straight back to the bow and sat down on her bucket and opened her book.

Then she looked up.

Not at the lid. At us. My father, and me, and Carol, and Evelyn, and Iselle with Roderic behind her chair, and Tamar on his stool at the wheel, and Siriel with her boots off, and Kell Dunnet on the rail.

I'd never seen Caitlin look at a whole group of people at once. She doesn't like it. She says there are too many of them to count properly and it makes her feel as if she's dropped something.

"I need to tell you how it works," she said. "Before I start. Because once I start, I can't stop to tell you."

* * *

"A lock is lines," said Caitlin. "I told you that. Like a ledger. Every line holds on to the line before it. That's what makes it strong. You can't pull one out, because the next one's holding it."

"So how do you pull any out?" said Roderic.

"You find the end," said Caitlin. "Every lock has an end. One line that isn't holding on to anything. That's the knot. That's where he started. If you pull the end, then the line after it doesn't have anything to hold, so you can pull that one, and the line after that. All the way back. Like unpicking a seam."

"And where's the end?" I said.

Caitlin looked at the thumb tower.

"Up there," she said. "At the top. Where he stands." She paused. "The first line goes right into his collar. The whole lid is tied to him. The way his chain is tied to the other one."

* * *

Nobody said anything for a moment.

"So you'd have to pull his collar," said Carol slowly. "To start."

"I could," said Caitlin. "From here. In the dark. A mile away." She looked down at her blue book. "I'm not going to. I don't pull things off people that they haven't said I can."

"Then—"

"But he left me another one," said Caitlin.

She turned her book around so we could see it. The page was covered with tiny numbers, rows and rows of them, ruled as straight as a ledger. Near the bottom, there was one number with a small pencil circle around it, and beside it, in the margin, 41.

"Last night," said Caitlin. "When he came down his stair. One line near the bottom on the north side went loose. Just for a moment. Then it went tight again. But not quite as tight as before." She put her finger on the circle. "It's not holding on as hard as the others. I can get my fingernail under it."

"He loosened it on purpose?" said Roderic.

"I don't know," said Caitlin. "I can count. I can't tell why." She closed the book. "But it's an end. A second end. And if I start there, I don't have to touch him at all."

* * *

"How long?" said my father.

"All night," said Caitlin. "If nothing goes wrong."

"And if something goes wrong?"

Caitlin looked at him for a moment. It was the same look Evelyn gives him sometimes, very level, with something underneath it that might be fond.

"Then you'll be sitting behind me," she said. "Like you were on the stairs."

* * *

She started at nine.

She didn't do anything you could see. That was the thing about it. I'd expected something, I suppose. Light, or sound, or her hands moving. Caitlin just sat on her bucket in the bow of the Knock with her blue book open on her knees and her pencil in her right hand and her eyes on the lid, and her lips moved, very slightly, and every so often she made a tiny mark in the margin.

That was all.

My father sat on the deck behind her with his back against the foremast, close enough to touch her. Roderic stood behind him. Carol sat on Caitlin's left, on the deck, with her knees drawn up and the blanket over both of them, and her hand on the back of Caitlin's ankle, very lightly, the way you'd hold the string of a kite.

I sat on the other side, with the Castellan's lamp, shaded, on the deck between my feet. Because Caitlin had asked me to.

"Borrow?" I'd said, before she started. "If you need it. You can have whatever I've got."

"No," said Caitlin. "You'll need yours in the morning. Hold the lamp."

So I held the lamp.

* * *

At first, nothing happened at all.

Then, a little after ten, I heard it.

It was so faint I thought it was my left ear, still coming back, playing tricks. A tiny sound, high and clear, from the direction of the island. Like a single harp string plucked very softly a long way off.

Then another. Then another.

"Thirty," said Caitlin, under her breath. "Thirty-one."

* * *

By midnight you could see it.

Not the lines. I don't think anybody but Caitlin will ever see the lines, not the way she does. But you could see the lid change.

It had been gray all week. Smooth and gray and solid, like smoke that had set. Now, very slowly, starting from the north side near the waterline, near the mouth of the sea-cave, it was going thin. Not clear. Thin. The way frost goes thin on a window when you breathe on it. You could almost see the black rock through it. You could almost see the little lights of the soldiers on the walls.

The harp-string sounds came steadily now. One every few seconds. Never hurrying. Never stopping.

"Four hundred and twelve," said Caitlin. "Four hundred and thirteen."

Behind her, my father's lips were moving too.

* * *

I looked at him. He didn't notice. He was watching the back of Caitlin's head, and his lips were moving, and he was counting. Exactly with her. Not a breath ahead and not a breath behind.

Evelyn came up the companionway at one with a cup of tea that Caitlin didn't drink, and stood by the rail and watched them for a while: her daughter on the bucket and her husband on the deck behind her, both counting, neither of them knowing the other one could hear.

Then she went and sat down next to my father, and leaned against his shoulder, and didn't say anything at all.

* * *

At two, the island noticed.

A bell rang on the walls, high and thin and frightened. Lights moved. I could see them through the thinning lid now, little torches running along the tops of the walls toward the north side, toward the place where the harp strings were coming from. A voice shouted in Kethran. Then another.

"They can't stop it," said Iselle quietly, from her chair. Roderic's hand was on her shoulder. "They don't know how. Only the priests know anything about the lid, and the priests only know how to say the words that make it stay up. They don't know how to tie it back."

"Can Brother Ostrand?"

"Brother Ostrand," said Iselle, "will be on the stair. Stopping at every landing."

The bell kept ringing.

"Nine hundred and four," said Caitlin. She hadn't looked up. "Nine hundred and five."

* * *

And then, at about half past two, a figure came out onto the top of the thumb tower.

Small. Gray. Even at a mile, even through the lid, even with one eye, I knew him.

He stood at the parapet, looking out at the north side. At the thin place in his lid. At us.

He raised one hand.

Every one of us on that deck went still. My father's hand moved off his knee toward Caitlin, the frost already on his fingertips. Carol's hand tightened on Caitlin's ankle. Roderic stepped forward. I put my hand on the hilt of a sword I didn't have anymore and remembered I'd broken it.

Caitlin didn't look up.

"Nine hundred and forty," she said. "Nine hundred and forty-one."

* * *

Kessavel's hand stayed up for a long moment.

Then it went to his throat. To his collar. And stayed there.

And the harp strings went on. One. Another. Another.

"Caitlin," said my father, very low. "Is he—"

"Someone's holding the knot," said Caitlin. Her pencil moved in the margin. "At the top. The first line. The one in his collar. Someone's holding it still." A pause. A string. "So it doesn't pull when I pull the others. So the rest comes out clean." Another string. "It was going to hurt him. When I got near the top. Pulling the bottom of a seam pulls the top a little too. Now it won't." Another. "Nine hundred and fifty."

On the thumb tower, the small gray figure stood very still with its hand at its throat, and didn't move again.

* * *

At about four, Caitlin lost her place.

I'd never seen it happen. Nobody had. Caitlin doesn't lose her place. She found the thirty-eighth step at Concordia that nobody else had noticed. She counted every padlock in Westmere on the night of the fleet. She has never once, in her whole life, been wrong.

She'd been awake for most of five nights, and one day's sleep doesn't pay that back. And at nineteen hundred and something, the pencil stopped in her hand.

"Nineteen hundred and—" she said. And stopped.

The harp strings stopped.

"Nineteen hundred and—" She looked down at the book. Her hand was shaking. "I don't. I've. Wait." She turned a page back. Then forward. "I had it. I had it. It was—"

Out on the island, very faintly, the lid made a sound like a sheet being shaken out. The thin place on the north side flickered. Went a little grayer.

It was starting to knit back.

"Caitlin," said Carol.

"I can't—" said Caitlin. Her voice was going high. "I can't find it. If I start from the wrong one it'll tangle and I'll have to go back to the beginning and there isn't time, there isn't, the morning—"

"Nineteen hundred and sixty-three," said my father.

* * *

He said it very quietly, from behind her, from the deck, with his back against the mast.

Caitlin went still.

"The last one was nineteen hundred and sixty-two," said my father. "You'd just said it. You were going to say sixty-three."

Caitlin didn't turn around. Her hand had stopped shaking.

"How do you know?" she said.

"I've been counting with you," said my father. "All night." He paused. "Since you were three, actually. On the stairs. I used to sit at the bottom and count with you. Under my breath. In case you ever dropped one." He was quiet for a moment. "You never did. Until tonight. So I never had to say."

The deck was very still.

Then Caitlin's pencil moved.

"Nineteen hundred and sixty-three," she said.

Out on the island, a harp string sang.

* * *

She didn't look back at him. I don't think she could have, and kept going. But her left hand came off her book and reached back behind her, without looking, and my father took it. And she counted the rest of the night like that. Holding his hand, back over her shoulder, with her eyes on the lid.

* * *

At half past four, I saw the people.

I've said that I see locks. The way they're made, the knots, which way the lines face. All night I'd been watching the lid with my good eye and the other thing, and all night it had been just a lid, going thinner. Lines without anything at the end of them.

Now the lid was thin enough that I could see what was underneath. The four finger towers. And inside the finger towers, rows of people standing in the dark.

And from each of them, from somewhere just at the throat, a line went up. Up through the stone of the tower. Up into the lid. And was woven into it like all the others.

"Caitlin," I said. "Stop."

* * *

She stopped. The pencil stopped. The harp strings stopped.

"Twenty-five hundred and ninety-five," she said. "Why?"

"The next one's tied to someone," I said. "And the one after. Not all of them. But a lot of them. They go into the finger towers. Into the Hushed. Every one of them has a line, and the lines go up into the lid." I swallowed. "If you pull those—"

"I'll pull them out of the people," said Caitlin.

"I think so."

Caitlin looked at the lid. Then down at her book. Then, for the first time all night, she turned her head and looked at me.

"I can't see that," she said. "I can only count them. I can't see where they go." She was very pale. "I'd have pulled them."

"You didn't," I said.

* * *

"How many?" said my father.

I counted. It took a long time. I'm not Caitlin. I counted the lines going down into the first finger tower, and the second, and the third, and the fourth. I lost my place twice. My father didn't help, and I was glad.

"Three hundred and eleven," I said. "Into the towers. Into people."

"And one into him," said Caitlin. "At the top."

"And one into him."

Caitlin wrote it down. Then she did a sum in the margin. I watched her pencil.

2,907. Out: 2,595. People: 311. Him: 1.

"Twenty-five hundred and ninety-five," she said. "That's all I can pull. That's all that isn't anybody." She looked at the lid. "It's not a lid anymore. Not really. It's a net. Three hundred and twelve lines, going up from the towers and from the thumb, and crossing at the top. With holes in between."

"Can we get through a net?" said Roderic.

"A boat can," said Kell Dunnet, from the rail, in Kethran. Iselle translated. "Under the edge. If you go slow. Nothing's holding the bottom anymore."

"Lightning can't," said my father quietly. "Not without hitting the lines. Not without going through three hundred and eleven people to get to the gate." He looked at the island. "Good. I'd hoped it would be like that."

"You hoped—"

"I'd much rather walk," said my father.

* * *

"What about the fishermen?" said Carol suddenly. "The seventeen. Are they—"

"No lines," I said. I'd already looked. I'd looked first, before anything. "They're in the palm, around the brazier. Seventeen of them. None of them have a line." I took a breath. "They haven't sworn. They're still singing."

Even from a mile away, if I listened with my left ear, which was nearly all the way back now, I could hear it. Very thin, under the wind. Under the bell, which had stopped ringing. Under the shouting, which had stopped too.

Haul away for Sallow, boys. Haul away for home.

* * *

It was five o'clock.

Caitlin closed her blue book. She put her pencil in the spine. She folded her hands on top of it. And then she turned around on her bucket, all the way around, and looked at my father, who was still holding her hand.

"You never told me," she said.

"You never dropped one," said my father.

Caitlin looked at him for a long time. Then she leaned forward until her forehead was resting on his shoulder, and closed her eyes, and was asleep before anyone could say anything.

My father put his arms around her. He didn't move. He just sat there against the foremast, holding his daughter, with the frost going slowly off his hands.

* * *

On the thumb tower, the small gray figure took its hand away from its throat.

It stood looking at us for a moment longer. Then it turned, and went down into the tower, and was gone.

* * *

"An hour to first light," said Tamar from the wheel.

Iselle stood up.

She'd been sitting all night in her chair beside the wheel with Roderic's hand on her shoulder. She stood up now and unwound her shawl from her hair and folded it very neatly and put it on the chair. Then she held out her right hand, palm up, with the faint gray mark on the inside of the wrist.

Roderic took the little tin lamp off the deck.

"Forty," said Iselle.

"Step over the thirteenth," said Roderic.

Kell Dunnet swung down into the jolly boat without a word. Corran Hale came over the rail from the red ship's boat alongside, and Ada behind him, and Grenna, on four feet, small and gray, with the smooth scar band at her throat. Brannoc dropped into the stern of the boat and the whole boat sat down a hand's width lower in the water.

I stood up. I gave the Castellan's lamp to Tamar. My left eye showed me nothing. My right eye showed me my brother with a tin lamp, and Iselle with her open hand, and the island going gray in the first thin edge of morning.

"Garrick," said my father.

I looked down at him. He was still sitting against the mast with Caitlin asleep on his shoulder. He couldn't get up without waking her. He wasn't going to.

"Stand where I can see you," said my father.

"I'll be on the gate," I said. "Under the thumb. Watch for it."

"I'll be watching," said my father. "Be the door. I'll be the wall."

* * *

Mary's book. Friday. Written at Westmere at seven in the morning, from what Carol told her through the middle in the last hour before dawn, very fast, in pieces, while it was happening. Mary wrote it down as quickly as she could and didn't fix the spelling until afterward.

Thursday dawn. Caitlin finished. 2,907 lines. Then she fell asleep sitting up. Carol caught her.

Evelyn came at noon and was furious. Caitlin slept till dark. Two bowls.

The lid is tied to Kessavel's collar at the top. That's the first line. Caitlin wouldn't pull it. She says she doesn't pull things off people that they haven't said she can. So she started from the loose line he left on Wednesday night.

9 p.m. she started. You could hear the lines come out. Like harp strings. Garrick held the lamp. She said no to borrowing. She said he'd need his in the morning.

2 a.m. bells on the walls. 2:30 Kessavel came out on the thumb and put up his hand. Then he put it on his collar and held the first line still, so it wouldn't hurt him when the rest came out. So it came out clean.

4 a.m. Caitlin lost her place. First time ever. Uriah said 1,963. He's been counting with her all night. He's been counting with her since she was three. On the stairs. She never knew.

4:30 Garrick saw the lines go into the Hushed. 311. He said stop. Caitlin can't see where the lines go. She'd have pulled them.

She pulled 2,595. That's everything that isn't anybody. It's a net now. A boat can go under it. Lightning can't. Uriah says good. He says he'd rather walk.

The fishermen have no lines. They haven't sworn. They're still singing.

5 a.m. Caitlin fell asleep on Uriah's shoulder. Kessavel went down.

Iselle stood up. Roderic picked up the lamp. Garrick went in the boat. Uriah said stand where I can see you. He said be the door. He'll be the wall.

And under that, in a small, perfectly even hand, as if it had been ruled by an invisible straight-edge, but written much later, after everything, and a little less straight than usual:

Caitlin Grey. I'd like it noted that I dropped one. And that it was all right. Because somebody had been counting with me the whole time. 2,907. 2,595. 311. 1. And Father: 1, also. I counted.