Chapter 161: Wounded

I woke up on the kitchen bench at Westmere at five o'clock on Monday morning with a blanket over me, a cat on my feet, and no idea what day it was.

Helena was at the stove. She didn't turn around.

"Monday," she said. "You slept a day and two nights. Your father slept one. He's gone back out. Your sister is on the Knock. Everyone is alive. There is porridge." She put a bowl down on the end of the table without looking. "Eat it before you ask me anything else."

I ate it.

* * *

When I'd finished, she took the bowl away and gave me a cup of tea and sat down across from me, which Helena never does before seven.

"Your left eye," she said.

"Still dark," I said. "Evelyn said midwinter."

"Your ear?"

"All the way back."

"Good." She looked at me over the top of her own cup for a long moment, the way she looks at a seam she's checking. "You folded the sea."

"Some of it."

"Mm," said Helena. And that was all she said about it. She has never once in my life told me she was proud of me. She just gets up at four and makes porridge, and is there when you wake up.

* * *

I went out to the North Sands to see the dragons before I went back to Harl.

It was a cold clear morning, the sky going pale over the sea, the tide out, the sand flat and shining. Uriah's snow beds from the night of the white ship were long gone, but the dragons had kept the place. Mirrow and Ondry were asleep in a heap above the tide line. Hask was eating something I didn't look at closely. Green was sitting on the dune at the top of the beach with her tail wrapped around her feet, the way a cat sits on a wall, watching the sea.

I went and sat beside her.

"Good morning, dear," said Green, without looking at me. "Look."

* * *

Out over the water, two dragons were flying.

One was very big and very old, slate and silver, with gray on her chin. The other was bigger, gold going bronze at the edges, with a wing that had been torn once, long ago, and healed crooked. And they were flying the same way.

That was what I noticed first. They were flying the same way. Aurethar has flown crooked his whole life. There's a hitch at the top of his left wingbeat, a little sideways slip, like a man with a bad knee taking a stair. I'd always thought of it as Aurethar's. Nobody else flies like that.

Except that Sabrenne was flying like that too.

Beside him. Wing to wing. Matching him. The same hitch at the top of the same wingbeat, the same little sideways slip, the two of them rising and slipping and rising together over the gray morning sea, so close their wingtips nearly touched.

* * *

"She's copying him," I said.

"She taught him," said Green. "Three hundred years ago. When his wing was torn and he couldn't fly straight anymore and everyone told him he'd never fly at all. She said a crooked wing is just a wing that knows something the straight ones don't. And then she flew crooked beside him every morning for a year, so he wouldn't be the only one." Green's tail twitched. "And then she went west to look for the phoenixes. And didn't come back."

I watched them.

"And now he's flying crooked beside her," I said.

"He asked her," said Green. "Last night. On the sand. In front of everyone." She sniffed. "Very improper. Very old-fashioned. I cried."

"Asked her what?"

Green turned her head and looked at me as if I were being very slow, which I suppose I was.

"To fly crooked with him," she said. "Every morning. That's how we say it, dear. When we mean always."

* * *

I didn't say anything for a while. The two of them went out over the sea, a long way, and turned, together, in a wide crooked circle, and came back.

"What did she say?" I said.

"She said she was three hundred years too old and her chin had gone gray and she'd spent most of those years with a hood on." Green's eyes were very bright. "And he said he'd noticed none of that, and would she please answer the question. And she said she only ever knew who was asking." A pause. "And then she said yes."

* * *

They came in to land a little later, low over the tide line, and came down together on the wet sand at the foot of the dune, so close their shoulders touched.

Aurethar looked up at me. He's never had much to say to me. He blew a warm breath on my son when he was a day old and said Acceptable, and that's the longest conversation we've ever had.

He looked at me for a long time now, with his gold eyes. Then at Sabrenne, beside him. Then back at me.

"Acceptable," said Aurethar.

Sabrenne made a sound I'd never heard a dragon make. Low and rumbling and long. It took me a moment to understand she was laughing.

"He means he's happy," she said. "He's never learned to say it any other way. I'll teach him."

* * *

Green took me back out to Harl after breakfast.

The island was very different from the one I'd left. The tide was in, ordinary and gray. The sea gate stood open. In the palm, the brazier had gone out at last, and somebody had swept the ash away, and three hundred and eleven people who had been Hushed were sitting in the lee of the thumb tower in blankets, eating, talking, some of them laughing, a lot of them crying. Sigrun was walking among them with her ledger, writing down every name twice. Annick Dole was teaching a boy of about twelve how to braid rope.

On the walls, the two hundred soldiers had stacked their spears in the guardroom by the gate, at my father's request, and were sitting on the battlements in their shirtsleeves in the cold sun, like men on a holiday nobody had told them about. A few of them were singing Haul Away for Sallow with Davy Harker. Badly.

And the twelve blue ships had come in close under the thumb, and their captains were coming ashore.

* * *

My father had asked for that. He'd sent Iselle across in the jolly boat on Sunday, with Kell Dunnet rowing, to every one of the twelve ships, to say in Kethran that the King of Greykeep would receive their surrender at noon on Monday, at the sea gate, and that every man aboard would be sent home afterward in his own ship, with his own sails, and food for the voyage, and nobody would be hanged, or chained, or sworn to anything.

Eleven of the captains had sent back yes.

The twelfth, the one on the fourth ship with the gilded stern, had sent back nothing at all. But at noon on Monday, when the eleven boats came in to the steps under the sea gate, his came in too.

* * *

I should have said something then.

I'd seen him on Sunday at dawn. Standing alone at his rail with his gold chain, not sitting down, not putting anything down, looking at Iselle. I'd seen him, and I'd been too tired to do anything but see him, and then I'd slept a day and two nights.

And when I saw his boat come in with the others, I thought: good, he's changed his mind. That's what I thought. That's all I thought.

I've thought about it every day since.

* * *

We received them at the threshold of the sea gate, where my father had knelt with the whole sea on his hands.

My father stood in the middle. He'd slept a night, and the gray had gone out of his face, and he looked like himself again, tall and quiet and plain, in his old coat. Brannoc stood behind him with his shield on his back. Thor sat on the gatepost with Mjölnir across her knees, cracking walnuts. Avarn stood a little apart, as he always does, where he can see everything.

I stood on my father's left. Out of habit. It's where I've always stood.

Iselle stood on my left, a step forward, to translate. And Roderic stood one step behind her. On her left.

Where a lamp-servant stands.

He'd stood there all week. Practicing. He didn't need to anymore. I don't think he even knew he was doing it.

* * *

The captains came up the steps one at a time.

They were ordinary men, most of them. Tired, unshaven, frightened, trying not to look frightened. Each of them came up the steps and stopped in front of my father and knelt, and drew his sword, and held it out across both hands, hilt forward, blade back, the way you hand a sword to someone you don't mean to hurt. Iselle said their names in Avarran. My father took each sword, and looked at it, and handed it back.

"Keep it," he said, every time. "Go home."

The first captain wept. The third laughed out loud, and then looked horrified that he'd laughed. The seventh asked, through Iselle, whether it was true that a god of the north had folded the whole sea two hundred miles west in a night, and my father said, "Not me. Him," and pointed at me, and the seventh captain looked at me for a long time, and then knelt to me too, which I didn't know what to do with.

The eleventh went home.

And then the twelfth came up the steps.

* * *

He was tall. Gray-bearded. Very straight. He had the gold chain around his neck with the closed hand on it, and a long blue coat, and he walked up the steps like a man walking up the steps of his own house.

He didn't look at my father.

He stopped in front of Iselle, and knelt, and drew his sword, and held it out across both hands. Hilt forward. Blade back.

"Holy daughter," he said, in Kethran. "I surrender to you. Only to you. To the blood of the house."

Iselle looked at my father. My father looked at the man for a long moment. Then he nodded, very slightly.

Iselle stepped forward and put out her hand for the hilt.

* * *

I didn't see it.

I want to say that clearly, because it matters, and because I've had to say it to a great many people since. I didn't see it. It happened on my left. On my blind side. I was standing where I always stand, on my father's left, and Iselle was on my left, and the captain was kneeling in front of her, and Roderic was one step behind her on her left, further still into the dark side of the world, and the captain's left hand was in the sleeve of his long blue coat, and all of it was on the side of the world I couldn't see.

I heard it.

I heard the little scrape of steel coming out of a sleeve. I heard Iselle draw in a breath, very short. And I heard Roderic move. Not a big sound. A step. One step. Forward and to the right, from behind her and on her left, into the space between her and the man kneeling in front of her.

Exactly where a lamp-servant steps, when the person he walks behind needs light.

And then I heard the other sound.

* * *

I turned my head. Alistair taught me that. Turn your head. Keep the trusted on your blind side, and turn your head.

I turned it too late.

Roderic was standing in front of Iselle with both hands at his left side, just under the ribs, and a look on his face of enormous surprise. The captain was still on one knee. His sword lay on the stone where he'd dropped it. In his left hand was a short knife with a closed fist on the pommel, and the blade of it was red.

"The Regent's word," said the captain, in Kethran. Very calmly. "The holy daughter does not come home."

* * *

Brannoc hit him with the shield.

I don't think Brannoc moved. I think he was simply, between one moment and the next, somewhere else, with his shield in front of him and the captain under it, flat on the stone of the threshold. The knife went skittering across the stone toward the sea. Thor caught it with her boot without getting off the gatepost.

And my father turned around.

* * *

I've seen my father angry a few times in my life. Not many. He doesn't get angry the way other people do. He goes quiet, and cold, and very, very still.

He went still now.

The frost came off him so fast that the stone of the threshold went white in a ring around him, ten feet across, all at once, with a sound like a pane of glass cracking. It went up Brannoc's shield and over the captain's legs and his back and up his left arm to the shoulder, the arm that had held the knife, and froze it to the stone. The air went so cold that every breath on that threshold came out white. Thor's walnut shells froze to her knee.

The captain lay under Brannoc's shield with his arm frozen to the stone and looked up at my father. And I saw on his face that he knew exactly who my father was, and what my father was, and what my father could do to him with one more breath.

My father looked down at him.

And I watched him decide not to.

* * *

It took about three seconds. I watched every one of them. I watched it go across my father's face like weather going across a hillside. And then he turned his back on the captain, as if the man were a stone he'd stepped over, and went down on his knees on the frozen threshold beside his son.

* * *

Roderic had sat down. Iselle had caught him going down and sat down with him, and now she was holding him, kneeling on the stone with his head in her lap and both her hands pressed over his, over the wound.

There wasn't much blood. That was the first strange thing. There should have been more. A knife like that, in under the ribs on the left side, there should have been a great deal. There was a little. A thin line of it between Iselle's fingers. And then nothing.

"It's not bleeding," said Iselle. Her voice was very high and very steady. "Why isn't it bleeding? Uriah. Why isn't it—"

"Evelyn," said my father. Not loud. He didn't need to be loud. Evelyn was already there, coming through the gate at a run with her sleeves already pushed up, because Evelyn has been at sickbeds for twenty-five years and she always knows before anyone shouts.

She knelt on Roderic's other side and put her hands over Iselle's.

And her face changed.

* * *

"It's locked," said Evelyn.

She said it very quietly, the way you'd say something you'd never heard of. She'd closed a thousand wounds with Aurelia's light coming through her hands. I watched the light come now, gold and warm, a sickroom after the fever breaks. And I watched it slide off. Like water off oiled cloth. Like a hand trying to push open a door that's been nailed shut.

"I can't get in," said Evelyn. "It's not bleeding because it's shut. It's shut from the inside. Nothing's coming out. And nothing can get in. Not me. Not her." She meant Aurelia. "It's like a—"

"It's one of mine."

* * *

Kessavel.

He was at the parapet of the thumb tower, high above us, with both hands at his throat. He'd been there for three days. He'd heard. I don't know how. Maybe he'd heard the knife come out of the sleeve, the same way I had. Maybe he could feel his own work wherever it was.

"An oath-knife," said Kessavel. His voice came down thin and hoarse from the top of the tower. "I made a hundred of them. For the Regent's captains. It locks what it cuts. So the healers of the enemy can't close it." His hands tightened on the chain. "It doesn't kill quickly. It's not meant to. It keeps the wound open on the inside, and shut on the outside, so nothing goes in or out. Until—"

He didn't finish.

* * *

"Then I'll open it," I said.

I was already on my knees beside Roderic. I don't remember getting there. I put my hand over Evelyn's, over Iselle's, over the place under my brother's ribs. And I looked at it, with my good eye and the other thing.

And it was one of Kessavel's.

Every line of it faced out. Clenched. A tiny fist, closed against anyone who came from outside. Every knuckle turned toward me. One hair harder than I could open.

His locks face out.

* * *

"I can't," I said. I heard my own voice crack. "From outside, I can't. It's built against me. Every lock he makes is built against someone coming from outside. I'd have to be inside—"

"Then let me," said Iselle.

* * *

She hadn't moved. She was still kneeling on the frozen stone with Roderic's head in her lap and her hands pressed flat over the wound, and her face was white, and there was a little of his blood between her fingers. And her eyes were very bright and very hard.

"I'm already inside," she said. "I'm his. A little. I've got the mark. The door knew me. This will know me too." She looked down at Roderic. "And I don't open locks, Garrick. I never have. I make what's holding let go."

Roderic opened his eyes.

"Iselle," he said. Very faintly. "Is it all right? Did he—are you—"

"I'm all right," said Iselle. "You stepped in front of me."

"I was behind you," said Roderic, as if that explained everything. "On your left. That's where I'm supposed to be." His face went gray. "It doesn't hurt. Is that bad? It doesn't hurt at all."

"Yes," said Evelyn, very steadily. "That's bad."

* * *

Iselle bent down until her forehead was nearly touching his.

"Roderic," she said. "Say your name."

"What?"

"Say your name. So I know you're still in there."

"Roderic," he whispered. "Roderic Grey."

"Good." She closed her eyes. And then she said, in Kethran, very quietly, to the wound under her hands, the way she'd said it to the old priest at the brazier, the way you'd say it to a child holding something hot:

"Let go."

* * *

It let go.

I felt it go. Under my hand, under hers, under Evelyn's. The little iron fist of the lock unclenched, all at once, every knuckle.

And then it hurt.

Roderic screamed. I'd never heard him scream. Not when he broke his arm falling off the stable roof at nine. Not when Faelan accidentally shut his hand in the carriage door. He screamed now, once, a terrible sound, and arched up off Iselle's lap, and the blood came. All of it. All the blood that should have come in the first moment and hadn't. It came up through Iselle's fingers and Evelyn's, hot and dark, and ran out across the frozen stone of the threshold and steamed.

"Now," said Evelyn.

* * *

And Aurelia came.

She came the way she always comes, like morning. Gold light, and the smell of roses, and clean linen, and a sickroom after the fever breaks. She came through Evelyn's hands into the wound, and this time there was nothing in the way, and the light went in.

And at the same moment, out of a clear noon sky over Harl, it began to rain.

* * *

Roderic's weather.

It had always come with his feelings. Rain when he was a little boy in a temper. A gust that blew in the shutters when Faelan broke his ship. A whole storm off the bow of the Knock on the night of the fire ships, out of his fear. And now he was lying on the stone with a hole under his ribs and Evelyn's hands in it, and all the pain he hadn't felt for the last five minutes had arrived at once. And the sky over the island went black, and the wind came up off the sea, hard, from nowhere, and the rain came down sideways, freezing, hammering on the stone, and the sea began to rise against the steps.

The captains' boats, still tied at the foot of the steps, began to slam against the stone. Somebody on the walls shouted. Out in the channel, the eleven blue ships heeled over in the gust.

"Roderic," said my father. "Roderic, it's all right—"

But Roderic couldn't hear him. Roderic couldn't hear anything. He was holding on to Iselle's wrist with both hands and his eyes were shut and the storm was pouring off him like blood.

* * *

I put my free hand on his shoulder.

"Borrow?" I said.

He didn't answer. He couldn't. But he didn't say no. And I knew him. I've known him since he was born. I knew what he'd say.

So I took it.

* * *

I took his storm. Not half of it, this time. All of it. All of that wind and that black sky and that freezing sideways rain, all that pain with nowhere to go. I took it off him the way you'd take a heavy pack off somebody's shoulders when they've fallen down in the road. And I held it.

It was very heavy. It was the heaviest thing I've ever held. Heavier than the sea. Because the sea was only water, and this was my little brother.

The rain stopped.

Not all at once. It thinned, and slowed, and softened, and then it was just a gray drizzle, falling straight down, warm, on the stone of the threshold and on all of us kneeling there. And then nothing. And then sun.

* * *

Roderic's hands loosened on Iselle's wrist.

"Oh," he said, very quietly. "That's better."

"Is it?" said Iselle.

"Somebody's carrying it," said Roderic. He opened his eyes a little, and found me. "Garrick?"

"I've got it," I said.

"Sorry," said Roderic. "It's heavy."

"I know," I said. "I don't mind."

* * *

He went to sleep after that, or something like sleep. Aurelia's light went on pouring into him through Evelyn's hands for a long time. Iselle didn't move. I didn't move either. I sat on the frozen stone with my hand on his shoulder and his storm on my back and I didn't let go of either.

After a long time Evelyn sat back on her heels.

"He'll live," she said.

She said it to my father. My father didn't say anything at all. He just bowed his head, very low, until it was nearly touching the stone.

"It went deep," said Evelyn. "And it was locked for five minutes, and five minutes is a long time for a wound to stay open on the inside. The blade went past the lung but it touched it. Aurelia's closed what she can. The rest has to close on its own, slowly. From the inside out." She looked down at Roderic. "He'll be in bed for weeks. He'll have a fever. He'll have a scar. And he'll live."

* * *

We couldn't move him in a boat. Evelyn wouldn't hear of it. Green offered. But Green is narrow across the shoulders, and a man with a hole under his ribs has to lie flat.

So Sabrenne carried him.

She came in from the North Sands an hour later, with Aurethar beside her, the two of them flying crooked, wing to wing. She landed on the bare stone of the palm, and lay down flat, and stretched out her great slate-gray neck along the ground, and let my father and Brannoc lay Roderic along the broad flat place between her shoulders, wrapped in every blanket on the island. Iselle climbed up beside him and lay down holding his hand. Evelyn climbed up on his other side.

"I flew three hundred years with a hood on," said Sabrenne to my father. "I can fly an hour with a boy on my back without dropping him."

"I know you can," said my father.

"And if I can't," said Sabrenne, "he's flying underneath me."

She looked at Aurethar. Aurethar, who has never in his whole life let anyone ride him.

He went underneath her when she lifted off. All the way to Westmere. Flying crooked, close below her belly, so close his wingtips brushed hers on every beat. So that if anything fell, it would fall onto him.

* * *

I went with Green. I couldn't fold. I was carrying Roderic's storm and I didn't dare put it down.

At Westmere, on the end of the north pier, someone was waiting.

Adriana.

She'd come through the Concordia gate an hour after the knife, and had stood on the end of the pier ever since, at the spot where my father always stands, with her hands folded in front of her and her face perfectly calm. She didn't run when Sabrenne came in. She didn't cry out. She walked to where the dragon came down on the sand at the foot of the pier, and climbed up onto Sabrenne's shoulder as if she'd been climbing onto dragons her whole life, and knelt beside her son, and put her hand on his forehead.

Then she looked up at me.

* * *

It was the same look. The one she'd given me in the harbor office, the night Roderic said I'm going. The one I'd understood without a word. Stand where he can see you.

I'd promised her. Without saying anything, I'd promised.

And I'd been standing on the wrong side.

"I didn't see it," I said. "It was on my left. I didn't—I saw the man. On Sunday. At the rail. I saw him looking at her. I saw him, Adriana, and I didn't do anything, I was too tired, I just—"

"Garrick," said Adriana.

I stopped.

"You're carrying his storm," she said. "Aren't you. I can feel it on you from here. It's raining a little, inside you. Only on you."

I didn't say anything.

"He stepped in front of her," said Adriana. "He was standing behind her, on her left, where nobody could see him. And he stepped in front of her." She looked down at Roderic, sleeping, gray-faced, between Iselle and Evelyn on the dragon's back. "That's not your fault, Garrick. That's his. That's the most his thing he's ever done."

She held out her hand to me. Open.

"Now come and help me get him to bed," she said. "And don't put that storm down until he's ready to take it back."

* * *

Mary's book. Monday night. Written at Westmere in the little room off the kitchen where they put Roderic, because it's warm and Helena can hear him from the stove. Mary sat in the corner on a stool and wrote very small, so the pen wouldn't scratch.

5 a.m. Garrick woke up. Helena gave him porridge. She asked about his eye and ear and said mm.

Aurethar asked Sabrenne last night on the North Sands, in front of everyone, to fly crooked with him. Every morning. Green says that's how dragons say always. Sabrenne said she only ever knew who was asking. Then she said yes. This morning they flew crooked together, wing to wing. Aurethar told Garrick acceptable. Sabrenne says that means happy. She says she'll teach him.

Noon. Eleven blue captains surrendered at the sea gate. Uriah gave every sword back and said go home.

The twelfth was Hand-Captain Corvane, with a gold chain. He surrendered to Iselle only. He had a knife in his sleeve. An oath-knife. One of Kessavel's. It was for Iselle. The Regent's word: the holy daughter does not come home.

Roderic was one step behind her, on her left. He stepped in front of her.

It happened on Garrick's blind side. He heard it.

Brannoc. Thor caught the knife with her boot. Uriah froze Corvane's arm to the stone. Then he decided not to. Then he knelt by Roderic.

The wound was locked. It wouldn't bleed and it wouldn't heal. Evelyn couldn't get in. Kessavel said it's one of mine. Garrick couldn't open it from outside. Iselle could, from inside. She said let go. It let go. Then it bled. Then Aurelia came through Evelyn's hands.

Roderic's pain made a storm. Garrick took all of it. He's still carrying it. Roderic said sorry, it's heavy. Garrick said I don't mind.

Evelyn says he'll live. Weeks in bed. A fever. A scar.

Sabrenne carried him home. Aurethar flew underneath her the whole way, so if anything fell it would fall on him. Aurethar has never let anyone ride him. He still didn't. He was underneath.

Adriana was waiting on the pier. She said it's not Garrick's fault. She said it's the most Roderic thing Roderic ever did.

Iselle hasn't let go of his hand.

And under that, in a fine, even, upright hand, the hand of a woman who was taught to write by a royal tutor in a palace that burned when she was young, and who still writes as if someone might be grading it, with one small blot at the end of the line, where the pen had rested too long on the page:

Adriana Grey. I asked one thing of my stepson: that he stand where my son could see him. I'd like it noted that it was my son who stood where she could see him. And that I have never been so frightened, or so proud, in my life.