Chapter 163: War Games

The little ones came to Westmere on Saturday.

Elenos and Faelan and Mirelle. Adriana brought them through the Concordia gate at nine in the morning, because Mirelle had cried every night for a week asking whether Roderic was going to die, and Faelan had stopped eating, and Elenos had said nothing at all, which is what Elenos does instead of crying. Adriana said they needed to see him. That you can be told a thing a hundred times and not believe it until you've seen it.

So they saw him.

Mirelle climbed straight onto the bed, very carefully, on the side away from the bandage, the way Evelyn showed her, and lay down with her head on his shoulder and didn't move for an hour. Faelan sat on the end of the bed with his green ledger in his lap and asked Roderic forty questions about the knife, and wrote all the answers down, and then went out to the kitchen and ate three bowls of porridge one after another while Helena watched with her arms folded. Elenos stood in the doorway for a long time with his hands in his pockets, and then went and stood beside the bed, and put two fingers on the back of Roderic's hand. Just two. The way Roderic had put two fingers on Iselle's wrist before the door.

Then he went outside and sat on the back step for an hour, by himself, and I left him alone.

* * *

By the afternoon they were bored.

You can only be frightened for so long when you're thirteen and ten and seven, and the person you were frightened for is sitting up in bed eating soup and complaining that Iselle won't let him have a second roll. The sun was out. The tide was out. The North Sands were flat and shining for half a mile below the dunes, and there were dragons on them, and driftwood, and nobody was telling anyone to do their lessons.

So they went out to play.

I watched them from the back step of the house, where you can see down the lane to the dunes. My father came and sat beside me at about two, with a mug of tea, and said nothing, and watched them too.

* * *

They started with a fort.

Faelan's idea. Faelan is always the one with ideas. He found a great gray tangle of driftwood above the tide line, the size of a hay wagon, and decided it was a castle, and set Elenos and Mirelle to dragging more driftwood up to it to make walls. Elenos did most of the dragging. Mirelle did most of the deciding where things went. Faelan stood on top of the tangle with a stick and gave orders.

Mirrow and Ondry watched from their heap, with their chins on the sand, very interested. At one point Ondry got up and brought them a whole tree trunk in her mouth, silver with salt, and laid it down at the foot of the castle, and Mirelle thanked her very politely and told her where to put it. Ondry put it there.

"She's going to be a queen," said my father, watching. "Or a general. Or a foreman on a building site."

"Adriana says all three," I said.

* * *

Then the castle was finished, and they had to decide what to do with it.

And Faelan, standing on top of it with his stick, said, "Let's play war."

* * *

My father didn't move. I didn't either.

Children play war. We did. Carol and I played it every day of our lives until we were twelve, in the yard at Greykeep and in the woods below the north wall and up and down the east range stairs, with wooden swords Grandpa made us, and Ignatius and Seraphina on the other side when they came to visit. It's how children work out what the grown-ups are frightened of. You play it until it isn't frightening anymore.

So we let them.

* * *

They divided it up the way children do, with a lot of argument.

Elenos was Westmere. He was the oldest, so he got to be the good side; that's the rule. He had a long piece of driftwood for a sword, and he held it under his arm, blade back, hilt forward, the way he's seen me carry the oak sword, the way I don't carry it anymore because I broke it. I don't think he even knew he was doing it.

Mirelle was Iselle.

She insisted. She was seven and she had decided that Iselle was the bravest person in the world, which may be true, and she wanted to be her. She found a long gray scarf of Helena's on the washing line and tied it around her head like Iselle's shawl, and stood on the castle wall with her chin up.

And Faelan was the bad side.

He didn't want to be. He said so, loudly. But Elenos had Westmere and Mirelle had Iselle, and there were only three of them, so somebody had to be the Kethrans, and Faelan lost the argument, the way Faelan usually loses arguments with Elenos, by being younger.

So he went and found a stick, a short one. And he tucked it into the sleeve of his coat.

* * *

I felt my father go still beside me.

He didn't say anything. He didn't move. He just went still, the way he had on the threshold at Harl, and his mug of tea went cold in his hand. I watched frost come up on the outside of it, very faint, in a ring.

"They heard," I said quietly. "At supper. Mary's been reading the book out. Every night. They've heard all of it."

"I know," said my father.

He didn't get up. Neither did I.

* * *

They played it out.

They'd heard every word, and they played it out exactly. It was terrible to watch and I couldn't stop watching. Elenos stood in front of the castle with his driftwood sword under his arm, being my father, being the King of Greykeep, receiving the surrender. Mirelle stood beside him with her chin up and Helena's scarf on her head, being Iselle. And Faelan came marching up the sand from the tide line in his coat, with his stick up his sleeve, and his face screwed up into the fiercest scowl a ten-year-old can make, being Hand-Captain Corvane.

He knelt down in front of Mirelle.

"Holy daughter," he said, in a deep, terrible voice. "I surrender. Only to you."

Mirelle put out her hand.

And Faelan pulled the stick out of his sleeve, and, because he'd heard it read out at supper and because he'd been practicing it in his head all week, the way children do with the frightening things, he said the other words.

Not the Regent's word. The ones before. The ones from the priest. The ones Linus Carr had told us about, and Mary had written down, and read out at supper, in Kethran, because she's very careful to get things right.

The hand closes.

* * *

He said it loudly. In a big fierce villain's voice. In Kethran.

And thirty feet away, on the dune, a boy stopped moving.

* * *

I hadn't seen him. Neither had my father. He'd been sitting in the long grass at the top of the dune, just below the house, with his knees drawn up, watching the children play. He was about twelve. Thin. Brown hair cut very short, the way they'd cut it in the golden city. He had a length of rope across his knees, half braided, and his hands had been moving on it, slowly, the way Annick Dole had taught him on the island.

His hands stopped.

His face went blank.

And very slowly, without any expression at all, he stood up. And put his arms out in front of him, palms forward, flat, the way three hundred people had put their hands on my father's wall of ice. And stood there, on the dune, perfectly still, with his hands out against nothing.

Waiting to be told what to do next.

* * *

My father was on his feet. I was on mine.

And I put my hand on his arm.

I don't know why. I'd never done that before. I'd never in my life stopped my father from going to somebody. But I put my hand on his arm, and he stopped, and looked at me.

"Wait," I said.

It was what he'd said to me on the Knock, on the night of the fire ships, when Roderic's storm came up off the bow. Wait. I'm not going to stop him. Not his first time.

My father looked at me for a long moment.

Then he sat back down on the step. Very slowly. With his hands in his lap, and frost on them.

"All right," he said quietly. "Wait."

* * *

Down on the sand, the children had stopped playing.

Faelan was still on one knee, with the stick in his hand, staring up at the dune. His mouth was open. His face had gone from fierce to white in about a second. Mirelle had pulled Helena's scarf off her head and was holding it against her chest with both hands.

"What's he doing?" she said. Her voice was very small. "Faelan. What's he doing?"

"I don't know," said Faelan. "I don't—I didn't—"

"It's the words," said Elenos.

* * *

Elenos hears what things are.

That's his. That's what he got from my father and Evelyn, the way Caitlin got counting and Roderic got weather and Faelan got the ledger that always balances. Elenos can stand next to a thing and hear what it is. A stone. A tree. A tune. A person. He doesn't talk about it much. He doesn't talk about anything much.

He was standing very still now, with his driftwood sword still under his arm, looking up at the boy on the dune with his head on one side.

"He's frightened," said Elenos. "Not of us. Of the words. They went into him. He was on the island. He was one of them." He was quiet for a moment, listening. "He's waiting. He's waiting for the next thing somebody tells him. He'll do whatever it is."

"Then tell him to stop!" said Mirelle.

"No," said Elenos.

* * *

He said it very firmly. More firmly than I'd ever heard him say anything.

"No," said Elenos. "If we tell him, he'll do it. That's the problem. That's what the words do. They make you do what you're told. If I tell him to stop, he'll stop. If I tell him to sit down, he'll sit down." He swallowed. "It'll just be us doing it instead of the priest."

Faelan stared at him.

Then he looked down at the stick in his hand. And he threw it away. Hard. Down the sand toward the sea. As if it were hot.

* * *

"Then what do we do?" said Mirelle. She was nearly crying.

Nobody said anything for a long moment.

And then Faelan got up off his knee. He went and got his green ledger from where he'd left it on the castle wall, the old laundry book from Mary's cupboard with forty pages of struck-through laundry accounts at the front, and the gods after. He opened it to a clean page. He took the pencil out of the spine.

And he walked up the dune toward the boy, with the ledger open in his hands.

* * *

He stopped in front of him. The boy didn't look at him. He was staring straight ahead with his arms out and his hands flat against nothing, and his eyes were blank, and his face was gray.

Faelan looked up at him for a long time. Then he did what he does with every god he meets. Every one. Brannoc and Thor and Damar and Corra and the little god of the river bend below Havenreach. The three questions. Because if you don't ask, it doesn't count.

"Excuse me," said Faelan. Very politely. In Avarran, because he doesn't know Kethran. "What is your name?"

* * *

Nothing happened for a moment.

Then the boy's eyes moved. Just a little. Down. To the small, serious, ten-year-old face in front of him, and the open book, and the pencil.

His lips moved.

"Wilm," he said. In Kethran. Very hoarsely.

Faelan wrote it down. Carefully. Wilm.

"Thank you," said Faelan. "What do you do?"

The boy's hands, out in front of him against nothing, shook a little.

"I," he said. And stopped. And looked at his own hands, as if he'd never seen them. And then down, at the half-braided rope lying in the grass at his feet.

"I braid rope," said Wilm. "Annick showed me."

Faelan wrote it down. Braids rope. Annick showed him.

"Thank you," said Faelan. "What is your favorite thing?"

* * *

This time it took a long time.

Mirelle had come up the dune behind Faelan, with Helena's scarf still clutched against her chest. Elenos had come up behind her. The three of them stood in a row on the dune in front of the boy, in the long grass, in the sun, and waited.

And very slowly, Wilm's arms came down.

Not because anybody told them to. Just because he'd forgotten they were up. He was thinking about the question. You could see it on his face. He was thinking about what his favorite thing was, and he'd forgotten to hold his arms out, and they came down by themselves.

"Bread," said Wilm at last. "The bread that the lady at the big house makes. With the brown on top." He looked at Faelan. "I didn't know there was bread like that."

Faelan wrote it down.

Favorite thing: Helena's bread. With the brown on top.

* * *

Then Wilm sat down in the grass, quite suddenly, as if his knees had given out. And put his face in his hands.

Mirelle sat down beside him.

She didn't say anything. She's seven. She didn't know what to say. She just held up her hand, palm open, and a little light came up out of it. A small warm yellow one, like a candle flame without a candle. Mirelle can light lamps without a taper; she's done it since she was three. She'd never done it without a lamp before. She held it up in her open hand between them, the way Carol makes little lights for people when they're sad.

Wilm looked at it through his fingers for a long time.

"Is that for me?" he said in Kethran.

Mirelle didn't understand him. But she understood the look. She nodded, very seriously, and held it out.

* * *

My father let out a breath beside me on the step. A long one. I hadn't realized he'd been holding it.

"They did it," he said quietly.

"They did it," I said.

"They did it the way we do it," said my father. "Nobody told them to. They asked." He looked down at his hands. The frost was going off them. "Where did they learn that?"

I thought about it. About Mary at the supper table every night, reading the book aloud, in her careful voice, with all of us around the table and the little ones listening with their mouths open. About everything that was in that book. Kessavel on the white ship. Do you want to stop. Carol on the deck of the flagship. Hello, Malachar. The fifty-eight at the wall who named themselves. Iselle at the brazier, saying let go.

"Supper," I said.

* * *

Elenos was the one who came down from the dune afterward.

He came across the sand and up the lane to the back step, with his driftwood sword under his arm, and stopped in front of us. He looked at my father. Then at me. He's thirteen and he looks like Evelyn, and he's the quietest person in the house, and he looked at us both for a long time.

"You saw," he said.

"We saw," said my father.

"You didn't come."

"No."

Elenos thought about that.

"Why not?" he said.

My father looked at me. I looked at Elenos.

"Because you didn't need us," I said. "You needed each other. And if we'd come, you'd never have found out."

Elenos was quiet for a long moment. Then he looked down at the driftwood sword under his arm, blade back, hilt forward. And he took it out from under his arm, and looked at it, and leaned it very carefully against the wall of the house beside the back step.

"I don't want to play war anymore," he said.

"No," said my father. "I didn't think you would."

* * *

They didn't play war again. Not that day. I don't know if they ever will.

They played something else instead. I watched it from the step until the sun went down. Wilm taught them to braid rope. All three of them, sitting in a row in the long grass on the dune with lengths of rope across their knees, and Wilm in the middle showing them how, very patiently, the way Annick Dole had shown him. Faelan was hopeless at it. Elenos was very good. Mirelle made a sort of knot that wasn't any kind of knot anybody had ever seen, and was so proud of it that Wilm said it was the best one, and meant it.

At five o'clock, Helena came out of the back door with a whole loaf of bread, brown on top, and a knife, and walked down the lane to the dune, and gave it to Wilm.

She didn't say anything. She just put it in his hands and went back to her stove.

I don't know who told her. I didn't. My father didn't. I think she just knew. Helena always does.

* * *

Adriana had watched it all from the upstairs window of the blue room.

I didn't know until afterward. She came down at suppertime and stood at the kitchen door and looked at her three children and Evelyn's one, and Wilm, who'd come up to the house with them and was sitting at the end of the table eating soup with both hands around the bowl, as if somebody might take it away.

"Tomorrow," said Adriana. "All of you. After breakfast. Come and find me in the garden."

Faelan looked up from his soup, alarmed. "Are we in trouble?"

"No," said Adriana. "You did something very difficult today. You did it well. But you did it because you didn't know what else to do." She looked at Elenos. "You said no to Mirelle. When she said tell him to stop. I heard you from the window."

Elenos went slightly pink.

"That was the right no," said Adriana. "I'd like to teach you about the other ones."

* * *

Mary's book. Saturday night. Written at Westmere, at the kitchen table, after supper, with Faelan reading every word over her shoulder to make sure she got it right, and correcting her twice.

9 a.m. Adriana brought Elenos, Faelan and Mirelle to see Roderic. Mirelle lay on his shoulder for an hour. Faelan asked forty questions. Elenos put two fingers on his hand.

Afternoon. They built a castle of driftwood on the North Sands. Ondry brought a tree. Mirelle told her where to put it.

They played war. Elenos was Westmere. Mirelle was Iselle. Faelan was the bad captain. He didn't want to be.

Faelan said the hand closes in Kethran because he heard it at supper.

A boy on the dune stopped moving and put his hands out like at the wall. He's from Harl. He's twelve.

Uriah got up. Garrick said wait. Uriah said all right, wait.

Mirelle said tell him to stop. Elenos said no. He said if we tell him he'll do it, and that's just us doing it instead of the priest.

Faelan threw the stick away. He got his ledger. He asked the three questions. What is your name: Wilm. What do you do: I braid rope, Annick showed me. What is your favorite thing: Helena's bread with the brown on top.

Wilm's arms came down by themselves while he was thinking.

Mirelle made a light in her hand for him. She's never done it without a lamp before.

Uriah said they did it the way we do it. He asked where they learned it. Garrick said supper.

Elenos leaned his sword against the house. He said he doesn't want to play war anymore.

Wilm taught them to braid rope. Helena brought him a loaf of bread with the brown on top. Nobody told her.

Adriana says tomorrow, in the garden, she will teach them about the other kinds of no.

And under that, in a small, square, very determined hand, pressing hard, with the letters all exactly the same size, the way you write in a ledger that has to balance:

Faelan Ansel Grey, 10. I'd like it noted that I'm never being the bad one again. And that Wilm is in my ledger now, between Thor and the river god, even though he isn't a god, because he answered all three, and it only counts if you ask.