Chapter 165: Mother's Light

My mother opened the infirmary in the lower court of the Westmere Hold at six o'clock on Monday morning, and gave me a yoke and two buckets.

"Water," she said.

"I could fold it," I said. "From the well to here. It's sixty yards. I could fold a barrel at a time and—"

"You could," said my mother. "Carry it."

* * *

I carried it.

The well in the Westmere Hold is in the upper court, by the old seaward corner, under a little slate roof. The lower court is down eleven steps and across the flagstones and through the arch where the Concordia gate comes out. Sixty yards. Two buckets. A yoke across the shoulders that Helena found in the back of the stable, polished dark by a hundred years of other people's shoulders.

I'd never carried water in my life. Not like that. Not on a yoke. I'd folded it, or a servant had brought it, or Carol had made it out of snow, or my father had. The first trip, I slopped a third of each bucket on the eleven steps. The second trip, I slipped on the wet I'd made on the first trip and sat down hard and slopped the rest.

The third trip, Wilm came and walked beside me on my left.

He didn't say anything. He just walked beside me, on my blind side, the way Carol does, and when we came to the top of the steps he put one hand flat on the side of the left bucket to steady it, and we went down the eleven steps together, and didn't spill a drop.

At the bottom I looked at him. He shrugged.

"In the golden city," he said in Kethran, slowly, so I'd understand. "Before. I carried water. Two years."

* * *

By seven, the lower court was full.

I hadn't understood, until I saw them all in one place, how many people had been hurt. Not badly. Not dying. Nobody was dying. But hurt, in all the small ways people get hurt when they've been kept somewhere cold and hungry and frightened for a long time, and then fought over.

There were the three hundred and eleven from Harl. Some of them had been Hushed for a month and some for nine years. They had sores on their feet from standing. Cracked hands. Teeth that needed seeing to. Coughs. An old man who'd stood in the dark of the second finger tower for so long that his knees wouldn't straighten. A woman whose wrists were raw where the padlock chain had rubbed.

There were the seventeen fishermen from Sallow Point, with their blacked eyes and their rope-burned wrists and their toes gone white and numb from two weeks of kneeling on cold stone. Davy Harker came in with his mother on his arm, and refused to be seen before anybody else, and sat on the end of a bench with his arms folded until Bet Harker told him to stop being a fool, and then sat on it anyway.

There were soldiers. Kethran soldiers from the walls of Harl, who'd come ashore with the blue ships and been sent to Westmere by my father to wait for a fair wind home. Farm boys, most of them. Bruised from Brannoc's shield, or from falling off the walls when the ice came up, or from nothing much except being twenty and having stood on a wall for a month. One of them had a bandaged forearm where Grenna had caught him on the steps. He kept looking at the door, as if a wolf might come through it.

And there were ours. Siriel's elves, two of them with rope burns from the rigging. A Kethran topman from the Knock with a cracked rib. Kell Dunnet, who'd cut his palm on an oarlock on the night of the cave and not told anybody for a week.

I counted, because everybody counts now. A hundred and eighty-four.

* * *

My mother sat on a stool in the middle of it all with a basin on the flagstones beside her and her sleeves pushed up, and saw them one at a time.

I'd seen her do it before. All my life. In the infirmary at Greykeep, and at sickbeds in the town, and at the side of the road once when a cart went over. But I'd always been doing something else at the time. Being ill myself, mostly, or fetching something, or being told to get out from underfoot.

I'd never just watched.

So between buckets, I watched.

* * *

The first was the old man whose knees wouldn't straighten.

He sat down on the bench in front of her. He was frightened. You could see it. He'd been Hushed for six years, Sigrun said, and before that he'd been a cooper in a town on the Ash, and he didn't know who my mother was, or what she was going to do, or whether it would hurt.

My mother didn't touch him.

She looked at him. Then she held out her hand, palm up, on her knee. Open. Not reaching for him. Just there.

"May I?" she said.

Iselle was there to translate. She'd left Roderic for an hour, at his insistence, because he said that if she didn't go and be useful somewhere he'd get out of bed and follow her. She translated. The old man looked at my mother's open hand for a long time.

Then he put his own in it.

And the light came.

* * *

It was Aurelia's light. I know that. My mother would be the first to say so. She's Aurelia's saintess; the light isn't hers, it comes through her, the way water comes through a pipe. Gold and warm and smelling faintly of roses and clean linen, a sickroom after the fever breaks. Every healer in Avarra prays to Aurelia. My mother is the one she answers fastest.

But I'd never noticed before that it was a little different, coming through my mother. Coming through Aurelia herself, it's like morning. Coming through my mother, it's like a kitchen. Like the kitchen at Greykeep at six o'clock on a winter evening, with the lamps lit and the stove going and something in the oven, and everybody coming in from the cold.

It went down the old man's arm and into his knees.

He gasped. Then he straightened his legs. Slowly. One, then the other. Out in front of him on the flagstones. Straight.

He looked at them for a long time. Then he looked at my mother.

"Thank you," he said in Kethran.

"You're welcome," said my mother. "Next."

* * *

That was how she did it. All day. Every one of them.

May I? Open hand, on her knee, waiting. Never reaching. And they'd put their hand in it, or they wouldn't, and if they did, the light came.

I asked her about it at about ten, when I'd brought my twenty-third pair of buckets and she'd let herself have one cup of tea.

"You never just reach out," I said. "Even when you can see what's wrong. Even when it's someone who couldn't say no if they wanted to. The old man. He didn't know what you were going to do."

"That's why I asked," said my mother.

"But you'd have healed him. Either way. It's a good thing."

My mother looked at me over her tea for a long moment. It was a look I've seen her give my father. Very level. With something underneath it.

"Light that goes in without asking," she said, "isn't healing, Garrick. It's just another thing being done to them." She put her cup down. "Those three hundred people have had things done to them for years. I'm not going to be one more."

* * *

Not all of them said yes.

That surprised me. I'd thought they would. Who wouldn't want a cracked rib mended, or a burn healed, or a cough taken away? But a few of them looked at my mother's open hand for a long time and then shook their heads.

Annick Dole was one.

She came in at about eleven with the boy she'd been teaching to braid, a different one, not Wilm, a small one about eight, whose feet were raw. She held him on her lap while my mother healed them. Then my mother looked at the old burn scar on the back of Annick's right hand, the one Ulla had smelled flax and a mill-race in, and held out her own hand.

"May I?"

Annick looked at the scar for a long time. Then she shook her head.

"It's from the mill," she said in Kethran. "The mill at Brennet. I burned it on the drying rack when I was fourteen. My mother put butter on it and cried." She turned her hand over and looked at the back of it. "When I was Hushed, I didn't know my own face. But I always knew this hand. Because of this." She put her other hand over it. "I'd like to keep it."

My mother lowered her hand.

"Then keep it," she said. "Next."

* * *

There were things she couldn't heal.

There was a woman of about thirty, from the third finger tower, with a faint gray mark on the side of her throat, just under the ear. A small closed fist, like the one on the inside of Iselle's wrist. The mark of the Great Oath. Every one of the three hundred and eleven had one somewhere. On the throat or the wrist or the palm. The padlocks had broken. The marks hadn't gone.

The woman put her hand in my mother's, and the light came, and went into her throat, and the mark stayed.

My mother frowned. She tried again. The light came again, stronger, gold, filling the lower court so that everybody on the benches turned to look. It went into the gray mark like water into a stone, and the mark stayed.

"It's not a wound," said my mother at last. Very quietly. "It isn't hurt. There's nothing to mend. It's a promise. Somebody else's promise, written on her." She sat back. "I can't heal a promise."

The woman touched the mark with her fingers. Then she looked at Iselle, translating beside my mother. At Iselle's right wrist, where the same gray fist sat on the inside, just under the sleeve.

"You too," she said in Kethran.

"Me too," said Iselle.

"Does it hurt?"

"No," said Iselle. "Not anymore. It just stays." She held out her wrist next to the woman's throat, so they could see them side by side. "Ignatius tried. Aurelia tried. Nobody can take it off." She paused. "I've stopped minding. Mostly. It reminds me I used to belong to somebody. And I don't now."

* * *

At noon, my father came with the big copper.

He and Thor carried it between them down the eleven steps, the great copper boiler from the back of Helena's kitchen that she uses for jam in the autumn, full of soup. Thor carried her end with one hand and Mjölnir in the other, because she wasn't allowed to leave it in the umbrella stand if she wasn't eating in the kitchen, and nobody had thought to tell her she could leave it somewhere else.

My father set the copper down by the wall and ladled out soup for an hour. He didn't heal anybody. That isn't his. But he went down the benches with the ladle and a stack of Helena's bowls, and gave every single person in that court a bowl of soup, and asked each of them their name. Soldiers and fishermen and the three hundred and eleven. Every one.

And wherever there was swelling, a wrenched ankle or a black eye or a hand that had been shut in a door on Harl, he'd put two fingers on it, very lightly, and a little frost would come up, and the swelling would go down a bit.

"That's not healing," he said to me, when I stopped with my buckets to watch. "That's just cold."

"It's helping."

"Cold helps," said my father. "Your mother does the rest."

* * *

The Kethran soldier with the bandaged forearm was the last one before dark.

He'd waited all day. He'd let everybody else go before him. Every time my mother said Next he'd looked at the door, and then at the floor, and stayed where he was. In the end he was the only one left on the benches, and my mother looked at him and held out her hand.

"May I?"

He looked at her hand. Then at the door.

"Is the wolf coming?" he said in Kethran.

Iselle translated, and my mother's mouth twitched.

"No," she said. "She's asleep on the North Sands. On top of a dragon." She kept her hand out. "Did she hurt you very much?"

"No," said the soldier. "Not very much." He was quiet for a moment. "I shot at the man with one eye. I didn't hit him. And then the wolf came up the steps." He looked at me, standing by the arch with my yoke and buckets. And went white.

I put the buckets down.

"You missed," I said, in my bad Kethran.

"Yes," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm—I'm a very bad shot. My father always said." He swallowed. "I'm glad I missed."

"So am I," I said.

My mother looked from him to me and back. Then she held out her hand a little further.

"May I?" she said again.

And he put his bitten arm in her hand. And the light came, like a kitchen in winter, and when it went away, his arm was whole, and he sat there looking at it, and then he put his face in his other hand and cried.

* * *

My mother went to Hand-Captain Corvane after supper.

I didn't want her to. I said so. I carried the buckets anyway.

He was in the old strongroom under the harbor office, where Westmere keeps the customs money when there's any customs money to keep. Brannoc was sitting outside the door on a stool. He stood up when my mother came down the stairs, and opened the door for her, and stood in it while she went in. I stood behind him with my buckets.

Corvane was sitting on a cot against the back wall. Very straight. Still in his long blue coat. His left arm was in his lap.

It was black.

* * *

Not all of it. From the fingers to just past the wrist. Black and swollen and dead-looking, the way flesh goes when it's been frozen too hard and too long and the blood has stopped coming back into it. My father's frost had gone up that arm to the shoulder, on the threshold at Harl, the arm that held the knife. My father had decided not to kill him. But he hadn't decided how hard to freeze.

Corvane looked at my mother. Then at me, behind Brannoc, with my buckets. His face didn't change.

"The healer," he said in Kethran. "The wife of the ice-god."

"Yes," said my mother. She'd learned more Kethran this week than I had. "And the mother of the boy you put a knife in."

Corvane's jaw tightened, very slightly.

* * *

My mother sat down on the stool Brannoc brought her, just inside the door. Not close. She looked at the black arm in his lap for a long time.

"You'll lose the hand," she said. "By the end of the week. The fingers first. Then the rest. Unless I look at it."

Corvane said nothing.

My mother held out her hand. Palm up. On her knee. Open.

"May I?" she said.

* * *

He looked at her hand for a long time.

"I do not take from the enemy," he said at last.

"I'm not offering," said my mother. "I'm asking. There's a difference. You can say no."

"Then no."

My mother didn't move. She didn't argue. She didn't take her hand away, either, for a long moment. She just sat there, on the stool, with her hand open on her knee, looking at him.

Then she lowered it.

"All right," she said. She stood up. "Garrick. Leave him one of the buckets."

I didn't want to. I put it down just inside the door anyway, by the stool. Corvane looked at the bucket. Then at me.

"The water-carrier," he said in Kethran, "is a prince of Greykeep."

"Yes," I said.

"In Kethra, a prince does not carry water."

"I know," I said. "I've been told."

* * *

My mother went out. Brannoc closed the door. I followed my mother up the stairs.

At the top, she stopped, and leaned against the wall of the harbor office with her eyes closed, and stood there for a long time without saying anything.

"He'll lose the hand," I said.

"Yes."

"You could have just done it. While he was arguing. Reached out and—"

"No," said my mother. "I couldn't."

She opened her eyes and looked at me.

"It's his hand, Garrick," she said. "Even if it's a hand that held a knife to my son. Especially if it's that hand. If I take that from him, without asking, because I've decided I know better what he ought to have—" She stopped. "Then I'm just a gentler sort of Kessavel. Locking a thing because I've decided where it should go."

* * *

I walked her home along the harbor wall in the dark. She was so tired she was leaning on my arm by the end, which my mother never does. I made her sit down on the bench in Helena's kitchen and I fetched a basin and went back out to the well one more time, my hundred-and-somethingth trip of the day, and filled it, and warmed it on the back of the stove, and put it down on the floor in front of her.

"Feet," I said.

She looked at the basin. Then at me. And then, very slowly, she unlaced her boots and put her feet in the warm water, and closed her eyes, and let out a breath that sounded as if she'd been holding it since six in the morning.

* * *

I sat down on the floor beside her with my back against the bench.

After a while she put her hand on my head. Just rested it there, the way she did when I was small and ill. And I felt the light come. Very faint. Not healing. There wasn't anything to heal. Just warm. Just the kitchen at Greykeep at six o'clock on a winter evening.

Then her hand moved, very lightly, down to my left eye. And rested there.

"Still dark?" she said.

"Still dark."

The light came again, very gently, into the eye. I felt it go in. Like warm water into a dry well. I felt it reach the bottom, and touch the mud, and stop.

"Midwinter," said my mother. "Still. I can't hurry a well." She took her hand away. "I'm sorry."

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me," said my mother. "You're my son. I'm allowed to want to fix it." She leaned her head back against the wall. "I'm just not allowed to."

* * *

At midnight, Brannoc came and knocked on the kitchen door.

My mother had gone up to bed. I was still sitting on the kitchen floor beside the basin of cold water, half asleep. I got up and opened the door.

"The prisoner," said Brannoc. "He asked for you."

"For me?"

"For the water-carrier," said Brannoc.

* * *

Corvane was sitting exactly where we'd left him, on the cot, very straight. The bucket was by the door. It was half empty.

He looked at me for a long time.

"The boy," he said in Kethran. "Your brother. The one who stepped in front of the holy daughter. Does he live?"

"Yes," I said.

Corvane closed his eyes.

He didn't say anything for so long that I thought he'd finished. I turned to go.

"Tell the healer," he said, behind me, without opening his eyes, "to ask me again tomorrow."

* * *

Mary's book. Monday. Written at Westmere, very late, at the kitchen table, with the basin of cold water still on the floor beside the bench, because nobody had the heart to move it.

6 a.m. Evelyn opened the infirmary in the lower court of the Hold. She gave Garrick a yoke and two buckets. He said he could fold it. She said carry it.

He spilled the first two. Wilm walked on his left on the third trip and steadied the bucket. Wilm carried water in the golden city for two years.

184 people. The 311 from Harl, the 17 fishermen, Kethran soldiers, our elves and sailors. Kell Dunnet cut his hand a week ago and didn't tell anyone.

Evelyn asked every one: May I? Open hand on her knee. Never reaching. She says light that goes in without asking isn't healing, it's just another thing being done to them.

The old cooper from the Ash straightened his knees for the first time in six years.

Annick Dole said no. She's keeping her burn from the mill at Brennet. She says it's how she knew her hand when she didn't know her face.

Evelyn can't heal the oath marks. She says they aren't wounds. They're promises. Somebody else's, written on you. Iselle showed the woman her wrist. She says it reminds her she used to belong to somebody, and doesn't now.

Noon. Uriah and Thor brought soup in Helena's jam copper. Uriah gave everyone a bowl and asked their name. He put frost on swellings. He says that's not healing, it's just cold.

The Kethran soldier Grenna bit is the one who shot at Garrick and missed. He said he's a bad shot and he's glad. Garrick said so am I. Evelyn healed his arm. He cried.

Evening. Hand-Captain Corvane's left hand is black from Uriah's frost. Evelyn asked. He said I do not take from the enemy. She said I'm not offering, I'm asking. He said no. She said all right. Garrick left him a bucket.

Garrick carried water for Evelyn's feet.

Midnight. Corvane asked for the water-carrier. He asked if Roderic lives. Garrick said yes. Corvane said tell the healer to ask me again tomorrow.

And under that, in a quick, slanting, practical hand, the hand of someone who has written a great many notes at a great many bedsides and never had time to make the letters pretty:

Evelyn Grey. 184 asked. 179 yes. I'd like it noted that the five who said no are the five I'll think about tonight. And that my son carried 211 buckets, and spilled the first two, and I didn't say anything, and that was the hardest thing I did all day.