Chapter 167: A Soldier's Story

I took Corvane his tea on Wednesday morning, because nobody else would.

That isn't quite fair. Brannoc would have. Brannoc would take tea to anyone; he took bread up a hundred and six steps every evening to a god who'd built the knife. But Brannoc was asleep on his stool outside the strongroom door, with his chin on his chest and his shield across his knees, and he'd been sitting there for nine days, and I didn't want to wake him.

So I took it. A cup, not a can. One of Helena's good ones, the plain white kind with the blue line around the rim. Helena had looked at me for a long time when I took it down off the shelf. Then she'd filled it, and put a saucer under it, and a piece of bread on the saucer, and handed it to me without a word.

* * *

Corvane was sitting on the cot. Very straight. Still in the long blue coat. He'd taken the gold chain off; it lay coiled on the floor by his boot, with the closed hand on it turned face down.

His left hand was in his lap. Pink and new and shaking. A thumb, two fingers, two stumps.

I held out the cup.

He looked at it for a long time. Then he reached for it with his right hand, from habit, and stopped. And very slowly, deliberately, he reached with his left.

It took him three tries to get his thumb and two fingers around the cup. The tea slopped into the saucer. He didn't look at me. He got it to his mouth, and drank, and put it down on his knee, and held it there.

"You'll hold a cup," he said, in Kethran. "The healer said."

"She did."

"I have held a sword for thirty-one years." He looked down at the cup. "This is harder."

* * *

I sat down on the floor with my back against the door. Not close. My mother's distance. He looked at me sideways.

"The water-carrier," he said. "You come every day."

"Somebody has to bring the water."

"In Kethra, a prince does not—"

"You've said."

Something happened at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. The place where a smile would have been, once, a long time ago.

"Yes," he said. "I have."

* * *

I hadn't come to ask him anything. I want to say that. I'd only come with the tea. But I'd been carrying water for three days, and listening to my mother ask May I? a hundred and eighty-four times, and sitting at a table on the north quay asking two hundred farm boys what they wanted. And I'd found that once you start asking people things, it's very hard to stop.

"What was it like," I said. "Before. In Kethra. Under him."

Corvane didn't ask who I meant.

He looked at his cup for a long time.

"You want a soldier's story," he said.

"I want yours."

* * *

He told it. Not all at once. Over the whole of that morning, a little at a time, in Kethran, slowly, so I'd understand, and sometimes in bad Avarran when he saw I didn't. Stopping to drink his tea with his three fingers. Starting again.

I'll put it down the way he told it. As near as I can.

* * *

I was born in Cardle. The harbor town below the golden city. My father mended nets. His father mended nets. That was the shape of things. You did what your father did, in the place your father did it, and your son did it after you.

When I was twelve, the priests came to the street, the way they come to every street, and took the children of the right age up to the oath-house, and gave us the small oath. On the wrist.

He turned his right hand over on his knee. There it was, on the inside of the wrist. Faded almost to nothing. A small gray fist.

You don't remember it, mostly. You say the words and they put the iron on and it hurts, and you go home. And afterward you belong. That's all. You belong to the house. You can't leave. Not that anyone wants to. Where would you go?

* * *

His Radiance held everything.

That's what I want you to understand, water-carrier. That's what nobody here understands. You think he was cruel. He wasn't cruel. He was never cruel. He held things.

The price of bread didn't change in Cardle for two hundred years. Not once. Not in famine, not in plenty. He held it. The river didn't flood. He held it. Ships didn't sink in the harbor. He held them. A man knew what his son would be, and what his son's son would be, and that nothing would ever be taken from him, and that nothing would ever change.

Nobody starved. Nobody left. Nobody asked.

He drank his tea.

We thought that was peace.

* * *

I went to sea at fifteen. On a blue ship. Not because anyone told me to. Because I wanted to see the edge of what he held. That was the only wanting anyone did, in Kethra. You could want to go and look at the edge. You could never want to go past it.

I served thirty-one years. I was good. I was made Hand-Captain at forty. I married a woman from the street behind the net-lofts. We had a son.

He stopped there for a long time.

I didn't say anything. I'd learned that from my mother.

* * *

Then His Radiance went to sea.

To your shore. With the whole fleet. The towers with the storms in them. Ten thousand men. I wasn't on it. I was in Cardle, refitting.

And while he was gone, the hand opened.

* * *

He looked at his left hand on his knee. The new one. The three fingers.

You couldn't see it. Nobody could. But everyone felt it. Like a cold draft through a house when a door you didn't know was open goes shut. The price of bread changed in Cardle. In one morning. Doubled. Nobody had ever seen a price change. Women stood in the street and stared at the baker's slate as if it had grown teeth.

And then the priests came.

Not the ones we knew. New ones. And the gray one with them. The one on your tower. He walked up the hill to the palace, and the doors opened for him, and he went in, and a day later there was a Regent.

* * *

"Who is the Regent?" I said.

Corvane looked at me.

Nobody knows, he said. Nobody has seen him. Orders come from the Throne of Hands, written in a hand none of us knows, sealed with a closed fist. The priests read them out in the squares. The Regent holds the throne in the name of His Radiance, who is unwell. That's all anyone is told.

He was quiet for a moment.

Some people say the Regent is the gray one. Some say there is no Regent at all. Just a chair, and a voice in it, and a hand on the back of the chair that nobody can see.

* * *

I thought about the voice that wasn't Kessavel's, coming out of Kessavel's mouth on the thumb tower. The hand closes. I thought about the thread at his throat going away east. I didn't say anything.

"And Malachar?" I said. "When he came home."

Corvane went very still.

* * *

I saw him, he said. I was on the quay at Cardle the morning he came back.

One ship. His flagship. Forty men. No towers. No storms. He came off it in plain clothes, with no crown and no chain, and he walked up the hill from the harbor to the golden city. On foot. Alone. Nobody went with him. The forty men stood on the quay and watched him go, and none of them followed, and I didn't either.

He walked up to the doors of his own palace.

And they didn't open.

* * *

The cup shook in Corvane's three fingers. He put it down on the saucer on his knee.

He stood there, he said. For a long time. In front of the doors. Then he sat down. On the steps. In the square. And he's still there.

"Still—"

Every day. Since he came home. He sits on the steps of his own palace in plain clothes, with his hands open on his knees, and he waits. For the doors. Corvane closed his eyes. The people walk around him. They go to market. They carry water. They don't look at him. Nobody dares to speak to him. Nobody dares not to walk past.

The children of the city are told not to go near the steps. The priests say His Radiance is unwell, and resting.

He opened his eyes.

I went past him every morning for a month. On my way to the harbor. I never once looked at him. Thirty-one years, I served him. And I walked past him every morning, and didn't look.

* * *

Neither of us said anything for a long time.

Outside the strongroom door, Brannoc snored, once, and shifted on his stool.

"Why the knife?" I said at last. Very quietly.

* * *

Corvane looked at me.

He didn't answer straight away. He picked up the cup again, with his three fingers, very carefully, and drank the last of the tea, and put it back on the saucer. Then he put the saucer on the floor beside his gold chain.

Every captain who sailed left a son, he said. In the priests' house in the golden city. Surety. That's the Regent's word. You sail, you serve well, your son is kept. Fed. Safe. He looked at the wall. You don't serve well, he's sworn.

The Great Oath. Not the small one.

And then he's Hushed. And stands in a tower in a row. And doesn't know your face.

* * *

The orders came the day before we sailed for the island. Every captain had the same. If you see the holy daughter, she does not come home. Her life, for your son's.

I knew who she was. I'd seen her at twelve, on the stair, in the oath-house in the golden city. Captains take a turn at the oath-house when they're in port. I was standing guard at the bottom of the stair. She was so frightened she couldn't feel her feet. An old woman was whispering to her, the whole way down.

He looked at his three-fingered hand.

I took the knife the gray one made. And I went up the steps at your sea gate. And I knelt in front of a girl I'd watched take the small oath at twelve. And I did what the Regent said.

And a boy stepped in front of her.

* * *

I didn't say anything. I couldn't.

His name, said Corvane. Your brother.

"Roderic."

Roderic. He said it carefully. Getting it right. He's the age my son is.

* * *

"What's your son's name?" I said.

Corvane looked at me.

It was a strange look. I'd seen it before. I'd seen it on the north quay the day before, on the faces of two hundred farm boys, when Iselle asked them what they wanted. That blankness. Like a man looking for a coat in a dark cupboard. Like someone who has just been asked something nobody has asked him in a very long time.

Aldric, he said. Very quietly. His name is Aldric. He's sixteen. He has his mother's hair.

He stopped.

Nobody in Kethra has asked me his name, he said. Not in four years. Not since he went into the priests' house. He looked down at his hands. You don't ask. It's not done. In case the answer is that he's sworn.

* * *

I got up off the floor.

"Wait here," I said, which was a stupid thing to say to a man in a locked strongroom, and Corvane looked at me as if he thought so too.

I went up the stairs and out into the gray morning and along the harbor wall to the house, and through the kitchen, where Helena looked at my face and didn't say anything, and into the little room off the kitchen, where Roderic was sitting up on his pillows eating toast, and Iselle was sitting in the chair by the bed reading him the Kethran sea stories.

They both looked up.

"He wants to know your name," I said to Roderic. "Corvane. He asked."

* * *

Roderic put down his toast.

He looked at me for a long time. Then at Iselle.

Iselle closed the book.

"I want to go," said Roderic.

"You're not allowed out of bed," said Iselle.

"I know," said Roderic. "I want to go anyway." He looked at her. "Will you come? You can say no."

Iselle looked at him for a very long time.

"He knelt in front of me," she said. "He called me holy daughter. He was going to—" She stopped. Her right hand had gone to the inside of her left wrist. To the mark. "I don't want to see him."

"Then you don't have to," said Roderic.

Iselle looked at him. Then at her own hand, on her wrist.

"But I'll come," she said. "I'll stand behind you. One step back. On your left."

* * *

My mother said no. Absolutely not. A man with a hole under his ribs did not walk along a harbor wall in this weather and down a flight of stone stairs into a strongroom.

So my father carried him.

He didn't make any fuss about it. He just came into the little room, and picked Roderic up off the bed, blanket and all, the way he'd picked us all up when we were small, as if we weighed nothing. And Roderic, who is twenty and nearly as tall as my father, let him, and went red to the hair, and said nothing.

My mother followed with her arms folded and her mouth very straight. Iselle came behind her. One step back. On my father's left.

Brannoc woke up when we came down the stairs. He looked at my father carrying Roderic. Then he stood up, and opened the strongroom door, and stood in it.

* * *

Corvane stood up when he saw who it was.

He stood very straight, the way he'd stood at the rail of his ship with his gold chain on. And he looked at Roderic, in my father's arms, wrapped in a blanket, gray-faced, with a bandage under his shirt. And then past Roderic, one step behind, at Iselle.

Then he went down on his knees.

Not the way he'd knelt at the sea gate. Not with a sword across his hands. He just went down, on the stone floor of the strongroom, as if his legs had stopped holding him, and put his three-fingered hand flat on the floor beside him to keep from falling.

* * *

My father set Roderic down on the cot. Very carefully. Sitting, with his back against the wall. My mother put a pillow behind him that I hadn't seen her carry.

Roderic looked down at the man kneeling on the floor in front of him.

"You asked my name," he said. In Kethran. Not perfectly. Iselle had been teaching him all week. "It's Roderic. Roderic Grey."

Corvane didn't look up.

Roderic Grey, he said. I'm sorry.

* * *

Roderic was quiet for a long time.

Then he said, "Garrick says you have a son."

Corvane looked up.

"What's his name?" said Roderic.

* * *

I watched it happen again. That blankness. The coat in the dark cupboard. And then, slowly, the answer coming up.

Aldric, said Corvane. Sixteen. He has his mother's hair. He likes boats. He wanted to mend nets, like my father. I told him a captain's son doesn't mend nets.

His voice cracked.

He's in the priests' house. In the golden city. And I failed. And they'll swear him. He looked at his hands. Maybe they already have.

* * *

Roderic looked at him for a long time.

Then he looked past him. At my father, standing in the doorway with his arms at his sides. And something passed between them that I didn't quite see, the way things pass between my father and his sons sometimes, without anybody saying anything.

"Aldric," said Roderic. "Sixteen. His mother's hair. Likes boats." He turned his head. "Iselle. Will you write it down?"

Iselle was standing one step behind the cot. On Roderic's left. She looked at Corvane on the floor for a long moment. Her hand was still on her wrist.

Then she took it off. And took the little blue book out of her pocket that Caitlin had given her, and the pencil from its spine, and wrote it down.

Aldric. Son of Corvane. Sixteen. His mother's hair. Likes boats. Priests' house, golden city.

* * *

Corvane watched her write it. He watched every letter.

"I'm not forgiving you," said Iselle, in Kethran, very quietly, without looking up from the page. "I don't know if I ever will. You were at the bottom of my stair when I was twelve. You knelt in front of me last week with a knife. I'm not forgiving you."

She closed the book.

"But he's written down," she said. "And everybody we write down, we go and fetch."

* * *

My father carried Roderic back to bed. My mother followed, still not speaking to anybody. Iselle went after them, one step back, on my father's left.

I stayed.

Corvane was still on his knees on the strongroom floor. He hadn't moved. I picked up the cup and the saucer from beside the cot, and the gold chain, which I didn't know what to do with, and stood there holding all three.

"Water-carrier," said Corvane.

"Yes."

Is it true? What she said? That you go and fetch them?

I thought about the Hushed at Harl. The three hundred and eleven. The two hundred farm boys. Sigrun's ledger and Mary's green book. My father on the quay, saying it isn't a promise, it's a plan.

"When the war starts," I said. "Yes."

Corvane closed his eyes.

Then I would like, he said, very slowly, to be asked. When it does.

* * *

Mary's book. Wednesday. Written at Westmere, in the evening, in the little room off the kitchen, with Roderic asleep and Iselle in the chair holding his hand, and the blue book from her pocket open on Mary's knee so she could copy the page exactly.

Morning. Garrick took Corvane tea in one of Helena's good cups. It took Corvane three tries to hold it with his three fingers. He says it's harder than a sword.

Corvane told Garrick a soldier's story. Born in Cardle, the harbor below the golden city. Net-menders. Small oath at 12. Hand-Captain at 40.

Under Malachar, the price of bread didn't change for 200 years. The river didn't flood. Ships didn't sink. Nobody starved. Nobody left. Nobody asked. He says they thought that was peace.

When Malachar went to sea, the hand opened. The bread doubled in one morning. New priests came with the gray one. Then there was a Regent. Nobody has seen the Regent. Orders come sealed with a closed fist. Some people say there's no Regent. Just a chair, a voice, and a hand on the back of the chair nobody can see.

Malachar came home on one ship with forty men. He walked up the hill alone. The palace doors didn't open. He sat down on the steps. He's still there. Every day since. Hands open on his knees. People walk around him. Corvane walked past him every morning for a month and never looked.

Every captain left a son in the priests' house as surety. If you fail, he's sworn. The order: the holy daughter does not come home. Her life for your son's.

Corvane was the guard at the bottom of Iselle's stair when she was 12.

Garrick asked his son's name. Nobody in Kethra has asked him in four years.

Uriah carried Roderic to the strongroom. Corvane knelt. Roderic said his name. Corvane said I'm sorry. Roderic asked his son's name.

Aldric. Son of Corvane. Sixteen. His mother's hair. Likes boats. Priests' house, golden city.

Iselle wrote it down. She said I'm not forgiving you. But he's written down. And everybody we write down, we go and fetch.

Corvane says he'd like to be asked, when the war starts.

And under that, in a hard, square, upright hand, the hand of a man who has written thirty-one years of ship's logs, but very shaky, and very slow, because it was written with three fingers and a thumb on the wrong hand, and he refused to use the other one:

Corvane, once Hand-Captain of the Throne of Hands. I'd like it noted that my son's name is Aldric. That nobody in Kethra has asked it in four years. That a boy I put a knife in asked it this morning. And that I have held a sword for thirty-one years, and a cup for one day, and the cup is harder.