Chapter 168: Asking Aldren

Eleanor Stonehand came into Helena's kitchen at seven o'clock on Thursday morning with salt in her hair and a crack in her voice, and sat down at the table without being asked, which nobody had ever seen her do.

Helena put a cup of tea in front of her. Eleanor didn't drink it.

"The thumb's going to fall," she said.

* * *

My father put down his spoon.

"How long?" he said.

"A month," said Eleanor. "If the weather's kind. The first big storm of winter, if it isn't." She put both hands flat on the table, the way she does on a set of plans. "I've been out there four days with Davren and Cassia. Measuring. Every crack on the island. There are more every morning."

* * *

She told us.

The fist had been built as a lock. Kessavel had built it, the month after the wave froze, the way he builds everything: every stone turned outward, every course of masonry clenched against whatever might come from outside. It had stood on Harl like a hand closed against a blow.

"But it was never built to stand on its own," said Eleanor. "It was built to be held. He held it. All of it, every stone, the whole time, the way he holds every lock he's ever made. And now his hands are busy."

I thought of Kessavel on the thumb tower, sitting against the parapet with both hands at his throat. Holding the one thread that kept Ovaren from reeling him back east. He'd been sitting there for nearly two weeks. Brannoc fed him bread every evening.

"Everything he had is in that thread," said Eleanor. "There's nothing left for the walls. And the iron hand under the palm was holding the rock together too, around the heart, and the phoenixes melted it, and then Garrick folded half the sea off the island in one night and the whole rock flexed like a plank." She looked at me. "I'm not blaming you. You had to. But it cracked."

"Where?" said my father.

"Everywhere," said Eleanor. "The four fingers are leaning. The palm's split in three places. The cave under the heart is open to the sea at the bottom now; you can hear the tide in it." She stopped. "And the thumb has a crack up the inside of it, from the sea gate to the parapet. You can put your arm in it, halfway up."

* * *

Nobody said anything for a moment.

"Then we bring him down," said my father. "Carry him. He doesn't have to let go to be carried."

"He can't come down," said Eleanor. "I asked. Brannoc asked. He said the thread's anchored in the tower. He built the thumb as his post. His chain runs through the lock in the stone and up to his throat. If he leaves the tower, the thread pulls straight, and whatever's on the other end has him." She looked down at her hands. "He has to stay on the thumb until somebody gets that collar off him. And the thumb has to stand until then."

* * *

"Can you hold it?" I said. "You and Davren and Cassia. With wards."

Eleanor looked at me for a long time.

"I can read every crack in it," she said. "I can tell you which stone will go first and which way it'll fall and what it'll take with it. That's what I am. I read stone." She paused. "I can't hold up a tower that's falling while you take away everything around it that's pulling it down. That isn't reading. That's a different kind of work. Slower. Older. And I'm not the best at it."

"Who is?" said my father.

Eleanor didn't answer straight away.

Helena, at the stove, turned around and looked at her. Just looked.

"Aldren," said Eleanor at last.

* * *

My father sat back in his chair.

I knew the name. Everybody in Greykeep knows it. Aldren Shaw, chief engineer of House Valewood, who came through the north gate before I was born with six hundred builders behind him and silver in his beard, and bent over the city plans with Eleanor for twenty-two years, arguing about every single foundation. Her deputy. The man who laid the pipes under the lower town and raised the new district and built the sprung cart that carried Lethan home.

Three years ago he'd gone home to the Valewood hills, and not come back. Nobody had said why. Nobody had asked Eleanor. You don't.

"He'd come," said my father. "If you asked."

"That," said Eleanor, "is the difficulty."

* * *

Helena put her spoon down.

"Eleanor," she said. "What did you say to him?"

Eleanor looked at her tea.

"That he was slowing down," she said. Very quietly. "On the Concordia college bridge. The second span. He wanted to wait a week for the mortar to cure and I wanted to set the keystone. I said he was getting old and slow and I didn't have time to wait for him." She turned the cup around on its saucer. "He said then he'd go and be slow somewhere he wasn't in the way. And he packed his tools that night. And I didn't stop him."

"And the span?" said my father.

"Cracked," said Eleanor. "The next spring. Right where he said it would. I rebuilt it myself and I've never told anyone why it needed rebuilding." She looked up. "He was right. And I've known for three years he was right. And I've never once gone to tell him so."

* * *

"Then go and tell him," said Helena.

She said it the way she says eat that. Then she turned back to her stove.

Eleanor sat there for a long time.

"It's a day's ride to the Valewood hills," she said at last. "And another back."

"It's no time at all," I said. "If you'll let me fold you."

She looked at me.

"And then," I said, "I'll fold him back, if he says yes. And whatever else you need."

"Whatever else I need," said Eleanor slowly, "is about forty construction golems."

* * *

My father laughed.

He didn't mean to. It came out of him all at once, the way it does when he hasn't laughed in a while, and Helena turned around from the stove with her eyebrows up.

"The golems," said my father. "I'd forgotten about the golems."

"Nobody's forgotten about the golems," said Helena. "The bathhouse keeper on Lantern Street hasn't forgotten about the golems."

* * *

I should explain about the golems.

When I was very small, after the stream, when Greykeep was a ruin of a castle with a refugee camp around it and nowhere near enough hands, the Castellan made construction golems. Pale stone, taller than a man and twice as broad, with arms that took different fittings at the wrist and a narrow slot in the face where a light came on when they woke. Five hundred of them, in the end. They built the lower town and the new district and the water basin and most of the walls. They carried every stone Eleanor told them to carry, exactly where she told them, and never once argued.

Almost never once. There were two, early on, that Perrin had given slightly the wrong instructions, and one of them had tried to carry the bathhouse on Lantern Street to a new location while there were still three people in it, and the other had tried to stop it by sitting on it. Perrin has never been allowed to forget it. Neither has the bathhouse.

When the city was finished, the Castellan put the golems to sleep. They stood in rows in the old quarry above the north wall, under canvas, with their lights out, and the moss grew on their shoulders, and children climbed on them on summer evenings. I used to climb on them myself.

They'd been standing there for fifteen years.

* * *

"Forty," said Eleanor. "To carry the timber and the shores and the iron while we take the fingers down. Men can't do it. Not on that rock, not in winter. A shore slips, a man's under it." She looked at my father. "A golem doesn't mind being under it."

"The Castellan will have to wake them," said my father.

"I know."

"And you'll have to ask it."

Eleanor put her face in her hands.

"I know," she said, through her fingers. "I know. Two in one day. It's going to be a terrible morning."

* * *

We went to the Castellan first. It was easier.

Not easy. Eleanor and the Castellan have known each other for twenty-five years, and in all that time Eleanor has asked it for things, the way you ask the weather, but she has never once said please. The Castellan doesn't need please. It isn't that kind of thing.

But I stood beside her in the lower court of the Westmere Hold, where the Concordia gate comes out and where the Castellan's lamp hangs on the wall when it isn't on the stern of the Knock, and I watched her say it anyway.

"Castellan," she said. "I need forty of the golems. Woken. On Harl. To hold up a tower while we take the rest of a fortress down around it. There's somebody on top of the tower who can't come down." She paused. "Please."

The lamp on the wall flickered.

Then, on the slate beside it that Mary keeps there for the Castellan's messages, in its small precise hand, chalk letters appeared.

Which forty?

Eleanor let out her breath.

"The steady ones," she said. "The ones that listen. And—" She hesitated. "And the two from the bathhouse."

I stared at her.

Those two, wrote the Castellan, were deactivated with narrower instructions.

"I know," said Eleanor. "That's why I want them. One of them saw somebody in danger and tried to stop it. It did it badly. But it tried." She looked at the slate. "On Harl, I need things that will try."

The chalk didn't move for a while.

Then: Yes. Noon. The quarry.

And under it, in smaller letters:

You said please.

"Don't," said Eleanor.

Noted, wrote the Castellan.

* * *

Then I folded her to the Valewood hills.

* * *

I'd never been. Helena's people come from there, and my mother's, and Grandpa's: rolling green country three days' ride from Greykeep, with sheep on it and rivers in the bottoms and old mills on the rivers, and stone houses with slate roofs and lavender by the doors. Grandpa says it's the best country in Avarra for oak. Helena says it's the best country in Avarra for minding your own business.

I folded us to the edge of a village called Mere Bottom, by a mill on a slow brown river, because that was where Helena said he'd be. And he was.

* * *

He was standing up to his knees in the mill race in a pair of oilskin waders, with a crowbar in his hands, levering at a sluice gate that had jammed. He was older than I remembered. The silver had gone white in his beard, and there was a lot less of it on top of his head, and he was thinner. But his shoulders were still square, and his hands on the crowbar were still the hands of a man who has spent his life lifting things that didn't want to be lifted.

He heard us on the bank. He looked up.

He saw me first, and his face changed: surprise, and then something warmer. Prince Garrick. He'd known me since I was born.

Then he saw Eleanor.

And his face closed like a sluice gate.

* * *

He didn't come out of the race. He stood there in the brown water with the crowbar in his hands and looked at her.

"Mistress Stonehand," he said.

"Master Shaw," said Eleanor.

That was all, for a while. The river went past around his knees. A moorhen came out from under the bank, saw the three of us, and went back again.

"You've come a long way," said Aldren.

"Garrick folded me."

"Then you've come no way at all," said Aldren. "Which is about what I'd have expected." He turned back to the sluice gate and set the crowbar again. "What do you want?"

* * *

I watched Eleanor.

I've known Eleanor Stonehand my whole life. She rebuilt the house I grew up in. She told my father, when I was six, that if I climbed the scaffolding on the north tower one more time she'd mortar me into the wall, and I believed her. She has never, in my hearing, been wrong about stone, and she has never, in my hearing, admitted it when she was wrong about anything else.

She stood on the bank of the mill race with her hands at her sides and her chin up.

"There's a tower on an island off the west coast," she said. "It's cracked from the root to the top. There's somebody on top of it who can't come down. The fortress around it has to come down stone by stone without bringing the tower with it. In winter. On a rock that's split in three places." She paused. "I can read it. I can't hold it up while I take the rest away. You can. You're the best man in Avarra at holding up a thing that's falling. You always were."

Aldren didn't turn around.

"That's a job," he said. "That's not what I asked."

* * *

Eleanor's jaw tightened.

"You asked what I want," she said.

"I did."

"I want you to come."

"Why?"

"I just told you why."

"No," said Aldren. He leaned on the crowbar. The sluice gate groaned and shifted half an inch. "You told me why the tower needs me. I didn't ask about the tower." He set the bar again. "I asked what you want."

* * *

I don't think I've ever seen Eleanor Stonehand at a loss.

She stood there on the bank. Her hands opened, and closed. She looked at the river, and at the mill, and at the moorhen's hole in the bank, and at Aldren's back.

"The second span," she said at last. Very low. "On the Concordia college bridge."

Aldren stopped levering.

"It cracked," said Eleanor. "The spring after you left. Right where you said. Right through the keystone I wouldn't wait for." She swallowed. "I rebuilt it myself. I never told anybody why. I've known for three years you were right, and I never came to tell you."

Aldren didn't turn around.

"That's not what you want either," he said, very quietly. "That's what you owe."

* * *

Eleanor closed her eyes.

"I want you to come back," she said. "Not for the tower. For me. I've been building for three years with nobody to tell me to wait, and I haven't waited once, and I've been wrong four times, and I've rebuilt every one of them myself in the night so nobody would know." Her voice cracked. "I miss you arguing with me. I miss you being slow. I said you were in the way and you were never in the way. You were the only thing in my way that was ever right." She opened her eyes. "Please, Aldren. Come back."

* * *

Aldren stood in the mill race for a long time with his back to her.

Then he put the crowbar over his shoulder. And waded to the bank. And stood in front of her, dripping, in his oilskin waders, a head taller than her, with his white beard and his square shoulders.

"Three years," he said.

"I know."

"Three years, and you finally say please, and it's because you need forty golems and a tower holding up."

"Yes," said Eleanor.

"Hm," said Aldren.

Then he smiled. Slowly. Right up into his eyes.

"I'll need my tools," he said. "They're in the shed. All of them. I've oiled them every Sunday for three years in case you came." He looked at me. "And I'll need to say goodbye to the ducks."

* * *

He said goodbye to the ducks.

There were eleven of them, on the millpond behind the house. He went down to the edge of the water and told them, quite seriously, that the miller's girl would feed them in the mornings, and that they weren't to bully the moorhen, and that he'd be back in the spring. They looked at him. Then he came back up the bank and handed me a heavy canvas roll of tools, and a smaller wooden box, and picked up a third one himself.

"Fold away, Prince Garrick," he said. "Before she changes her mind."

"I won't," said Eleanor.

"I know you won't," said Aldren. "I'm just saying it so you'll have something to argue with on the way."

* * *

The golems came out of the quarry above Greykeep at noon.

I was there for it. I'd folded Eleanor and Aldren straight from Mere Bottom to the top of the north wall, and we stood on the parapet and watched, with my father beside us and half of Greykeep lining the quarry edge, and Perrin standing at the front with his hands clasped behind his back and the face of a man who knows exactly which two golems are about to wake up.

The canvas came off. Forty pale stone figures, in four rows of ten, moss on their shoulders, ivy up their legs, a bird's nest on the head of one in the third row.

And one by one, all down the rows, the lights came on behind the narrow slots in their faces. Gold, very faint at first, like a lamp being turned up.

A child on the quarry edge cheered. Then a lot of children.

* * *

The two at the end of the last row woke up last.

They were a little taller than the others, and a little more battered, and one of them had a chip out of its left shoulder where, the story goes, the bathhouse doorframe had caught it. Their lights came on together. They turned their heads, slowly, and looked at each other.

Then they looked up at the top of the north wall. At Eleanor.

Perrin made a small noise.

"They'll be all right," said Eleanor, without looking at him. "They know what they did."

"They don't know anything," said Perrin. "They're golems."

"Then they'll learn," said Eleanor. "Same as the rest of us."

* * *

I folded them to Harl at three o'clock that afternoon. Forty golems, Aldren's tools, Bodvar's dwarves with the iron straps they'd been forging all week, and a great deal of timber from the Westmere yards. It took me nine folds. My father stood on the end of the north pier and watched each one go with his hand on the back of his neck.

Aldren went up the thumb tower before he did anything else.

He climbed all hundred and six steps, slowly, with one hand on the wall the whole way. I followed him. At the crack, halfway up, he stopped, and put his whole arm into it up to the elbow, and stood there with his eyes shut for a long time, feeling. Then he took his arm out and went on up.

At the top, Kessavel was sitting where he always sat. Against the parapet. Both hands at his throat. He looked up when Aldren came through the hatch.

They looked at each other.

* * *

"You built this," said Aldren.

"Yes," said Kessavel.

"It's a good tower," said Aldren. He put his hand flat on the stone of the parapet beside Kessavel's shoulder. "Every course clenched. Every stone faced out. Nothing could get in." He paused. "It was never built to stand by itself, though. Was it."

"No," said Kessavel. Very quietly. "I didn't know how to make a thing that stood by itself. I only knew how to hold."

Aldren nodded slowly.

"Then here's what we'll do," he said. "We'll give it something to lean on that isn't you." He patted the stone. "You keep holding your end. I'll hold the rest. And when somebody gets that collar off you, son, you can come down and help."

Kessavel looked at him for a long moment.

"I am older than your entire country," he said.

"I know," said Aldren. "Everybody's somebody's son, though. Even the old ones."

* * *

At dusk, the first shores went in.

Four great timbers, iron-strapped by Bodvar's dwarves, set against the inside of the thumb tower at the foot of the crack, angled up to the sound stone above it, wedged at the bottom against the living rock of Harl. The golems carried them in, one to a timber, and held them while Aldren set the wedges, slowly, one tap at a time, with his ear against the wood, listening to the tower take the weight.

My father came out at the end, on Calder, and stood at the crack and laid one hand flat against the stone on either side. Frost went into the crack and filled it from the bottom up, white and thin, holding it closed. Not forever. Just for tonight. Until the shores had settled.

"Just cold," he said, when Aldren looked at him. "Cold helps."

"Cold always helps," said Aldren. "Mortar sets slower and holds better. I told her that on the second span." He looked over at Eleanor, who was standing ten feet away with Davren and Cassia and a lantern and the whole fortress drawn out on a board, very obviously not listening. "Didn't I."

"Yes," said Eleanor, without looking up. "You did. Stop saying so."

"I'll stop," said Aldren, "when you start waiting for mortar."

* * *

The two bathhouse golems held the last shore.

Eleanor had put them there herself. The worst place on the island, at the very foot of the crack, where if anything went, it would go on them first. They stood in the dark at the base of the thumb with their lights glowing faint gold in their faceplates and the great iron-strapped timber braced between them, perfectly still.

As I went past at the end of the night, the one with the chipped shoulder turned its head, slowly, and looked up the inside of the tower, toward the top. Toward where Kessavel sat. And then back at the shore in its hands. And it shifted its feet, very slightly, the way a man does when he's settling in for a long night of holding something.

I don't know what golems understand. Perrin says nothing at all.

But it tried.

* * *

Mary's book. Thursday. Written at Westmere, late, from what Garrick told her and what Eleanor wouldn't, with Helena standing over Mary's shoulder making sure she put down the part about please.

7 a.m. Eleanor came into Helena's kitchen and sat down without being asked. She said the thumb's going to fall. A month, or the first storm.

Kessavel built the fist as a lock. It was built to be held, not to stand. All his strength is in the thread now. The iron hand under the heart is gone. The fold flexed the rock. The fingers lean. The palm is split in three. There's a crack up the inside of the thumb you can put your arm in.

Kessavel can't come down. His thread runs through the tower. If he leaves it, he's taken.

Eleanor reads stone. She can't hold up a falling tower while she takes things away from it. She said the best man in Avarra for that is Aldren Shaw.

Three years ago she told him he was too old and slow, on the Concordia college bridge, the second span. He went home to the Valewood hills. The span cracked the next spring where he said. She rebuilt it in secret.

Helena said then go and tell him.

Eleanor asked the Castellan for forty golems. She said please. The Castellan wrote You said please. Then it wrote Noted. She asked for the two from the bathhouse. She said on Harl I need things that will try.

Garrick folded Eleanor to Mere Bottom. Aldren was in the mill race. He asked her what she wants. Not the tower. Her.

She said: I want you to come back. For me. I miss you arguing. You were the only thing in my way that was ever right. Please.

He oiled his tools every Sunday for three years in case she came. He said goodbye to eleven ducks.

Noon. The golems woke in the quarry. 40. A bird's nest on one. The bathhouse two woke last and looked at Eleanor.

Nine folds to Harl. Aldren climbed the thumb and put his arm in the crack. He told Kessavel: we'll give it something to lean on that isn't you. You keep holding your end. I'll hold the rest. Kessavel said I am older than your country. Aldren said everybody's somebody's son.

Dusk. Four shores in. Bodvar's iron straps. Uriah froze the crack for the night. Cold helps.

The bathhouse two are holding the last shore. At the bottom. The worst place.

And under that, in a big, blunt, square engineer's hand, with the letters set out on the page as though each one had been measured and shimmed before it was allowed to stand there:

Aldren Shaw, once of House Valewood, now of Harl. I'd like it noted that she said please. That it took her three years and a falling tower. That I'd have come for either, and she knows it. And that the mortar on the second span would have held if she'd waited a week, and I'll be telling her so every day until spring.