Chapter 215: Landfall

The tide carried us in.

I don't know how else to say it. Jörmungandr didn't swim the last quarter mile. He lay still in the black water off the harbor mouth, and the sea came and picked him up, the whole impossible length of him, and set him moving gently toward the quay, the way you'd carry a sleeping child up to bed. A road of deep water, running straight between the two arms of the mole. Ebb's road. On either side of it the harbor was shallow and pale with shingle. Down the middle, it was deep enough for a serpent.

"He's never been carried before," said Loki, very quietly, at my shoulder. He had his hand flat on the scales of the passage wall. "Not once. Not in a thousand years. He's always been the one doing the carrying." He swallowed. "He doesn't know what to do with it. He's letting it."

Selvane stood at the door I'd folded, with the lamp held out into the night, and didn't say anything at all. Her face was wet. She'd stopped bothering to wipe it.

The quay came up out of the dark. Old stone, black with weed below the tide line, gray above it, worn into a dip along the top by a thousand years of feet. Iron rings set into it for mooring. Stone steps going down into the water at the end, slick and green. And above it, at the landward end, the net loft: a tall narrow wooden building, tarred black, with a square window high up under the eaves and the lamp in it.

Jörmungandr stopped with his side a yard from the bottom step. The water held him there. It didn't even lap.

"Ten feet," I said. "I'll fold us the rest."

"No," said Selvane.

I looked at her.

"No folding," she said. "Not here. Not the first step." She turned to me. Her voice was steady, though her face wasn't. "I said I'd knock at every door. This is the first door. You don't fold through the first door, Garrick. You walk."

So I made the window into a proper doorway, on the side of the passage, level with the step, and she walked.

She stepped out of the serpent onto the bottom step of the quay at Lanth with her lamp in her hand, and stood there on the wet green stone, and didn't move. I watched her feet. Her bare feet, on Kethran stone, for the first time in a hundred years. She'd come ashore at Westmere so thin you could see the pier through her. Here, now, standing on a step at the bottom of a quay in the dark, I couldn't see anything through her at all.

"Oh," said Selvane, to nobody. "Oh, it's cold."

Then she laughed. She stood on the step with the sea a yard behind her and laughed out loud, like a girl, and went up the steps one at a time with the lamp held high, and stopped at the top, on the quay, and turned around.

"Come in," she said. "It's all right. He said."

* * *

I went second. Carol said afterward that I should have, because somebody had to be first after Selvane, and it might as well be the one who'd said come back across the sea. I don't think that was why. I think I just couldn't wait anymore.

I stepped out of Jörmungandr onto the bottom step.

I'd wondered for six days what it would feel like. Caldris had said: as a guest, the oath holds you up. I'd thought it would be like standing on ice. Careful. Waiting for a crack.

It wasn't like that. It was like stepping onto the deck of a ship that somebody else is keeping level. The stone under my boots was strange stone, cold in a way our stone isn't, and the air that came down the quay smelled of tar and fish and somebody else's woodsmoke, and none of it knew my name. I could feel that. The way you feel it in a house where nobody's expecting you. But underneath all of it, underneath the step itself, something old and very large and very patient was holding me up. Not out of love. Not out of anything I'd call kindness. Out of promise. Leave given.

And the palm-coal in my right hand went bright as a lit match.

I put my hand against my coat to cover it. It shone through the cloth. It was pulling south so hard my whole arm wanted to follow it, like a dog that's caught the smell of home.

"Garrick," said Carol, behind me in the doorway.

"I'm all right."

"I know you are. You're also standing on the bottom step in the dark with your hand on fire. Move. Some of us want to come in too."

I went up. She came after me, with her bad hand in its sling and her good hand holding the doorframe of air. Ignatius after her, with one hand under her elbow on the slick step whether she wanted it there or not. Then Io, barefoot, the way she always is, and when her feet touched the step I heard the weed on it hiss and dry. Lexander, with his one eye going everywhere at once, the way a king's does in a strange harbor: the quay, the boats, the roofs, the lines of approach. Iselle.

Iselle stopped on the bottom step.

She stood there a long time. Her right hand closed, the way it does, slowly, on its own. I saw her look down at it. Then she opened it again, on purpose, one finger at a time, and held it open at her side.

Roderic came out of the serpent behind her. He didn't touch her. He just stood one step behind, where she could feel him there, and waited.

"It smells the same," said Iselle, at last. Her voice was very small. "I didn't think it would. I thought it would smell like the city. It smells like the mill."

"Go on up," said Roderic. "I'm right here."

She went up.

Then Loki, who came out of the doorway backward, so that he could keep looking at his son. And last of all Kessavel.

He came out slowly. He's still not used to his own legs on land. He's been a long time on decks, and a long time on a tower, and a long time on his knees with a collar on. He stood on the bottom step with Nara's warmth on him still, I could see it, a faint glow along the edges of his gray hands, and looked up the quay at the little black net loft with the lamp in its window.

"I've never come in at a harbor," he said. "Not once. I've always come in at the front of a ship, with a hand painted on the sail. People went inside when they saw me coming." He looked at his feet. "I didn't know the steps were so worn."

"A thousand years of fishermen," said Selvane, from the top. "Come up, Kessavel. You're let in. He said."

* * *

Jörmungandr couldn't stay. He was too big. Even on Ebb's road, even with Ebb holding him, half of him was still out past the mole in the open sea, and the twelve boats on their moorings were bumping against his scales like ducklings against a barge.

Loki stood on the quay with his hand flat against the great dark side of his son's head. Jörmungandr had raised one eye out of the water to look at him. It was bigger than the net loft's door.

"There's a shelf," said Loki. "A mile out. Sand, then rock. You'll lie along it like a reef. Nobody will notice a reef." His voice wasn't quite steady. "If they notice, you'll tell me."

The eye blinked once. Slowly. It took a long time.

"I know," said Loki. "I know you are. You're a road. And a road doesn't come into the village. It waits at the edge for people to walk back along it." He pressed his forehead against the scales. "I'm so proud of you I still can't breathe. That hasn't worn off. I thought it might, by now."

The eye closed.

And the tide went out again. Not fast, this time. Gently. Ebb let him go the way you'd let go of a hand. The great dark shape slid back down the road of deep water, out between the arms of the mole, and away into the black, and the twelve boats settled back down onto the shingle, and the harbor was just a small harbor again.

Loki stood at the end of the quay for a long time after there was anything to see.

* * *

Ebb came up out of the mole while we were still standing there.

I don't know what I'd expected. Not much. The voice had been so small. But I'd thought there'd be something: a shimmer, a light, the way the very small gods at home are a shimmer at the height of your knee.

Ebb was a child.

Or the shape of one. About as tall as my son, if my son could stand up straight for more than a minute. Made of wet shingle and wrack, of the green weed off the bottom step and the white crust of barnacles, with a little round face like a smooth pebble that's been in the sea a long time. It climbed out from between the stones of the mole and came along the top of the harbor wall on all fours, carefully, the way a child climbs, and stopped at the end of the quay, and stood up, dripping.

And looked at Selvane.

Selvane got down on her knees on the quay. Right there, on the wet stone, so that their faces were level.

"Ebb," she said.

You got big again, said Ebb. The voice was hoarse still, but stronger than it had been from the water. You were thin. Last time. When you came to say goodbye. You were so thin I could see the moon through you.

"I know. I'm sorry. I didn't think I'd come back."

I kept the lamp.

"I know you did. I saw it from the sea. I steered by it."

Ebb's pebble face did something. I don't know what you'd call it. Something that on a person would have been crying, or the beginning of it.

Nobody steered by it, said Ebb. In a hundred years. I kept it every night and nobody came in by it. Only our own boats. And they'd have come in anyway. They know the way.

"I steered by it," said Selvane. "I came in by it. It's the first lamp I've come in by in a hundred years, Ebb. It's the first lamp I've come in by in my life. I've only ever been the lamp."

Then she did what she'd promised Caldris she'd do. She told Ebb who had come in.

She didn't have to. Ebb was awake. Ebb had said yes. But she'd promised, so she did it anyway, kneeling on the quay at Lanth with her lamp beside her, and she named every one of us. One at a time. She turned and held out her hand toward each of us as she said it, so Ebb would know which.

"Garrick Grey, of Greykeep. He folds. He came for his wife. He wanted to come in by the front door and I made him walk." Ebb looked at me. "Carol Grey, his sister. She holds the other end of his name so he doesn't get lost. Ignatius, who's a phoenix, which you can tell. Io, who's a fire, which you can also tell. Lexander, who's a king, a little. He has one eye and he uses it very hard. Iselle. She's from here. From Kethra. From the Ilvane valley, where the mill is. She was taken into the city when she was twelve. She's come back. Roderic, who stands one step behind her. Loki, who has a son who's a road, and you just carried him."

He was very heavy, said Ebb.

"He was. Thank you."

Then she stopped.

There was only one of us left. Kessavel was standing at the very back, by the bottom of the steps, where he'd stopped. Nara's warmth on his hands. His gray head down.

Ebb looked past Selvane and saw him.

The little god went absolutely still. The water in the harbor went still with it, every ripple flattening at once.

That's the Gray One, said Ebb.

Nobody said anything.

That's the Gray One, said Ebb again. The hoarse little voice had gone thin and high, like a child's when it's trying not to be frightened and is. He came for the others. He came to Kittering, and to Dunnock, and to Fellsend. He came in the front of a ship with a hand on the sail. I was under the stones. I heard them. I heard them all go. Fellsend cried the whole way. I heard her crying going out past the point. It took a step back, toward the mole. You let the Gray One in. You let the Gray One into my harbor.

"Ebb," said Selvane. "Wait. Please."

But it was Kessavel who moved.

He came up the steps. Slowly. He didn't come any closer than the top step. And then he knelt down on the quay, the way Selvane had, so that he wasn't any taller than a child made of shingle, and put his gray hands flat on the stone in front of him where Ebb could see them. Empty. No chain in them. No collar on his throat. Just the fading mark of where it had been.

"I did," said Kessavel. "I came to Kittering. And to Dunnock. And to Fellsend. I took them. I took her crying, going out past the point." His voice was very low. "I didn't come here because I didn't see you. That's all. You were too small. It wasn't mercy. I'd have taken you too."

Ebb didn't move.

"I don't have the collar on anymore," said Kessavel. "Somebody took it off. A boy who read it backward, and a woman who frees things, and the Flame's mother, with a priest of oaths watching to make sure it was done honestly. I've come back across the sea to try and undo it. All of it. Every one I took. Kittering and Dunnock and Fellsend." He looked down at his hands. "I don't know if I can. I'm going to try. And I'll go back out to sea and lie on the shelf with the serpent, if you say so. It's your harbor. You can say no."

You'd go?

"Yes."

If I said?

"If you said," said Kessavel. "I've never been let in anywhere. I've never asked. I'm asking."

Ebb looked at him for a very long time. Then at Selvane.

Did you ask him in?

"I did," said Selvane. "At the line. And at your door. I asked for all of us." She held out her hand, open, the way Iselle holds hers now. "I'd ask again. He's come home to give it back, Ebb. I've watched him for nine days. He means it."

The little god stood on the end of the harbor wall and dripped.

Fellsend was my friend, said Ebb at last. She was bigger than me. She used to let me borrow her fog.

"I know," said Kessavel. "I'll bring her home. Or I'll die trying to, and somebody else will."

Don't die, said Ebb. Then nobody would know where she is. It was quiet. You can come in. Because she asked. Not because of you.

"That's fair," said Kessavel. "That's more than fair."

And he stayed where he was, kneeling on the quay at Lanth, with his empty hands flat on the stone, until Ebb had climbed back down into the mole and was gone.

* * *

There was one more who wanted to come in.

I'd almost forgotten it. It had been so quiet since the passage. What's Left of Draum had come with us all the way, the way it had for two days, beside Selvane's lamp, a cold small shape in the water beside the serpent, humming. West. It had stopped humming when the tide turned. Now it was lying in the deep water at the foot of the steps, where Jörmungandr had been. Waiting.

I went and crouched at the top of the steps.

"Are you all right?"

Small, said What's Left of Draum. The voice was like water draining out of a bucket. Small harbor. Ebb's harbor. It was quiet. I used to. Hit harbors. Like this one. Storms. Big seas. Knock the boats. Knock the walls. I never. It stopped.

"Never what?"

Asked. It was quiet for a long time. I was the sea. The sea doesn't ask. The sea comes in. The water at the foot of the steps rocked a little. I'm not the sea now. Most of me is across the harbor mouth. In the city. Tied. Another silence. How do you ask?

So I told it. The way I'd told it how to want something and let go, three nights ago, inside the serpent. You say your name. You say what you want. You say they can say no. And then you wait.

What's Left of Draum lay in the black water for a while.

Then it said, very softly, toward the mole, in a voice that didn't carry farther than the harbor wall:

Ebb. I'm Draum. Some of. I knocked your boats, once. Lots of times. I'd like to stay in your harbor tonight. Small. I won't knock. You can say no.

Nothing happened for a moment.

Then, from under the stones, very small:

You're the big sea.

Was, said What's Left of Draum.

A long silence. And then the water at the foot of the steps rocked once, gently, the way water rocks when a boat's being let in on a slack tide.

All right, said Ebb. Small. Don't knock.

Won't, said Draum.

And it didn't. It lay in Ebb's harbor all night, at the foot of the steps, as quiet as a pond.

* * *

The door of the net loft opened while I was still crouched there.

I heard it before I saw it. An old latch, lifted. Hinges that needed oil. And then a lantern came out of the door at the landward end of the quay and down the steps beside the loft, swinging, and a woman behind it, with a shawl over her head and a boathook in her other hand, held low and ready, the way you'd hold it to fend a boat off a wall, or a man.

A girl came out behind her. Small. Nine or ten. In a nightgown and a man's coat much too big for her, with the sleeves rolled up four times.

"Tegen," said the woman sharply, without looking around. "Inside."

The girl didn't go inside.

The woman came down the quay toward us with the lantern held up. I watched her see us. All of us at once, in the swinging light. Strangers. Ten of them, standing on her quay in the middle of the night, an hour after low water, with the tide just gone out again faster than any tide goes. A woman with her feet hissing on the wet stone. A man whose hair was moving in no wind like a flame. A woman in a blue coat with her arm in a sling. A tall one-eyed man in a good coat, the kind of coat nobody in Lanth would ever have seen.

And at the back, kneeling on her quay, a gray man with gray hair and gray hands.

She stopped as if she'd walked into a wall.

The lantern swung. The boathook came up. With her other hand, the one with the lantern in it, she did something quick and small that I'd never seen before: she touched the backs of her fingers to her own mouth and held them there. As if she were stopping herself from saying anything. As if she'd been taught, since she was smaller than the girl behind her, that when the Gray One passes, you don't say anything at all.

"Tegen," she said, very low, through her fingers. "Get behind me. Now."

The girl got behind her.

And I stood up.

* * *

I could have done it wrong. I've thought about that since. There were a lot of ways to do it wrong. I could have let Lexander speak, because he's a king, and he's good at frightened people. I could have let Iselle, because she speaks Kethran like water. I could have told Kessavel to go back down the steps into the dark.

I didn't do any of those. I walked down the quay toward her, not fast, with my hands where she could see them. The white one and the one that was shining. And I stopped well out of reach of the boathook.

"My name is Garrick Grey," I said. "Garrick Elias Grey. I'm from Greykeep, on the other side of the sea. These are my family and my friends. We came in by your lamp." I nodded up at the window of the net loft. "We asked the keeper of your harbor first. He said yes. We're guests."

She stared at me. The boathook didn't come down.

"The gray man is with us," I said. "He's not with them anymore. He's come back to give back what he took. You don't have to believe that. I wouldn't, in your place." I took a breath. "What's your name?"

It was as if I'd struck her.

She actually took a step back. The lantern jerked. The girl behind her made a small sound.

Iselle came up beside me. Quietly. And said something to the woman in Kethran, soft and quick, and I heard my own name in it, and Ilvane, and the mill, and something that sounded like a question. The woman's eyes went to Iselle's face. To her open right hand. And something in her own face changed.

"He doesn't know," said Iselle to me, in our tongue, not looking away from the woman. "I told her. He doesn't know it isn't done here. Nobody in Kethra asks anybody's name, Garrick. Not anymore. Not outside your own house." Her voice was gentle. "In case the answer is that they're sworn. In case you ask a woman her name and what comes back is His."

I looked at the woman with the boathook.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't know. Where I come from, it's the first thing you ask. You don't have to answer. You can say no."

She stood there with the lantern and the boathook, on her own quay, in the middle of the night, and didn't say anything for a long time.

It was the girl who answered.

She came out from behind her mother. Her mother grabbed for her coat and missed. She walked right past me, and past Iselle, the too-big sleeves of the man's coat flapping, all the way down the quay to where Selvane was still kneeling by the harbor wall with her lamp beside her. And stopped, and looked at the lamp.

Then up at the window of the net loft, where its twin was burning.

Then at Selvane.

"You're the lamp lady," said the girl. In our tongue, oddly accented, the old shore-speech that the fisher villages on both sides of that sea used to share, before the ships. "Granny said. Granny said there was a lady who kept all the lamps, and she went away, and we had to keep ours lit every night, every single night, because somebody might come." She looked at the lamp again. "That's the same lamp. That's our lamp."

"It's the same kind," said Selvane. Her voice wasn't working very well. "Every harbor had one, once."

"Granny said somebody might come," said the girl. She turned around to her mother, on the quay, with the lantern. "Ma. Somebody came. Granny said."

The woman lowered the boathook.

Not all the way. Halfway. She looked at her daughter. At Selvane. At the lamp. At me, standing on her quay with my hands open.

"Kenna," she said.

Her voice cracked on it. Like a hinge nobody's oiled.

"My name's Kenna," she said. "Lowen's wife. Of Lanth." She swallowed. "That's Tegen. She's mine." She looked at me hard. "I've not said my name out loud to a stranger since I was younger than her. If you're lying to me about any of it, I'll put this hook through you."

"That's fair," I said.

"It's more than fair," said Kessavel, from where he knelt. Very quietly. "Everyone keeps saying that to me tonight. It keeps being true."

* * *

She took us into the net loft.

I don't think she meant to, at first. I think she meant to stand on the quay until we went away, or until she understood. But Tegen went up the stairs first, two at a time, holding Selvane's hand, and her mother couldn't let Tegen go up those stairs with ten strangers behind her, so she went too. And by the time we were all inside, with the door shut and the stove opened up and the lamp in the window still burning over all our heads, she'd stopped holding the boathook like a weapon and was holding it like something she'd forgotten to put down.

It was one long room under the roof, smelling of tar and twine and fish and smoke. Nets everywhere. Hanging from the beams, heaped on the floor, half-mended on a frame by the stove with the needle still stuck in the mesh where she'd left it. A pallet in the corner where Tegen slept. A table. Two stools. And the window, the little square one, high up under the eaves, with the old brass lamp on the sill, very like Selvane's, burning low and yellow and steady.

Selvane went straight to it. She didn't touch it. She just stood in front of it a long time.

Kenna put a pot on the stove. That was the first thing she did, after the boathook. I don't think she even thought about it. There were ten of us and we'd come in out of the cold and the dark, and she was a woman from a fishing village. Some things don't need a shared language. Helena would have done the same. Helena would have done it faster and been rude about it.

It was fish, and onions, and something that might have been barley. Kenna ladled it into everything she had. Two bowls, a mug, a pan lid, the tin cup off the nail by the door. We passed them around. Io warmed hers in her hands until it steamed.

Kenna gave the last bowl to Kessavel.

She didn't say anything when she did it. She just held it out, at arm's length, as far from her own body as she could get it, and looked at the wall. And Kessavel took it in both hands, the way he'd held his hands out to Nara's warmth: as if it were a cup too full.

"I can't eat," he said. "I'm not—"

"Then hold it," said Kenna. Short. "You look cold."

Kessavel held it.

I watched Iselle watching that. Her right hand was open in her lap. It stayed open.

* * *

She told us in pieces, while we ate. Lowen had gone two winters ago. Not drowned. Taken. The priests had come up the coast road with a list, the way they come every tenth day to the little shrine at the top of the village, and on that day the list had names on it. Every man in Lanth between sixteen and fifty, for the ships. They hadn't been asked. Nobody's asked, in Kethra. They'd been told, and they'd gone. Lowen had kissed Tegen on the top of her head on the quay and got into the cart without looking back, because if he'd looked back he wouldn't have got in, and if he hadn't got in they'd have taken Kenna instead.

"The ships," said Lexander. "The black ships. The fleet."

"The fleet," said Kenna. "They row. Below. On the black ships." She stirred the pot. Her face didn't change at all. "We had word from the city in the summer. All the ships went over the sea. To the other side. To your side." She looked at me. "And then in the autumn word stopped. Nobody's said where they are. Nobody's said anything. The priests don't say. They just look at the list."

Everybody in that room looked at me.

I didn't look at anyone but Kenna.

"I know where the fleet is," I said.

The ladle stopped.

"It's off our coast. Off a town called Westmere. Every ship. Frozen in the sea." I held her eyes. "My father's holding it. He's the winter, on our side. He froze them still so they couldn't come in and burn us. He's holding them now. Tonight. He's sitting by a wall in our house holding every one of them still, and he hasn't slept properly in weeks."

Kenna's face had gone the color of the ash in the stove.

"Nobody's sinking anything," I said. "Nobody's drowning anyone. That's the first thing I promised my father, a long time before any of this. That when we went, we'd go to bring them home. All of them. The ones in the holds and the ones at the oars. Not to sink the ships with them inside." I took a breath. "I can't promise you Lowen. I don't know his face. But I can promise you he's not at the bottom of anything. Not because of us. Not while my father's holding."

She put the ladle down.

She stood by the stove for a long time, with her back to all of us, and her shoulders didn't move, and she didn't make a sound. Tegen got up off the pallet and went and stood against her, the way my son stands against my leg. And Kenna put her hand on the girl's head without turning around.

"Frozen," she said, at last, to the wall. "He'll hate that. He's always cold. He wears two pairs of socks in summer."

"My father would like him," I said.

She made a sound that might, in a year or two, be a laugh.

* * *

Later, when the others were asleep in the nets, Carol and I went out onto the quay.

It was very late. Past midnight. The village was dark, every window, all the way up the hill to the little stone shrine at the top, which I could just make out against the sky because it had something on its gable that caught the starlight. Something black and iron, the size of a cartwheel. A closed hand.

And to the south, over the shoulder of the headland, the glow.

Cold and white and steady, like a second moon that had come down too close. Fifty miles. You could have read by it, almost. Kenna said you could, on clear nights, in the summer. That's what it's for, Iselle said, inside the serpent. So everybody always knows it can see them.

The coal in my palm was pointing straight at it.

"Don't," said Carol.

"I'm not."

"You're thinking about it."

"I'm always thinking about it." I opened my hand and looked at it. It was so bright now it made a little red room of my fingers. "I want to try something. Not that. Something small. Stay with me."

"I'm here," said Carol. "I've got the other end."

I put out the fold. Ten yards. Just ten. From where I stood to the iron mooring ring at the end of the quay.

At home a ten-yard fold is like stepping over a puddle. I've done them in my sleep. I've done them carrying my son.

Here, it was like pushing my hand into a heavy curtain. The fold went out, and the air of Kethra pushed back. Not hard. Not a wall. More like water, when you try to run in it. The world on this side of the sea didn't know me. It didn't know my name, or my fold, or the shape of my hands. It didn't want to be folded by a stranger. It wasn't angry about it. It was just heavy.

I leaned into it. I felt Carol at the other end of my name, steady as a post. And the fold went, slow and stiff, like a door swollen in its frame, and I came out at the mooring ring with my heart going like I'd run a mile.

Ten yards.

I walked back. I didn't fold.

"Well," said Carol.

"It's not like home."

"Nothing's going to be like home." She took my right arm, the bright one, and held it against her side. "That's what away means, Idiot."

We stood there.

And at a quarter past twelve, which is not a time she's ever flashed, not once in all these nights, the coal in my hand went bright and dark. Once. Short. Then nothing.

I stood absolutely still.

"That's not the code," said Carol.

"No."

"That's not three. That's not ten. That's one." She looked at my face. "What's one?"

I didn't know. Nobody had ever told me what one was. It wasn't in the children's code. It wasn't anything we'd made up on a roof.

And then I did know. Not because anybody told me. Because I'd done it myself, without thinking, a hundred times. When my son's asleep across the room and I can't see him, and I need to know, and I put out my hand toward him in the dark and feel the warmth of him. Not to wake him. Just to check.

"She felt me," I said. "She felt me land."

Carol didn't say anything.

I held up my hand toward the south. Toward the glow. And I didn't send Coming. She knew that already.

I sent three. Short. Steady. The first thing the children's code ever said, on a roof in the snow, a long time ago.

I'm all right.

There wasn't an answer. There didn't need to be one. But the coal stayed warm in my palm, warmer than it had been since Westmere, all the rest of the night, as if somebody fifty miles away had their hand around the other side of it.

* * *

In the morning, I saw Kethra.

I'd seen it last night, but in the dark, and from the water. In the morning I stood at the top of Kenna's stairs with the door open and the sun coming up over the sea behind me, and I looked at it properly.

It was beautiful. That was the first thing, and it surprised me, and I was ashamed of being surprised. Gray stone houses climbing the hill in steps, with blue doors, and nets drying on the walls, and smoke going up straight from every chimney in the still cold. Gulls. A boy carrying two pails down to the pump. A dog asleep on a doorstep. It could have been Westmere. It could have been any fishing village on our coast.

Except that nobody looked at anybody.

The boy at the pump passed a woman coming up with a basket, and neither of them lifted their head. Not a nod. Not a word. They went by each other on that narrow street like two people who'd been taught that the safest thing in the world is not to see.

And at the top of the hill, the shrine. In daylight, the hand on the gable was black iron, closed into a fist, rust bleeding down the stone under it in long brown tears. Under it, a door. I couldn't see from there whether the door was locked. I found out later that it isn't. There's nothing inside to lock in.

Selvane came and stood beside me.

"Fellsend's four miles down the coast," she said. "Dunnock's nine. Kittering's fourteen, then the long beach, then the cliffs, then the city." She had her lamp in her hand. It was lit, in daylight. "There are twenty-three faithful lamps left on this coast, Garrick. And three hundred and seventy-seven dark ones. I said I'd knock at every door."

"You did."

"It'll be slow. On foot. Door to door." She looked at me. "You could fold it in an afternoon. Even here. Even pushing."

"I know."

"You'll want to."

"Every step," I said.

Behind me, inside, I heard Lexander saying something to Kenna about the coast road and the priests. Iselle answering him in Kethran. Carol laughing at something Ignatius had said. Loki, at the window, looking out to sea toward the shelf where a reef lay that nobody would notice. And Kessavel, very low, asking Tegen whether the fish in the stew had been caught by her mother, and Tegen telling him, at length, about every single fish.

I looked south. The glow was paler in daylight, but it was there. It was always there.

"We walk," I said. "Door to door. The way we said we would. Starting at Fellsend." I looked at Selvane. "She used to let Ebb borrow her fog."

Selvane's face did the same thing Ebb's had done.

"Then we'd better go and tell her," she said, "that somebody's come home."

Behind us, up in the window under the eaves, in broad daylight, Kenna lit the lamp.

I asked her why, as we went down the quay. It was full morning. The sun was on the water.

"So you've a road back," said Kenna. "Granny said. You light it for the ones going out as much as the ones coming in." She crossed her arms over her shawl. "And so they can see it in the city. All the way down the coast. One more."

"They'll see it," I said.

"Good," said Kenna of Lanth. "Let them."

* * *

From Mary's book. Thursday. Mary's hand, small and steady:

Sel's tenth tree. She says ten is an orchard now, officially. She's decided.

Wednesday night, a quarter past twelve: the boy woke in Grandpa's basket and said "Ma." Then he said "Da." Then he went back to sleep holding the blanket. Fenrir did not go back to sleep. He sat up at the window until it was light.

Mirelle was still at the stone at a quarter past twelve. It flashed once. Short. Never before at that hour, never only once. Davren says it isn't in any code. Benjamin says he doesn't think it was meant for us. He thinks we were just near enough to see it.

9:10 p.m. Thursday at the stone. Three and three. Mirelle lit the lamp. Benjamin answered. She said I saw.

The needle has not moved since last night. Davren says wherever she's gone, she's stopped there.

Uriah went down to Westmere on Thursday afternoon. He stood on the north sands and looked at the ships in the ice for an hour. Tamar went with him. Uriah asked Tamar if anybody had ever counted the men at the oars. Tamar said no. Uriah said: then somebody should. He's asked Caitlin.

Caitlin has started a new column. It doesn't have a heading yet.

And under that, in a small round hand that slopes downhill and has a pressed silver leaf caught in the binding where it was written:

Sel. I'd like it noted that I planted the tenth tree today and that ten is an orchard now. I'd like it noted that I asked the ground first, every time, and the ground has said yes ten times, even in the frost, which it doesn't have to. I'd like it noted that I don't know what's happening on the far side, and I'm frightened, and I'm planting anyway, because when she comes home I want her to be able to walk down a row of trees and count how long it was and know that every single day of it, somebody here was doing something with their hands about her. I'd like it noted that Uriah came and stood in the orchard after Westmere and didn't say anything, and then he said it was a good orchard. I'm going to remember that for the rest of my life.