Chapter 230: The Flame-Consort

Liddy came off the first boat on Friday with her apron full of bread and her face full of something she was trying very hard not to let out until she was inside.

She waded up the mud slope, and came in through the door of the bleaching-shed, and put the bread down on a rinsing trough, and turned around, and said, "She ate."

Ignatius was sitting on his upturned trough by the gap in the west wall, where he'd sat all night. He didn't move. I don't think he understood.

"She ate," said Liddy again. Louder. In our language, the few words, and then in Kethran, fast, to Iselle, who said it after her. "Last night. After the hour. After the light. Nell took the tray up the way she does every night and waited outside the door for it to come back full, the way it always does. And it came back empty. Everything. The bread, the broth, the little cakes the cook sends that she's never once touched. And then she rang. She's never rung. And when Nell went in, she said—" Liddy stopped and pressed her red hands together. "She said, is there any more bread?"

Ignatius put his face in his hands.

He didn't make a sound. He just sat there by the gap with his face in his big hands and his shoulders going, and Carol went and sat on the floor by his trough and put her head against his knee, and neither of them said anything for a long while.

"Nell took her up the whole loaf," said Liddy, more quietly. "From the kitchen. The cook gave it her. The cook said, is the kettle on, then? and Nell said yes, and the cook cried into the dough."

* * *

Nell is the girl who takes the tray.

I hadn't known her name until that morning. None of us had. In every slip Liddy had sent since Friday she'd been the girl who takes the tray, the way Annis Penner had been the woman with the forearms until I asked. I asked now.

"Nell," said Liddy. "Nell Ashby. She's fourteen. She's from Kittering. Taken on the summer list two years ago, the same list as Dorrie's cousin." She looked at me. "She's the only one in the palace who goes into the gold room. Besides him."

"What's she like?"

Liddy thought about it.

"Quiet," she said. "Very quiet. She doesn't say anything to anybody. She carries the tray up and carries it down. The priests like her because she never says anything." She almost smiled. "And then she comes down to the kitchen roof and tells us everything."

* * *

What Nell had told them, that morning on the roof, before the first boat went out, was this.

Seraphina had stood at the window for a long time after the light went down. After the red had flared in her lamp, and she'd put her hand flat on the glass. Nell had seen that from the door; she'd been told never to come in until she was called, but the door had been open a crack, and she'd seen the lady stand at the glass with her hand on it, and then stand there after, very straight, with her eyes shut, as if she were listening to somebody a long way off.

And then she'd turned around, and come to the door, and opened it, and found Nell crouched outside with the tray.

"I'm sorry," Nell had said, frightened. "I'm sorry, I wasn't—"

"Nell," Seraphina had said. "Is your name Nell?"

Nobody in the palace had ever asked. Nell had nodded.

"Nell," said Seraphina. "Somebody told me the kettle's on."

And Nell had looked up at her, at the emperor's lady, at the Flame, in her gold room at the top of the gold tower, and said, in a whisper, the thing every girl on every stair had been saying for three days: "There's room for one more."

And Seraphina had laughed. Out loud. The second time anybody in that palace had heard her laugh.

"Then I'd like my supper," she said. "All of it. And then some bread, if there's any going."

* * *

"He's not keeping her," said Liddy.

She said it to me, but she said it to everybody in the shed, the way you'd say a thing you'd found out and wanted to put down on a table where everyone could see it.

"I thought he was. We all did. In the kitchens. The emperor's lady, up in the tower, with the door that's always shut. We thought she was his, the way everything's his." She shook her head. "She isn't. Nell says. Nell's been up those stairs every day since she came, and the door's never locked. Not once. There's no key. There's no guard. Not on her." She looked at Ignatius. "She walks where she likes. She came in by herself, on her own feet, through the harbor shrine like anybody, and asked for him by name, and he came down. Himself. He's never come down for anybody. And he said guest. And she's been his guest ever since."

"She went in on purpose," I said. "After a woman and her two girls. Somebody we know at home. Their son's at Greykeep." I looked at Carol. "And to look at him. To see what he is. From the inside."

"Nell says he goes up every day," said Liddy. "At noon. Every single day. With a gift."

* * *

Loki came back at noon.

He'd gone in at dawn. I hadn't wanted him to. He'd simply stood up off the floor of the shed when the first laundry boat came by, and stretched, and said, "I'm going to the market," in the tone of a man going out for a pint of milk, and walked down the mud slope into the shallows, and climbed up on the back of the boat among the sheets beside Liddy as if he'd done it every day of his life. And the women on the boat looked at him, and he looked back at them, and said something in Kethran I didn't catch, and they all laughed, and the boat went in through the water-gate with him sitting on top of a pile of pillowslips.

"What did you tell them?" I said, when he climbed back up the mud slope with his boots wet and a bag over his shoulder.

"The truth," said Loki. He sounded faintly insulted. "I said I was a carter from up the coast who'd lost his cart and needed to get into the city to see a man about a horse. Which is true. I did lose a cart. At the Throat. I never got it back." He sat down on a trough and pulled off one boot and poured water out of it. "Nobody asks a man sitting on laundry anything. You'd be amazed. I didn't need to tell a single lie all day. I'm almost disappointed."

"Loki."

"Yes, all right." He put the boot down. "The market."

* * *

The market at the foot of the gold, Loki said, was the biggest he'd ever seen, and he'd seen most of them. It filled the great square in front of the Hall of Hands, between the black hall with the iron hand on its roof and the foot of the tower. Fish and cloth and bread and lamp-oil and copper pans and children. And priests walking up and down through it in their white with their lamps unlit at noon, listening.

"And everybody's talking about her," said Loki.

"About Seraphina?"

"About the Flame-Consort." He said it in Kethran first, a long, grand, gold-sounding word, and then in ours. "That's what they call her. That's what he calls her, apparently, in front of the court. The Flame-Consort. As if she'd married him." He curled his lip. "As if it's only a matter of time."

Carol's face went very still.

"But that's not what they mean by it in the market," said Loki. "Not anymore. Not this week." He looked at me. "You want to know what they're saying, Garrick? In the fish market at the foot of his tower, with his priests walking up and down? Very low, so you can only hear it if you're buying a herring?"

"Yes."

"They're saying she says no," said Loki.

* * *

"Every day," said Loki. "Every day since she came he's gone up at noon with a gift. And every day she's sent it back. That's the story. It's all over the market. Everybody knows it. The fishwives know it. The children know it." He held up his fingers, counting. "Silk. Eleven bolts of it, every color, from the south. She sent it back. Rubies. A necklace of them, as long as your arm. She sent it back. A garden. He had a whole garden planted for her on the tower roof, every flower that burns, fire-lilies, embermoss, the red trees from the hot islands. Overnight. She looked at it from the window and sent it back. He had to dig it up." Loki grinned. "The market loved that one. There's a fish-seller by the Hall steps who tells it with gestures."

"What else?"

"A throne," said Loki. "Beside his. In the gold room. She sent it back. A ship. A whole ship, gold-sailed, in the harbor, with her name on it. She sent that back too. They say it's still sitting at the quay with nobody on it." He stopped counting. "Thirty-four gifts. That's what the market says. They've been counting. The children keep count on the fish-steps in chalk."

Nobody said anything for a while.

"And there's a game," said Loki.

"A game?"

"The children. In the square, under the priests' noses. One of them's the emperor and one's the Flame-Consort. And the emperor offers her things. Stones. Shells. A dead crab. And the Flame-Consort looks at it very grandly and says—" he did a high, haughty little voice in Kethran "—and everybody else shouts it with her."

"Says what?"

Iselle, sitting by Roderic, had started laughing before Loki could answer.

"No, thank you," said Iselle. "It's no, thank you. We used to say it in the palace. When I was small. To each other. When the priests weren't looking." She put her hand over her mouth. "It's the rudest thing you can say to him. Not no. He's heard no.No, thank you. As if it isn't worth having."

* * *

Loki didn't stop smiling until Liddy spoke.

She'd been standing by the door all this time with her arms folded, listening, not saying anything. Now she said, in Kethran, low, "Tell them about the cradle."

Loki's smile went.

"I wasn't going to," he said.

"Tell them."

He looked at me. Then at Carol. Then, for some reason, at Ignatius.

"Last week," said Loki, "after the forty-one houses, he brought her a cradle."

The shed went very quiet.

"Gold," said Loki. "Small. Beautifully made. A child's cradle. Empty." He looked at his hands. "The market tells it as a love-gift. A promise. He'll give her a son. They think it's a wedding thing. That's how it's told in the fish market." He was quiet for a moment. "That's not what it was."

"No," I said. My voice didn't sound like mine.

"He knows about the boy," said Loki. "Of course he knows. He felt the boy light his first flame at midwinter, same as everybody with a nose for fire felt it. He knows she's got a son on the far side of the sea." He looked up at me. "An empty cradle the size of a year-old child. Sent up to her room. That isn't a promise, Garrick. That's a question."

I couldn't speak.

"She sent it back," said Liddy quietly. "Nell carried it down. Nell says the lady didn't touch it. Didn't look at it. She stood at the window with her back to it and said, take that away, please, Nell. And tell him the boy's got a wolf."

* * *

I went out of the shed.

I don't remember doing it. I remember standing on the dry mud slope outside with the reeds all around and the wall of the city a quarter of a mile away, black and sheer, and the gold tower going up over it, and my hands. My hands were shaking. The left one, the one with the silver and the gold in it, was burning.

Carol came out after me. She didn't touch me. She just stood beside me.

"He's got a wolf," she said. "Garrick. He's got Fenrir. Fenrir doesn't sleep. He's got Father. He's got Mother and Helena and Grandpa and Thor at the top of the stair and the whole of Greykeep. He's got a kettle." She waited. "Nobody's getting to that boy. You know that. Malachar knows it. That's why it was a cradle and not a hand."

"He sent her an empty cradle," I said.

"He did. And she sent it back without looking at it." Carol's voice was very steady. "She's the one up there with him, Garrick. Every day. At noon. And she said, the boy's got a wolf. That's not a frightened woman. That's a mother telling a man exactly what's going to happen to him."

I stood there a long time.

When I could, I went back in.

* * *

"There's more," said Liddy, when I sat down. "There's today's."

She looked at Ignatius, and then at me, and then she took a breath.

"Nell says he came up at noon today," she said. "The way he always does. But today he didn't bring anything. Nothing in his hands. He stood in the doorway of the gold room, and he said—" She stopped. She said it in Kethran, very carefully, as if she'd learned it by heart from Nell to get it exactly right, and Iselle said it after her, word by word.

"I felt you warm last night. I felt someone give you fire. I am not a fool, and I know whose it is. And I know where the forty-one houses have been getting their warmth."

Ignatius had gone very still.

"So here is a gift you will not send back," said Liddy, in Nell's words, in Malachar's words. "On the first day of the Games, you will stand beside me in the arena. In front of my city. Wearing the crown I have made for you. And when the Hand of Oaths asks, you will answer with them. Whose are you. You will say: His. Once. Where they can all hear you." Liddy's voice shook. "And the forty-one houses will walk out of the cellars under my Hall and go home in their nightclothes, and nobody will ever ask them anything again."

* * *

Nobody moved.

"He said that," said Carol.

"He said that. Nell heard all of it. She was on the stair."

"And Seraphina," I said. "What did she say?"

Liddy looked at me.

"Nothing," she said. "Nell says she didn't say anything. She just looked at him. For a long time. And he waited. And she didn't say yes and she didn't say no and she didn't say no thank you. And in the end he smiled and said, you have until the Games, and went down."

"She didn't say no," said Ignatius. His voice was terrible.

"She didn't say anything," said Liddy.

"She'll do it." Ignatius stood up off his trough. "You don't know her. I know her. She'll do it. She'll stand up there in his crown and say His in front of the whole city if it gets forty-one families out of a cellar. She'd do it without blinking. She'd tell herself she didn't mean it. She'd tell herself it was only a word." He was shaking. "That's what she's like. That's what she's always been like. She'd burn the house down to get the cat out."

"She hasn't said yes," said Carol.

"She hasn't said no!"

* * *

I looked at the gap in the west wall. At the tower.

And I understood something then. Something I hadn't let myself understand, maybe, since the stream. Since Carol stood in the gap on Skerrick and made me say her name.

Malachar didn't want the forty-one houses. He'd never wanted them. They were nothing to him. Forty-one houses out of a whole city. He'd swear them Hushed or let them go; it wouldn't matter to him at all. What he wanted was the one word, in the arena, in front of everybody. Not from them.

From her.

Because the whole city had heard she said no. The whole market. The children in the square. Thirty-four gifts, in chalk, on the fish-steps. No, thank you. She'd been saying no at the top of his tower every day since she came, and every person in his city had heard about it, and every one of them who'd lit a candle at ten past nine had lit it for a woman in a gold room who wouldn't be his.

If she said His in the arena, it wouldn't matter what the forty-one did. It wouldn't matter what anybody sang at the stove. It wouldn't matter how many stones were shining. The city would hear the Flame-Consort say His, and every one of them would go home and say it a little louder.

That was the gift. That was what he was offering her. A chance to put out every candle in Kethra with one word.

"No," I said.

They all looked at me.

"She won't have to," I said. "Liddy. Tell Nell. Tell her to tell the lady tonight, with the tray, from me."

Liddy waited.

"Tell her they aren't his to give," I said. "The forty-one houses. They aren't his. They're the city's. And the city's going to take them back itself, on the first day of the Games, in front of him, with one word. The same word he wants from her. The other one." I stood up. "Tell her she doesn't have to buy them. Tell her what Carol drew in the fish scales. All of it. The kitchens and the harbors and the roads. Tell her the song." I looked at Carol, and she nodded. "Tell her the city's already saying it under its breath. And on the first day of the Games, it's going to say it out loud. And she can say it with them."

* * *

"That's a lot for a scullery girl to carry up a stair," said Liddy slowly.

"Then tell her one thing. Just one. Tell her—"

I stopped. What would I say, if it was one thing? If it was only one?

"No, thank you," said Iselle softly, from beside Roderic.

I looked at her.

"Tell her to say no, thank you," said Iselle. "To the crown. To the gift. That's all. She'll understand. Everyone in that palace will understand. And if she says it to him, Nell will hear it on the stair, and by nightfall the whole kitchen will know, and by morning the whole market." She smiled a small, fierce smile I'd never seen on her. "He's never had a no, thank you he couldn't send back."

Liddy looked at me. I nodded.

"No, thank you," said Liddy. She said it in Kethran, trying it in her mouth. Then she said it again, and her tired face changed, the way Annis Penner's had at the well. "I'll tell her."

* * *

The last boat went in at dusk. Liddy went with it, sitting on the sheets with her hands in her lap, and didn't look back.

At ten past nine I stood in the gap and held up my hand, and the lamp came up in the window, steady, and Ignatius stood beside me and opened his hands, and the red went into her light, half, only half, the way Carol had made him promise. Strong and steady.

She didn't come to the glass tonight. She didn't put her hand on it. The light stayed back in the room.

But she held it. Four minutes. Five. Longer than she'd ever held it.

And when it went down, Ignatius stayed in the gap a long time with his hands still open.

"She's angry," he said at last. Very low. He sounded almost like he was smiling. "She's not cold anymore. She's angry. I can feel it." He closed his hands, slowly. "Gods help him. She's really angry."

* * *

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

Thursday. Sel's twenty-fifth tree. The boy's flame red at the bottom all day. He has made it the size of a cabbage and Helena has made a rule about the curtains.

Friday. Sel's twenty-sixth.

Friday, a little after noon, Fenrir stood up.

He hasn't stood up since Wednesday. He's been lying around the boy under the table, or across the door, or at the foot of the boy's basket, for two days without moving. Today at noon he stood up all at once, and his hackles went up from his neck to his tail, and he walked to the south window of the little kitchen and stood there with his nose against the glass, and he growled. Not loud. Very low. For a long time. Uriah came. He stood beside the wolf at the window and looked south with him. He didn't say anything. Then he put his hand on Fenrir's neck and said: I know. I felt it too. Somebody just said something about our boy.

Then Uriah went out to the inner court and stood in the snow. Evelyn went after him. He said: I'd like his name added to the list. She said: whose? He said: you know whose. She said: it's been at the top of the list for a year. He said: I'd like it underlined.

Fenrir lay back down across the door. He has not moved since.

9:10 p.m. at the stone. His long light. Hers, very long. Five minutes. And the red beside hers. And Davren says hers was a different color tonight. Not the red of a lamp. The red of a forge with the door open.

Nine days since midwinter.

And under that, in very large heavy letters that go right across the page and through it in two places where the pen went through the paper, a hand that presses much too hard:

THOR. I'd like it noted that I am at the top of the stair, as asked. I'd like it noted that I have been at the top of the stair every day since the boat went. I'd like it noted that a man on the far side of the sea sent a cradle to my friend, and that I have not yet been told the address. I'd like it noted that I am being very patient. Uriah says I'm not to write any more than that. I'd like it noted that I've broken the pen.