Chapter 24: Three Ships Stay

I told Father at six in the morning, in the little kitchen, while Helena pretended not to listen.

He didn't interrupt. He sat at the scrubbed table with his tea going cold in front of him and his hands flat on either side of it, and he listened to all of it. The mill bridge. The weaver in the southern valley. The man in the gray coat who asked twice. The rooms with no windows. He'll ask the river. When I got to the end, he was quiet for a long time.

"His sister," he said at last.

"Half-sister."

"And she's been sleeping in our east wing for nine days." He rubbed his face with both hands. "And Mary wrote her down as keeps his papers."

"She does keep his papers," I said. "That part was true."

Father almost laughed. Not quite.

"She said to come yourself," I said. "Not the hall. Somewhere with a window."

Helena, at the stove, put down her spoon.

"The north tower," she said, without turning around. "Carol's room. The top one. It has windows on every side." She picked the spoon up again. "And Carol will be up already. She always is, now."

Father looked at her back for a moment.

"Thank you, Helena," he said.

"I didn't say anything," said Helena.

* * *

Carol said yes before Father had finished asking.

She was up, as Helena had said. She was sitting in the window seat of the topmost room of the north tower with her knees drawn up and her braid over one shoulder, watching the sun come up over the river, and when Father knocked and put his head in and asked if he could borrow her room for an hour, she looked at him, and then at me behind him, and then she simply got up and went to the door.

"She'll like it," was all she said, on her way past. "You can see everything from up here. Nobody can come at you from anywhere you can't see."

Then she went down the stair to fetch Iselle herself.

So it was the four of us, in the end. Father, and Iselle, and me, because Iselle asked for me to stay, and Carol, because Father asked Iselle if Carol could stay and Iselle looked at Carol for a long moment and said yes. The round room at the top of the north tower, with its eight tall windows, one in every direction, and the morning coming in through all of them, so that there was no shadow anywhere and no corner where anything could hide.

Iselle stood in the middle of it and turned around slowly, once, looking out of every window. The river. The town. The far hills. The west. She stopped at the west for a long time.

Then she turned back to Father.

He hadn't sat down. He was standing by the door, with his hands at his sides, the way he stood in the great hall when he answered for the crown. Not like a king. Like a man waiting to be let in.

"My name is Uriah Grey," he said. "I'm Garrick's father. And Carol's. And Roderic's, who I gather has been a great deal braver than usual this week." He paused. "Garrick told me what you told Roderic. With your permission. Thank you for giving it."

Iselle didn't say anything. Her hands were folded in front of her, very tight.

"I want to ask you something," said Father. "Just one thing, to begin with. And you can say no, and nothing will happen. Not to you, not to your mother, not to anyone's river. No will mean no. The first time." He was quiet for a moment. "What do you want me to do?"

She looked at him for a long time.

I don't think anyone had ever asked her that. Not even Io had asked her that, exactly. What do you want is one question. What do you want me to do is another, and it is a much harder one to be asked by a king, because it means he is putting himself in your hands.

"Nothing," Iselle said finally.

Father waited.

"Not yet," she said. "Please. Don't tell the Council. Don't tell anyone outside this room, and your wives, and Mary, because Mary will know anyway." Something that was almost a smile came and went. "Don't send anyone to my mother's valley. Don't write to her. Don't try to take the river back. If you do anything at all, he'll know, and he'll ask." Her hands tightened. "Let me go to the college. Let me be a student. Let me learn what Queen Io teaches. And when he tells me what I'm for..."

She stopped.

"When he tells you," said Carol softly, from the window seat.

"When he tells me," said Iselle, "I'd like to have somewhere to go. Someone to tell. Before I answer him." She looked at Father. "That's all. That's what I want. Somewhere to go."

Father looked at her for a long moment.

"You have it," he said. "This room. This house. Any door in it. Whenever you need it, for as long as you need it, and you never have to explain why." He paused. "And if the day comes and you want my help with the river, you'll ask, and I'll come. And if you never ask, I'll never come. Is that fair?"

Iselle's face did something very complicated.

"Yes," she said. "That's fair."

"One more thing," said Father. "And then I'll go, and leave you the windows." He hesitated. "Does Severin know that we know?"

Iselle almost laughed. It came out as a breath.

"Severin," she said, "sent me to the river."

* * *

Tamar came through the Westmere gate at noon.

I was in the lower hall when he arrived. I'd gone down to check the gates, the way I had every day since Severin's walk, and I was standing at the Concordia arch with my hand flat against the stone, feeling for the old wobble, when the Westmere arch behind me folded and Tamar Vale stepped out of it with salt on his boots and his hair standing up in the wind of the crossing.

He looked as if he had run the whole way from the harbor. He probably had.

The Castellan was already beside the ledger. It had the pen in its hand before Tamar's second foot was through. Tamar Vale. Steward of Westmere. Inward. Noon.

"Garrick," said Tamar. He was breathing hard. "Your father. Where..."

"The north tower. He's with someone. Tell me."

Tamar looked at me. Then he nodded, once, and put his hands on his knees, and got his breath back, and told me.

"They've gone," he said. "The fleet. They weighed anchor at first light. All at once, every ship together, no signal that anyone saw, no crews on deck, nothing. The sails just... dropped. And filled. And they turned west, all sixty of them, in that same long line, and went out past the shoals like they'd been pulled on a string." He straightened up. "The whole town was on the harbor wall watching. My father too. He put down his fishing line. He hasn't put down his fishing line in three winters."

"And the singing?"

"Stopped." Tamar shook his head slowly. "Last night, at sunset, it didn't start. First time since they came. The whole town noticed. People came out of their houses at dusk and stood in the street waiting for it, and it just... didn't come. My father said it was the loudest quiet he'd ever heard."

I let out a breath I hadn't known I was holding.

"That's good," I said. "That's..."

"Fifty-seven," said Tamar.

I stopped.

"Fifty-seven sailed," he said. "Three stayed."

* * *

He told me the rest walking up the main stair, fast, toward the north tower.

The three ships that stayed had not stayed where the fleet had been, a mile out inside the shoals. They had come in. As the other fifty-seven went west, the three had turned the other way, slowly, and come in toward the harbor, and dropped anchor just outside the harbor wall. Inside the mole. Close enough that you could throw a stone from the end of the pier and hit the nearest one.

"They're flying trade pennants," Tamar said. "Proper ones. Green and white, the Kethran merchant colors, Severin showed me the pattern. And there are crews on them now. Real ones. Men on deck, coiling rope, scrubbing. Someone was frying fish on the stern of the near one this morning. You could smell it from the quay." He shook his head. "It's the most ordinary thing I've ever seen, and it's made the whole town more frightened than sixty ships with nobody on them."

"Because they look normal," I said.

"Because they look normal." Tamar nodded. "And because of the middle one."

We had reached the foot of the north tower stair. He stopped.

"There's someone on the bow," he said. "Of the middle ship. Standing right at the front, by the figurehead, looking at the town. He was there when the sun came up. He was there when I left. He hasn't moved. Not once. The crew go around him as if he isn't there." Tamar's voice dropped. "My father watched him through the glass for an hour. He says it's a man, or looks like one. Tall. Bare-headed. Gray clothes. And there's something on his left wrist that catches the light every time the ship moves. Like a bracelet." He paused. "Or a piece of chain."

I stood very still at the bottom of the stair.

The Chained are his hands, Aurelia had said, in the chapel, among the candles. They walk at the bow of his ships.

"Garrick?" said Tamar.

"Come up," I said. "Father needs to hear this. And so does someone else."

* * *

Tamar told it again at the top of the north tower, to Father, standing in the middle of the round room with the noon light pouring in through all eight windows. Iselle had not left the room all morning. Carol said she had simply gone from window to window, for hours, as if she were learning them.

Father listened with his arms folded. Carol listened from the window seat. And Iselle listened from where she stood by the west window, with her back very straight and her hands folded in front of her, and when Tamar got to the man on the bow, and the thing on his wrist that caught the light, she closed her eyes.

"You know him," said Father. It wasn't a question.

Iselle was quiet for a long moment.

"Bare-headed," she said. "Gray clothes. Never moves. The chain on the left wrist, one link, very small, iron gone black." She opened her eyes. "In the golden city they call him the Lockwarden. I've never heard anyone use another name. He was a god of locks and keys, before. Every door in Kethra used to belong to him, a little."

"And now?" said Carol.

"Now he stands outside doors." Iselle's voice was very flat. "When a city tells my brother no, the Lockwarden goes and stands outside its gate. That's all he does. He doesn't break it. He doesn't touch it. He just stands there, day after day, and waits for someone inside to ask him what he wants." She looked out of the west window, toward the sea she couldn't see. "And when they ask him, he tells them. Very politely. And they open it."

Nobody said anything.

"I don't think he's there for the trade," said Iselle quietly.

"No," said Father. "Neither do I."

He turned and looked out of the same window. West. Toward Westmere, and the harbor wall, and the three ordinary ships with their crews frying fish on deck, and the one tall gray figure standing at the bow of the middle one, looking at the town.

"Then nobody asks him anything," said Father. "Nobody. Not one word. We don't go near him, and we don't ask him what he wants." He was quiet for a moment. "Let him stand there. A door that nobody asks about stays shut."

* * *

Severin left the next morning.

He came to Father's study at eight, with his leather case and his gray coat buttoned to the throat, and told him plainly. The fleet had gone, as promised. The three ships that remained were there for the trade, as promised, to carry the first grain when the merchants' council had agreed a price. Someone had to see to them. Someone had to keep the accounts, and talk to the harbormaster, and make sure that the crews moved when they were asked to move.

"I'd like to do that myself," he said. "From Westmere. If Your Majesty will permit it. I'll live aboard the near ship. I won't come ashore without Tamar Vale's leave." He paused. "And I won't come inland again without yours."

Father looked at him across the desk for a long time.

"And the man on the bow of the middle ship?" he said. "With the chain on his wrist?"

Severin was quiet for a moment. He did not ask how Father knew.

"He's there for the trade," he said.

"Is he."

"He's there," said Severin carefully, "because he was sent. As I was." He looked down at his gloved hands. "I would ask Your Majesty not to send anyone to speak to him. Not Tamar. Not the harbormaster. Not your son." He glanced at me, where I stood by the window. "He doesn't speak, the way you and I speak. And if he's spoken to, he asks."

Nobody said anything for a while.

"You could have the gate," said Father finally. "To Westmere. If you want it. It's faster."

I stared at him. So did Severin.

"I'm not offering it out of trust," said Father. "I'm offering it because you asked for it once, properly, and I said no, and you went the long way without complaining. I've thought about that a good deal." He paused. "You asked once. I'm offering once. You can say no."

Severin looked at him for a very long time.

"No," he said at last. "Thank you. I came the long way. I think I'd like to go back the same way." The corner of his mouth moved. "I'm told the locks at the falls are very beautiful in late summer. I didn't have time to look at them, coming up. I was reading."

* * *

We saw him off at the quay at ten. Not the whole household. Father, and me, and Mary with her book, and Ansel, who was simply there, as he had been the first day. And Iselle.

The same old barge, low in the water, with the gray awning stretched across the deck and the stout red-faced bargemaster at the sweep, looking as if she had been paid double again and had stopped wondering whether it was enough. The two oarsmen at the bow, side by side, in gray, exactly where they had stood for ten days without moving. I had stopped expecting them to blink.

Severin shook Father's hand. He bowed to Mary. He looked at Ansel for a moment, and Ansel looked back, mildly, and neither of them said anything at all.

Then he turned to Iselle.

They stood on the quay facing each other. He was a little taller. She was very straight.

He did not say anything to her for a long moment. Then he reached inside his coat and took out a letter. A plain one, on ordinary paper, folded small, with no seal at all. He held it out.

"From your mother," he said. "It came with the last packet from the south. I've been carrying it." He paused. "I haven't read it. I never have. I wanted you to know that."

Iselle took it. Her hand was shaking. She held it against her chest with both hands, and did not open it.

"Learn whatever they'll teach you," Severin said quietly. "All of it. Don't hurry."

"He'll tell me," said Iselle. "When it's time. He always does."

"Yes," said Severin. "He will." He looked at her for a moment longer. "And when he does, you'll answer him however you answer him. And I'll carry it back across the sea, whatever it is. Exactly as given. That's what I'm for."

Then he stepped onto the gangplank.

I couldn't help it. I went after him. Two steps down the quay, to the edge.

"Severin."

He turned, halfway up the plank.

"Why did you send her to the river?" I said. "That night. You knew Roderic would come. You wanted him to find her."

Severin looked down at me. The river went past behind him, brown and slow and full of summer.

"Because someone in this house would ask her what she wanted," he said. "Everyone here asks. You can't stop yourselves. It's the most extraordinary thing I've ever seen." He paused. "Nobody ever asked me."

He went up the plank and under the gray awning, and sat down in the canvas chair, and opened his book.

The bargemaster cast off. The current took her. The barge turned slowly out into the stream, and the gray awning went away downriver past the warehouses, past the salt sheds, past the crane where Ansgar's daughters had sat on the first day. He did not look up from his book. Not once. I watched until the bend took him.

Beside me, Iselle was holding her mother's letter against her chest.

"Aren't you going to read it?" I said.

"Not yet," she said. "When I'm somewhere with a window."

* * *

That evening I went up to the map room.

The Castellan was there, kneeling by the river with the gray chalk in its hand. It had drawn a mark just below the little brass tower of Havenreach. On the river. Going the other way.

Then it moved out to the coast, past the marshes and the silver shoals, to the place where the black silk of Kethra met the gray stone of our own floor, a hand's width apart. And just off the little brass star of Westmere, inside the harbor wall, it drew three small marks.

Not gray. It had a stick of black chalk as well, and it used that.

Three black marks, sitting very close to the shore.

And the big letter I had drawn in gray chalk on the sea nearly three weeks ago, the hook and the double kink and the short hard stroke, the one that meant given, was still there, a little further out, faded now, but not gone.

The Castellan looked at it for a long time. Then it put the chalk back on the windowsill, exactly where it had found it, and did not rub the letter out.