Chapter 61: Seraphina's Flame

Io decided it at breakfast, in the middle of a sentence about marmalade.

"...and anyway, the Lyradon oranges are better this year, Helena, I don't care what the Concordia grocers say." She put her spoon down. "Seraphina. I want to see your flame."

Seraphina looked up from cutting little Uriah's toast into soldiers.

"Now?"

"Not now. Tomorrow. Properly. Out of doors, somewhere with a long way to go and nothing to hurt." Io picked her spoon back up. "Since the summer, everybody in this family has been tested by something. Carol by a dream and a song. Garrick on a beach. Thor broke twenty years of peace on a slipway. My son sat in a chair for eleven nights." She looked at Seraphina over the marmalade. "You've been holding a baby. Very well. But you haven't used it, not properly, since you cut the gift table in half. Have you?"

"I lit the nursery fire on Tuesday."

"With a taper," said Io. "I asked Helena."

Helena, at the stove, did not turn around.

Seraphina was quiet for a moment. Then she put the knife down, and I saw her hands, and I understood something I should have understood months ago.

She'd been afraid of it.

Not of using it. Seraphina has never been afraid of using anything. Of having it, with a baby on her hip. The destructive side of the First Flame. The side that cuts. Ignatius got the warm half, the half that closes wounds and feels like bathwater. Seraphina got the other one. When she was nine she cut a granite horse trough in two because a boy pushed her into it, and the two halves are still in the Concordia barracks yard, with a line through them so clean you could shave in it.

And for a year now, she'd been carrying our son around with that inside her.

"Where?" she said.

"Westmere," said Io. "The north sands. At low tide there's a mile of wet beach and a whole sea to put out anything that gets away from you." She glanced at me. "And I want to see this stone of Benjamin's. Everybody's seen it but me. I'm feeling left out."

* * *

So the next morning, at low water, four of us came through the Westmere gate into the gray salt light. Io in a plain brown coat with her red hair tied up in a scarf. Seraphina in her old riding clothes from before the wedding, the ones with the scorch marks on the cuffs. Me. And little Uriah, in a knitted hat with ears on it that Grandpa had carved the pattern for and Helena had knitted, riding on my hip and pointing at every gull.

"Bird," said little Uriah.

That's five words now. Mary has them all written down. Jam. Ma. Ca. Dada. And as of that morning, bird, which he said to everything that moved, including a dog, a fishwife, and Tamar Vale.

Tamar met us at the top of the harbor steps, in his oilskins, with his square jaw and his tired eyes. He'd been on double watch all winter. He looked at Io and Seraphina and then out at the long flat sand, and I saw him understand what was going to happen to his beach.

"Is anybody going to tell me what this is?" he said.

"Flame practice," said Io cheerfully.

Tamar closed his eyes briefly.

"I'll clear the beach," he said. "Again."

* * *

The north sands at Westmere are the flattest place I've ever seen. When the tide goes out, it goes out a long way, a mile or more, and leaves behind a great wet gray mirror of a beach with the sky lying in it. There are ribs of old wrecks out on the flats, black and broken, and lines of stakes where the fishermen hang their nets, and gulls standing in the shallow pools, all facing the same way into the wind.

Up behind the beach, on the low hill over the harbor, is Westmere Hold. Square and gray and old, with the town around its knees. In its lower court, in Tamar's biggest washtub, on a wooden platter, the stone was floating, pointing west.

You could hear it from the beach if you stood still. Not with your ears. Underneath. A faint low hum, like a bee in another room. The whole Hold hums along with it now, since Selvane left her shell. Benjamin says it's the happiest a building's ever sounded.

Io walked Seraphina a hundred paces out onto the wet sand, and I sat down on an upturned boat at the top of the beach with little Uriah in my lap, and watched.

* * *

I'd never seen Io teach before.

I'd heard about it. Everybody at her college says she's the best teacher in the five kingdoms and also the most frightening, and that the two things are related. But I'd never seen it. She doesn't explain much. She asks questions. And she stands very close to you while you answer them, close enough that you can feel her own fire, warm and steady, just under her skin, like standing next to a hearth.

"Show me," she said.

Seraphina held out her right hand, palm down, toward the sand.

And her flame came.

I've seen it a thousand times. I'll never get used to it. Ignatius's fire is gold and soft and spreads out like light through a window. Seraphina's isn't like that. It's white-gold, and thin, a line of it, coming down out of her palm like a thread being drawn out of a spool. It doesn't spread. It doesn't flicker. It cuts. Where it touched the wet sand, the sand hissed and went to glass in a line as straight as a ruler, and the steam went up off it in a little white wall.

"Good," said Io. "Now walk it."

Seraphina began to walk. Slowly. Along the beach, parallel to the sea, with her hand held out and the thin white line coming down out of it, and behind her on the sand a long dark streak of glass unrolled like a ribbon, smoking.

"Narrower," said Io, walking beside her.

The line went thinner. A thread. A hair.

"Narrower."

Thinner still. I could hardly see it. Only the hiss, and the little thread of steam, and the glass going on unrolling behind them.

"Now," said Io. "Stop it."

Seraphina closed her hand.

The flame went out. Not all at once. It drew back up into her palm the way a snail draws back into its shell, and the last of the steam drifted away on the wind, and there was nothing left but the long straight line of glass on the sand, a hundred paces of it, cooling and ticking in the cold.

"Good," said Io again. "Again. This way."

* * *

They did it for an hour. Up the beach and down it. Straight lines, then curves, then circles. Io had her cut a piece of driftwood the size of a man in half, lengthwise, without scorching either half. Then a fishing float, without cracking the glass. Then a single strand of seaweed lying on a rock, without touching the rock.

Seraphina did all of it. I don't think I'd realized, until I watched her, how good she was. Not how strong. Everyone knows how strong she is. How careful. How exactly she could put that terrible white line where she wanted it, and nowhere else, and stop it the instant she chose.

Little Uriah watched too. He sat in my lap with his hat over his eyes and his fists in my coat and watched his mother walk up and down the beach with fire coming out of her hand, and he didn't cry, and he didn't laugh. He just watched, very seriously, the way he watches Helena cut bread.

Once, when the flame went out, he said, quite clearly, "Ma."

"Yes," I said. "That's your ma."

"Ma," he agreed, and went on watching.

* * *

It was in the second hour that it started.

Io had set her a long one. From the old wreck at the south end of the flats all the way north to the net stakes, a quarter of a mile, in a single unbroken line, without stopping, without letting it waver. "Like writing your name," Io said, "without lifting the pen."

Seraphina set off from the wreck with her hand held out. The white thread came down out of her palm, steady as a plumb line. The glass unrolled behind her. Io walked beside her, a little to one side, with her hands in her coat pockets.

And about halfway along the beach, right below the Hold, the flame flickered.

I saw it from the boat. Just once. A little bend in the line, a little lean, the way a candle leans when somebody opens a door behind you. The thread went thin and wavering for a heartbeat, and the glass behind it went from a clean straight line to a tiny wobble, like a pen skipping on paper.

Then it straightened, and went on.

Seraphina stopped walking.

"Don't stop," said Io.

"It moved."

"I saw. Don't stop. Finish the line."

Seraphina walked on. The flame held steady all the way to the net stakes. She closed her hand. She stood there for a moment looking at her own palm, frowning, and then turned around and looked back down the long line of glass toward the wreck.

Halfway along it, right below the Hold, there was a kink. Small. You wouldn't see it unless you were looking. But it was there.

"That's never happened," said Seraphina. "Not since I was four. It doesn't do that. Mother, it doesn't flicker. It never flickers."

"I know," said Io. She wasn't looking at her daughter. She was looking up the hill, at the square gray Hold. "Do it again. Back the other way. Slowly."

* * *

It happened again.

In exactly the same place. Halfway along the beach, right where the line passed below the Hold, the flame leaned. More this time. It didn't just flicker; it bent, for the space of three or four heartbeats, curving away from the straight line Seraphina was drawing, up the beach toward the hill, the way iron filings lean toward a lodestone. Then she gritted her teeth and pulled it straight, and it came back.

"Something's pulling it," said Seraphina. Her voice had gone very flat. "Mother. Something up there is pulling on it."

"Yes," said Io.

"What?"

Io didn't answer. She took one hand out of her pocket and held it out, palm down, and let her own fire come. I'd never seen Io's fire before, either. It's the healing kind, like Ignatius's. Gold, and soft, and low, like a lamp turned down. She walked along the line of glass with it, slowly, toward the place below the Hold.

When she got there, her fire leaned too.

Not as much as Seraphina's. Just a little. A gentle lean, like a plant toward a window. But it leaned. Up the hill. Toward the Hold.

Io closed her hand. She stood very still on the wet sand for a long moment. Then she turned around and looked at me, sitting on the upturned boat with little Uriah in my lap.

And that was when I felt it.

* * *

I don't know how to explain this to anyone who isn't a twin.

Everything I've ever kept is in me somewhere. My father's winter. Thor's thunder. Damar's stone-hearing. Aurelia's warmth. Seraphina's folding, and her fire. I carry them the way you carry the things in your pockets, without thinking, and I mostly don't notice them unless I'm using them.

But sitting on that boat, I noticed the fire.

Not hers. Mine. The bit of her I'd had since we were two. It was sitting where it always sits, low, under my breastbone, banked and quiet. And it was leaning. Very gently. The way a compass needle leans. Up the hill, toward the Hold, toward that low humming in the stone that I'd been hearing all morning without listening to.

And there was something else. Something under that. Something I'd felt before, at Skellow, at the bottom of the hollow god where there should have been something and wasn't. Not the same. But a cousin to it. A small, cold, patient attention.

Something was listening for fire.

In my lap, little Uriah went very still.

Then he pulled his fist out of my coat and held out his hand, small and plump and open, toward the hill. Toward the Hold. The way he holds his hand out to Helena for toast.

His palm was warm. Very warm. Warmer than a baby's hand should be in a cold wind off the sea. I could feel it through my sleeve.

"Bird," said little Uriah, to the Hold.

* * *

Io was across the sand to us in about four seconds.

I've never seen anyone her age move that fast. She didn't run, exactly. She was just suddenly there, standing in front of the boat, between us and the hill, with her back to the Hold and her arms half out from her sides. Like someone standing in front of a fire to keep the draft off it.

"Give him to me," she said. "Please."

I gave him to her.

She held him against her chest, inside her brown coat, with his face turned in toward her neck. She put her hand over his small warm hand and closed it, very gently, into a fist. And then she stood there with her eyes shut and her own fire coming up, soft and gold, all around the two of them, like a lantern with a baby in it.

The lean went out of little Uriah's hand. I felt it go. He yawned enormously and put his face into his grandmother's scarf.

Seraphina had come up the beach behind Io. She was white to the lips.

"Mother," she said. "What is it?"

Io opened her eyes.

"I think," she said, "it's time we went and looked at Benjamin's stone."

* * *

We went up the harbor steps and through the town and up the hill into the lower court of Westmere Hold, and the stone was exactly where it always is.

Tamar's biggest washtub stood on its trestles in the middle of the court, full to the brim with seawater. On the water floated a wide wooden platter, the kind you'd carve a goose on. And on the platter sat the stone. Black, and smooth, and egg-shaped, about the size of a man's head, with no seam in it anywhere. Humming.

Benjamin was sitting on an upturned crate beside it, mending a net, in his salt-white sailor's coat. He looked up when we came in, and his face went from glad to careful very fast.

"It's been restless all morning," he said, before anyone asked. "Since about ten. I thought it was the tide."

"Which way does it point?" said Io.

"West. A little south. Always." Benjamin put the net down. "Toward the golden city. Toward whatever it's lonely for. It hasn't moved a hair since Cassia floated it."

"Seraphina," said Io. "Would you go and stand by the gate, please. Just there."

Seraphina went and stood by the court gate, twenty paces off.

Nobody touched anything. Nobody said anything.

And on the water in the washtub, very slowly, the wooden platter began to turn.

It turned the way a weathervane turns when the wind changes. Smoothly. Without hurry. Away from the west, away from the golden city, around through the north, until the narrow end of the black stone was pointing straight across the court at Seraphina, standing by the gate.

And stopped there.

Benjamin stood up so fast his crate went over.

"It's never done that," he said. "Not once. Not in two months. It only ever points home."

"It isn't pointing home," said Io quietly. "It never was. It's pointing at fire."

* * *

Then I did a stupid thing.

I didn't decide to. I just took a step. Toward the washtub. Without thinking. To see better.

The platter turned again.

Just a little. Away from Seraphina. Toward me. And hung there, wavering, between the two of us. Pointing at her, then at me, then at her, as if it couldn't decide. As if there were two fires in the court, and it was trying to work out which one it wanted.

And then Io, with little Uriah asleep inside her coat, took one step forward too.

The platter swung so hard the water slopped over the side of the tub.

Toward Io. Toward the brown coat. Toward the small warm sleeping weight inside it.

Io stepped back at once. Three steps. Four. Back through the court gate and out into the lane, with her arms wrapped around her grandson and her own fire coming up gold all around her. And the platter swung back, slowly, uncertainly, to waver between Seraphina and me.

Seraphina's right hand came up.

I saw it. I saw the white-gold thread start to come down out of her palm, thin as a hair, pointing at the black stone on the water. I knew exactly what she was going to do. She was going to cut it in half. Clean through, end to end, the way she'd cut the gift table. And it would never listen to anything ever again.

And I didn't stop her. I didn't say a word. Because I wanted her to.

"Seraphina," said Io, from the lane.

Not loudly. Just her name.

"It's pointing at my son," said Seraphina. Her voice shook. The thread of fire hung in the air between her hand and the stone, a hair's breadth from the black surface. "Mother. It's pointing at my son."

"I know."

"Somebody made it to find him."

"Maybe," said Io. "Maybe somebody made it to find all of us. Maybe it's only an ear and somebody else is listening through it. I don't know yet. Neither do you." She paused. "And it's the only way Selvane has of hearing Benjamin sing. Cut it, and she's alone in the dark again. Wherever she is."

Seraphina didn't move.

"Power's the easy part," said Io. "Do you remember?"

For a long moment nobody breathed. The fire hung there in the air of the lower court, white-gold and humming, a hair from the stone.

"The hard part," said Seraphina, very quietly, "is having it and not using it. Every day. For the rest of your life."

And she closed her hand.

The thread drew back up into her palm, like a snail into its shell. She stood there by the gate with her fist clenched against her chest, shaking, and didn't cut anything.

I let out a breath I'd been holding since the beach.

* * *

Benjamin covered the stone with his coat.

He asked it first. I want that written down. He crouched beside the washtub and said, very softly, the way you'd speak to a nervous horse, "I'm going to put this over you for a while. You can still hear. You just can't see. Is that all right?" And then he sang to it, the first verse of the soldiers' song, low and slow, the way he does every night. And the humming dropped, and steadied, and under the salt-white coat the platter turned back, slowly, all the way around, until it was pointing west again.

"Davren," said Io. She'd come back as far as the gate, but no further. "Today. Whatever he's doing. And Cassia. And Eleanor, and the Castellan, if it'll come." She looked at Seraphina. "And Uriah. And Lex."

"I'll fold them," I said.

"No," said Io. "You'll walk through the gate, the ordinary way, and you'll take Seraphina, and she'll take the baby, and you'll go home and sit in Helena's kitchen until I tell you otherwise." She took a breath. "Please."

So we did.

* * *

That night, little Uriah slept between us, which he hasn't done since he was very small. He slept the way he always does, flat on his back with his arms flung up over his head, as if he's just won something. His hands were cool. Ordinary. A baby's hands.

Seraphina lay awake beside him for a long time. I could feel her not sleeping.

"I wanted to," she said, into the dark. "So much. I wanted to cut it into a hundred pieces."

"So did I."

"I know. I could feel you wanting it." She was quiet a while. "You didn't stop me."

"No."

"Mother did."

"No," I said. "You did. She just said your name."

Seraphina didn't answer. But after a while she reached across our son in the dark, and found my hand, and held it.

Her palm was warm. Not burning. Just warm. The way it always is.

"Borrow?" she said.

It was the second time she'd turned it around. I knew what she was asking for.

"Take," I said.

And we lay there like that, with our hands joined across little Uriah, and the banked fire in both of us leaning toward each other instead of toward anything else, until we slept.