Chapter 63: Destroy or Use

My father called the family together two nights later, in the south solar, after supper.

Not the Council. He was very clear about that. The Council would hear it, and the Council would vote, because the stone was a thing that touched every god in Avarra whose seed Carol and I were carrying, and you don't decide something like that for a thousand gods in your own sitting room. But before the Council, he wanted the family.

"Because it's our son it's pointing at," he said to my mother, at supper. "And our daughter. And our grandson. And I want to hear what everybody in this house thinks before I hear what everybody in the world thinks."

"You want to have the argument first," said my mother. "So that you've already lost it by the time you get to the Council."

"Yes," said my father. "That's exactly what I want."

* * *

The south solar is the warmest room in the old keep after the little kitchen. It has a long low window over the river, and a hearth big enough to stand in, and Grandpa's basket of wooden horses beside it, and too many chairs, none of which match. By eight o'clock every one of the chairs was full and people were sitting on the window seat and the hearthrug and the arms of other people's chairs.

My father, by the fire. My mother beside him, with her hands folded and her dry look on. Adriana on his other side, with Mirelle asleep against her and Faelan pretending to be asleep on the rug at her feet with his ledger under his cheek. Lexander and Io on the long settle, Io with her shoes off. Thor on the floor with her back against the settle and her hammer across her knees. Aurelia in the plain chair by the window, the one nobody else ever sits in. Carol in the big chair by the hearth, with Ignatius on the arm of it. Seraphina and I on the window seat. Roderic, on a footstool, too tall for it. Iselle beside him, on the floor, with her knees drawn up and her blue scarf around her shoulders. Mary at the little writing table in the corner, with her black book open and her pen already wet. Davren, who'd come through from Westmere with a leather case of tuning forks under his arm and wouldn't put it down.

Little Uriah was in the little kitchen with Helena and the kettle and Fenrir across the door.

And at five past eight, there were three knocks at the solar door.

"Come in," said my father.

Loki came in.

He was carrying a cup of his own pine-smoke tea, which he'd made himself in the little kitchen without asking, and an apple. He looked around the room at every single chair being full, and smiled very widely, and turned a hard wooden chair from the wall around backward and sat on it with his arms folded across the back, the way he always sits at Council.

Thor sneezed.

"Bless you," said Loki.

"It's your tea."

"I know," said Loki. "That's why I brought it."

* * *

My father told it all again, for the ones who hadn't been at Westmere. The beach. The flicker. The two notes, the Flame and the seeds. The Castellan reading two hands in the stone. Eleanor's own ward-writing, learned off the copy, cut through Selvane's old harbor-ear like a road through a field. Someone at the other end, listening, coming and going in the night. The closing mark at noon. Selvane saying thank you.

When he finished, nobody said anything for a while.

Then Thor said, "Smash it."

She said it the way she says most things. Loudly, and as if there could be no possible further discussion.

"Thor..."

"No. You asked. That's my answer. Smash it. Grind it up. Throw the bits in the sea in a hundred different places." She thumped the hammer on her knees. "It's a dog for hunting my nephew. My nephew. You don't keep a dog that's been trained to hunt your nephew, Uriah. You don't study it. You don't put a nice little door on it. You put it down."

"Thank you, Thor," said my father.

"I'm agreeing with myself," said Thor. "Loudly."

"I'd noticed."

* * *

And then, to my great surprise, my mother agreed with her.

"I'm a healer," she said. She said it quietly, in her dry voice, the one she uses to read aloud, and the whole room turned to listen, because my mother doesn't speak in family arguments until she's decided, and when she's decided, she's usually right. "I've spent twenty-five years at sickbeds, and Aurelia taught me most of what I know, and the first thing she taught me is that you don't cut what you can heal." She looked across the room at Aurelia, who inclined her head. "And the second thing she taught me is that some things can't be healed. They can only be cut out. Before they spread." She looked back at my father. "This was made to find my grandson. Somebody sat down with a copy of Eleanor's plan and learned her whole hand, line by line, so that they could cut a hunting-song into a lonely old harbor-ear. That's not a mistake, Uriah. That's not a misunderstanding. That's a sickness. I'd cut it out."

"And Selvane?" said Aurelia, gently, from the window.

My mother didn't look away.

"I know," she said. "I know. That's why I'm not sure. But you asked what I thought, and that's what I think."

* * *

Aurelia didn't argue. Aurelia almost never argues. She just told us, quietly, what the stone was before.

"She lit a lamp for boats," she said. "For a very long time. On a pier, in a little harbor on the other side of the sea, she lit a lamp every night for fishing boats coming home in the dark, and she listened for them, and she made that stone to listen with. It's the oldest part of her. It's older than her name." She folded her hands. "And now it's the only way she can hear anybody singing to her. Benjamin sings to her every night. Every night for two months. It's the only kind thing that's happened to her in a hundred years." She looked at Thor, and then at my mother. "If you break it, you won't be breaking his dog. You'll be breaking her ear. And she'll be alone in the dark again, wherever she's hiding, and nobody will be singing."

Thor's jaw worked. She didn't say anything.

My mother closed her eyes for a moment.

"Yes," she said. "That's the part I can't get past either."

* * *

Lexander hadn't said a word.

He sat on the long settle with his hands on his knees and his one eye on the fire, the way he sits at the chessboard in the boat, and everybody waited for him, because when Lexander speaks in an argument he's usually been ten moves ahead of everyone else the whole time.

"It's information," he said at last.

His voice is very deep. It always surprises me how gently he uses it.

"Every piece of the board is information," he said. "A move tells you something about the person who made it. This tells us something. It tells us he wants the Flame and the seeds. Together. It tells us he has someone who can read Eleanor's hand nearly as well as she does. It tells us he listens. Patiently. At night." He turned his head and looked at my father with his one eye. "And it tells us he thinks we don't know. Or it did, until Eleanor closed it."

"So?" said Thor.

"So a man who thinks you don't know he's listening," said Lexander, "will believe what he hears."

* * *

And that was when Loki sat up.

He'd been eating his apple, slowly, backward on his chair, watching everyone with his bright green eyes and saying nothing at all, which is so unlike Loki that I should have known something was coming. Now he put the apple core on the floor beside him, very carefully, as if it were a chess piece, and leaned his chin on his folded arms on the back of the chair, and smiled.

"Lie to it," he said.

Nobody said anything.

"Don't smash it," said Loki. "Don't keep it shut. Don't sit in a room studying it while Davren goes grayer. Lie to it." He spread his hands. "You've got a man on the other side of the sea, putting his ear to a stone every night, listening for two notes. The Flame and the seeds. And you've got," he pointed at Davren, "a very clever man with a case full of brass sticks, who found both of those notes in one morning and can make them ring whenever he likes."

Davren clutched his leather case a little tighter.

"So ring them," said Loki. "Somewhere else. Somewhere they're not. Open Eleanor's little door for an hour, one night, and let him hear the Flame and the seeds where there isn't a single soul. Let him chase that." He grinned. "The best lie isn't the one you tell somebody. It's the one you let them tell themselves. You don't say a word. You just ring a chord in an empty room, and you let him decide what it means."

"Lie," said Carol.

She said it very quietly. But the whole room heard it.

Loki turned his head to look at her. He stopped smiling.

"Yes, little spark," he said. "Lie."

* * *

I want to be fair to everybody in that room. So I'm going to write down Carol's side exactly the way she said it, because she said it better than I could.

"That's what he does," said Carol.

She was sitting forward in the big chair with her hands clasped between her knees. Ignatius had his hand on her shoulder. She didn't seem to notice.

"That's all he does," she said. "That's the whole of him. He asks for things, and the asking's a lie, because it isn't really a question. He sends letters full of beautiful words that don't mean anything. He sends a song that sounds like my name and isn't. He sends a gift that's a dog. He lets people tell themselves he's kind." She looked around the room. "We're not like that. That's the only thing we've got that he hasn't. We ask properly. We mean what we say. When we say no, it's no, and when we say yes, it's yes. Rysa taught us. Every one of those rules has two people in it." She swallowed. "If we start lying to him, even to a stone, even to a keyhole... then what are we? We're just the other side of the same board."

Nobody said anything for a long moment.

I looked at my father. He was looking at Carol, and his face was very still, and I knew that look. It was the one he'd worn at the Council, the night Thor wanted to sail.

He agreed with her. I could see it. Everything in him agreed with her.

And then Loki said, quite softly, "Can I tell you something about lying, Carol?"

Carol looked at him.

"I'm the god of it," said Loki. "Among other things. Mischief. Fire. And the space between what you said and what you meant." He wasn't smiling. "So I know a bit about it. And here's the thing nobody ever tells you. Rysa's rules have two people in them. You're right. Name, Want, Permission, Stop, Friend. Every one of them is for somebody on the other side of the door. Somebody who's asking."

He nodded at the window. West. The sea.

"He isn't asking you anything," said Loki. "He's not at your door. He's not knocking three times and waiting to hear come in. He's lying on his belly in the dark with his ear pressed to a crack in your wall, listening to you breathe, so that one day he can come in without knocking and take your nephew out of his cradle." He let that sit. "There isn't a rule in the world that says you owe the truth to a keyhole, little spark. There isn't a rule that says you have to stand on the other side of the crack and whisper exactly where you sleep."

Carol didn't say anything.

"And there's another thing," said Loki. "I've lied to a great many people. Most of them I shouldn't have. I lied to my own family once, a very long time ago, and somebody I loved died of it, and I've spent a very long time since then finding out what that costs." He picked up his cup of pine-smoke tea and looked into it. "So believe me when I tell you. I know the difference. There's the lie you tell to get something. And there's the lie you tell to keep somebody you love from being found." He drank. "One of those is what he does. The other's just shutting the curtains."

* * *

It went quiet.

The fire popped. Mirelle muttered something in her sleep against Adriana's side. On the rug, Faelan, who had very obviously not been asleep for some time, had his eyes wide open and his pencil moving.

And then, from the floor beside Roderic, somebody said, "May I say something?"

It was Iselle.

She'd hardly ever spoken in a family gathering. She sat with her knees drawn up and her blue scarf around her shoulders and her right hand open on the floor beside her, palm up, the way it's been ever since the night of the season reports.

"You can say no," she said. "It's not my family."

"It is," said Roderic, before anyone else could. Then went bright red.

My father smiled at her. "Go on, Iselle."

"Nobody lies to him," said Iselle.

Everyone looked at her.

"That's what I wanted to say. Nobody in the golden city has ever lied to him. Not once. Not in my whole life." She looked at her open hand. "Everybody's too frightened. You don't lie to someone who can take hold of you. And the Chained wouldn't. They love him." She was quiet a moment. "So he doesn't know what it looks like. He's never had to. Everything anyone has ever told him has been true, because they were too afraid for it not to be." She looked up. "I lied to him once. This autumn. On the back of the black page. I told him nobody here could hold anything. That he'd dreamed it."

"I remember," said Carol softly.

"He believed me," said Iselle. "Because he's never been lied to. So he doesn't know how to tell." She hesitated. "But you should know. When he finds out, and he will, one day... he won't be angry. He doesn't get angry. He'll be interested." She shivered, very slightly, inside her blue scarf. "That's worse."

* * *

Seraphina hadn't said anything all evening.

She'd sat beside me on the window seat with her hands in her lap and listened to every single word. And now, when Iselle stopped speaking, I felt her shift beside me. Felt her decide.

"I said I'd decide what I thought," she said.

Everybody turned.

"Two days ago. I told Garrick to go and find out who made it, and come home and tell me, and then I'd decide." She looked at Carol. "I've decided. But I want to ask Loki one thing first."

"Ask," said Loki.

"Where?" said Seraphina. "If you ring the Flame and the seeds somewhere else. Where does the lie point?"

Loki smiled. It wasn't his usual smile. It was smaller, and older, and a little sad.

"Somewhere with nobody in it," he said. "I'd never point a hound at a house with a child in it, Seraphina. Not even somebody else's. I've had a hound pointed at mine." He set down his cup. "An empty island. A bare rock in the sea. The top of a mountain where nothing lives but goats, and the goats can look after themselves. Somewhere he'll waste a month and a ship and a great deal of his temper, and find nothing but wind."

Seraphina looked at him for a long time.

"Then yes," she said. "I'd lie to him. For that." She turned to Carol, beside the hearth. "Carol. I know. I know it's what he does. But Loki's right. He's not knocking. He's at the crack in the wall, listening for my son." Her voice didn't shake at all. "And I'll shut the curtains in his face every night for the rest of my life if I have to. Gladly."

Carol looked at her. Then at Iselle. Then at Loki. Then at me.

I didn't say anything. I didn't have to. She was in the twin-room, and she knew exactly what I thought, because I'd been thinking it since the beach.

"I hate it," said Carol finally.

"I know," said Seraphina.

"I hate it. I'm going to go on hating it." Carol took a long breath. "But a lie to keep a baby from being found is just shutting the curtains." She looked at Loki. "Isn't it."

"That's all it is," said Loki gently.

"Then I won't stop you." She sat back in the big chair. Ignatius's hand tightened on her shoulder. "But I want a rule. You don't point it anywhere there's a single living soul. Not a shepherd. Not a fisherman. Not a goat if you can help it. And you don't do it for winning. Only for keeping."

"Agreed," said Loki at once. "Goats included."

* * *

And then Davren, who'd been holding his case of tuning forks on his knees all evening like a man holding a sleeping cat, cleared his throat.

"It won't work," he said.

Everyone turned to look at him.

"Not with forks," said Davren apologetically. "I'm sorry. I can make both notes ring. I can make them ring together. But it'll sound like two brass forks ringing together. Do you see? It'll be thin. The stone didn't just hear two notes, at Westmere. It heard the shape of them. Where the seeds were. How they moved. The way the needle pointed between Carol and Garrick, not at either of them. It heard two people, standing together, carrying half each." He shook his head. "Whoever's listening at the other end will hear two forks and know it's forks. Anybody would. I would."

"So we need something better than forks," said Loki. He didn't sound discouraged at all. He sounded delighted.

"We'd need the real shape," said Davren. "Or something so close to it that nobody could tell."

And then everybody in the room, very slowly, turned to look at me.

I knew what they were thinking. I'd been thinking it too, for about a minute. I've got half the seeds. I can fold space. I can borrow anything I've ever been near, including whatever it is Loki does when he wears somebody else's face. And I've got a sister I've shared a room with since before we could walk, whose half of the seeds reaches for mine every time I open them, like two halves of a song.

"You'd need a Carol," I said slowly. "Something that sounds like Carol. Standing next to me."

"A false Carol," said Loki. His green eyes were very bright. "Out of folded space and borrowed signals. And the real Garrick standing next to it, ringing true."

Carol looked at me.

I looked back.

"I'd have to borrow you," I said. "Your shape. Your half. Everything it would need to sound like you. I couldn't do it without asking."

"I know," said Carol.

She was quiet for a long time. The fire popped. On the rug, Faelan had stopped pretending to be asleep entirely and was sitting up with his ledger open, pencil poised.

Then my sister held out her hand to me, across the hearthrug, palm up. The way Seraphina does. The way Rysa taught us when we were two.

"Borrow?" I said.

"Take," said Carol. "But you bring it back. All of it. And you don't let it say anything I wouldn't."

"I won't."

"And it doesn't get my blue shawl."

"Agreed," said Loki. "Shawl excluded."

* * *

My father had listened to all of it without saying a word. Now he stood up, and looked around the room, at every one of us, and I saw that he'd lost the argument exactly the way my mother had said he would, and that he didn't mind at all.

"All right," he said. "Here's what we'll take to the Council tomorrow. We don't break the stone. We don't use it to win anything. We use it once, if the Council agrees, to keep somebody from being found. Pointed at nowhere. Nobody living at the end of it. Not even a goat." He looked at Loki. "And if it goes wrong, at any point, for any reason, you stop. And you tell me. Before you try to be clever about it."

"I'm always clever about it," said Loki. "That's the problem."

"I know," said my father. "That's why I said it."

* * *

The Council voted the next morning. Thirty-four to six. Thor voted against, on the grounds that she'd still rather smash it, and then went and found Loki afterward and told him that if he needed anybody to stand on an empty rock in the middle of the sea looking threatening, she was available.

Mary wrote it that night.

The family met. Thor: smash it. Evelyn: cut it out. Aurelia: it is Selvane's ear. Lexander: it is information. Loki: lie to it. Carol: that is what he does. Loki: not to a keyhole. Iselle: no one has ever lied to him. Seraphina: then yes, for that.

Carol's rule: nowhere with a living soul. Not for winning. Only for keeping.

Council: 34 to 6. Carol lent herself to Garrick. Shawl excluded.

And in the green laundry ledger, on Loki's page, under WHAT DO YOU DO?, where he'd written Mischief, fire, and the space between months ago, Faelan added very carefully in pencil:

ALSO SHUTTING CURTAINS.