Chapter 65: Westmere Watch

Carol's half came home on the second evening.

She was in the little kitchen when it happened, helping Helena shell peas, which she does when she wants her hands busy and her head quiet. I was across the table with little Uriah in my lap. And all at once she stopped, with a pod open in her fingers, and her face went very still.

"Oh," she said.

I felt it too. Through the twin-room. The fold in my coat, which had been going thinner and thinner for two days like snow going off a roof, went thin all at once, and something warm and bright and many-colored slipped out of it and went across the table to her, quick and quiet, the way a cat comes in through a window it knows.

Carol put the pea pod down. She put her hand flat on her chest, under her collarbone, where her half lives.

"All of it?" I said.

She was quiet for a moment, feeling. Counting, I think. The rivers. The seasons. The first cold morning you don't mind.

"All of it," said Carol.

Helena, at the stove, said nothing at all. But she put a honey biscuit on the table in front of each of us, and one in front of little Uriah, who ate his with great seriousness and then said "No" to the empty plate, which is his favorite word now.

* * *

On the sixth morning after Blackstack, I went to Westmere.

I go every eighth day. My father started it in the summer, after the fleet left. Give Tamar my best. And look. It's been every eighth day ever since, and the Castellan logs me out of the Westmere gate with the same two words every time. Look carefully. But that week my father sent me two days early, at five in the morning, with a cup of Helena's tea in one hand and nothing in the other.

"Loki says he'll come and look," he said, in the little kitchen, with the lamp still lit. "At Blackstack. And Loki's usually right about what people will do. He's only wrong about what they'll do afterward." He turned his cup around in his hands. "If Malachar sends ships to look at an empty rock, they'll come back past Westmere. Close enough to see the harbor. Close enough to see whether anybody's watching." He looked at me. "Go and help Tamar watch. And whatever you see, don't do anything about it until you've counted to a thousand."

"A thousand?"

"Tamar will explain."

* * *

Tamar was on the sea tower.

Westmere Hold has a tower on its seaward corner, older than the rest of it, round and squat and gray, with a flat roof and a low wall and a view of the whole western sea from the outer shoals to the horizon. There's a little stone hut on the roof, out of the wind, with a stove and a stool and a shelf, and on the shelf is Tamar's watch book. It's been there since the fleet came in the summer. Tamar has written in it every hour of every day since. Or someone has. When he sleeps, which isn't often, Dunmore writes in it, or one of Dunmore's crew, or Tamar's father.

He was sitting on the stool when I came up the last of the stairs, with a long brass spyglass across his knees and the watch book open on the wall beside him. He looked the way he always looks now. Square-jawed and tired and very steady, like a man who's been holding a door for a long time and has stopped noticing his arms ache.

"Garrick." He didn't get up. "Your father sent word. You're early."

"He thinks something's coming."

"It's here," said Tamar. He handed me the spyglass. "Look west. A little south. On the line."

* * *

I looked.

At first there was nothing. The sea, gray and wrinkled in the early light, going away and away to where it met the sky. The outer shoals, a line of white where the waves broke on the sandbars a mile out. Gulls. A couple of Westmere's fishing boats, already out past the harbor mouth with their brown sails up.

And then, right on the line of the horizon, where the gray sea met the gray sky, I saw them.

Three small dark marks. Like three fingernail clippings standing up out of the sea.

Sails. Black ones.

"They came up over the edge at the seventh hour," said Tamar. "Just after first light. Hull-down. You can only see the tops of the masts. They haven't moved since." He took the book off the wall and showed me. In his neat square hand, under the date:

7th hour. 3 sails. W by SW. On the line. Holding.

"They came from the southwest," said Tamar. "From the direction of your rock." He looked at me. "Loki said they'd go there first."

"Then they've been," I said.

"Then they've been," said Tamar. "And found nothing. And on the way home, they've come to stand on the edge of the world and look at us."

* * *

We watched them for an hour.

They didn't move. That was the strange thing. Three black sails, on the very edge of the sea, as still as if somebody had painted them there. No closer. No farther. Just standing.

I could feel it, a little. Not the cold attention. That was shut behind Eleanor's mark. But something like it. A long, patient looking. Like a cat sitting outside a mouse hole, not doing anything at all.

"They're waiting," I said.

"Yes."

"For what?"

"For us," said Tamar. He took the glass back, looked through it for a long moment, and set it down. "They want to see what we do. Whether we ring the bell. Whether we light the lamp on the north pier. Whether the fishing boats come running home. Whether a storm turns up out of a clear sky, or a dragon, or Lady Thor on the harbor wall with her hammer." He wrote something in the book. "Whether anybody's frightened."

"So what do we do?"

Tamar picked up his cup of tea, which had gone cold an hour ago, and drank it anyway.

"Nothing," he said.

* * *

He explained it while the sails stood on the horizon.

"My father taught me," he said. "When I was small. In the war, before your father came, the raiders used to come up the coast. Not Varrick's. Just ordinary raiders. Thieves with boats. And they'd do this. Sit out on the line, just where you could see them, and wait. And count." He tapped the book. "How long it took the harbor to ring its bell. How long before the boats came home. How many men came running down to the wall, and how fast, and whether they had swords. Every harbor on this coast that rang its bell the first morning got raided the third."

"Why?"

"Because the raiders had learned everything they needed. How long they had. Where the men would be. How frightened everyone was." Tamar looked at the three black marks on the line. "My father didn't ring the bell. He sent the boats out fishing. He sat on the harbor wall with a line in the water. He let them count to nothing." He shrugged. "They came three mornings running, and they never learned a thing, and on the fourth morning they went somewhere else."

I thought about that.

"Dad said not to do anything until I'd counted to a thousand," I said.

Tamar almost smiled. It's the closest I've ever seen him come.

"He got that from my father too," he said. "They were on the harbor wall together, the first winter. Your father wanted to sink every raider on the coast. Mine told him to count to a thousand first." He closed the book. "Your father's never told anyone that. I don't think he knows I know."

* * *

So Westmere did nothing.

I've never seen anything so hard. Or so beautifully done.

The fishing boats went out. All of them, the way they do every morning, brown sails and blue sails and old Mother Kitto's son Hobb in his tarred dinghy with the Lockwarden's long gray coat on, because he says it's the warmest coat in Westmere and it would be a shame to waste it. They went out past the harbor mouth and out to the near grounds, inside the shoals, and dropped their nets, and sat there in the gray morning as if there were nothing in the world but fish.

Dunmore's crews unloaded the grain lighter at the quay. Somebody was whistling. The bell in the harbor chapel rang for the eighth hour, and only the eighth hour, the way it always does.

And on the harbor wall, right at the very end, in plain view of the whole western sea, Edric Vale sat on an upturned bucket with a fishing line in the water, and his hat pulled down over his eyes, catching nothing, the way he has every morning since he handed his stewardship to his son.

"He's very bad at it," said Tamar, watching his father through the glass with an expression I couldn't read. "Fishing. He's never once caught anything off that wall. Not in three winters."

"Then why does he do it?"

"Because a man fishing on a wall isn't frightened," said Tamar. "Anybody looking can see that."

* * *

At the eighth hour and four minutes, the sails went away.

I didn't see them go, exactly. I looked away for a moment, to watch a gull, and when I looked back, the line of the horizon was empty. Just the gray sea and the gray sky and nothing standing on the edge between them.

Tamar wrote in the book.

8th hour, 4 minutes. Gone. W by SW. 64 minutes on the line. No answer given.

He underlined the last four words.

"They'll come back tomorrow," he said.

"How do you know?"

"Because we didn't give them anything." He closed the book and put it back on the shelf. "A man who comes to count, and goes home with nothing, always comes back to count again. He thinks he must have missed something." He stood up and stretched his back, the way men do who've sat on stools for a whole winter. "Stay. Your father won't mind. I've a bed in the Hold. My wife will feed you. She's stopped throwing shoes at people. Mostly."

* * *

They came back the next morning.

Seventh hour, just after first light, the way Tamar had said. Three black sails, on the line, west by southwest.

Only this time they didn't stop on the line.

They came closer.

Slowly. So slowly you could hardly see them move, unless you looked away for a count of a hundred and then looked back. The tops of the masts first. Then the sails, all of them, black and square and furled at the top. Then, around the middle of the morning, the long low black hulls, with the pale script crawling on their sides that Eleanor says is her own ward-writing written backward. Closer and closer, until they were standing out there just beyond the outer shoals, a mile out, where the sixty ships had anchored in the summer.

The bell in the harbor chapel rang for the ninth hour. Only the ninth hour.

"Tamar," I said.

"I see them."

"They're at the shoals."

"I see them," said Tamar. He hadn't moved off the stool. He had the book open on his knee and his pencil in his hand. "They're not past the shoals."

"What happens if they come past the shoals?"

Tamar wrote something in the book.

"Then we answer," he said. "Then the lamp goes up on the north pier, and your father comes the fast way, and Lady Thor stands on the wall, and the world serpent comes up out of the harbor mouth, and I ring the chapel bell myself until it cracks." He looked at me. "The shoals are the door, Garrick. That's the line. Everybody in Westmere knows it, and everybody on those ships knows it too, by now. They can stand on our doorstep all day. They can look in our windows. We won't come out." He turned back to the sea. "But if they put one foot over the step, they'll find out what's inside."

* * *

It was the longest morning of my life.

Out on the near grounds, inside the shoals, the fishing boats sat with their nets down, a mile from three black ships, and nobody came home. I watched Hobb Kitto stand up in his dinghy, in the Lockwarden's long gray coat, and look out at the nearest black hull for a long time. And then sit down again, and haul in his net, and go on fishing.

On the wall, Edric Vale put a fresh worm on his hook.

I counted to a thousand. Twice. Then I counted to a thousand in my head in Kethran, which Iselle had been teaching Roderic, and Roderic had been teaching me, badly. Then I counted the stones in the tower wall. Then I counted the gulls.

Tamar didn't count anything. He just sat. Every quarter of an hour he wrote a line in the book in his neat square hand. Holding. Holding. Holding.

"How do you do this?" I said at last.

Tamar didn't look away from the sea.

"A harbor's mostly waiting," he said. "That's all it is, really. A place where people wait for boats. My mother waited for my father every night of the war. Mother Kitto waited twenty-four days on a barrel for Hobb. Selvane waited a hundred years with a lamp." He wrote another Holding. "You get good at it. Or you go mad. Most people in Westmere got good at it."

* * *

At eleven and twelve minutes, the black ships turned around.

All three together. Smoothly, without hurry, the way a weathervane turns when the wind changes. They put their bows to the west, and their long low hulls to us, and went away. Not fast. Not slow. They just went. Past the shoals, out into the gray, smaller and smaller, the hulls first, then the sails, then the very tops of the masts. And then they went over the edge of the world, and the horizon was empty.

Tamar wrote it down.

11th hour, 12 minutes. Turned W. At the shoals 2 hours, 19 minutes. Did not cross. No answer given.

He underlined the last four words again. Then he put down his pencil and sat very still for a while with his eyes shut.

"They'll come back tomorrow," I said.

Tamar opened his eyes.

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe not. They've been to the rock and found nothing. They've been to the line and found nothing. They've been to the door and found a man fishing." He picked up the cold tea. "Now they'll go home and tell somebody, and somebody'll sit in a gold room and wonder what it means."

"Loki said wondering's bad for people like him."

"Loki's right," said Tamar. He drank the cold tea. "It means they've started counting the wrong things."

* * *

They didn't come back.

I stayed two more days at Westmere, and slept in a narrow bed in the Hold under a window that looked at the sea, and ate Tamar's wife's fish stew, which was very good, and was not thrown at even once. And every morning at the seventh hour I went up the stairs of the sea tower with a cup of tea, and Tamar was already there with the glass and the book, and we watched the line together. And every morning it was empty.

7th hour. Nothing on the line. Holding.

On the third night, Benjamin came up the tower stairs with the white storm-shell in his hand.

He'd been sitting by the washtub in the lower court, the way he does every night, singing to the stone. And Selvane had sung back. And then, he said, she'd done something she'd never done before. She'd told him something. A long something. In Kethran. With pauses, as if she were looking at it while she spoke.

"She saw them," said Benjamin. "The three ships. She's somewhere on the coast down there, south of the golden city. She saw them go out, a week ago. And she followed them, a little, the way she can. Along the water." He turned the shell in his hand. "They went to Blackstack."

Tamar and I looked at each other.

"They went all the way around it," said Benjamin. "Twice. And then a boat went ashore, on the one flat ledge, the one you stood on. And a man got out." He paused. "A tall man. In gray. Barefoot."

I went cold.

"The Lockwarden," said Tamar quietly.

"She says he walked all over it," said Benjamin. "Every bit. Slowly. Like somebody looking for footprints. And then he sat down on the ledge, where you'd stood, for a long time. A whole afternoon. Just sitting. Looking at the sea." He swallowed. "And then, before he got back in the boat... he lit a lamp."

Nobody said anything.

"A little one," said Benjamin. "Just a ship's lamp. He set it down on the ledge, in a crack in the rock where the wind couldn't get it, and lit it, and left it there. And got back in the boat. And they went away." He held up the shell. "She says it's still burning. She can see it from where she is, on a clear night, if she goes out far enough. A little light, all on its own, on a rock in the middle of the sea."

* * *

I didn't know what it meant. I still don't, really.

Tamar thought it was a message. I know it was you. I know it was empty. I came anyway. Benjamin thought it was something kinder than that. A lamp is what you leave for someone you're expecting home. Loki, when I told him the next day, laughed for a very long time, and then stopped laughing very suddenly, and said, "Oh, he's good," and then went off by himself to the end of the east wall and didn't come back for an hour.

But Mirelle, when I told her at supper, just nodded, very satisfied, and went back to her soup.

"Good," she said. "Now it's somewhere."

* * *

Mary wrote it that night.

Westmere. Three black sails on the line, 64 minutes. Next morning at the shoals, 2 hours 19. Did not cross. No answer given. Edric Vale fished.

They went to Blackstack and found nothing. The Lockwarden walked it, sat a whole afternoon, and left a lamp.

Mirelle says: Now it's somewhere.

And under that, in Tamar's neat square hand, because he'd come through the gate with me for supper and Mary had let him have the pen, which she almost never does for anybody outside the family:

Holding.