Chapter 79: Double Agent

My father asked her first. He'd said he would, and he did.

He asked her in the little kitchen, after breakfast, when the plates were cleared and Helena had gone out to the herb beds with her basket and her back to the window, which is how Helena gives people a room without leaving it. Carol was still at the table, and Roderic, and me. My father had asked Iselle whether she wanted us gone. She'd said no.

"I want to answer him," said my father. "The page. Every night. With something he'll believe and nothing that's true. So that he keeps asking you, where we can see it, and not somebody else, somewhere we can't." He folded his hands on the table. "But it's your page. It's your hand he knows. It's your name at the bottom. I won't do it without you, and I won't do it if you say no. And if you say yes now and no next week, it stops next week."

Iselle looked at him for a long time.

"Who would write it?" she said.

"Loki."

I watched her hand. It closed. Then she opened it, on purpose, the way she does.

"The god of lies," she said.

"Yes."

"I grew up in a city made of lies," said Iselle quietly. "Every room. Every smile. Every you're safe here, little sister." She looked down at her open hand. "And you want me to let the god of lies write in my hand."

"I want you to meet him first," said my father. "And ask him anything you like. And then decide." He stood up. "He's in the map room. He's been there since six. He hasn't been told what for. I asked him to wait."

* * *

Iselle asked me to come. And Roderic. And then, at the foot of the west tower stairs, she stopped and asked Carol too.

"It's your where," she said. "It's about you. You should hear what he's going to say about you."

Carol looked at her for a moment. Then she smiled.

"Yes," she said. "I'd like that very much."

So the four of us climbed the hundred and twelve steps to the top of the old west tower, Iselle first, with her hand open on the rail.

* * *

Loki was sitting backward on the one chair in the map room, with his arms folded across the back of it, eating an apple. His pine-smoke tea was steaming on the windowsill beside him. The maps lay all over the floor around him, every road and river and silver gate-circle in Avarra, and Severin's silk Kethra over the old bare stone in the west, and the tiny ink dot of Blackstack in between.

He looked up when we came in. He looked at Iselle, and at her open hand, and at the three of us behind her. And something in his face changed. Just slightly. The way a cat's face changes when it realizes the game is about to be something other than what it thought.

"Ah," he said. "It's not about the stone."

"No," said Iselle.

Loki put the apple down on the sill. He got up off the chair, turned it the right way around, and sat on it properly, with his hands on his knees. I've never seen him do that before. Not once in my life.

"Then you'd better tell me," he said. "And I'd better listen."

* * *

She told him. All of it. She didn't show him the page; she didn't need to. She'd said the lines so many times in four days that she knew them the way you know a song you hate.

Loki listened without moving. He didn't make a single joke. When she got to She sings slower when the mill is slow, he closed his eyes for a moment. When she got to She would come all that way. Alone. For you, he looked at Carol, very quickly, and then away.

When Iselle had finished, she said, "Uriah wants you to write the answers. In my name. Every night. Things he'll believe that aren't true."

"Yes," said Loki. "I'd guessed."

"I don't trust you."

"No," said Loki. "You shouldn't. I'm the god of lies." He said it without any smile at all. "Ask me anything you like. I'll tell you the truth. Then you can decide whether you believe me."

Iselle looked at him.

"Have you ever lied to anyone in this family?" she said.

"No," said Loki.

"Not once?"

"Not once. Not in twenty years." He nodded toward the window, where the castle roofs fell away toward the river. "It's the only rule I've got that isn't about carpentry. I lie to emperors and stones and gods who keep other gods in chains, and I'm extremely good at it. I've never once lied to anybody who'd let me sit at their table." He looked at Carol. "Ask her."

"It's true," said Carol. "He tells you the truth so plainly it's rude. When I was nine, I asked him whether my drawing of a horse was good, and he said, No, but the horse looks very happy."

"It did look happy," said Loki. "It looked like a happy potato."

Iselle didn't laugh. But her mouth moved.

"Why?" she said. "Why don't you lie to them?"

Loki was quiet for a moment.

"Because nobody ever let me sit at their table before," he said. "Not for a very long time. And when somebody finally did, I found I didn't want to bring any of it in with me." He looked at his hands on his knees. "A lie is a thing you carry. It's heavy. I carry a great many of them, everywhere I go. I put them all down at the door of the little kitchen." He looked up at her. "I'd like to put yours down too. That's the truth. You can believe it or not."

* * *

Iselle stood in the middle of the map room, among all the roads and rivers, for a long time.

Then she said, "I have conditions."

"Good," said Loki. "I'd think much less of you if you didn't."

"Five," said Iselle. She held up her hand. Her right hand. Open. And she counted them on her fingers, one at a time, the way Rysa counts the rules. The way Faelan does.

"Name," she said. Thumb. "Whatever goes back goes in my hand. My own writing. Not yours copying mine. You write it on a slate, and I read it, and then I write it on the page myself. He knows my hand. And it's my name at the bottom."

"Yes," said Loki.

"Want." First finger. "Nothing about my mother. Nothing about the river. Nothing that makes him want to go and look at either of them. And nothing about anywhere a living soul is. Carol's rule. From the stone." She glanced at Carol. "Nowhere with anyone in it."

"Yes."

"Permission." Second finger. "I read every line before it goes. If I say no to a line, it doesn't go. I don't have to tell you why."

"Yes."

"Stop." Third finger. "Any night I want, it stops. No reason. And you don't try to talk me out of it."

"Yes," said Loki. "Though I might sulk. Quietly. In another room."

"That's allowed," said Iselle.

She looked at her last finger. The little one. She held it up for a moment without saying anything.

"And the fifth?" said Loki.

Iselle's face went slowly pink.

"I don't know how to do the fifth one," she said. "Faelan does it. He says you have to ask first. Before you know. So you can find out." She looked at Loki over her open hand. "I'm supposed to ask you. Aren't I. If I'm going to let you write in my name."

Loki looked at her for a very long time.

Then he stood up. He came across the map room, stepping carefully between Lyradon and the southern towns, and stopped in front of her. And then he crouched. Down. All the way. Until his face was lower than hers. The way my father does. The way Sahrun did, for Faelan, in the round room with the rain on the sill.

"You don't have to ask me," he said. "I'll ask you. That's fairer. You've done all the asking so far." He looked up at her. "My name's Loki. Son of Laufey. Father of Fenrir and Jörmungandr and a few others who don't write. I lie for a living and I'm very good at it, and I'd like to do it for you, and never once to you. You can say no." He held out his hand. Palm up. "Friend?"

Iselle looked down at his hand.

Then she put her open hand in it.

"Yes," she said.

* * *

"Now," said Loki, getting up and dusting off his knees, "the carpentry."

* * *

The carpentry took all morning.

Loki sat backward on his chair again, now that the asking was done, and drank his tea, and thought out loud. Iselle sat on the floor by Severin's silk, with a slate on her knees. Carol sat on the window seat with her chin on her knees. Roderic and I sat on the stairs, because there weren't any more chairs and neither of us wanted to step on Belleren.

"Rule one," said Loki. "Where. He's asked where. So every answer has to be a where. If you start telling him why and how and with whom, he'll wonder why you've started being so helpful. People who've been silent for four days don't suddenly become chatty. They become small. Grudging. A few words. As if each one costs them something." He pointed his apple at Iselle. "Which, for you, it would."

"Yes," said Iselle.

"Rule two. Small. As small as you can make it. The best lies are nearly all true. The true parts do the work." He looked at Carol. "Where were you last night?"

"In bed," said Carol. "At the top of the north tower. I didn't sleep well. Garrick knocked on my door at one in the morning."

"Perfect," said Loki. "That's the first one. The north tower. She does not sleep well." He spread his hands. "Every word true. And he'll love it. Because rule three..."

"Something they want to believe," said Iselle slowly. "He wants to believe she's restless. Unhappy. That she's lying awake. That she's ready to go."

"Exactly. So we'll let him believe it. And he'll do all the work himself." Loki took a bite of his apple. "Meanwhile she'll be at the top of her tower every night, exactly where we say she is, shelling peas or asleep or arguing with Ignatius about whose turn it is to bring the cider."

"It's always mine," said Carol.

"I know," said Loki. "I've heard."

* * *

"But that's not a lie," said Roderic from the stairs. "If it's all true."

"The lie isn't in any one line," said Loki. "It's in the shape of them all together. She does not sleep well. She looked west from the window. She asked how far it is to the southern valleys. Every one true, if we make it true. And all of them together say she's coming." He turned his cup around. "And she isn't. That's the lie. The lie is the river. He'll sit by the Ilvane every night, waiting, watching it go low, sure she's on her way. And she'll be in the little kitchen with her feet on the fender."

Iselle put her slate down.

"She asked how far it is to the southern valleys," she said. "She hasn't."

"No," said Loki. "Not yet."

There was a pause.

And then Carol, on the window seat, lifted her chin off her knees.

"I will, then," she said.

Everyone looked at her.

"I'll ask Helena tonight," said Carol. "At supper. How far it is to the southern valleys. She'll tell me, because Helena knows how far it is to everywhere. And then it'll be true." She looked at Iselle. "I'll look west out of my window too. I do that most nights anyway. That's where the weather comes from." She shrugged. "I'll do all of them. Whatever he needs to be true, I'll go and make true. Then nobody's lying in your name. Not even Loki."

Loki stared at her.

"That's cheating," he said.

"Is it?"

"It's the most outrageous thing anyone's ever done to one of my lies," said Loki. "You're making them honest." He put his apple down. He looked genuinely put out, for about three seconds. Then a slow, enormous, delighted grin spread across his whole face. "Oh, I like that. Carol Grey. You've just invented a new kind of lie. A lie made entirely out of true things, every one of them done on purpose, by the person it's about, with her permission." He looked at Iselle. "Is that allowed? Under your conditions?"

Iselle looked at Carol for a long moment.

"Permission," she said softly. "She's giving it."

"I'm giving it," said Carol. "Every night. And if I don't want to do one of them, I'll say so, and we'll find another."

"Then yes," said Iselle. "That's allowed."

* * *

The first line went that night.

I was there. Iselle asked me to be. She sat at the little desk in her room at the top of the east range, with the tall east window going dark over the orchard, and the gray horse with the white blaze standing beside the inkpot. Loki sat on the end of her bed, very still, because she'd asked him not to fidget. Roderic stood by the door. Carol wasn't there. Carol was in Greykeep, at the top of the north tower, being exactly where we said.

Iselle took the page out of the drawer. She unfolded it. Under I can wait, little sister, there was a new line, wet, shining. It must have come up while it was folded in the dark.

Where is she tonight?

Loki held out the slate. On it, in his quick slanted hand, he'd written five words.

Iselle read them twice. With her lips moving, the way Eleanor reads.

Then she dipped her pen and wrote, in her own small neat hand, under his question:

The north tower. She does not sleep well.

She put the pen down.

Her hand closed. She opened it.

We waited.

For a long time, nothing. The ink dried. The lamp burned. Outside, an owl went over the orchard.

And then, very slowly, the page moved.

Thank you, little sister.

And under that:

I knew you would.

* * *

Iselle didn't cry. I'd thought she might. She just sat very still and looked at those words for a long time.

"He's pleased," she said at last.

"Yes," said Loki quietly.

"He thinks I'm what he made me." She folded the page small and put it back in the drawer, under the horse. "He thinks I'm finally being what I'm for."

"Yes."

"Good," said Iselle.

And she turned around in her chair, and looked at Loki, and there was something in her face I'd never seen there before. Not fear. Not the careful blankness she wears in lectures. Something much older and stronger than either.

"Let him think it," she said. "Every night. For as long as it takes."

* * *

It went on like that for a week.

Every evening, Loki and Iselle sat in the map room after supper and built the next night's line together. Small. A few words. True, if Carol made it true. Then Loki went down to the little kitchen and told Carol what she was going to have done, and Carol either went and did it or said no, and twice she said no, and twice they found another.

The north tower. She does not sleep well.

The north tower. She stood at the west window for an hour. (She did. With a cup of cider. Ignatius stood with her, and they argued about whether the cloud over the river looked more like a goose or a teapot.)

The little kitchen. She asked how far it is to the southern valleys. (She did. Helena said, "Eleven days on a good horse and four on Aurethar, if he'd carry you, which he won't. Why?" Carol said, "No reason." Helena gave her a long look and a honey biscuit.)

The north tower. She did not come down to breakfast. (She didn't. She had breakfast on the roof with Ignatius among the lightning rods, which Helena found out about and was not pleased.)

The chapel. Alone. A long time. (She was. She sat with Meriel's candles, and said the names of all the held gods she could remember, one by one, which is something she does anyway, about once a month, and has never told anyone why.)

And every night, the page answered. Short. Pleased. Patient.

Good.

Soon.

The river is very low now.

Iselle read that one twice, and her hand closed, and stayed closed, for a long time. Roderic, by the door, didn't move. Then she opened it, on purpose, one finger at a time, and wrote under Loki's line, in her own hand, without a slate:

She has not asked me.

Loki went very still on the end of the bed.

Iselle looked at the words for a moment. Then she put the pen down.

"That's true," she said. "Every word. She hasn't." She looked up at Loki. "Is that allowed?"

Loki looked at her for a long time.

"That," he said, "is the best line anyone's written on this page all week. Including me."

* * *

On the eighth night, the page didn't ask where.

Iselle took it out of the drawer at nine o'clock, the way she had every night, and unfolded it, and there was no question waiting. Just a single wet line under her last one, already half dry, as if it had been written early in the evening and left for her to find.

There is a festival at your college soon, I hear. Lanterns. Do they let the Greys come down to dance?

Nobody said anything.

Loki got up off the end of the bed, very slowly, and came and stood behind Iselle's chair and read it over her shoulder. He read it three times. I watched his lips move.

"He's never asked about anything but where," he said. "Not once. Not in eight nights."

"No," said Iselle.

"He's not asking where she is," said Loki slowly. "He's asking where she's going to be." He straightened up. "That's not a question. That's a man setting a table."

Iselle looked at the page for a long time.

Then she folded it up, small, without writing anything, and put it in the drawer under the gray horse with the white blaze, and shut the drawer.

"He can wait in there," she said. "Tonight. I want to ask Uriah first."

* * *

Mary wrote it that week, a line a night, the way she writes everything.

Iselle met Loki in the map room. Five conditions, on her fingers. He agreed to all of them. He crouched. He asked her Friend. She said yes.

Carol makes every line true. Loki says it is cheating. He is delighted.

The page says: Good. Soon. I knew you would.

Iselle wrote one line herself: She has not asked me. True.

And on the eighth night, under all of it, in a different ink, because Mary had gone and got her good pen:

He asked about the Festival of Lanterns. Not where. When.