Chapter 81: Under the Lanterns

I said I'd tell it in its own place. This is the place.

* * *

On the first night, nobody saw Carol and Ignatius dance except everybody.

It happened a little after ten, when the fiddler had found his second wind and the drummer had stopped pretending he knew the old soldiers' tunes and was just keeping time. The Lyradon step had been going for an hour, and the parade ground was a slow blue wheel of people going three steps forward, turn, three steps back, treading on each other's feet and laughing.

And then the fiddler started something else.

I didn't know it. Hardly anybody did. It was an old Concordian court dance, the kind Lisbeth used to make Lexander's children learn in the long gallery of the palace on rainy afternoons, with a stick to tap the time on the floor. Seraphina knew it; she groaned against my chest when she heard the first bars and said, "Oh, no. Grandmother's stick." Ignatius knew it. And Carol knew it, because she'd spent half her childhood in that long gallery too, on the rainy afternoons when Concordia was more interesting than home.

It isn't a dance for crowds. It needs space. Two people, a long way apart, coming together and going away again, and never quite touching except at the very end. The students on the parade ground didn't know the steps, so one by one they stopped and stood back to watch the two people who did.

And there they were. In the middle of the blue light, in a wide empty circle that had opened around them without anybody deciding it should.

* * *

I've watched my sister do a great many things. I've watched her stop a river. I've watched her hold Malachar's own grip in her bare hands until it melted like ice off Greymere in spring. I've watched her stand in front of an emperor's envoy at a long oak table and say you may not have me without her voice moving at all.

I'd never watched her dance with Ignatius. Not properly. Not like that.

She danced like a leaf on a stream, the way she always has. Light and quick and going exactly where the current goes, without any effort at all. And Ignatius, who is solid and slow and patient and swears in old Concordian when he burns the toast, moved around her like the stream itself. Never hurrying. Never quite where you expected. Always, somehow, exactly where she was going to be next.

They didn't look at anybody else. They didn't look at the lanterns. They looked at each other, across the empty space in the middle of the blue light, the whole way through.

At the very end, the dance brings the two people together, palm to palm, for one beat. That's the only touch in it. Lisbeth used to rap the floor with her stick at that moment and say one beat, children, one, because everybody always wants to hold on longer.

Carol and Ignatius held it for one beat. Exactly one. And then they let go, and stepped back, and bowed to each other the old Concordian way, with a hand on the heart.

The parade ground was completely silent.

And then a first-year near the fountain started clapping, and then everyone was, four hundred people under four hundred blue lamps, and Carol went pink to the ears and Ignatius looked at his feet and swore, very softly, in old Concordian.

"Grandmother would have rapped us for the bow," said Seraphina against my chest. "Too deep."

She was crying a little. I didn't say anything about it.

* * *

That was the first night. Everybody saw that.

The second night was the one nobody saw. Not even me. I'll tell what I can.

* * *

It started with Carol knocking on my door at seven in the evening, the second night, in her own blue coat, with her hair up and a little light hanging at her ear the way she does when she's going out and wants to see where she's putting her feet.

She knocked three times. And then she came in and stood in the middle of the sitting room, where little Uriah was building a tower of wooden horses on the rug and knocking it down and saying "No" with great satisfaction each time.

"I want to ask you something," she said. "You can say no."

"All right."

"Will you have the door tonight?"

I knew what she meant. Not the twin-room door. The other one. The door everybody had been holding for her, ever since the page first asked where is she tonight. The watching. The standing at the edges. The counting of exits and the scanning of faces and the never quite letting her out of anybody's sight.

"Ignatius has had it for weeks," said Carol. "He sleeps in my chair. He walks me down the stairs. He stands at the edge of every room I'm in, and he counts the windows, and he counts the doors, and he never once stops." She looked down at little Uriah's horses. "Last night, we danced. And it was the first time in a month I've seen him look at me without looking past me at the same time. One dance. And then the music stopped and he went straight back to counting."

"You want him off duty."

"I want him off duty," said Carol. "For one night. I want him to stand under the lanterns with me and not count anything. And he won't. He won't unless somebody else is counting for him. Somebody he trusts more than himself." She looked at me. "So I'm asking. Will you have the door? You and Thor and Loki and Fenrir and Father's sky. All of you. So he can put it down. Just tonight."

Little Uriah knocked over his tower. "No," he said, delighted.

"Yes," I said. "Of course yes."

Carol let her breath out.

"And will you tell him?" she said. "Not me. You. He has to hear it from somebody who's going to do it."

* * *

So I told him.

I found him in the lower hall, waiting at the Concordia arch, in his good coat, with his hands behind his back and his eyes going over the six arches one by one, the way they always do now. Counting.

"Ignatius," I said.

He turned around.

"Carol asked me to have the door tonight," I said. "Me and Thor and Loki and Fenrir and Father. All night. Every edge. Every face. Every exit." I stood in front of him. "You're off duty."

Ignatius looked at me for a long time.

"I can't," he said.

"She asked."

"I know she asked. I know why she asked." He looked at the Concordia arch. "I can't, Garrick. I don't know how. I've been watching for her for so long, I don't know how to stand in a room with her and not."

I didn't say anything. I didn't reassure him. He taught me that, Ignatius did. All winter. You don't fix it. You don't grab it.

So I just stood there, in the lower hall, and waited.

After a while, Ignatius said, very quietly, "You'll really watch? All night? Not just say you will?"

"All night."

"The barracks wall," he said. "Loki was looking at it last night. A little after one. I saw him."

"I'll be on it."

"And the fountain. And the steps on the east range, where the light doesn't reach. And the gate. And the sky..."

"Father has the sky. Fenrir has the gate. Thor has the fountain. Loki has the steps. I have the barracks wall." I put my hand on his shoulder. "And all of us have her. You don't have to have anything tonight. Just her."

Ignatius looked at me.

Then he did something I've seen him do maybe twice in my whole life. He closed his eyes, and took a long breath, and let it go, and when he opened them again, his shoulders had come down an inch from where they'd been for a month.

"All right," he said. "All right. One night."

"One night."

"Garrick," he said. "Thank you."

The Castellan, at the arch, said "Ignatius Dinar. Yes. You may." And then, after a pause: "Off duty." As if it were writing it down.

* * *

I spent the second night of the Festival of Lanterns sitting on the old barracks wall at the edge of the parade ground, in the dark, where the last line of lanterns ended.

It's a good wall. Thick, and low, and very old, with moss in the cracks and a flat top you can sit on with your legs hanging over. From it, you can see the whole parade ground, all four hundred blue lamps and everybody dancing under them. And behind you, the dark: the old drill yard, and the stables nobody uses anymore, and the lane that runs down toward the harbor quarter.

I sat with my back to the light and my face to the dark, mostly. That was the job.

But I could feel her.

That's the thing about the middle. I wasn't watching Carol. I'd promised myself I wouldn't; that wasn't what she'd asked for. But both our doors were open, the way they nearly always are, and so I didn't need to watch. I could feel her the way you can feel the sun on your back when you're facing the other way.

And that night, for the first time in a month, the middle was warm all the way through. Not careful-warm. Not I'm fine warm. Just warm. The way it used to be when we were small, on summer evenings, lying in the hay in the stable loft while Grandpa sang the goat song below.

I sat on the barracks wall in the dark and let it warm me, and watched the lane.

* * *

She told me some of it afterward. On Twins' Day, the next one, in Grandpa's workshop, with her thumb over the chipped ear of the first horse I ever folded. Some of it she didn't tell me, and that's hers, and it's going to stay hers.

This is what she told me.

* * *

They didn't dance at first.

Ignatius didn't know what to do with his hands. That was the first thing. He stood at the edge of the parade ground beside her, under the first line of lanterns, and his eyes went to the fountain, and the east range steps, and the gate, and the dark by the barracks wall, one after another. And then he caught himself, and made them stop, and looked at her. And then they went to the fountain again.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I can't stop."

"I know," said Carol. "It's all right. Here."

And she gave him a cup of cider. Because it was her turn to bring the cider. It's always her turn. And Ignatius held it in both hands, and looked down into it, and that gave his eyes somewhere to go that wasn't an exit.

"There," said Carol. "Now you're a man holding a cup of cider. That's all you are."

He laughed. Properly. For the first time in weeks, she said.

* * *

They walked. Up and down under the lantern lines, very slowly, with the dancers going past them like water going past two stones. They didn't talk much at first. Ignatius stopped once to kneel and put his hand on a first-year's foot, a girl who'd been dancing barefoot and cut her heel on a stone, and the cut closed under his palm with a little warm white light, and the girl stared at him and said thank you, Your Highness, and he said you're welcome and wear shoes.

"That's not off duty," said Carol.

"That's not duty," said Ignatius. "That's manners."

* * *

Somewhere around midnight, they sat down on the grass under the long line of lanterns by the fountain, where Iselle's lantern hung, and Kip's lamps made everything soft and blue.

And Carol asked him the thing she'd been carrying since the page.

"Do you ever wish we had?" she said. "Married. Properly. Like Garrick and Sera."

Ignatius was quiet for a long time. He turned his cup of cider around in his hands.

"No," he said. "I wish people would stop asking us why we haven't."

Carol laughed.

"Your grandmother asks every midwinter," she said.

"Grandmother asks everyone everything every midwinter. She asked Helena why she wasn't a duchess." He set his cup down on the grass. "No. I don't wish it. We decided. You remember. When we were eighteen. On the north tower roof."

"I remember."

"And we decided it for a reason," said Ignatius. "And the reason's still true. More true now than it was then." He looked at her. "Isn't it."

Carol didn't say anything for a while.

Then she said, very quietly, "Severin stood at the long table and asked for me. The Lady Carol. In whom lightning sleeps. Like a cup off a shelf. And every night since then, something's been asking. The singing. The foot of the bed. The stone. The page." She pulled her knees up and put her chin on them. "Everybody wants to ask for me, Ignatius. Everybody wants to have me. And I won't be had. Not by anyone. Not even by you." She looked at him over her knees. "That's why. Isn't it. That's what we decided on the roof. That nobody gets to ask for me. Not once, forever, in front of a chapel. They have to ask me. Every time."

"Every day," said Ignatius.

"Every day."

"I do," he said. "Ask."

"I know you do," said Carol. "Every night. On the stairs. Before you go into the chair."

"And you ask me every morning," said Ignatius. "When you wake up and I'm still there."

Carol smiled.

"Still?" she said.

"Still," said Ignatius.

* * *

That's the word. She told me that much, in Grandpa's workshop, with her thumb on the horse's ear. It's what they say. Every morning, every night, for five years, since the roof. Not forever. Not always. Nothing anybody could stand up in a chapel and ask for. Just one word, asked new each time, and answered new each time.

Still?

Still.

"It's better than a ring," Carol said to me. "A ring you only have to say yes to once."

* * *

They danced, after that. Not the court dance. Nobody watched, that night. They just stood up, somewhere near the fountain, among all the first-years doing the Lyradon step badly, and did it badly too, on purpose, three steps forward, turn, three back, for a long time.

And Ignatius didn't count a single exit. Not one. Carol said she watched for it. His eyes stayed on her the whole time.

The middle was so warm I had to take my coat off on the barracks wall.

* * *

It was about half past two when I saw them.

Not Carol and Ignatius. Them. The others.

I'd been watching the lane behind the barracks wall for five hours, and nothing had come up it. Not a cat. Not a fox. Not a drunk student looking for somewhere to be sick. My father's sky was still and clear and empty from one edge to the other. Thor was by the fountain, in her country cloak, eating a sausage. Loki was on the east range steps, juggling three apples very slowly with his eyes on the dark. Fenrir lay across the college gate with his chin on his paws.

So I turned around, for a moment, to look at the light. To rest my eyes.

And they were already there.

At the far edge of the parade ground, on the other side, by the east range wall, where the last line of lanterns didn't quite reach. Standing very still among the people sitting on the grass. I didn't see them come. Nobody saw them come.

Eleven of them. Tall and short, men and women, in ordinary festival clothes, dark cloaks, nothing you'd look at twice.

Except for the masks.

White masks. Plain, smooth, oval, with two eyeholes and nothing else. No mouth. No painted features. The kind the students would wear on the third night, the masked night, when the lines are cut and everybody dances with their face hidden so that nobody knows whose want is going up into the sky.

But this was the second night. Nobody wears masks on the second night.

And they weren't dancing.

They weren't doing anything. They were just standing there, among the people sitting on the grass, with their white faces turned toward the middle of the parade ground. Toward the fountain. Toward two people doing the Lyradon step badly, on purpose, under the lanterns.

I stood up on the wall.

I didn't fold. I didn't shout. I didn't do anything at all, for a moment, except count them again. Eleven. And then I looked for Loki, on the east range steps, which were much nearer to them than I was. And Loki had stopped juggling. He was holding all three apples in one hand, very still, looking at them.

He looked across the whole parade ground at me. And shook his head. Once. Very slightly.

Not yet.

I stayed on the wall.

* * *

They stood there for an hour.

Then, a little before four, when the lamps were starting to burn low and the dancing had thinned out to a few slow couples, the eleven masks turned around, all at once, the way a flock of birds turns. And walked out through the east range arch, into the dark, in a line, without hurrying. Fenrir lifted his head at the gate as they went past the end of the lane. He didn't get up. His hackles were standing all along his back.

Carol and Ignatius were still dancing. They hadn't seen. Neither of them had looked away from each other once.

I didn't tell them. Not that night. That night was hers. She'd asked for it, and I'd said yes, and I was going to give it to her whole.

But the middle had a door in it, and I kept mine open, and I made sure nothing went through it but warmth.

* * *

Mary wrote it the next morning. She'd been in her chair at the edge of the parade ground all night, with Melody asleep against her shoulder. Mary never sleeps at festivals. She says somebody has to remember them.

The second night. Ignatius off duty, at Carol's asking. Garrick had the door, with Thor, Loki, Fenrir, and Uriah's sky.

Carol and Ignatius walked, and drank cider, and danced the Lyradon step badly, on purpose. He did not count a single exit.

Eleven in white masks at the east range wall, half past two until nearly four. On the second night. They did not dance. They watched the fountain. They left in a line by the east range arch. Loki said not yet.

Carol has not been told. Garrick says it can wait until she wakes.

And under that, in very small writing, in Carol's own hand, because she'd come down at noon and asked Mary for the pen and Mary had let her, and she hadn't read anything above it first:

Still.