Chapter 87: The King Holds

He counted all the way to a thousand.

I know, because I counted with him. I couldn't help it. I stood on the deck of the Gray Heron with my sister's tarred hand an inch from mine and watched my father's lips move on the end of the harbor wall, and I counted. One. Two. Three. Out loud, under my breath. Carol counted too. I felt her doing it in the middle. Bram Halloran, beside us, took his cap off and held it against his chest, and his lips moved as well.

It takes a long time to count to a thousand. Longer than you'd think. Long enough for the white to go out of the sky, slowly, and the evening to come back red and gold over the western sea. Long enough for the flat sea to start breathing again, little waves, then bigger ones, slapping against the Heron's side. Long enough for Edric Vale, on his bucket at the end of the wall, to reel in his line, and look at the bare hook, and put the rod down across his knees, and wait.

At a thousand, my father stopped.

He turned around. He looked out across the anchorage at the Heron. At me, and Carol, and Bram with his cap against his chest.

He didn't fold. He didn't come as lightning. He walked down the end of the harbor wall to the steps where the lighters tie up, and got into one, and picked up the oars, and rowed.

* * *

It took him a quarter of an hour to row out to the Heron.

He rows badly. I'd never known that. He's the god of storms and winter, and he's held the sky still over a whole city for three nights, and he can come down out of a clear evening as a bolt of white fire. And he rows like a man who learned it late in life from a book. Too deep on the left. Splashing on the right. Going around in a slow half-circle every twenty strokes and having to correct.

Nobody laughed. Not one fisherman in the whole harbor.

When he got to the Heron, he tied the lighter to the ladder with a knot that would have made Dunmore weep, and climbed up the side, slowly, hand over hand, the way Carol had. And stood on the deck in his smoking coat with tar on his palms, and looked at us.

"Mr. Halloran," he said. "May I come aboard?"

Bram looked at him. At the tar. At the smoking coat. At the knot.

"You are aboard, Majesty."

"I'm on your deck," said my father. "That's not the same."

Bram's face did something complicated.

"Yes," he said. "Yes. You may."

* * *

My father didn't shout.

I'd been waiting for it. I'd been braced for it since the sky went white. I'd never once in my life heard my father shout at anybody, but I'd been sure he was going to start tonight, at me, on the deck of a grain ship, in front of a man he'd forgiven and a harbor full of fishermen pretending not to watch.

He didn't.

He walked across the deck to the rail, and leaned on it, and looked out at the sea going red. And after a while, he said, without turning around:

"Garrick. Carol. Come here. Please."

We went. We stood on either side of him at the rail, the way we used to stand on either side of him on the east wall when we were small, and he'd point out the stars and tell us their names in the language from his first life, which nobody else speaks.

"I'm not going to tell you not to go," he said.

I looked at him.

"I'm going to ask you not to," said my father. "And then I'm going to tell you why. And then you can decide." He was still looking at the sea. "That's the only way I've ever stopped anybody doing anything. I'm not going to start doing it another way now. Not with you."

* * *

"The first winter," said my father. "After I came. After Greykeep."

Down on the harbor wall, Edric Vale's head came up.

"There were raiders on this coast," said my father. "Black ships. Out of the west, before anybody knew what was west. They'd come in at dawn and burn a village and take everything that could be carried. And everybody that could be carried." He was quiet a moment. "They took a fishing village called Shearwater, two miles up the coast. Forty-one people. Women. Children. A boy of nine who'd been mending nets on the shingle. They took them out to the ships and sailed away west, and nobody ever saw any of them again."

Carol had gone very still.

"I was here," said my father. "In Westmere. That week. I'd come down to see the steward, which was Edric, then, new to it. And the morning after Shearwater, I stood on the end of that harbor wall where he's sitting now, with my lightning in my hand and the sea in my other hand, and I was going to go after them. Alone. As the storm. Across the whole western sea. I was going to find those ships and sink every one of them to the bottom." He turned his hands over on the rail. "I could have, too. I think. I was very angry. It makes you strong, being that angry. Stronger than you've ever been."

"What stopped you?" said Carol.

My father looked down at the end of the harbor wall. At the old man on the bucket.

"Edric," he said. "He came and stood beside me. He didn't touch me. He didn't tell me not to. He just stood there, and after a while he said, Majesty, would you count to a thousand first. Just to a thousand. And then if you still want to go, I'll hold the boat."

On the harbor wall, Edric Vale put his hand over his eyes.

"I've never told anyone that," said my father. "Not Evelyn. Not Adriana. Not Mary. I think Edric thinks I've forgotten." He raised his voice, a little, so it would carry across the water. "I haven't, Edric. I never will."

Edric didn't take his hand away from his eyes. But his shoulders moved.

* * *

"So I counted," said my father. "And somewhere around six hundred, I stopped being angry enough to sink ships, and started being angry enough to think. And I thought about the forty-one people from Shearwater. On those ships. Below decks. In the hold." He looked at me. "If I'd come down on those ships as the storm, Garrick, what would have happened to the forty-one people in the hold?"

I didn't say anything.

"They'd have gone to the bottom with the ships," said my father. "Every one of them. The boy who mended nets. All of them. I'd have killed every one of the people I was going to save, because I was so angry about losing them that I forgot they were still alive."

The sea slapped against the Heron's side.

"And the raiders would have sent more ships," said my father. "Next spring. Because they'd have known I would come. And how. And how fast. And what I did when I was angry. They'd have counted me." He looked at the sea. "And next time, they'd have been ready."

* * *

"What happened?" said Carol. "To the forty-one?"

My father was quiet for a long time.

"Most of them came home," he said. "Two years later. Thirty-four of them. On a merchant ship out of a port nobody had heard of, that had bought them off the raiders and didn't know what to do with them, and asked around until somebody said Westmere." He turned his hands over again. "The boy who mended nets was a man by then. Nearly. He'd learned to speak the raiders' language. He came and stood on that harbor wall and told me everything about where they'd been taken, and how, and by whom, and how many ships, and where the ships put in for water." He looked at me. "And the next spring, when the raiders came, we were ready. And they never came back."

"Thirty-four," I said.

"Thirty-four," said my father. "Not forty-one. Seven died, in those two years, where I couldn't reach them. I think about them every day. I think about them every single day of my life, and about the morning I didn't go." He looked at me. "That's what a crown costs, Garrick. That's all it is. It's not the gold, or the chair, or the Council. It's this. It's the morning you stand on the wall with everything in your hands and don't go. And carry the seven for the rest of your life, so that the thirty-four can come home."

* * *

I didn't say anything for a long time.

Then I said the thing I'd been carrying since the map room. The thing that had been sitting under the anger all day, getting heavier.

"I'm not you, though."

My father turned and looked at me.

"I don't mean it badly," I said. "I mean it's true. I'm not you on the wall that first winter. I'm more than that. You know I am. I've got your storm. And Sera's flame. And Thor's strength, and Damar's stone, and Carol's frost, and the holding off the Ilvane, and every god I've ever stood next to since I was born. I keep all of it. Every one." I looked at the sea. "If I went into the great hall tonight with all of that, they couldn't stop me. Not with a ring of iron. Not with anything."

"They stopped you last night," said my father. Quietly.

"Last night I didn't know what it was. Now I do."

My father looked at me for a long moment. Then he looked down at the sea beside the Heron.

"Look at the water, Garrick," he said.

* * *

I looked.

The sea around the Heron was rising.

Not the tide. Not the wind. There wasn't any wind; the evening was still and red. But all around the ship, in a ring, the water was standing up. Slowly. In long, smooth, dark swells, coming in toward the hull from every side at once, higher than they had any right to be in a sheltered anchorage, lifting the Heron and setting her down and lifting her again. And out past the anchorage, beyond the shoals, a line of white was building along the horizon. A storm. Gathering. Out of a clear sky.

"I'm not doing that," said my father.

I stared at the water.

"I've had my hands in my pockets since I got on this ship," said my father. "That's not my storm. I know my storm. I've known it for twenty years." He looked at me. "That's yours."

* * *

I didn't understand.

I'd never made a storm. Not my own. I've borrowed my father's a thousand times, and used it exactly the way he does, because that's what Carol and I do; we're every god in the room. But borrowing is borrowing. You reach for something that's there and use it the way it's used.

I hadn't reached for anything.

I was just standing at a rail being angry. And the sea had heard me.

"Since last night," said my father quietly. "Since the ring. Since everything you carry was locked away for ten minutes and then came back all at once." He looked at the swells lifting the ship. "Have you felt it? Since then? Bigger?"

I opened my mouth to say no.

And didn't. Because it was true.

Since midnight. Since Seraphina cut the last link, and every door inside me flew open at once. I'd thought it was just the relief of having it back. The way your own hand feels strange after it's been asleep. But it hadn't gone away. All day, all the way through the frost cracking and the map room and Seraphina going down the stairs, I'd felt it. Everything I carry, sitting in me wider. Like a river after a dam breaks. Not just back. More.

"When a dam goes," said my father, "the river doesn't go back to the size it was. It finds out how big it can be." He looked at the white line on the horizon. "They locked everything you've ever been given, and it pushed against the lock, all of it, at once, for ten minutes. And when the lock broke, it didn't go back into the shape it was in before. It went into a bigger one."

* * *

"Aurelia told me," said my father, "the week you were born. When you and Carol lay in that cradle sparking with whoever leaned over you. She said, They're every god in the room, Uriah. And one day the room is going to be the world." He was quiet a moment. "I've watched it happen for twenty-three years. Every god you've ever stood beside, you've kept. And they don't just sit in you, the way coins sit in a purse. They grow into each other. Into you. They stop being my storm and Sera's fire and Damar's stone and start being yours."

He looked at the sea, still rising.

"You're going to be more than me, Garrick," he said. "More than Thor. More than Aurelia. More than Malachar, and Kessavel, and every chained god on the far side of that water put together. One day you're going to be the most powerful thing that has ever walked in this world." He said it plainly. The way he'd say it was going to rain. "I've known it since you were three, at the stream. I've never once been afraid of it. I'm not afraid of it now."

"Then why..."

"Because you're not that yet," said my father. "Not tonight. Tonight you're a man who folded thirty paces wrong and can't forgive himself. And if you go across that sea tonight, you won't go as the most powerful god in the world." He turned and looked at me properly. "You'll go as the angriest. And those are not the same thing. Malachar is the angriest god in the world. He has been for three hundred years. Look what it's made him."

* * *

The sea had stopped rising.

I don't know when. Somewhere in the middle of what he'd said. The swells around the Heron had gone long and low and quiet, and the white line on the horizon was coming apart, slowly, like a cloud on a summer afternoon.

"The day you go," said my father, "and you will go, one day, I know you will, I want you to go as all of it. Not as the part that's hurting. I want you to go knowing the shape of every harbor on that coast, because Mr. Halloran's taught it to you properly, over a winter, with charts. I want you to go knowing where the forty-one are kept. Because there are forty-one, Garrick. There always are. In the hold. Below the decks. In the cells under the golden city. People he's taken. Gods he's chained. The Hollow Choir. The held storms. Every name Kessavel ever locked." He put his hand on my shoulder. "I want you to go to bring them home. Not to sink the ships with them inside."

I couldn't say anything.

"That's what a crown costs," said my father. "It costs tonight. It costs standing on the wall with everything in your hands and not going. It costs Iselle in a bed in Concordia with her hand shut, and you not being able to do anything about it except sit with her." He took his hand off my shoulder. "And I'm asking you to pay it. I'm not telling you. I'm asking. Will you stay?" He looked at me, and at Carol. "Both of you. You can say no."

* * *

Carol answered first.

She always does. She looked at our father for a long time, with her tarred hands on the rail. Then she said:

"Yes."

And through the middle, I felt her put something down. Something she'd been holding since midnight, since the ring, since the frost cracked on the kitchen window. Not the fear. Not the anger. Something underneath both of them. The thing that had made her row out alone and climb the ladder.

I don't have to go into a ring for you, she said to me, through the middle. I only have to not let you go into one alone. And you're not going. So I can put it down.

I looked at the sea.

At the swells, gone quiet. At the last of the white line on the horizon, coming apart.

My storm. Not borrowed. Mine.

"Yes," I said. "I'll stay."

My father let his breath out. All of it. As if he'd been holding it since the sky went white.

* * *

Bram Halloran put his cap back on.

"Majesty," he said. "Prince Garrick." He cleared his throat. "When you want it. The harbors. I'll teach you. Properly. Every one. With charts. Over a winter, like the king said." He looked at me. "I'd like to. If you'll let me. It's a useful thing I'd be permitted to do."

"Yes," I said. "Thank you. I'd like that."

* * *

My father rowed us back to the wall. Badly. Carol offered to take the oars, and he said no, thank you, I'm learning, and went around in a half-circle twice.

Edric Vale was waiting at the top of the steps.

He didn't say anything. He was holding his bucket in one hand and his rod in the other, and his face was wet, and he didn't try to hide it. And my father climbed up the steps and stood in front of him, and they looked at each other for a long time. Two old men on the end of a harbor wall in the dark.

"You remembered," said Edric.

"Every day," said my father.

Edric nodded. Then he held out his rod.

"Fishing tomorrow?" he said. "At six. Off the end. I've never caught anything. You won't either. But it's good for counting."

My father took the rod. He held it for a moment. Then he gave it back.

"Yes," he said. "Six."

* * *

The Castellan said "Garrick Grey. Yes. You may." And then, after a pause, "Welcome home."

It had never said that to me before. Not once. I stood in the middle of the lower hall and didn't know what to do with it.

Seraphina was sitting on the bottom step of the main stair with little Uriah asleep on her lap. She'd been there since sunset, Mary told me afterward. Waiting. Not knowing whether I was going to come back through that arch tonight, or in a month, or ever.

She looked up at me.

"You were right," I said. "This morning. In the map room. All of it. I'm sorry."

"I know," said Seraphina.

And then she held out her free hand. Palm up.

I took it. And sat down on the step beside her. And she put her head on my shoulder, and little Uriah stirred between us, and said "Da," and went back to sleep.

"Your father came and asked me," said Seraphina, after a while. "Before he went. He came down to the nursery and said, Seraphina, may I go and get him?" She closed her eyes. "I said yes. I said bring him back by supper."

"It's past supper."

"I know," said Seraphina. "I saved you some."

* * *

Mary wrote it that night, in the little kitchen, by the blue lamp.

Garrick went to Westmere to borrow the shape of the far harbors from Bram Halloran and go alone. Carol rowed out and climbed the ladder. Uriah came by the fast way and counted to a thousand on the end of the wall.

He told them about the first winter. Shearwater. Forty-one taken. He did not go. Thirty-four came home. Seven did not.

Edric's thousand. Uriah remembered. Edric cried.

The sea rose around the Heron. It was not Uriah's storm. It was Garrick's.

Uriah asked them to stay. Both said yes.

Bram Halloran will teach Garrick the harbors over the winter. With charts.

And under that, in my father's own hand:

Fishing at six. U.