Chapter 95: Selvane's Tale

My father left for the Ilvane at five in the morning, by the fast way, from the end of the east wall.

I went ten minutes after him. Not by the fast way. I don't have one. My father's lightning is his, and I've never borrowed it, because he's never offered and I've never asked, and some things in a family you leave alone.

I went by a fold.

* * *

The last time I'd folded anywhere far, it had been at Concordia, inside Kessavel's ring, with Carol in the chain and everything going wrong, and I'd come out thirty paces from where I meant to. I hadn't folded farther than the orchard since. Seraphina knew it. Carol knew it. I'd never said so out loud.

"You don't have to," my father had said, the night before, in the little kitchen. "I can bring her the long way. Eleven days on a good horse. She wouldn't mind. She's waited twelve years."

"She's waited twelve years," I said. "That's why."

He'd looked at me for a long time.

"Then don't fold to a place," he said at last. "You've never stood in that valley. You'd be guessing." He put his cup down. "Fold to me. You know my shape better than any place in the world. I'll be standing on her back step at a quarter past five. Come to me."

"May I?" I said. "Use you? As the door?"

"You can say no," said my father, "is what I usually say. But I'm not going to say it. Yes."

* * *

So I stood at the end of the east wall at ten past five, where the stones were still scorched in a ring from his leaving, and shut my eyes.

I didn't reach for a place. I reached for him.

It's hard to explain. My father has a shape, the way a song has a shape. Gray skies and the smell of snow coming and a man counting to a thousand under his breath. I've known it since before I could walk. I could find it in the dark. I could find it, I realized, standing on that wall, from a very long way off. Further than I'd ever tried. Across hills and rivers and a range of mountains I'd only seen on Faelan's maps, all the way down to a small, steady, gray, familiar shape standing on a back step in a valley I'd never been to.

There he was.

I folded.

* * *

I came out on a back step.

Not thirty paces from it. Not one pace. On it. Next to my father, close enough that our shoulders bumped. In the gray early light, with a mill race running loud under the wall beside us, and the smell of wet stone and wool and woodsmoke, and a narrow lane behind us going down to a river that was far too high and far too fast.

My father looked at me sideways.

"Well," he said.

That was all. But he put his hand on the back of my neck for a moment, the way he used to when I was small and had done something he hadn't expected, and then he took it away again.

* * *

The back door opened.

Saba was small. Smaller than Iselle. Brown and gray, like a wren, with her gray hair in a long plait down her back and her sleeves pushed up past the elbows, and a weaver's hands, broad at the fingertips and quick even standing still. She had a bundle on her back, tied with a sash, and a jar of herbs from her windowsill under one arm, and a wooden shuttle in her other hand, worn smooth and dark with use.

She looked at me. At my father. Back at me.

"You're the brother," she said. In the common tongue, carefully. "The one who listens."

"Garrick," I said. "Garrick Elias Grey. Yes."

"She wrote about you." Saba looked at my face a long time. "She said you stand behind your sister. Not in front."

"Yes."

"Good," said Saba. And then, without changing her voice at all: "Will it hurt?"

"No," I said. "It's like stepping through a door you didn't see. You might feel dizzy. I'll hold your hand the whole way. You can say no, and we'll go the long way instead."

Saba looked down the lane at the river, going past in the gray light, much too high.

"I said goodbye to it," she said. "Three days. Every morning. It didn't answer. It hasn't answered in years." Her mouth went tight. "He has it by the throat. I could hear it in the mill. I don't want to go eleven days beside it, listening."

She held out her hand. The one without the shuttle.

"Take me to my daughter," she said.

* * *

I'd never folded anyone before. Not a mortal. Not anyone who couldn't fold back.

I held her hand very carefully. She held mine back, hard, the way you'd hold a rail on a ship.

And I reached for home.

Not a place, again. I'd learned that much on the wall. I reached for the Castellan. For the old, warm, patient waking in the stones of Greykeep, the one that's known me since before I was born and counts every crossing I've ever made. It was easy to find. It's always easy to find. It's like reaching for the latch of your own bedroom door in the dark.

We folded.

* * *

We came out in the lower hall, under the six arches, at twenty past five in the morning.

Saba swayed. I held her. She didn't let go of my hand.

"Saba who weaves," said the Castellan, from the stones under us. Its ledger voice. "Of the Ilvane valley, where the mill is." A pause. "Inward. Asked."

And then, after another, longer pause:

"Guest of the house."

Saba looked up at the vaulted ceiling with her mouth open.

"It talks," she said.

"It does," I said. "It likes you. It doesn't say guest to everyone."

* * *

Iselle was at the foot of the west stair.

She must have been there since four. She was in her coat and her blue scarf, and she had the new bolt of cloth from the Ilvane over her arm, folded, and her face was so white I thought she might fall down.

She didn't move.

Saba didn't move either. They stood at opposite ends of the lower hall, in the gray light coming through the high windows, and looked at each other. Twelve years. I watched them do it. I watched Saba see the woman, and look for the girl in her, and find her.

"Iselle," said Saba.

Not in the common tongue. In Kethran, the valley way, with the s soft.

And Iselle dropped the cloth on the floor and ran.

* * *

I went to stand by the arches, out of the way, and looked at the ceiling for a while, because some things you don't watch.

But I heard Saba say, after a long time, in a voice muffled by her daughter's shoulder:

"Your hands."

"What about them?"

"They're open." Saba pulled back and took both of Iselle's hands in hers and turned them over, palms up, and looked at them. "When you were small you held them shut. All the time. In fists. I used to think you were cold." She was crying. "And then I understood. And I let you."

Iselle went very still.

"You knew," she said.

"I knew," said Saba.

* * *

My father had come home while I was looking at the ceiling. By lightning onto the east wall, and then on foot down to the lower hall, so as not to frighten her. He stood beside me with his boots in his hand.

So we both heard it. I don't think Saba minded. I think she'd decided, on that back step, that she was done keeping things in rooms.

"Knots," said Saba. "When you were a baby. Every knot in the house. Your swaddling. My apron strings. The warp on the loom, if you were in the room. I'd tie them and turn around and they'd be loose. Birds out of the neighbor's coop. The gate latch." She held Iselle's hands tighter. "I knew what your father was. I knew what your brother was. I'd heard about the palace. I knew what they'd do if they found out you were the other way around."

"The other way around," said Iselle.

"He holds," said Saba. "You let go. I knew it before you could walk." She bent her head. "So I taught you to keep your hands shut. I made a game of it. Fists, little fish. Like a fisherman holding his line. I sang it to you. And you did it, every day, because you were a good girl. And the knots stopped coming loose. And when they came to take you to the golden city, you had your fists shut, and they never knew."

* * *

Iselle didn't say anything for a long time.

"Mama," she said finally. "He put a new lock on my door. Every year."

"I know. You wrote."

"I thought it was because he loved me."

"I know." Saba looked up at her. "I think it was because he was frightened. I think he never knew for certain. I think he only guessed." Her mouth went tight. "And then you came here, and they taught you to open your hands. On purpose. And two days ago you opened somebody else's."

"How do you know about that?"

"The river told me," said Saba. "It hasn't said a word to me in nine years. And two mornings ago, while I was saying goodbye to it, it went slack. For one breath. Just one. As if the hand on its throat had flinched." She touched Iselle's cheek. "And I thought: that's my girl."

* * *

That was the morning.

The afternoon was Selvane's.

* * *

She'd asked for it. That's the thing I want you to understand. Nobody asked her to tell it. Not Aurelia, not my father, not the Council. She sent word up from Westmere by Benjamin, at noon, in her careful common tongue on a page torn from Tamar's watch book:

I would like to tell you what he does. All of it. Before I lose my nerve. Today. In the tower, where I can hear the boats.

So we went.

My father. Aurelia. Carol and me. Tamar, by the door. Benjamin on his stool. Mary, with her book. Eleanor and Davren, because Aurelia said someone should listen who thinks in shapes. And Iselle, at the last minute, alone, coming through the Westmere arch just as we were starting up the tower stair, with her hands open.

"Mama's asleep," she said. "In my bed. With the shuttle. She said I should come." She looked up the stair. "She said, You're one of the ones who can do something about it now. Go and listen."

* * *

Selvane was sitting up on the cot by the stove, with Tessaly in her lap in a little clay cup that Tamar's wife had found for it, like a candle in a dish. She was still thin. But she was sitting up.

"Thank you," she said. "For coming. I'll try to be quick. I'm not used to talking for long. I'm used to listening."

She looked at the little light in the cup.

"I'll start with the asking," she said.

* * *

"He always asks first," said Selvane. "That's the first thing you have to understand about him. Everyone thinks he takes. He doesn't. Not at first. He asks."

"A letter. Very polite. Very beautiful. Black paper, silver writing. He tells you who you are, better than anyone ever has. He tells you how tired you must be. He tells you he'll hold it for you. The weight. All of it. Come and be still."

"Most of the gods in Kethra said yes the first time." She closed her eyes. "Not because they were wicked. Because they were tired. And because no one had ever written them a letter that understood them so well."

"Those are the Chained," said my father quietly.

"Some of them. The ones who wanted to help him hold. The rest just went to sleep. In his ships. In his cellars. Held." Her hands tightened around the cup. "That's the granary. You know about the granary."

"We know," said Aurelia.

* * *

"Then there's the second asking," said Selvane.

"That's not him. That's the Chained. They come to your harbor. They stand on your pier. They don't touch anything. They just stand there, all night, and the next night, and the next. And the fishermen stop going out, because there's a tall gray shape on the end of the pier. And your lamp goes unlit, because there's no one coming home to light it for." She swallowed. "That's the second asking. Look what it costs to say no. Look what it costs the people you love."

"The Lockwarden," said Carol softly.

"He was the best at it," said Selvane. "He stood outside more gates than any of them. Forty years. He never touched a single one." She looked up. "He's the one who gave me back a little, last spring. Before. I've never understood why."

Nobody said anything. I thought about a coat folded at the feet of a tall gray man on the bow of a ship, and a name chalked beside it. Hobb.

* * *

"The ones who say no twice," said Selvane, "go to Kessavel. You know about that too. The Hollow Choir. He finds where your name sits, and he takes it, and what's left goes below decks and sings." She shuddered. "That's for the ones who fight. Who make trouble. Who might be a rallying point."

"And the rest?" said Aurelia.

Selvane was quiet for a long time.

"The rest," she said, "he strips."

* * *

"I don't know how," she said, before anyone could ask. "I want to say that first. I've tried to understand it for a hundred years, and I can't. Nobody can. The Chained don't know. I asked one, once, a goddess of fences who used to be my friend, and she didn't know either. She said, He just holds them, Selvane. Until they're his."

"Holds what?" said Eleanor.

"Your places." Selvane looked down at Tessaly in its cup. "The things that make you what you are. A god of a river has the river. A god of harbors has her harbors. A god of a crossroads has the crossroads. They're not things, exactly. They're more like…" She searched for it. "Like the people who love you. You're who you are partly because of them. And he takes hold of them. One at a time. Gently. And holds them. And after a while, they forget you."

* * *

The room was very quiet.

"Tessaly forgot me," said Selvane. "For a month. The lamp stood on the end of the pier and nobody lit it, and nobody wondered why there was a lamp there at all. The old woman's granddaughter stopped putting bread on the bollard. She didn't know why her grandmother ever had." Her voice was very steady. "That's stripping. Not pain. Nothing so loud. Just… being forgotten by everything you were for. One place at a time. Until there's nothing left to hold you up."

"And then you go thin," I said.

"And then you go thin," said Selvane. "And then, if you're lucky, he puts you somewhere quiet, where you don't have to watch. And if you're not lucky, he leaves you where you are, so the others can see."

"Where's somewhere quiet?" said Carol.

* * *

"There's a garden," said Selvane, "under the palace hill. Behind a high wall, with no gate. They call it the Stillyard."

Iselle made a small sound. We all looked at her.

"I've seen the wall," she said. "From my window. I asked what it was, when I was nine. Severin said it was where the Emperor kept his roses."

"He does keep them there," said Selvane gently. "That's what they look like, from the top of the wall. Rows and rows of them. Gray roses. Not moving." She closed her eyes. "Three hundred and eleven. I counted them once. From a gull's back. That was the last spring I could still borrow a gull."

* * *

"Three hundred and eleven gods," said my father. Very quietly.

"Three hundred and eleven that I could count," said Selvane. "Oradne, who kept the wells in the hill towns. Taveth, who was every bridge on the Kethran coast road. A little god of school bells I never knew the name of. A goddess of the first warm day of spring who used to come to my harbor every year and make the fishermen take their coats off." Her voice cracked for the first time. "She's in the third row. I saw her. She didn't look up."

Davren had stopped writing. Eleanor had her hand over her mouth.

* * *

"I ran," said Selvane. "After the second asking. I didn't fight. I wasn't brave enough for Kessavel and I wasn't tired enough for the ships. So I ran. I moved my lamp every night. A different harbor. A different pier. A ship's captain helped me, sometimes. A woman called Brisa Thale, who doesn't like him, and has a fast boat, and doesn't ask questions." Something like a smile. "And every time I carried one of your letters, he found one of my harbors and took it. And I carried them anyway."

"Why?" said Carol.

Selvane looked at her.

"Because you asked," she said. "Every letter. Through Benjamin. Will you carry this? You can say no. Nobody had asked me anything in a hundred years. Not properly. Not like that." She looked down at Tessaly. "I'd have carried them for that if it had cost me every harbor I had." A breath. "It did."

* * *

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then I heard Iselle get up.

She didn't say anything. She just stood there, by the stove, with her hands open at her sides, looking at Tessaly in its cup. One harbor. One little light, out of all the hundreds Selvane used to have.

And I felt it. Through the boards. The thing I'd felt two days ago, small and new and frightened. Only it wasn't frightened now. It was something else.

"Three hundred and eleven," said Iselle.

"Not now," said my father.

She turned to look at him.

"Not now," he said again, gently. "Not today. You opened one hand two days ago and slept for fourteen hours. You've had your mother home for a morning." He held her eyes. "I'm not saying no. It isn't mine to say. I'm saying not yet. The way you said it to Garrick. Learn it first. Learn what it costs. Then we'll talk about walls."

Iselle looked at him for a long time.

Then she nodded. And sat back down. And put her open hands in her lap.

But she didn't stop looking at the little light in the cup. And I knew, through the boards, through the middle, through every god I've ever stood next to, that she'd counted the rows already.

* * *

That night, in the little kitchen at Greykeep, Saba sat by the fire in Helena's chair, which Helena had given her without being asked, which nobody had ever seen Helena do. She had the shuttle in her lap. Iselle was on the floor with her head on her mother's knee. Mary was at the table with her book.

Garrick folded to his father in the Ilvane valley. Landed true. Not thirty paces. Not one.

Garrick folded Saba home. The Castellan said: Guest of the house.

Saba knew. Since Iselle was a baby. Fists, little fish. She taught her to keep her hands shut so they would never know.

The Ilvane went slack for one breath, the morning Iselle opened Selvane's hand. Saba said: that's my girl.

Selvane told it. The first asking: a letter. The second asking: the Chained on the pier. Twice: Kessavel. The rest: stripped. Held until their places forget them.

The Stillyard. Under the palace hill. Three hundred and eleven gray roses. The goddess of the first warm day of spring is in the third row.

Uriah to Iselle: not yet.

And under that, in a small, careful, plain hand that had learned its letters late, pressing hard:

Saba who weaves. I am here.