Chapter 189: The Price of Survival

(Alash Vortex POV)

I could have lied to him.

I had several lies ready. I always do; it is one of the few things I prepare in advance.

I had heard the long call come from the lookout, where Elizabeth had gone, and guessed. I’d had a bad feeling about that ridge from the start. I knew Elizabeth, and she was exactly the kind of person who ends up in the middle of trouble on a ridge.

They were all reasonable, and Renn would have seen through every one of them.

He had his guards’ accounts folded in his hand. A long call means hold, and it can mean a loose stone or a deer on the path. Every other person on that ridge had stopped where they stood and waited to learn which.

I hadn’t waited. I had said "It’s Elizabeth" out loud at the low wall, in front of his guard, before anyone had said her name to anybody.

So I didn’t lie.

"I can’t tell you," I said.

Renn’s face didn’t change. "Can’t, or won’t?"

"Can’t." I made myself hold his eyes. "I’m not keeping it from you because I’d rather not say. I’d have to tell you things I can’t explain to anyone, and I don’t know where I would even start."

It was the truest thing I had said all day, and it sounded exactly like an excuse.

Renn looked at me for a long moment.

"And the wall," he said. "Why could the four of you walk through it, when my men couldn’t?"

"I don’t know."

"That one," said Renn, "I believe."

He unfolded the sheet in his hand at last and looked at it, though I don’t think he was reading it.

"I have a report to finish," he said. "The Crown will read it. So will your Headmaster. It will say that you broke my hold, that you knew who was in danger before anyone could have told you, and that when I asked you how, you declined to answer."

"That’s accurate."

"I know it’s accurate. I’ve written most of it." He folded the sheet again. "Here’s the part that isn’t going in the report."

The room went quieter, which I wouldn’t have thought possible.

"You were right," said Renn. "If you’d held, she would probably be dead. I’ve stood on that ridge and looked at what she built, and at the damage something did getting through it."

He let that sit for a moment.

"Being right doesn’t make it acceptable," he said. "It makes it something I have to plan around."

"How?"

"Like this. The next time you know something you can’t explain, you tell me. You don’t tell the wall, or whoever happens to be standing next to you. You don’t have to tell me how. You tell me what, and I decide what we do about it."

"And if there isn’t time?"

"Then you shout it while you’re running," said Renn. "Loud enough for me to hear."

I hadn’t expected that. I don’t think anyone in the room had.

"Yes," I said.

"Good." He turned to the rest of the room. "Nobody goes beyond the inner wall until we move. We don’t move until the Crown’s officers have walked that ridge, and until Sorel says Her Highness can sit a horse. That will not be two days."

He went to the door and stopped there with his hand on the frame.

"Five," he said, to nobody in particular, and went out.

Daphne, two beds down, was still looking at me.

Before anyone could have told you. She had heard it said aloud now, by a man who wrote things down. She had trusted me on that exact question, on a ridge, in less time than it took her to choose a chair.

She didn’t say anything. She turned her face to the wall and closed her eyes, and I lay there and watched her not sleep.

***

(Elizabeth Aurelius POV)

The Foreign Office official arrived before breakfast, which told me the news had travelled faster than he had.

He had brought a draft. He would have brought a draft to his own funeral.

He stood at the foot of my bed and read it to me in the voice of a man who had been up all night choosing adjectives. It was a dispatch to the Crown.

The First Princess had been attacked on the western ridge by an unknown assailant, one day after the signing. The attacker had come from the direction of the border country. Beastkin involvement could not, at this time, be ruled out.

"Stop there," I said.

He stopped.

"Read me that last sentence again."

He did.

"Take it out."

"Your Highness, it’s simply accurate. The attack came from the west, and..."

"It’s accurate the way a rumour is accurate."

I was sitting up against three pillows, with my left arm in a sling and my hands lying in my lap where Sorel had ordered them kept. They wanted very badly to do something.

"I was there," I said. "You weren’t. Nothing that came over that ridge was beastkin."

"With respect, Your Highness, nobody else saw it."

"Five of us saw it, and I outrank the rumour."

He opened his mouth. I went on, because I had been lying awake since before dawn putting this in order, and I wasn’t going to waste it.

"There are already two stories in this keep. I’ve heard both of them from the corridor. One says the beastkin wanted the treaty to fail. The other says someone on our side wanted it to fail and paid a beastkin to do it."

I looked at him. "Somebody sold our route to the Tigers once already, and we still don’t know who. I can understand why people like the second story."

"Your Highness..."

"Neither of them is evidence. If that dispatch goes east with that sentence in it, the first story will reach the capital before the truth does, and the treaty will be a day old and already bleeding."

He had stopped arguing. That was something.

"Write that the attacker is unidentified," I said. "I saw it. It was nothing I have ever read of, and I have read every bestiary in my father’s library."

He wrote that.

"And write that there is no evidence of beastkin involvement," I said, "and no evidence of anyone else’s either."

He was writing now, very fast, which I have to admit is the one thing about him I admire.

"And the delegation," I said. "Nobody tells them anything before I do. I’ll see the Speakers myself this morning."

"You’re meant to be resting."

"I’m sitting in a bed," I said. "I’ll see them from the bed."

***

Sorel brought the Headmaster’s reply after breakfast.

It had come back by relay late the night before, folded small and sealed. She had held it until morning, because she had wanted me asleep more than she had wanted me informed.

She had clearly read it already. She had the face of someone delivering a verdict she agreed with and wished she didn’t.

She sent for Alash before she opened it. He came in with his pillow under his arm and stood at the end of my bed, and for once he didn’t sit down.

Sorel read it aloud. It was short. Theoran says once what other people need three attempts at.

There were two matters, he wrote, and he would not allow them to be confused with one another.

The first was Lord Vortex’s use of Healing Bond, in deliberate breach of an instruction given personally.

He had said at the time that he would treat a breach as a breach of his authority rather than of a rule, and he had meant it. The matter would be addressed in person, at Zenith, and nowhere else.

Until then, Lord Vortex would use no skill beyond ordinary Healing without Healer Sorel’s consent.

The second was the advancement of all five students. Healer Sorel would examine all five every day until departure and send every finding by relay. A full account would be given at Zenith. Lord Vortex’s weekly reports would continue, and would now be considerably longer.

At the bottom there was one more line, in the same hand. If Her Highness consented, as I expect she will tell me she did, that is hers to account for. It does not alter the breach.

Sorel folded the sheet.

"He’s right," said Alash. "About all of it."

"I consented," I said. "I’d like that recorded somewhere. I gave it knowing every risk the Headmaster could name, because Alash named every one of them to me first."

"It will be recorded," said Sorel. "It doesn’t change the first matter."

"I’m not asking it to. I’m asking for it to be true on paper as well as in this room."

Alash looked at me then, briefly, and away again. It was the look of someone who had expected to stand in a room alone and found that he wasn’t.

***

I saw the Speakers before noon, from the bed, with a shawl over the sling so that nobody would be distracted by it.

I told them what I had seen and what I hadn’t, and what the dispatch would say, and what it would not. Hadrin listened with his crooked antlers bent toward me and his hands folded on his knee.

At the end he said only, "Thank you for telling us first."

I held on to that for the rest of the morning.

James came in the afternoon.

He closed the door behind him and sat in the chair by the bed, and for a while he didn’t say anything at all. That was new. James always says something.

"Sophie told me," I said at last, "that you nearly used Spatial."

"I didn’t."

"I know. She told me that too. She told me what she said to you."

"Worse," said James.

"Yes."

He looked at his hands. "You sent me to stand next to a pile of rocks."

"I did."

"I stood there the whole time. I held, because it was Renn’s code, and because I didn’t know it was you." His voice didn’t change at all. "I counted my breaths. I lost count."

I had nothing to say to that, so I didn’t try.

"I’m not going to joke about this," he said.

"I know."

"I’d like to. I can’t find one."

On that platform he had felt what I felt the day he caught me, when we were younger, in a hall with old beams. I had felt one word from his father go through him like the sun coming out.

We had been promised to each other for years. I had thought there was nothing left that either of us could tell the other. I had been wrong about that, and I found I was glad, which surprised me.

"You were there when I fell," I said. "The first time."

"I wasn’t there today."

"You came. You came through a wall, and you put a knife into it, and you carried me out." I looked at him. "I’d like that recorded too."

He laughed once, without much in it. Then he took my good hand and held it, and he didn’t let go for a long time.

***

(Alash Vortex POV)

Mia found me on the inner wall in the late afternoon, which was as far from the infirmary as Renn’s orders allowed me to get.

Lyssairia came with her. Neither of them said anything at first. They stood on either side of me, as they had sat two nights ago above the lanterns, and looked out over the courtyard with me.

"Your princess came to us before the rumour did," said Mia eventually. "The Speakers noticed."

"She would."

Lyssairia turned her head and looked at me properly. Her ears were half flat, and they stayed that way.

"What was up there?"

"I don’t know what it was."

She watched my face. "That’s true. And it isn’t all of it."

"No."

"He does that," said Mia, to nobody in particular.

Lyssairia looked past me, down into the courtyard. The others were crossing it below us, on their way back from the infirmary: James with Elizabeth on his arm, Sophie talking with her hands, Daphne a pace behind with her wrapped wrists folded.

I watched Lyssairia count them, as she had counted us once before. Four of them below, and me beside her.

"Five," she said.

"Five."

"All of you," said Mia quietly, "this time."

"It nearly wasn’t."

Mia was quiet for a while.

"Nearly is a word for the living," she said. "Caelum would have liked it."

I didn’t trust my voice with that, so I didn’t use it. Lyssairia’s shoulder bumped mine, once, lightly enough that she could deny it later.

"Stay that way," she said, as she had said it before, and went down the steps.

***

The five of us ended up in the small sitting room off our corridor that evening. Sorel had run out of reasons to keep us apart, and Renn had run out of rooms he trusted more.

Elizabeth was propped in the good chair with her arm in its sling. James sat on the floor beside her. Sophie had taken the window seat. Daphne stood by the door, because in every room Daphne takes the place that can see it.

I lay along the bench with Dream Haven under my head, and felt them.

All four of them. I didn’t have to look. I knew where each of them was as surely as I knew where my own hands were, and from the way they kept glancing at one another, so did they.

"Does it stop?" said Sophie.

Nobody needed to ask what she meant.

"It stopped when you went to the gatehouse," I said. "It came back when you came in."

"So it’s only when we’re close."

"As far as I can tell."

"And as far as you can tell," said Elizabeth, "is not very far."

"No."

Nobody said anything about the memories. They sat in the room with us like a sixth person none of us wanted to introduce.

Sophie broke first. She usually does.

"I’m sorry," she said to James. "About your father. I mean, I’m not sorry, he said better, that’s good. I just mean I’m sorry I was there for it."

"Don’t," said James.

"I’m only..."

"Sophie."

"Yes."

"I was there for your mother’s hand," said James. "So we’re even."

Sophie went red to the ears. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed, and for a moment she looked as though she might cry instead.

She hadn’t looked at me since the ridge. She looked now, for about half a second, and then at the floor.

I knew why. Four years of that forest had gone into her in a few seconds. Nobody knows what to say to someone after that, and Sophie, who has never once been short of words, had nothing.

"It’s all right," I said.

"It isn’t."

"No," I agreed. "But you’re allowed to look at me anyway."

She looked at me. It took her a moment to manage it, and after that she kept managing it.

Elizabeth said very little. She had spent her whole life deciding who saw what, and four people had now felt her fall backward with no fear in it, into the arms of the boy she was going to marry.

Every so often I caught her looking at one of us, working out what we thought of her for it. I didn’t think less of her. Sitting there and letting us look was the bravest thing anyone did in that room.

Daphne said nothing at all.

***

They went one at a time when Sorel came round to send us to bed. Daphne went last. She stopped in the doorway with her back to the corridor.

"You asked her," she said.

I sat up.

"On the ridge. You told her everything it could do, and you asked whether she wanted it." Her voice was perfectly level. "The gold came under my feet too. Nobody asked me."

"Daphne..."

"On the stair, you were going to tell me something. At the table you said tomorrow." She didn’t move. "Tomorrow was yesterday."

"I know," I said. "I started. And then the whistle went."

"You said ’since Merrow’s.’" She said it quietly, as though she were turning the words over to see what was underneath them. "And a minute later you knew where she was before anyone had told you."

She looked at me for a long time. I couldn’t tell what she saw. I never can.

I opened my mouth.

"Not tonight," she said. "You’re tired, and you’ll make it smaller than it is."

"I wasn’t going to."

"You were," said Daphne. "When you can say all of it, say it."

She went.

***

( Somewhere a very long way from Halden, the previous afternoon )

Pride had been standing still for some time before Greed noticed.

"What."

Pride raised his hand, palm open. The absence of light gathered on it into a line and began to turn slowly.

Twice before, the line had folded away at a second and a half. Greed waited for it to fold.

It went on turning instead, and lengthening, long past a second and a half, long past any count either of them had been prepared to keep.

"The same?" said Greed.

"Stronger," said Pride. "And longer."

Envy was beside them. Neither of them had heard her arrive. She looked at the line on his palm for a long time without speaking.

"Where?" said Greed.

Pride closed his hand. The line went on turning against his fingers for a breath more, and then it was gone.

"Not where it was before," he said. "That is all I have."

"Your hunter," Greed said to Envy. "Did it find it?"

"If it had found it," said Envy, "it would be coming back."

"Is it?"

"I do not know."

Pride was still looking at his closed hand.

"The second time," he said, "it looked back at us."

"And this time?"

"This time it did not look at us at all," said Pride. "It was looking at something else."

***

(Alash Vortex POV)

It was past midnight when I opened the book.

The page I wanted wasn’t there anymore. It was somewhere east of me by now, in a leather bag behind a rider who had no idea what was in it. In a few days Penelope would sit on her bed and read it.

I could remember every word anyway.

We reached Halden. Nobody died. You will notice this is becoming a theme.

Further down was the line she would read longest. Everyone is fine. Including me. I mean it this time.

Above my name, in the space I had left blank, I had written eight more words. It’s signed. Now I’m counting the days home.

She would count them. She would believe every one, because for once I had meant all of them.

The departure was going to be late, and she would count that too.

I took a clean sheet from the back of the book and looked at it for a long time.

I couldn’t tell her about the ridge, or what had stood on it. I couldn’t explain what had happened to five people’s cores without telling her the thing I had told nobody, and I was too tired to lie to her well.

In the end I wrote one line.

The third letter was true when I wrote it.

I looked at it. It was exactly the kind of sentence she would hold up to a lamp. She would find everything I hadn’t written underneath it, and then she would wait until I said it.

I didn’t sign it. I didn’t cross it out either. I left the rest of the page empty and closed the book on it.

[You did not sign it.]

’Not yet.’

[I am recording that.]

I didn’t tell it not to.

Somewhere in Zenith, I suspected, there was a drawer with room in it for one more letter, and the third was on its way to fill it. I didn’t know where she would put a fourth.

I lay down with Dream Haven under my head and looked at the ceiling.

All this time, I had thought connecting the other four vessels was the hard part. Four of four. The System had counted them for me, and I had counted them myself, and I had believed that once the number was finished, something would be safer. Nothing was.

The thing on the ridge was still alive somewhere beyond it, hurt, and still hunting.

Five cores had jumped two stages, and the only person who could begin to explain why was lying on a borrowed bed with no way to say it. Theoran would want that explanation at Zenith, and he would not accept "I can’t."

And the people I cared about had started asking me questions I couldn’t answer. Renn had asked his across the foot of a bed. Daphne had only started on hers.

I watched the ceiling until it got light.