Chapter 63: Those Who Came Freely

Breakfast nearly ended before anyone ate.

The young giant reached for the bread, saw the steward approaching with another tray, and put his hand back in his lap. Hadrun noticed. So did the gray-haired woman beside him.

“Take it, Borrin,” she said.

He looked toward Lisbeth.

She was checking the dressing at the woman’s throat. Both collars had been removed during the night, and the iron lay under guard far from the breakfast tables.

“The bread is there to be eaten,” Lisbeth told him.

Borrin took a piece no larger than his thumb.

Bruni looked at it, then silently passed him half a loaf.

Anja, seated beside her father, watched the exchange with the solemn attention she gave to important adult mistakes. She pushed the butter closer to Borrin and returned to her own breakfast.

Lexander arrived while Hadrun was trying to remember the name of a ferryman.

“Rusk,” the woman said.

“No. Rusk had the red boat.”

“They were both red.”

“One was brown.”

“After he stopped painting it.”

Hadrun considered that, then laughed.

The sound startled Borrin enough that he nearly dropped the butter knife.

The woman introduced herself as Hessa. She had known Hadrun’s village, though she had lived farther upriver. Before the war, she had repaired ferry landings and married a man who believed every broken tool could be fixed with a larger hammer.

“Sometimes right,” Bruni observed.

“Frequently expensive,” Hessa replied.

Lexander accepted the chair placed near the end of the table. For several minutes, the conversation remained with boats, tools, and people who had once expected to grow old in the places where they were born.

Then a bell sounded at the nearby work yard.

Borrin stood so quickly that the bench lurched beneath him.

His cup struck the ground and broke.

Nobody spoke.

The young giant stared toward the bell, breathing through his mouth. One hand had risen to the bare skin beneath his jaw.

Hessa reached for his wrist.

“Different bell,” she said.

He looked at her.

“Different place.”

Slowly, he sat.

Lisbeth signaled the steward away from the broken cup. There would be time to gather the pieces after Borrin no longer expected someone to make him pay for them.

Lexander found the steward outside the shelter afterward.

“Can the work yard use a flag for the next few days?”

The man looked toward the bell tower, then back through the doorway.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Ask them. Explain why.”

Inside, Hessa was speaking quietly to Hadrun. Anja had begun telling Borrin about the river stones on her shelf, holding up nine fingers and correcting herself when she discovered she had shown him eight.

Lexander stayed in the doorway a moment longer.

He had grown accustomed to counting a rescue when the wagons reached home. Breakfast was teaching him how much work remained after that.

Hessa asked to speak with him before noon.

Lisbeth allowed the conversation provided she remained seated and Lexander did not turn it into a council meeting. They spoke beneath the shelter awning while rainwater dripped from the ropes overhead.

“You keep looking at the roads,” Hessa said.

“There are people on them.”

“There are people off them too.”

He waited.

She rested her hands on her knees. Around one wrist, pale skin marked the place where another restraint had once been worn.

“The ridge families haven’t all gone to Surtr.”

“Some have.”

“Yes.” Her answer was immediate. “Some went gladly. Some wanted what he promised them. Some wanted a chance to make humans afraid.”

She glanced toward the city walls.

“They won’t like hearing that you’ve freed us.”

“What about the others?”

“They’ll want to know whether it’s true.”

Lexander considered the weight of that distinction. A rumor of safety could lure people into a trap as easily as a rumor of danger could keep them captive.

“Would they believe your word?”

“Some would. Others would believe I’d been made to say it.”

“Then what would convince them?”

Hessa looked toward Bruni, who sat nearby pretending not to listen while Anja repaired the tie on his sling.

“That depends on whether they remember him.”

Bruni’s head lifted.

For once, he had no immediate answer.

The council received Hessa’s proposal badly.

Lexander had expected caution. He had not expected Councilor Veylan to place a broken piece of roof tile on the table.

“My brother’s house,” the man said.

Atreyu, standing near the window, went still.

Veylan kept his hand beside the tile. He was a narrow, precise man who ordinarily arrived with notes arranged by subject. That morning he had brought only the fragment wrapped in a handkerchief.

“Three giants broke the north gate at Dunmere. Your patrol recovered eleven people from the lower street. My brother was not among them.”

Lexander looked at the broken edge.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you are. I also know there are people here who would like a reassuring distinction between the giants who chose and the giants who were forced.”

“No one has called it reassuring,” Io said.

Veylan looked at her, then down at his hand.

“How will we know?”

The question stayed in the room.

Thor stood beside the hearth with her arms folded. Mara had a bandage beneath her sleeve. Neither tried to answer quickly.

At last Lexander said, “We ask witnesses. We examine what happened. We don’t treat the presence of a collar as an answer to every other question.”

“And until then?”

“We feed injured people and keep investigating.”

Veylan’s mouth tightened.

“Hadrun told me he was forced to break gates,” Lexander continued. “He knows we will hear accounts from the places where he was taken. He has offered what he remembers. That matters. So will what other people remember.”

The councilor looked up sharply.

“You would bring him before a hearing?”

“If the evidence requires one. With someone to speak for him, and with the people harmed allowed to speak too.”

Io leaned forward.

“The proposed meeting is outside the walls. No armed party enters Concordia because Hessa says they should. But refusing to hear them leaves us with less knowledge than we have now.”

Veylan looked around the table. Nobody smiled at him. Nobody asked him to set his grief aside for the convenience of the kingdom.

Eventually, he wrapped the tile again.

“I want the terms written,” he said.

“So do I,” Lexander replied.

Bruni found Lexander in the lower courtyard afterward.

His sling was crooked. Anja’s knot had held, but he had plainly been using the arm when Lisbeth was not looking.

“You know the ridge families?” Lexander asked.

“Some.”

“Would they listen to you?”

Bruni watched water spill from a gutter into the stone channel.

“Used to laugh.”

Lexander waited.

“Talk slow. Think slow, they say.” He frowned, searching for the next words. “Not all. Enough.”

The courtyard seemed very large around them.

Lexander had heard men praise Bruni’s strength while speaking about him as though he were not in the room. He had corrected them. He wondered how often he had failed to notice.

“You don’t have to carry the invitation.”

“Hessa can’t walk far.”

“We have messengers.”

Bruni looked toward the open passage leading to the receiving house.

“Borrin asks if can leave.”

“He can, once Lisbeth thinks he’s fit for the road.”

“Asks many times.”

“I know.”

Bruni drew a breath.

“I can tell them.”

Lexander looked at his sling.

“You’ll take an escort. And you’ll let the shoulder rest.”

Bruni’s expression brightened enough to make the next words difficult.

“An escort that stays with you,” Lexander added. “You won’t leave them behind because your legs are longer.”

Bruni considered this restriction with evident disappointment.

Then he nodded.

They did not send him that day.

Hessa helped mark the meeting place on an old survey: a summer grazing hollow beyond the disputed roads, reachable without passing through Surtr’s timber works. A shepherd who still traded along the western hills agreed to carry the first message. Bruni would attend only if someone answered.

The invitation named a time, the number permitted to attend, and the distance armed escorts would keep. It promised safe conduct for the meeting. It made no promise to excuse crimes or return anyone who sought refuge.

Lexander signed it. Io read it twice before adding her name.

Then they sent a copy through the gate to Greykeep.

Uriah asked Lexander to come in person when he could.

There was news from the inquiry into Merrow’s accounts.

Loki went with him.

He claimed an interest in merchant fraud, a subject on which Lexander suspected he could have delivered several lectures from personal experience. Yet he grew quieter as they crossed the gate court, and quieter still when Greykeep’s stone rose around them.

Havenreach sounded busy beyond the castle walls. Construction wagons rattled along the street below, and someone was arguing with a mason about the position of a drain.

Lexander found the ordinary noise comforting.

Mary met them near the stair with a packet beneath one arm.

“We have identified two payments,” she said. “The rest will require people who can tell us which names are real.”

“Only two?” Loki asked.

She looked at him.

“Two that I can defend under questioning. There are several others you’re welcome to guess about.”

“I begin to understand why everyone fears your paperwork.”

“Only people who haven’t read it.”

She led them into a small workroom where Uriah waited beside a table covered in copies. Lexander noticed that the originals had been kept elsewhere.

Mary placed Merrow’s invoice beside a page from Oswin’s records.

“The stone braces reached the outer settlement. The payments went through a factor who also purchased furnace fuel for the workshop outside Concordia.”

“That gives us a shared supplier,” Lexander said.

“Yes. It does not give us the engraver.”

Uriah tapped another line.

“But the supplier charged for lodging on the journey. Mary found the inn.”

Lexander looked down.

The inn stood east of the ridge road, several miles from the Hall’s outer settlement.

“Eliza?” he asked.

“She has the name,” Uriah said. “We’re checking who stayed there before anyone knocks on the door with soldiers behind them.”

Loki leaned over the accounts.

For the first time since entering Greykeep, he looked wholly present.

They worked until the lamps were needed.

Lexander described the convoy rescue and the extra strap over the control assembly. Uriah asked about the soldiers injured during the release. Mary copied the names of the rescued workers for comparison with the missing lists.

The Hall of Accord remained beyond their immediate reach. Its altered thresholds had not become less dangerous because ordinary merchants kept accounts outside them. The inquiry concerning the bedding deliveries was being handled separately; no one would risk the laundry worker merely to confirm a detail that might be found another way.

Then Lexander laid down Hessa’s proposed meeting.

Uriah read the invitation carefully.

“Will you go?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me there?”

Lexander glanced at the table: the routes, the copied payments, the records of people still inside the Hall.

“Keep doing this. Send someone who can observe for Greykeep, if they agree to the numbers.”

Uriah nodded.

“Melody may have advice about the approach. She has heard enough frightened leaders trying to sound unafraid.”

“So have you.”

Uriah smiled faintly.

“So have you.”

For a moment neither looked at the papers.

Then Mary placed another sheet between them.

“Since we have established that everyone is experienced, perhaps someone can explain why this merchant charged for six horses and bought feed for eight.”

Loki reached for the page.

“Finally,” he said. “A question worthy of suspicion.”

When they left the workroom, Loki turned toward the garden.

Lexander followed far enough to see the pavilion beyond the lamps.

Fenrir lay inside, his head raised.

Loki stopped beneath the nearest tree.

For a long moment, father and son regarded each other across the grass.

“You look tired,” Fenrir said.

“I’ve been reading honest accounts. The effort is unfamiliar.”

Fenrir’s gaze moved to Lexander, then back.

“The giants?”

“Alive.”

“I heard.”

Loki put his hands into his coat pockets.

“They’re asking whether anyone else wants to stop helping Surtr.”

Fenrir’s ears shifted. “Some will want to stop losing.”

“Yes. We shall have to distinguish the two.”

“That can take time.”

“I’m learning.”

The words landed more heavily than Loki’s tone suggested.

Lexander remained beside the path. There were things between them he could neither settle nor soften by standing closer.

At last Loki asked, “What would you look for?”

Fenrir lowered his head a little.

“Who they leave behind.”

“Their escorts?”

“The people who pay when they change sides.”

Loki’s face altered.

Lexander thought of Dorr’s warning about the false housings.

For a while the garden was quiet except for leaves moving against the pavilion roof.

Then Loki nodded.

“I’ll remember.”

Fenrir watched him turn away.

Neither offered forgiveness. Neither pretended the conversation had meant nothing.

Io had brought the children to Greykeep that afternoon, and Lexander found them asleep in a room adjoining Evelyn’s sitting room.

Ignatius lay with one hand caught in the edge of his blanket. Seraphina had rejected the pillow and occupied the middle of the bed with firm conviction. In the next bed, Carol slept facing Garrick, whose feet had escaped his covering.

Lexander stood in the doorway until Io came beside him.

“They played with Julian and Elowen,” she whispered. “Then they argued over whether a wooden horse needed a bed.”

“Did it?”

“It has a blanket.”

“A reasonable compromise.”

“Adriana negotiated it.”

They returned to the sitting room, where Adriana rested with a cushion behind her back and Evelyn was trying to persuade Uriah that sitting down would not endanger the kingdom.

The baby moved while Adriana was reaching for her cup. She stopped, one hand settling over the curve of her belly.

Io smiled.

“Still determined to rearrange you?”

“Apparently my ribs were poorly placed.”

Evelyn laughed and moved the cup closer.

For a little while, the conversation stayed with family. Io told them about the climbing frame. Uriah admitted Garrick had begun planning routes onto furniture before anyone noticed he had entered the room. Adriana pointed out that Carol supplied most of the encouragement and escaped most of the blame.

Lexander listened, grateful for people with whom he could discuss extraordinary children as children.

When Evelyn asked whether Seraphina’s temper still brought heat to her hands, Io answered plainly.

“Sometimes. Less when we notice she’s tired before she does.”

“And Ignatius?”

“Small things. Cracks in clay. Warmth where he’s been holding something.”

Uriah looked toward the sleeping room.

“They’re learning so much faster than we can get used to.”

Io nodded.

“We still have to let them learn slowly when they need to.”

They returned to Concordia after the children woke.

Seraphina insisted she was not tired, then fell asleep against Lexander before they reached their own rooms. Ignatius stayed awake long enough to ask whether they would see Carol and Garrick tomorrow.

“Not tomorrow,” Io told him. “We’re staying home.”

He considered objecting, discovered he lacked the energy, and accepted his blanket instead.

Later, Io found Lexander beside the nursery window.

“What did you remember in the garden?” she asked.

“The raven. The snow. You laughing.”

“Your crown had fallen into a drift.”

He turned.

She nodded.

“You said the bird had done it deliberately.”

“Had it?”

“Almost certainly.”

He smiled. Then the smile faded as another fragment stirred beneath the first: a long hall, a place at a table left empty, the knowledge of losses still waiting ahead.

Io took his hand before he could follow it farther.

“I remember the laughter too,” she said.

He looked through the open nursery door at the two sleeping shapes.

“Sometimes it feels as though the old life is waiting for us to make the same choices.”

“Then we’ll have to keep paying attention.”

She led him away from the window.

The shepherd returned two days later.

Someone had answered.

They had not agreed to send three elders. They offered one speaker, one witness, and an injured woman who could not walk without help. They asked whether the injured woman counted toward the limit.

Lexander read the question twice.

“Tell them she may bring someone to carry her,” he said.

The shepherd shifted his cap between his hands.

“There was another thing.”

He unwrapped a small parcel.

Inside lay half an iron collar.

It had been broken with such force that one edge had curled inward. Dark leather still clung to the lining.

Atreyu leaned closer, keeping his hands away from it.

“Where did they get this?”

“They said their speaker would explain.”

Lexander looked toward Bruni.

The giant had gone very still.

“Know the mark,” he said.

“Whose?”

“Ridge smith. Old work.”

He touched his own chest, just below the shoulder.

“Made armor. Before.”

The meeting took place in a hollow where sheep had eaten the grass short before the war emptied the summer pastures.

Lexander brought Bruni, Mara, and an interpreter familiar with the northern dialects. Hessa had insisted there would be words worth hearing correctly. Greykeep’s interest would be represented by Lexander for this first meeting; adding another observer would have exceeded the agreed party.

Armed escorts waited on the slopes at the stipulated distance.

Thor remained with Concordia’s reserve, visibly unhappy about it.

“Shout loudly,” she had told Lexander before he left.

“I generally try not to conduct diplomacy that way.”

“Expand your methods.”

Now, standing beside a weathered boundary stone, he watched four figures descend from the opposite ridge.

The injured woman rode on a carrying frame between two others. One set his end down when they reached level ground and remained beside her. The other approached with the speaker, who carried a long wrapped object beneath one arm.

Bruni stiffened.

The speaker saw him.

“Bruni.”

No laughter followed the name.

The man was old enough that white had spread through his dark beard. A scar crossed his chin and disappeared beneath his collar. His eyes lingered on Bruni’s sling.

“You fought at the road.”

Bruni nodded.

“You freed Hessa?”

“Helped.”

The speaker looked toward Lexander.

“I am Rauk. Before you offer me anything, you should know I carried stone for Surtr willingly.”

Mara’s hand remained still beside her belt.

Lexander held the giant’s gaze.

“Tell me.”

Rauk spoke without making himself smaller.

He had believed the old promises: land restored, human kings driven from ancient crossings, giant children no longer taught to duck away from roads. He had brought eleven adults to the first mustering and sent timber afterward.

Then the levies grew. So did the punishments for failing to meet them.

“When my niece could not walk, they called it refusal,” he said.

Behind him, the woman on the carrying frame stared at the ground.

Rauk unwrapped the object beneath his arm.

The other half of the collar lay across his palm.

“I broke it.”

“And brought her here,” Lexander said.

“No.”

Rauk looked toward the eastern ridge.

“I brought her to our winter caves. Then I came here.”

“How many remain there?”

“Forty-three. Children among them. People who followed me when I told them Surtr would give us a future.”

Lexander heard Fenrir’s warning again.

“Does Surtr know you’ve left?”

“By now.”

Mara glanced toward the waiting escorts.

Rauk lowered the broken iron.

“I cannot offer you innocent hands. I can offer you the road to those caves and the names of the men who will come for them.”

The injured woman finally lifted her head.

“Ask him,” she said.

Rauk’s jaw tightened. For the first time, the certainty left his voice.

“Will you take our children?”

Lexander stepped closer to the boundary stone.

“Their families may come with them.”

Rauk stared at him.

“We will hear what each of you has done,” Lexander continued. “You’ve already told me there are things to answer for. But I won’t require a child to lose a parent before we let them cross a road.”

The woman on the frame covered her mouth.

Beside Lexander, Bruni shifted his weight and looked toward the eastern ridge.

“Forty-three,” he said.

Mara was already unfolding the map.

This time, the people beyond the lines had given them their own names.