Chapter 121: The Spark

I woke at ten past three on Wednesday night because the light under the nursery door was the wrong color.

Our nursery used to be a linen cupboard. It's the warmest room in our rooms, backed up against the kitchen chimney; Helena chose it. It has a door with a gap at the bottom you could slide a book through, and every night of my son's life there's been a light under it. Carol's light. The little plum-sized lamp on a silver thread that she hung over his cradle the week he was born, warm white, steady, never flickering.

I know that light the way I know my own breathing. I don't look at it anymore. I just know it's there.

At ten past three, it wasn't white.

It was gold.

* * *

I was out of bed before I was awake. Seraphina was out of bed before I was. We reached the nursery door at the same moment and she got her hand on the latch first, and stopped.

"Garrick," she said. Very quietly. "Wait."

"There's—"

"I know. I can feel it." She hadn't opened the door. She was standing with her hand flat against the wood, the way Ansel stands at a door before he knocks. "It's fire."

My whole body went cold.

"Open the door," I said.

"Wait," said Seraphina. "Listen first."

* * *

I listened.

And underneath the roaring in my own ears, I heard it. Not crying. Not screaming. Nothing frightened or hurt.

My son was laughing.

* * *

Seraphina opened the door.

* * *

The cradle was on fire.

No. That isn't right. I'll try again, because I want to get it exactly right, because I think one day someone will need to know exactly what it looked like.

The blanket was on fire. The blue wool blanket Helena knitted before he was born, with the uneven border where she ran out of the first blue and had to finish with another. It was lying over my son the way it always does, kicked half off, tangled around his legs. And the whole top of it, from his feet to his chin, was covered in flame.

Gold flame. Low and soft and steady, a hand's width high, moving very slowly, the way grass moves in a field when there's almost no wind. It lay on the blanket the way a cat lies on a warm stone. It didn't crackle. It didn't smoke. It didn't climb the bars of the cradle or reach for the curtains or do any of the things fire does.

And the blanket wasn't burning.

The wool was right there, under the flame, blue, whole, every stitch of it. Not scorched. Not even darkened. The fire was sitting on it, and the blanket was simply letting it.

And in the middle of it, on his back, with both arms up over his head like a small surrendering soldier, my son was patting the flame with his hands and laughing.

* * *

I moved.

I don't know what I was going to do. Snatch him out. Put it out. Borrow Carol's frost, or my father's, and lay it over the cradle. Something. Anything. I had my hand up and something gray and cold already coming into it.

Seraphina caught my wrist.

"Don't," she said.

"Sera, he's—"

"Look at him," she said. "Garrick. Look at his hands."

* * *

I looked.

His hands were in the fire. Both of them. Fat and small and perfectly pink, patting at the flame the way he pats at the bathwater, and every time his palm came down the flame rose up a little to meet it, the way a dog's head comes up to meet your hand.

His skin wasn't red. It wasn't blistered. Nothing was happening to it at all.

And as I watched, the flame curled itself around three of his fingers, very gently, like a ring. And he looked at it, and his whole face lit up, and he said, very clearly, "Ooh."

* * *

I put my hand down.

The gray went out of it. I let it go.

"It's not hurting him," I said.

"No," said Seraphina.

"It's not burning anything."

"No." Her voice had gone very strange. "Garrick. It's not mine."

* * *

I turned and looked at her.

She was standing in the doorway in my old brown jersey with her hair all down and her bare feet on the cold boards, and her face in the gold light was completely white.

"I thought it was mine," she said. "When I felt it through the door. I thought it was mine coming up in him, the way it did with the phoenix feather. My side of it. The side that cuts." She was staring at the cradle. "It isn't. It's not mine. It's not Ignatius's either. It's not healing. It's not cutting. It's not anything I've ever felt."

She took a step toward the cradle. Then another. And knelt down beside it on the floor, so that her face was level with the bars, with the flame a hand's width from her nose.

"It's his," she said.

* * *

I knelt down beside her.

I've been near the First Flame my whole life. Ignatius's, warm and golden and full of mending, the kind you'd hold your hands out to in winter. Seraphina's, white at the heart, so sharp that the air goes thin around it, the kind you'd step back from. I know both of them better than I know most people's faces. I've borrowed both of them, when they've said yes.

This was neither.

It was warm. Very warm. But it didn't want anything. Ignatius's flame wants to mend. Seraphina's wants to cut. This one just lay there on the blanket, warm and gold and perfectly content, like a cat in the sun, or a dog asleep by a hearth. It didn't want to take anything, or change anything, or go anywhere. It just wanted to be beside him.

It was the warmest thing I'd ever been near that didn't want anything at all.

* * *

And I felt the pull.

I want to be honest about that, because it frightened me more than the fire did. I'm a mimic. I borrow what's near me; I can't help feeling it, the way you can't help hearing a song in the next room. And kneeling there beside the cradle, with that gold flame a hand's width away, I felt the thing in me that borrows lift its head and look at it.

Borrow? it wanted to say. The way it says to Seraphina's fire every morning. The way it says to the whole world.

I didn't say it.

Rysa taught Carol and me the rule when we were three, the week after the stream, when we were full of every god in the world and didn't know what to do with any of it. She made us say it every night before bed, until we said it in our sleep.

The person next to you is a person. Not a well.

My son was eleven months old the day he put a phoenix feather in his mouth. He's older now. He has six words and a hat with ears and a favorite spoon. He's a person.

He's not a well.

I closed my hands in my lap. Not fists. Just closed. Like a door you've decided not to open.

Seraphina saw. She didn't say anything. But she put her hand over mine.

* * *

There was a sound behind us. Bare feet on the boards, running, and then stopping very suddenly in the doorway.

"Garrick—"

Carol. In her nightgown, with her hair in a plait and Ignatius's coat thrown over her shoulders, and her face white.

"I felt it," she said. "Through the middle. I was asleep, and I felt you go cold all at once, and then—" She stopped. She was looking at the cradle. "Oh," she said. "Oh. Oh."

Above the cradle, on its silver thread, her little lamp had turned around.

I'd never seen it move before. It doesn't; it hangs there, steady, the way she made it. But it had turned on its thread, slowly, all the way, so that the side of it that faces the window now faced down. Toward the blanket. Toward the gold.

As if it wanted to see.

* * *

"Is he all right?" said Carol.

"He's fine," said Seraphina. "He's better than fine. Look at him."

Carol came and knelt down on my other side. The three of us in a row on the nursery floor at a quarter past three in the morning, in our nightclothes, looking through the bars of a cradle at a baby lying in a blanket made of fire, patting it.

He noticed us, then. All three of us. He turned his head on the pillow and looked at us through the bars with his solemn eyes, and his whole face cracked open into a grin.

"Ca!" he said, to Carol.

"Hello, little one," said Carol. Her voice was shaking.

He held up his hand. The one with the ring of fire around three fingers. And showed it to her. Very proudly. The way he shows you a stone he's found, or a snail, or a spoon.

"Ooh," he told her.

"Yes," said Carol. "I can see. It's beautiful."

* * *

"How do we put it out?" I said.

Seraphina looked at me.

"We don't," she said.

"Sera—"

"It's not ours to put out." She was looking at our son. "It's his. He made it. I don't know how, and I don't know what it is, but it came out of him on its own, and it's not hurting anything. If I put it out, I'd be taking it. If you put it out, you'd be taking it." She swallowed. "He's eleven months older than the feather. He can't talk properly yet. But he can be asked."

She put her face close to the bars.

"Little love," she said. "It's very late. It's the middle of the night. Everyone's asleep, even the dragon. Would you like to put your fire to bed?" She paused. "You can say no."

* * *

He looked at her for a long time.

Then he looked down at the flame on his blanket. At the gold ring around his fingers.

And he did something I'll remember for the rest of my life.

He patted it. The way Helena pats the bread dough when she's done kneading it. Twice. Very gently. With his whole small hand.

"Night," he said.

And the flame went out.

* * *

It didn't gutter. It didn't shrink or fade or sputter. It just wasn't there anymore, the way a candle isn't there when you've blown it out, except that nobody had blown. One moment the whole blanket was gold. The next it was blue wool again, in the white light of Carol's lamp.

And Carol's lamp, very slowly, turned back around on its thread. And faced the window. And was still.

* * *

My son yawned. Enormously. Put his thumb in his mouth. And went to sleep.

Just like that. Arms up. Bottom in the air, the way he always ends up. Breathing slow and steady, as if nothing had happened at all.

The three of us knelt on the nursery floor and didn't say anything for a long time.

* * *

Then Seraphina reached through the bars and put her hand flat on the blanket.

"It's warm," she said.

I put my hand next to hers.

It was. Not hot. Warm. The way a stone is warm after it's been in the sun all day. The way the stone by the stream was warm, where Carol and I had sat, twenty years after.

And when I looked closely, very closely, in the lamplight, there was something in the wool that hadn't been there before. Running through every row of Helena's stitches, right to the uneven border. So fine you'd only see it if you were looking. A single thread of gold.

* * *

None of us went back to bed.

We sat in the kitchen. Carol made the tea, because Helena wasn't up yet and Carol is the only one of us Helena trusts with the big pot. Ignatius came down at four, having woken up cold and found his coat gone, and found us at the long table, and took one look at our faces and sat down and didn't ask anything. He's like that.

Seraphina told him.

He listened to all of it with his chin in his hands. When she'd finished, he was quiet for a long time.

"Not healing," he said at last.

"No."

"Not cutting."

"No."

"Something that warms," said Ignatius slowly, "and doesn't want anything." He looked at his sister. "Sera. I don't think that's ever been. Not in Concordia. Not in all the stories. Every First Flame there's ever been was one side or the other. Mother's. Ours." He shook his head. "I don't know what that is."

"Neither do I," said Seraphina. And then, very quietly: "But I know who'll want to."

* * *

Nobody said anything after that.

We all knew what she meant. We'd all been in the great hall when Severin read the letter. We'd all heard Wend say, in his thin new voice, names are for those who are asked for. We'd all sat in the south solar and heard Aurelia say Ovaren, and felt our hands want to close.

There are people in the world who want things. And the thing that had been lying on my son's blanket at three in the morning was the most wantable thing I'd ever seen.

* * *

"I'm going to ask my mother," said Seraphina. "And my father. Today. Through the Concordia gate. Before anyone else."

"Yes," said Ignatius.

"And we tell Uriah," said Carol. "And Evelyn. And Adriana. This morning."

"Yes."

"And nobody else," I said.

They all looked at me.

"Not yet," I said. "Not till we know what it is. Not the Council. Not the household. Not—" I stopped.

"Not Mary," said Carol softly.

I didn't answer.

Mary's book has had everything in it for as long as I've been alive. Every birth, every death, every first word, every name. My own name day. My son's. Uriah. Son of Garrick and Seraphina. Loud. Mary has never left anything out. She promised my father, a long time ago, that someone would always write it down.

"I'll ask her," I said. "Myself. She can say no."

* * *

The Thursday hearings started at nine. I went down at a quarter to, with no sleep, and sat in my father's chair.

The first two names the Castellan read out were Hettie Ludd and Amos Ferrer.

They came in together. Side by side. Not an arm's length apart. Amos was holding his hat in both hands again, and he'd shaved, and Hettie had a clean collar on her black shawl. They came up to the table, and stood there, and didn't sit down.

"We'd like to withdraw," said Hettie Ludd.

I looked at her.

"Our complaint," she said. "About the tree. We'd like to withdraw it. If that's allowed." She glanced sideways at Amos. "We've had tea."

"Twice," said Amos Ferrer, to his hat.

"Twice," said Hettie Ludd. "He drank out of the good cup." She looked back at me. "Thank you for knocking, Prince Garrick. It wanted doing. I'd have done it myself, three years ago, only I couldn't."

I couldn't say anything for a moment.

"It's withdrawn," I said. "Thank you for coming to tell me."

"We brought you some pears," said Amos Ferrer. He put a small sack on the table. "And there's some for the dragon. Young Orla from the dye-house came by and said it likes them."

* * *

At the back of the lower hall, on the bench by the door, my father was looking at the ceiling. But I could see his shoulders shaking.

* * *

I went to the library at noon.

Mary was at her desk with the black book open. She looked up when I knocked, and saw my face, and put her pen down.

"Sit down, Garrick," she said.

I sat. And told her. All of it. The light under the door. The gold. The blanket. Ooh.Night. The thread in the wool. Ignatius saying I don't think that's ever been.

And then I asked her.

"Would you leave it out?" I said. "Of the book. Just for now. Until we know what it is." I swallowed. "You can say no. You've never left anything out. I know what I'm asking."

Mary looked at me for a very long time.

Then she looked down at the black book. At the page she'd been writing on. At the pen beside it.

"Your father asked me once," she said, "a long time ago, to promise that someone would always write it down. And I did promise. And I've kept it." She touched the edge of the page. "But he didn't ask me to write it down now. He asked me to make sure it was written." She looked up at me. "There's a difference. Your father knows it. I think you do too."

"Mary—"

"I'll write it," said Mary. "Every word you've just told me. In my own hand. On a separate page. And I'll put it somewhere only I know. And when it's safe, whenever that is, I'll put it back where it belongs, and nobody will be able to tell it was ever anywhere else." She picked up her pen. "That's not leaving it out, Garrick. That's keeping it."

I couldn't speak.

"Thank you," I said, when I could.

"You asked," said Mary. "That's the only reason it's yes."

* * *

So this is what was in Mary's book that night. The one everyone can read.

Thursday. Garrick's second hearing.

Ludd and Ferrer came in together and withdrew. They've had tea. Twice. He drank out of the good cup.

Pears for the Prince. Pears for the dragon. The dragon rang the bell at noon today. On time.

Seraphina went to Concordia through the gate. Ignatius went with her.

Little Uriah slept late.

And under that, in a small, careful, old-fashioned hand, a little stiff, as if the person writing hadn't held a pen in a long time:

Hettie Ludd. Two cups. Both used.