Chapter 125: Assassins

Iselle went back to Concordia on the Tuesday, because the term wasn't finished, and because, she said, a room with no windows is still a room with no windows even if everyone in it is kind.

My father didn't argue. I thought he would. I'd watched him sit at the top of the north tower and promise her that nobody would ever put her anywhere again, and I'd watched him mean it, and I'd thought: he'll find a way to keep her here anyway, gently, for her own good. That's what most people would do. That's what I'd have done.

He didn't.

He sat across from her at breakfast on the Monday and said, "Tell me what you need to be safe there."

And Iselle, who had been braced for an argument, put her spoon down and blinked at him.

"I don't know," she said.

"Then let's find out," said my father.

* * *

They found out over three hours, at the kitchen table, with Helena refilling the pot and pretending not to listen.

Iselle would go back to her room at the college. The one with the window. Io's college, the old barracks she turned into a place for questions, where every room has a window because she told the masons so, and the masons thought she was mad. Iselle would finish her term, and sit in Master Ashby's lectures on The Unanswered Shore, and correct him from the front row when he got Kethra wrong, which Caitlin says is twice an hour.

And Caitlin would go too. She'd been accepted to the same lectures. She'd take the room across the stair.

And Roderic would go, because Lexander had offered him a place in the palace guard for the winter, posted to the college, and because there was no power in heaven or earth that was going to keep Roderic in Greykeep while Iselle was in Concordia, and everyone at the table knew it, including Roderic, who went red to the ears when Adriana said so.

And Thor would go. In her brown hooded cloak, as a tall girl from the country who'd come to the city to find work, and who happened to find it as a porter at the college gate, and who happened to sit by that gate every night until dawn, cracking walnuts with her fingers.

"I'll be very inconspicuous," said Thor.

"You'll be seven feet tall and humming," said Loki.

"Inconspicuously," said Thor.

* * *

"Is that enough?" said Iselle, at the end of it.

"No," said my father. "Nothing's ever enough. But it's what you asked for, and it's a lot of people who love you." He looked at her. "And I'll come and visit. Often. Whether you want me to or not."

"I'll want you to," said Iselle.

"Then I'll knock," said my father.

* * *

He came the next Tuesday, a week later, and he brought me.

It wasn't only to see Iselle. Lexander had asked him for a war council. Just the two kings, at the long table in the Concordian palace, with maps and the king's-table board and two ravens on the back of a chair, talking about the fleet. The black sail that had sat on the line for seven hours. What it meant. How many more there'd be when they came back. My father wanted me there for it.

"You'll be in the chair one day," he said, on the way through the gate. "You might as well know what the chair has to know."

Seraphina came too, with my son on her hip. Partly to see her mother. Partly because Loki had said it was time.

* * *

I should tell you about that, because it was the first time we'd done it, and it was stranger than I'd expected.

We walked through the lower town of Concordia at noon, Seraphina and I, with our son. Through the market by the river, past the glassblowers and the spice stalls and the old bridge with the statues on it. And Seraphina let her fire show.

Not much. She's careful. A little gold at her fingertips, where they rested on his back. A faint warm shimmer in the air around her shoulders, the way the air shimmers above a road in summer. Enough that people noticed. Enough that a fishwife at the bridge nudged the woman beside her and said, quite loudly, "That's the princess. The one with the fire. Look, you can see it on her."

And my son, on her hip, with his own little gold flickering at the edge of his fist where he was holding her collar, looked at the fishwife and said "Ta," and held out a piece of his bun.

The fishwife laughed and took it.

"His mother's son," she said. "Look at that. Sparking already."

Seraphina smiled at her. And kept walking. And I saw her hand on his back tighten, just a little.

"It works," she said quietly, at the end of the bridge.

"It works," I said.

"I hate it," said Seraphina.

"I know."

"It's very sensible," said Seraphina. "I hate it."

* * *

The war council took the whole afternoon. I'll put down only one part of it, because it's the part I keep coming back to.

They'd been talking about numbers. How many ships Tamar had counted last time: sixty. How many Severin had said Malachar could build: hundreds. How many gods in Kethra were held, and how many of those might be made to fight. Lexander had the numbers in a book. My father had them in his head. They went back and forth across the long table for two hours, ships and storms and harbors and walls, until I stopped being able to hold them all.

And then Lexander closed the book.

"And when they come," he said. "When it's not one sail. When it's the whole sea." He looked at my father with his one eye. "What will you do, Uriah?"

My father didn't answer straight away.

He got up, and went to the tall window that looks west over Concordia toward the far-off line where the sky meets the hills, and stood there with his hands behind his back.

"I'll stand in front," he said.

Lexander didn't say anything.

"I'll stand in front of all of them," said my father. "My children. My wives. My grandson. Every god in the Accord who's frightened. Every harbor Selvane's ever lit." He was still looking west. "I'll freeze the sea if I have to. I've done it before. I'll stand on the ice and let them come to me, and they'll have to come through me to reach any of it." He turned around. "That's what I'll do."

"And when that isn't enough?" said Lexander quietly.

My father looked at me.

Not at Lexander. At me.

"Then my children will finish it," he said. "That's what they're for. Not the war. What comes after." He came back to the table and sat down. "I'm the wall, Lexander. I've always been the wall. But walls only hold. They don't end anything." He put his big hand flat on the closed book of numbers. "My son and my daughter are the ones who end things. I've known it since they were three, sitting on a stone with their feet in a stream, giving back everything a god had ever stolen." He looked at me again. "I just have to stand in front long enough for them to get there."

* * *

I didn't say anything. I couldn't.

Lexander looked at my father for a long moment. Then he reached out and moved one piece on the king's-table board between them. A plain white defender. He moved it one square, so that it stood directly in front of the empty space where the king should have been.

"Yes," he said. "I know the feeling."

* * *

We stayed the night at the palace. My father in the old guest rooms on the west side, where he always stays. Seraphina and I and our son in the rooms she grew up in, with the window that looks out over the college roofs.

I couldn't sleep. I never can, in Concordia. Too many bells; they ring every hour, all night, from every tower in the city, and every one of them is slightly out of time with the others.

So at midnight I went up onto the palace wall, the way I go up onto the east wall at home, and sat in an embrasure with my back against the stone and looked out over the city.

And at a quarter past midnight, my father came and sat down beside me.

* * *

"You can't sleep either," I said.

"I never can, here," said my father. "Too many bells." He settled his back against the stone with a grunt. "Your mother says I sleep like a felled tree everywhere else in the world. Just not Concordia. She says it's because Concordia's the one place I'm not in charge of anything."

We sat for a while. The bells rang the half hour, all of them, raggedly, one after another, rolling across the roofs.

"Did you mean it?" I said. "This afternoon. About standing in front."

"Yes."

"And about us. Carol and me. Being the ones who end it."

My father was quiet for a long moment.

"I've never told you this," he said. "I've never told Carol either. I've told your mothers. And Aurelia, once." He looked out over the city. "When you were three, at the stream. After Varrick fell. I found you on that stone, the two of you, with your feet in the water, giving everything back. Every god he'd taken. Every domain. Handing them back, one by one, perfectly calmly, as if you'd done it a thousand times."

"I remember the stone," I said. "I don't remember that."

"You were singing," said my father. "Your mother's right about that. Some song with no words." He smiled a little. "And I stood on the bank and watched you, and I was more frightened than I'd been in the whole war. Not of you. For you. Because I knew, standing there, that one day there'd be something in the world that only the two of you could end. And I'd have to watch you walk toward it." He looked down at his hands. "And I couldn't do it for you. Whatever it was. I'd be standing in front, holding it back. But the end of it wouldn't be mine."

* * *

"Father," I said.

"Yes."

"You're the strongest person I know."

My father laughed. Quietly.

"I froze the western sea with one hand," he said. "In front of a hundred and forty gods. I know what I am, Garrick." He shook his head. "Strong's not the same as being the one who ends things. Strong is just being very hard to get past." He put his hand on my shoulder. "I'll be very hard to get past. I promise you that. Whatever comes over that sea, it'll have to come through me first. And it'll find that very, very difficult."

* * *

That was when the light went out.

* * *

I didn't notice at first. I was looking at my father. But he wasn't looking at me anymore. He was looking past me, out over the roofs, toward the college. And his face had changed.

I turned.

The college sits a quarter mile from the palace, across the river, on a low hill of its own. A long gray building that used to be a barracks, with a tower at each corner and, as Io promised, a window in every room. At midnight most of them are dark. But not all. There's always someone up, reading, at Io's college. And Iselle always kept a lamp in her window. All night. Every night. Ever since she came. So that I can see it from outside, she told me once. So I know which one's mine.

Her window was the third from the left, two floors below the roof of the east tower.

It had been lit when I came up onto the wall. I'd looked for it. I always do.

It was dark.

* * *

"Garrick," said my father. Very quietly.

"I see it."

"Not the window." He was on his feet. "Listen."

I listened.

The bells had just rung the half hour. All of them, ragged, across the whole city. I'd heard them roll across the roofs.

All except one.

The college bell. In the east tower. The one directly above Iselle's window. It hadn't rung.

And now that I was listening, I could hear something else. Or not hear it. A hole in the night. Over the college, over the whole east tower, a patch of silence like a hand pressed flat over a mouth. No wind. No river sound. No bells. Nothing. Just held, perfect, unnatural quiet.

Held.

* * *

And then, over the college gate, lightning.

One bolt. Straight up. White and blue and enormous, from the ground into the clouds, so bright it left a line burned across my eyes. No thunder. The silence swallowed the thunder. Just the light, standing straight up from the college gate like a spear, and then gone.

Thor.

A signal. The only one she could give, in a silence that ate sound.

* * *

My father moved before I did.

I've never seen him move like that. I didn't know he could. He didn't fold; he can't. He didn't run. He went up onto the parapet of the palace wall in one step, a huge man, in his shirt and his bare feet, and he raised one hand toward the college.

And the air went cold.

Not the palace. Not the city. Just the college. Just that low hill across the river, all of it, the whole long building and its four towers and its courtyard and its walls. I watched frost go over it. White and fast and absolute, like a sheet thrown over furniture. Every roof. Every tower. Every window frame, every drainpipe, every slate. In two heartbeats the whole college was white under the moon. Rimed. Sealed.

"Nothing leaves," said my father. Not to me. To the night. His voice was very calm. "Whatever's in there. Nothing gets out through a window or over a wall or through a fold. Not while I'm holding it." He didn't lower his hand. "Garrick."

"Yes."

"Go," said my father. "I'll hold the outside. You go in." He looked at me, just for a second, and his face was the one I'd seen on the stone at the stream, twenty years ago, that I didn't remember. "Find your brother."

* * *

I reached for Roderic.

I know the shape of every one of my brothers and sisters the way you know the shape of your own hand in the dark. Roderic's is tall and steady and warm, a little clumsy at the edges, like a big dog that doesn't know how big it is. I found it at once. Right where it should be. In the east tower. Second floor. On the stair.

And around it, pressing in on it, a silence so heavy I could feel it from a quarter mile away. Like trying to see someone at the bottom of deep water.

I folded anyway.

* * *

I came out on the stair of the east tower, in the dark, in the silence.

It was like stepping into wool. Everything muffled. I opened my mouth to say Roderic's name and nothing came out. Not quiet; nothing. My own voice went into the held silence and vanished like a stone into a well. I couldn't hear my own breathing. I couldn't hear my feet on the stair.

But I could see.

There was a little light. From below. Gold and white and flickering, from the doorway at the turn of the stair, where somebody had knocked a lamp over and it was burning on the stone floor.

And by that light, on the stair above me, between me and the landing where Iselle's door was, I saw my brother.

* * *

He had his back to me. He was standing in the middle of the stair, very tall, in his nightshirt and his bare feet, with his back to Iselle's door. Not touching it. In front of it.

He was holding a fire poker. The long iron one from her grate.

There were four gray shapes on the stair above him, and two on the landing below him, between him and me. Tall, in gray, faces wrapped. Moving without any sound at all. One of them had something in its hand that caught the lamplight. Long and thin and very bright.

And my brother, my brother Roderic who apologizes to the laundry when his temper brings clouds over the east wall, who couldn't refuse a girl asking him to dance, who carried a frog around in his pocket for an entire summer when he was six, turned his head and looked at me down the stair over his shoulder.

He'd seen me fold in. He knew I was there.

And he smiled.

Not a nice smile. Not his smile. Something I'd never seen on his face in twenty years. Very calm. Very bright. Very sure.

And he lifted one finger off the poker. Just one. And shook his head at me.

Not yet.

* * *

Mary's book. She wrote it at eleven that night, in Greykeep, before any of it. I didn't see it until two days later.

Tuesday. Uriah and Garrick to Concordia, for the war council. Seraphina and the little one to see Io.

Seraphina let her fire show in the lower town. A fishwife said: his mother's son. He gave her his bun.

Iselle's lamp is in her window. Thor is at the college gate. Roderic is on the stair.

And under that, in a small square hand, written that morning before she went back through the Concordia gate, the way Caitlin writes when she's made a note she means to keep:

Caitlin. The east tower stair at the college has thirty-seven steps. I counted them twice. If there's ever a thirty-eighth, I'll know.