Chapter 645: The Seventh Place

Isadora did not come to breakfast. She sent for them instead, an hour after dawn, to a small round room high in the eastern spire, where a fire was burning in a hearth of black stone and the Queen of the Glacial Palace sat beside it in a plain grey robe with a blanket over her knees.

She had not slept. Vane could see that from the doorway. The frost in her hair had not melted overnight, and there was a cup of something steaming on the arm of her chair that she had not touched.

Isaac was already there, standing by the window with his hands behind his back. He had not slept either. There was frost on his own fingers, very faint, and he kept flexing them as though they ached.

"Sit," said Isadora. "All of you. I won’t keep you long. I don’t have long."

Vane sat. So did Valerica, with her case of papers on her knees, and Sarai Vell, who had been invited specifically and had come in her sky-blue envoy’s coat with Thessaly’s knot pinned to the collar.

"I read the letter," Isadora said. "Twice. Once at dinner and once at three this morning, when I came back up from the ice and couldn’t sleep." She looked at Sarai Vell. "Your mistress wants the Palaces at one table before the sea reaches the shore. She wants the Accord made again. She wants me there."

"She does, Majesty," said the envoy.

"Then you may tell her the answer is yes."

Valerica’s pen stopped moving.

"Yes," Isadora repeated. "The Glacial Palace will sit at her table. I’ve spent forty years refusing that woman everything she ever asked of me, and I’d happily spend forty more. But I’ve also spent three months standing on the ice by myself, and I’m not too proud to know when I’m losing." She picked up the cup at last and held it without drinking. "Write that down, Sol. Not too proud. I want it on record. Thessaly will frame it."

"I’ll write after due consideration," said Valerica.

"You’re very good at this," Isadora said. "It’s slightly frightening."

"There’s a difficulty," the Queen went on. "I can’t go."

"Majesty..." Sarai Vell began.

"I can’t go," Isadora said again, quite gently. "Not to Aelstrom, not anywhere. If I’m away from the ice for more than a night, it opens past the point where I can close it. You’ve seen what’s under it." She looked at Vane. "You saw it breathe."

"Yes."

"Then you understand. I’ll sit at her table. But the table will have to come here, or it will have to do without my chair." She turned the cup in her hands. "Or I can send someone to sit in it for me."

She did not look at the window. She did not need to.

Isaac had gone very still.

"Mother," he said.

"You stood on the ice last night." Isadora was still looking at the fire. "I told you that you weren’t strong enough yet. That was true. It’s still true. But you stood there anyway, beside me, for two hours, until the whole length of it was closed." Her voice did not change, but something underneath it did. "I’ve kept you in this Palace for a year because I wanted one person in my life who didn’t have to stand on the ice. I was wrong. There isn’t anyone like that anymore. Not even you."

Isaac crossed the room and knelt beside her chair. He did not say anything. Vane, watching, thought that perhaps he could not.

"The Glacial Palace needs a voice at that table," Isadora said. "And the boy who stood on a road needs someone with him who knows how Palaces talk, and how they lie, and which of them can be shamed into helping and which of them can only be frightened. Sarai Vell knows the west. My son knows the rest." She put her hand on Isaac’s head, very lightly, the way she might have done when he was small. "Go with them. Speak for Boreas. Come back when it’s done."

"And the ice?" Isaac said.

"I’ll hold the ice."

"Alone."

"For now," his mother said. "That’s the other thing I want from this Accord. Not words. Hands. There used to be more of us who could stand on a shore. I want them found." She looked at Vane over her son’s head. "Can you do that, Usurper? Find me people who’ll stand on the ice?"

He thought of a road in the west, and thirty people standing at a mile-stone because nobody had told them not to.

"I can ask," he said.

"Asking is all any of us has ever done," said Isadora. "You’re just better at being looked at while you do it."

She gave them the rest of it in plain words, because she was too tired for any other kind.

Thessaly’s letter named five more Palaces. Isadora went through them one by one, with Valerica writing and Sarai Vell nodding at each, and when she had finished she told them which to try first.

"South," she said. "The Cinder Palace. Its lord owes me a favor, and he hates Thessaly even more than I do, so he’ll come to the table out of pure spite if he hears I’ve already agreed." She almost smiled. "Never underestimate spite. It’s built more alliances than love ever has."

"And the one we shouldn’t try?" asked Valerica.

Isadora was quiet for a moment.

"There’s one on her list I’d leave until last," she said. "And I’d go with a great many friends. I’ll tell Isaac which. He’ll tell you when you need to know." She closed her eyes. "Now go away. All of you. I’m going to sleep for four hours, and if anyone wakes me before the ice needs me, I’ll freeze them to the wall."

They left the next morning, in the Lark, with one more passenger than they had arrived with.

Isaac stood at the rail with a small case of clothes and a much larger case of books, and a white falcon made of ice perched on his shoulder, which his mother had put there at the landing terrace without a word of explanation.

"She’s sending a falcon," Isaac said. "To watch me."

"She’s sending a falcon," Valerica corrected, "so you can write to her."

"Every week," said Isaac gloomily. "She said every week. In detail. With the weather."

Ashe, who had spent two days in the Glacial Palace walking around on solid ice that stayed where it had been put, and had been in a better mood than anyone could remember, sat down in the center of the deck without being asked.

"I liked it there," she announced. "Nothing moved."

"It’s a lid on a sea monster," said Nyx.

"It’s a very stable lid," Ashe said.

Mara had found a corner of the deck beside Isaac’s book case. She was looking at the falcon. The falcon was looking at her. After a while, very solemnly, Mara opened her ledger to the page headed North, and wrote underneath it, in her careful hand, Seven.

Isaac looked over her shoulder.

"Seven what?" he asked.

"Places," said Mara. "At the table." She closed the ledger. "She set seven. Now there’s seven of us."