Chapter 75: The Nail

The Iron Throne’s priests lodged in a chapel on the Imperial side of the wall.

Aren found it on the second morning, carrying water for the Prince’s household up the iron stair. Two hundred riders and their servants needed water too, and the Imperial water boys couldn’t carry all of it. Nobody on that side looked at him either, because a water boy was a water boy.

It was a small stone building tucked against the inner wall, below the great iron tower, with one door and a narrow window high up under the roof. A bell hung over the door. Two soldiers in black stood outside, not exactly guarding it, but not going anywhere either.

The four men in grey went in at noon and never came out.

"I can’t get in there," Aren admitted that evening, in the hollow on the ridge. "Not as a water boy. Not as anything."

Roderick picked absently at a thread on his cloak.

"I can."

Aren looked at him.

"There’s a window under the roof. I saw it from the slope." Roderick pulled his cloak tighter. "The wall behind it is old stone, full of cracks. I can climb that in the dark without a sound." He shrugged. "I can climb anything in the dark without a sound, ghost. That’s what I am now, isn’t it? That’s what the window said."

"If they see you..."

"They won’t." There was no pride in Roderick’s voice at all, because it was simply true. "Nobody sees me. That’s the whole problem with me."

He went quietly at midnight.

Aren waited on the iron stair below the chapel, in the shadow of a buttress, buckets beside him so anyone passing would see a water boy resting. He couldn’t see the window from there, so he sat with his back against the cold stone and counted, as he had counted at the door of the Pools.

At four hundred, he stopped counting. At eight hundred, he made himself start again.

’He’s fine. He’s a shadow. Shadows don’t fall off roofs. Do they?!’

Somewhere past a thousand, a shadow came off the wall above him, dropped onto the stair without a sound, and turned into Roderick.

They didn’t speak until they were back on the ridge.

Roderick sat down heavily in the hollow, pulled his cloak around him, and said nothing. His hands weren’t quite steady, and Aren hadn’t seen them shake since the Furnace.

"There’s a room under the roof," Roderick finally answered. "Where they sleep. Four beds. The grey-eyed one doesn’t sleep. He sat at a table with a candle and the box in front of him, and he waited."

"For what?"

"For the other one." Roderick looked down at his hands. "A man came in after the bell. Not one of the four. An Imperial. Old, in black robes with a silver chain. He walked like someone used to people standing up when he comes in." He rubbed his thumb across his knuckles. "The Prince’s chaplain. The others called him Father."

"What did they say?"

"Not much. They didn’t need to. The grey-eyed one opened the box."

Aren waited.

"There was a nail in it. Black iron. Long as my hand. Covered in those marks. The ones on the chain in the dark, under the Academy. The Valdris ones." He looked up. "It was humming, ghost. I could hear it from the roof. Like the hounds used to hum before they talked."

Aren’s hand closed on his knee.

He had held a nail like that once. Black iron, carved all over, cold in a way that went deeper than metal. He’d laid it on the counter of a shop on Lantern Street that wasn’t always there, and a creature with a smooth face had stopped smiling when it saw it.

One of the nails failed, the Headmaster had said, behind the Measure. Someone made it fail.

"What did the chaplain say?"

"He asked if it was the right one. The grey-eyed one said it was the only one left." Roderick’s voice went completely flat. "Then the chaplain said this. I remember it exactly, because I didn’t understand it. ’The mine answers to Blooded blood. If she fails, it answers to his. And he listens to me.’"

Neither of them spoke.

Below them, across the valley, the iron half of the wall glowed with lanterns, and somewhere inside it, a woman was standing in front of her brother, explaining a dead pool and an iron heart on a chain.

If she fails.

"They need her to fail." Aren spoke slowly.

"Who’s she?"

"The captain." He watched the lanterns intently. "The mine under the Imperial side. The Pools, the deep tunnels, whatever’s down there. It’s sealed with blood. Her blood, because she’s the one who holds Kharn. If she isn’t Blooded on the day of the treaty, it passes to her brother. And her brother listens to his chaplain."

Roderick was staring at him.

"And the grey-eyed one has a nail that hums like the hounds."

"Yes."

"And you ate four months of her blood on the first night we got here."

Aren had no answer.

He thought about the bath: the cold in his side opening on its own, in the dark, for the warmest thing it could find, four months gone in a few breaths, the bells, the garrison turned upside down. A captain who was supposed to be Blooded by the treaty, suddenly short.

He hadn’t meant to, and the Familiar hadn’t meant anything at all. But if someone had wanted Kaela Voss to fail, they couldn’t have done it better if they’d planned it for a year.

’Congratulations, Aren! You’ve been working for the Choir since the night you arrived. Unpaid.’

[Kaela Voss. Rank D: Blood. 81%.]

Four days, and nineteen points to go. And the deep pool, the only pool in Kharn strong enough to close that gap, was dead.

He had killed that too.

Varro hit him twenty-one times that night, and Aren barely even felt most of them.

"You’re somewhere else," the old man grumbled, after the ninth. "I can see it. Your feet are here and your head’s on the other side of the wall."

"Sorry, Sergeant."

"Don’t be sorry. Be here." The stick came again, and Aren caught it close to his body and held. "Whatever it is, it’ll still be there when we’re done. It always is."

He stayed. He deliberately made himself stay. He held his ground eleven times and pushed back twice, and on the last one, Varro had to take a full step to keep his feet. The old man grunted and said nothing, which was the best thing he ever said.

[Street Fighter’s Instinct. Mastery: 70% → 71%.]

When it was over, Varro leaned on his stick in the dark and squinted at him.

"You’ve got the face of a man counting coins he doesn’t have."

"I am."

A captain at eighty-one with four days left and no pool deep enough. A nail in a box. A chaplain who whispered to a prince. And a line of ink on his own side he hadn’t touched.

The essence of the Deep Pool. Everything that pool had held, written down. What has been written down can be taken out again. Once.

Taken out into him. Not into her. Never into her.

’Unless...’

"Not yet."

Varro grunted and went off toward his tent.

Aren walked back through the dark camp toward the ridge path, past the cook tents, the stacked barrels and the cold fires, his stick under his arm and his head full of numbers.

He didn’t see her until he was almost at the woodpile.

She was standing beside it, in the shadow of the stacked logs, in a grey hood. She had clearly been there a while. He could tell from the frost on her shoulders.

A small pale shape sat at her feet. Its eyes were two moons, and they were fixed on his left side.

He stopped dead.

There was nowhere to go that wouldn’t look like running.

’Oh no. Not now. Not her.’

Vivienne Ashgrave pushed back her hood and looked at him across the dark, exactly as she had looked at a servant once in a cold grey hall, a lifetime ago, before she ruined him.

"Ren," she said softly. "Isn’t it?"