Chapter 224: Restraint

The laundry boat came out to Skerrick on Friday afternoon, and it brought Liddy.

I didn't know it was a laundry boat at first. It was a flat, wide, ugly little thing, low in the water, piled high with bundles of linen under a tarpaulin, rowed by two women with their sleeves rolled up. It came around the end of the headland in the gray light of the early afternoon, very slowly, as if it had nowhere in particular to be, and nobody on the rock paid it the least attention until it was under the lee of the stack. Then Brisa Thale stood up from the net she was mending and said, "That's early."

The palace laundry goes out of the city by water, Iselle told me, while we watched it come in. Not by the gates; the city has no gates, the way Ammet has none. By the river, on flat boats, to the bleaching grounds at Kell Ford, three miles up the coast, where the women spread the palace linen on the grass to whiten in the sun and the salt wind. It's the only way out of the city that nobody watches. Nobody watches laundry.

"Brisa's had a woman on the laundry boats for nine years," said Iselle. "Everything that comes out of the palace that isn't supposed to comes out in the sheets."

The laundry boat slid into the slot in the rock. And one of the women rowing it stood up in the stern, and put back her hood.

She was thin and tired and somewhere near forty, with chapped red hands and hair scraped back under a kerchief and a burn scar on one forearm, the kind you get from leaning over a copper. I'd never seen her before. But I knew her face. I'd seen it at twelve years old, in the box bed in a fisherman's cottage at Dunnock, with a plait down its back.

"You're Dorrie's mother," I said.

She stared at me.

"How do you know my daughter's name?"

* * *

Her name was Liddy. Liddy Varrow, of Dunnock. Two winters in the palace kitchens. Scrubbing pots for the cooks who cooked for the priests who served the man in the gold room. She'd come out on the laundry boat four times since the autumn, with Brisa's woman, under the sheets, and gone back in again every time, because if she didn't go back in, someone would count the kitchen women and find one short, and then Dorrie and her grandfather would be on the next list.

I told her about Dorrie. I told her about the box bed, and the knocking on doors in the back lane in a nightgown, and can I tell the light? I told her about Hew sitting on his doorstep with his hands over his face. She stood on the bottom step of the stair inside the rock with her red hands pressed flat against her apron and listened to every word with her face perfectly still, the way people's faces go in Kethra when they're not allowed to have them.

When I'd finished, she said, very quietly, "She's got a plait?"

"Down her back."

"She never let me plait it. She said it pulled." Liddy closed her eyes. "Somebody's been doing it for her."

"Her grandfather," I said.

"He can't plait."

"He's learned," I said.

She stood there on the step for a long moment. Then she opened her eyes and wiped her face once, hard, with the back of her chapped hand, and was a different person. Somebody with something to say, and not much time to say it in.

"I didn't come about Dorrie," she said. "I came about the candles."

* * *

She told it at Brisa's fire, in the ruined tower at the top of the rock, with the sixty standing around the walls and the sailcloth roof cracking in the wind. She told it flatly, in shore-speech, with no expression at all, the way you'd read out a list.

The candles had started in the city a week ago. One window. Then two. Then, by the third night, twenty. By the night of midwinter, Liddy said, you could stand on the kitchen roof of the palace, where the scullery girls go to empty slops, and look out over the whole lower city at ten past nine, and see them come up. Hundreds. Little yellow lights in windows, all over the city, one after another, for exactly as long as the red light in the gold tower was held up. And then out. All together. As if they'd been told.

"Nobody told them," said Liddy. "Nobody knows who started it. Nobody says. You just look up, at ten past nine, and you see the red light, and you think: somebody up there is saying something. And you light a candle so they know you heard."

Around the walls, nobody moved.

"Last night," said Liddy, "the priests came."

* * *

It had been done carefully. That was the worst of it. Not a raid. Not soldiers kicking in doors. At ten past nine, when the candles went up, the priests had been standing in the streets already, one at every corner, with their lamps. And they hadn't done anything. They'd just watched. And written down every window.

And at midnight, when the city was asleep, they'd gone to every door they'd written down. Quietly. And knocked. And asked the question.

Whose are you?

"And the people who said His," said Liddy, "they let be. That time." Her chapped hands were knotted in her apron. "And the people who didn't say anything, or said it wrong, or said it too slow, or had a child who wouldn't—" She stopped. "They took them."

"How many?" said Lexander. Very quietly.

"Forty-one houses," said Liddy. "That I know of. Maybe more. Whole houses. Mothers and fathers and children and grandmothers. Walked out of their own front doors in their nightclothes in the middle of the night and down the hill." She looked at the fire. "To the Hall of Hands."

Iselle had gone white.

"The Hall of Hands," said Liddy, "is where they swear you. Properly. The great oath. Your face and your voice, to him. After that, you're Hushed." She swallowed. "They'll keep them in the cellars under the Hall until the Year Games. Three weeks. And then on the first day of the Games, in front of the whole city, in the arena, they'll swear them all at once. Forty-one houses. So that everyone can see what happens when you light a candle at ten past nine." She looked up. "That's what the board says. In every square. Since this morning. Those who answer the false light will be given the true one."

Nobody said anything.

"And the guest in the gold tower," said Liddy. "The one with the red light. The priests went up to her this morning. The scullery heard it from the girl who carries her tray. They told her about the forty-one houses. What happens to the people who answer her." She looked at me. "The girl says she didn't say anything. She just went and stood at the window all day."

* * *

I don't remember standing up.

I remember the fire. I remember Liddy's chapped red hands in her apron. I remember the coal in my palm, gone so hot it was white, not red, white, the way iron goes in a forge just before it melts.

And I remember the city.

Fifteen miles south. Through the gap in the broken wall of the watch-tower, along the edge of the sea, a smudge of cold white light with towers in it like a crown on its side, and in the middle of it, taller than all the rest, the gold. And somewhere under it, the Hall of Hands, with its cellars. With forty-one houses in them. Mothers in their nightclothes. Children who wouldn't say the word.

For me. For a light I'd held up every night since Dunnock, for the people with the candles, as if that were a gift. As if I'd been giving them something. When all I'd been doing was showing the priests exactly where to stand.

I was at the gap in the wall. I don't remember walking there either.

And I put out the fold.

* * *

It wasn't like the folds on the coast road. It wasn't like the ten yards at Lanth, the heavy curtain, the swollen door.

There was nothing heavy about it at all.

I'd never felt anything like it. The fold went out of me the way a held breath goes out when you've been underwater too long. All at once. Toward the city. Fifteen miles. And Kethra didn't push back. I don't think it dared. The air in front of me went thin and bright and shaking, the way air goes over a road in summer, and the rock under my boots went cold, and I heard, behind me, the sixty on the rock make a sound all together, like a crowd watching a man walk out onto ice.

I didn't care. I could see it. Through the fold, through the shaking air, fifteen miles off, I could see the city as if it were at the bottom of the stair. The walls. The towers. The great dark roof of a building at the foot of the gold, square and black, with an iron hand on it the size of a house.

The Hall of Hands.

I could fold there. Now. I knew it. I'd never been surer of anything. I could fold the whole of myself into that hall, and the cellars under it, and I could take the roof off it the way you take a lid off a pot, and bring the forty-one houses out into the air. And then I could fold into the gold tower and bring her out. And then I could turn around and look at that city, at every shrine and every board and every priest with his lamp, and fold it. All of it. Fold it the way you'd fold a letter you were done with, again and again, smaller and smaller, until there was nothing left of it to hold anybody.

Fifteen miles. One step.

The coal was white in my hand. I could feel my left palm too, burning, where Adriana's silver lay, as if it knew what I was about to do and was waking up.

I lifted my foot.

* * *

And Carol stood in front of me.

She didn't fold. She can't. She didn't throw lightning or pull down a cloud or freeze the air. She didn't do anything that Brisa would have called a god doing something. She just stepped into the gap in the broken wall, between me and the fold, with her back to the city and her face to me, the way Roderic had stepped between Iselle and the woman with the forearms. With her bad arm in its sling and her blue coat flapping in the wind off the sea.

Right in the middle of it. Right in front of the shaking air. Where I couldn't go without going through her.

"No," said Carol.

"Get out of the way."

"No."

"Carol." My voice didn't sound like mine. "Forty-one houses. Children. Because of me. Because I held up my hand like a fool every night and told them it was for them."

"I know."

"Get out of the way."

"Say my name," said Carol.

I stared at her.

"Say my name," said my sister. "The whole of it. The way you say it when you're folding and you need to know where the other end is." She didn't move. The air shook all around her. Her hair was lifting in it. "You're holding a fold fifteen miles long and you can't feel me at the end of it. I can tell. I can feel you not feeling me. Say my name."

"Carol—"

"All of it."

"Carol Clara Grey," I said.

And felt her.

The other end of my name. The way I always feel it, when I'm folding, steady as a post. She'd been there the whole time. I hadn't been holding it. For the first time since the stream, I'd put out a fold and not held on to the other end at all.

I'd have gone fifteen miles and come out somewhere with nothing tying me to anything.

* * *

"Now listen," said Carol.

She was shaking. I could see it. But her voice wasn't.

"You want to take the roof off the Hall of Hands," she said. "I know you do. I want you to. I want it so much I can taste it. And then you want to fold the city. I felt you think it. Every shrine. Every board. Every priest." She held my eyes. "Garrick. Who's in the city?"

"Him."

"Who else?"

I didn't answer.

"Liddy's in the city," said Carol. "In the kitchens. With two hundred women from the lists, scrubbing pots. Dorrie's mother. Who came out under the sheets to tell us, and is going back in tonight under the sheets so that her daughter isn't put on a list." She didn't look away. "Who else?"

"Carol."

"Sander's in the city. Not him. The boys like him. The patrols. Hundreds of them. Fifteen, sixteen, in gray coats too big for them, who were taken from Coln Head and Fellsend and the long plain, and who'll be standing in the streets tomorrow night with spears, because if they don't they go to the oars." Her voice was rising now. "The priest at Ammet's in the city. The one with the goat on his robe. Somebody's boy, once. Somebody taught him to read. Who else?"

I didn't say anything.

"The Hushed," said Carol.

Behind her, at the back of the tower, I saw Kessavel lift his head.

"There are Hushed guarding that Hall," said Carol. "There are Hushed in every street. Hundreds of them. Thousands. People who had faces once. And voices. Who said yes the wrong way on a Tuesday when they were twelve, and had their names taken, and have stood in his doorways with their hands like shackles ever since, and have never once in their lives been asked anything." She was crying now. She didn't stop. "And when we planned Harl, before any of this, before the black ship, you stood up in front of everyone and said: Nobody kills a Hushed. I want them named. You said it. I heard you. Father heard you. Grenna and the wolves heard you." She drew a breath that shook all the way down. "You fold that city small, Garrick, and you fold them with it. Every one. And not one of them will ever get a name back."

* * *

I stood there with the fold in front of me, shaking, fifteen miles long.

I could still see the Hall of Hands through it. The iron fist on the roof. Somewhere under it, forty-one houses in the dark.

And all around it, now that I was looking, the city. Not as a crown on its side. As a place. Streets. Roofs. A thousand chimneys with smoke going up. A woman hanging washing out of a window in the lower town. A boy driving geese. A gray coat on a corner, too big for whoever was in it. People.

Victims, Carol said, later. That's the word she used, afterward, when it was over. They're victims too. Nearly all of them. Nearly everyone in that city is somebody he's holding.

She didn't say it then. She didn't need to.

"I want to," I said. It came out cracked. "Carol. I want to so much."

"I know," said my sister. "So do I." She held out her good hand. Open. "Say no on top of it."

Adriana. On the north tower roof. Six in the morning. Someone will offer you something you want with your whole heart. Fold just a little further. And you'll have to say no on top of it. Not instead.

It wasn't Malachar offering. That was the thing. I'd always thought it would be him. Standing in a door somewhere with Seraphina behind him, saying come through and she's right here. I'd never once thought the offer would come from inside me, on top of a rock, with my sister's face in front of me and a fire in my hand.

My left palm was burning. Adriana's silver, awake. Ready. For when yours isn't enough.

I didn't use it.

I don't know how I knew. I just did. This one was mine. This one was supposed to be mine.

"No," I said.

And let the fold go.

* * *

It went back into me like the tide going out. Slowly. The shaking air steadied. The thin bright light in the gap in the wall faded, and was just the gray afternoon again, and the sea, and the long line of the coast, and the city a smudge on the edge of it, fifteen miles off, out of reach.

The coal in my palm went from white back to red. My left hand stopped burning. The silver in it went quiet again, and cool, and waited.

I sat down on the broken wall.

Carol sat down next to me. She didn't say anything. She took my right hand, the one with the coal in it, and held it in her lap in her good one, and leaned her shoulder against mine, and we sat there.

The sixty didn't move for a long time. None of them. Then, slowly, a few at a time, they went back to their fires and their nets and their goats. Not talking. Not looking at us. The way you leave a room where somebody has just been told something terrible and has taken it standing up.

Brisa Thale didn't go anywhere. She stood by the fire with her arms crossed and looked at me for a long time with her sea-ice eyes.

"You could have," she said at last. "Couldn't you? All of it. The Hall. The city. Folded it up like a letter."

"Yes," I said.

"And you didn't."

"No."

Brisa looked at Carol. Then back at me.

"In my grandmother's time," she said, "the rain god of the long plain could have rained. Any day of those three years. He was up there the whole time. He could have." She uncrossed her arms. "He wanted to make the whole country feel how it felt, when somebody cut down his grove. So he didn't." She looked at the city. "I've never seen a god want to do a thing that badly and not do it. I've only ever seen them want not to, and not."

She turned away. Then stopped.

"Your sister's right," she said, without looking back. "Most of that city's ours. It just doesn't know it yet."

* * *

Kessavel came and sat on my other side, much later, when it was nearly dark.

He didn't say anything for a long time. He was turning Tegen's shell over and over in his gray fingers.

"I took most of them," he said at last. "The Hushed in that city. Not all. Most." He looked at the shell. "I know their faces. I know where I put every one. I could name you the first hundred, if you asked me, and the streets they stand on."

"Will you?" I said. "When it's time?"

Kessavel looked at me.

"You'd want them named," he said slowly. "All of them. Even now. Even after tonight."

"Especially after tonight," I said.

He was quiet a long time.

"Then I'll start a list," said Kessavel. "Tonight. Every one I remember. Caitlin's way. With a column." He put the shell away very carefully in his coat. "I think it'll take me until the Games."

"Then we'll have it in time," said Carol.

* * *

Liddy went back on the laundry boat at dusk.

She didn't want to. I saw her not want to. She stood at the bottom of the stair in the slot in the rock with her red hands in her apron and looked at the boat, piled with the clean palace sheets she'd come out under, and her face did a thing it hadn't done all afternoon, and then stopped doing it.

"If I'm not in the kitchen by the morning count," she said, "they'll know. And then it's Dorrie."

"I know," I said.

"I'll go back. I'll keep scrubbing. I'll keep my eyes down." She looked up at me. "And I'll keep looking. In the kitchens. At the cellar doors under the Hall. The priests eat, and they talk when they eat, and nobody listens to a scullery woman." She swallowed. "Three weeks. I'll tell Brisa's woman everything I hear. Every day. In the sheets."

"Thank you," I said. "Liddy. Will you tell Seraphina something? If you ever get near the tower. If you ever can."

She looked at me for a long moment.

"The scullery doesn't go near the tower."

"I know. If you ever can."

"What?"

I thought about it. About forty-one houses and a board in every square. About her up there in the gold, being told by priests what her light had done, and standing at the window all day.

"Tell her I nearly came," I said. "Today. All at once. Without asking. And I didn't. Tell her I said no on top of it." I swallowed. "She'll know what that means. And then tell her to keep lighting it."

Liddy looked at me a while longer.

"She will," she said. And got into the laundry boat, and pulled the tarpaulin over the sheets, and sat down on top of them, and the other woman pushed off, and they went out of the slot in the rock and around the end of the headland into the dark, very slowly, as if they had nowhere in particular to be.

* * *

At ten past nine I stood at the gap in the broken wall of the watch-tower and held up my right hand toward the city.

The coal flashed. Three and three.

I sent three. I'm all right. And ten. Coming.

And then I stood there for a long time with my hand down at my side.

I didn't hold it up. Not tonight. Not for the people with the candles. Every one I'd held it up for had been written down at a street corner by a man with a lamp.

Carol, beside me, didn't say anything. But I felt her look at me.

And then the coal lit. Steady. From the other end. All by itself. Red, and deep, and held, the way she'd held it every night since midwinter, for as long as I'd held mine. Except I wasn't holding mine.

She held it anyway. A minute. Two. Three.

And then, through the gap in the wall, along the edge of the sea, fifteen miles off, in the lower city under the gold, I saw them. Tiny. One. Then three. Then ten. Then more than I could count. Yellow lights in windows. Coming up, all over the city, one after another, in the dark.

The night after forty-one houses had been walked down the hill in their nightclothes.

With the priests on every corner. With the board in every square.

They lit them anyway.

I stood at the gap in the wall with my hand at my side and watched a whole city answer my wife, and I didn't hold up mine, and I understood, finally, standing there, that it had never been for me to give. It had never been mine. It was theirs. It always had been.

"Victims," I said. Very quietly.

"Yes," said Carol.

"And brave."

"Yes," said Carol. "That too. Mostly that."

* * *

From Mary's book. Friday. Mary's hand, small and steady, and in one place pressed so hard the pen went through:

Sel's nineteenth tree.

At about half past three this afternoon Uriah stood up in the nook so fast the chair went over. The whole east wall frosted over, top to bottom, in one breath, like a window in a hard winter. Helena dropped a dish. Evelyn ran.

Uriah stood there with both hands flat on the frost and his eyes shut, and said: no. Then: no, son. Don't. Then he didn't say anything for nearly a minute. The frost was getting thicker. Evelyn had her hand on his back. Then he said: Carol. And then: good girl. And then, very quietly: oh, that's my boy.

The frost melted off the wall in about ten minutes. Uriah sat down on the floor of the nook and didn't get up for an hour. Evelyn sat with him. Nobody asked.

9:10 p.m. at the stone. Three and three. Mirelle lit the lamp. Benjamin answered. Three and ten from the nearer bearing. Then nothing from the nearer bearing. No long light from him. But the long light from hers. Steady. Three minutes. And around it, Davren says, the field of tiny lights again. More than last night. He tried to count them and stopped. He says Caitlin would have to.

Caitlin went down to the stone at half past nine and stood there for an hour. She came back and didn't say the number. She wrote it on the OARS page, under the other one, and drew a line between them.

The boy, at bedtime, held his little flame up in his hands for a long time without being asked, at the window that faces south. Then he put it out and went to sleep.

Three days since midwinter.

And under that, in a plain upright hand, the hand of a man who has written mostly on slates at gates and in the margins of other people's ledgers, and not often anywhere else:

Uriah Grey. I'd like it noted that this afternoon, from fifteen miles off a coast I've never seen, my son put out a fold that would have taken a city. I felt it in the ice. I'd like it noted that I have wanted to do the same thing every day since the black ship sailed, and that I have held a sea still instead, and that it is the hardest thing I have ever done, and that I did not know until today that he had been learning it from watching me. I'd like it noted that it was his sister who stood in the way. I'd like it noted that I am prouder of the fold he didn't make than of anything any of my children has ever done. And I'd like it noted that I'd still like to take the roof off that hall myself. And I'm not going to either.