Chapter 233: Inland

Seraphina had been looking for them since the day she walked into the city.

I'd known that. It was why she'd gone. On the night the gate closed in my face at Greykeep, she'd stepped through it on purpose, after a woman called Mags and two girls called Clemmie and Goldie, who were the mother and sisters of a young man in our own house. Wynn. Who'd opened our gate from the inside, because somebody across the sea had his family and told him what would happen to them if he didn't.

Father had judged him. Wynn kept his place, his wage, his bed, his seat in the servants' hall, his good name. Father said nobody in Greykeep was going to be punished for loving his mother.

And Seraphina had gone to bring her home.

I'd thought, all this time, that Mags and the girls must be in the city. In the palace. Somewhere in the gold, where Seraphina could reach them.

On Monday morning, Liddy came off the first boat with a slip of paper in Seraphina's own quick slanting hand, folded very small, inside the cuff of a nightgown.

They're not here. I've looked everywhere for five weeks. Cerys knew. They're at the Keeping House in Mirewood, two days up the Kell from Ferrow's Reach. I can't go. I won't leave the forty-one. Garrick, I'm sorry. I came for them and I can't get to them. Will you?

* * *

I read it twice. Then I gave it to Carol. Then I went and stood in the gap in the west wall and looked at the tower for a long time.

"Tobin," I said, without turning around. "What's the Keeping House?"

Tobin was sitting on a trough with Roderic's coat around him. He'd gone very quiet when I said the name. When I looked at him, his big ears had gone white.

"It's where they keep the ones from away," he said. Iselle put it into our language. "The hostages. Not from Kethra. From over the sea. The people he holds so that people on the other side will do what they're told." He swallowed. "I've never been. Nobody goes. It's in the forest, up the river, past the last galley-town. The priests who keep it don't come back to the Hall. They live there."

"How many?"

"I don't know. Nobody knows. It's a big house. It's old. It was a lord's house once, before the hand." He looked at his own hands. "The Hand of Roads keeps the road to it. There's a shrine every mile, and a chain across the road at every shrine. You can't get there without being asked whose you are thirty times."

"And the river?"

"The river's watched. The galleys go up and down. The galley-masters are his."

"Not all of them," said Carol quietly. She was holding Seraphina's slip. "Not anymore. Jory said. There's one at Ferrow's Reach who sat down on his own deck and wouldn't get up."

* * *

I turned around.

Eleven days to the Games. The dark of the moon in three. Every road in Carol's fish scales was waking up. Every kitchen was singing. Liddy came off the boat every morning with something new. And I'd said to Brisa, on Skerrick, that I would sit at the emperor's door until it was done. That I'd be standing in front.

"I said I'd stay," I said.

"You did," said Carol.

"I said I'd be here. At the door. Where she could see me."

"You did."

"It's two days up the river to Ferrow's Reach. And two more to Mirewood. And two back to Ferrow's, and two more back here." I did the sum. "Eight days. If nothing goes wrong."

"Three to spare," said Carol. "Before the Games."

I looked at her. And she looked at me. And neither of us said anything for a while, because both of us knew what the other one was thinking, the way we've always known since we were three.

Mags. Who mends nets. Who walked Wynn four days to Lyradon when he was apprenticed, to make sure he was respectable. Clemmie, eleven. Goldie, eight. In a house in a forest at the end of a road with a chain across it every mile.

Five weeks. That was how long Seraphina had looked. Every day, from the top of his tower, with everything else she was carrying.

Garrick, I'm sorry. I came for them and I can't get to them.

Will you?

"Ignatius," I said.

He was by the gap, where he always was. He looked up.

"Can you keep her lit without me? Every night. At ten past nine. If I'm not here to hold up my hand."

Ignatius looked at me for a long time.

"I don't need your hand to see her window, boy," he said. "I need it to see her." He looked up at the tower. "But she'll know where you've gone. And why. She asked." He turned back to me. "I'll keep her lit. Go and get that woman's children."

* * *

We left at noon. Five of us.

Me. Carol, because she was coming and there was no point discussing it. Loki, because he said a woman who mends nets would need somebody to complain to on the way home, and he was the best complainer he knew. Ossery, because it was his roads. And Jory, who'd come up the reed path the night before with Coln bread, and who'd been on the galleys for a year and knew the river and every bend of it, and who stood up when he heard where we were going and said in Kethran, I'm coming, in the same voice Annis Penner had used at the well.

Iselle and Roderic stayed. They had the priests' house, and Aldric, and dawn on the first day, and Iselle had to learn the way through the Hall from Tobin by heart. Tobin stayed with them. Ignatius stayed in his gap.

Liddy stayed on the mud slope until the noon boat went back in. Then she climbed on, and turned around, and said to me across the water, in our language, very carefully, the way she says the words she's learned:

"Bring them home."

* * *

I won't tell every mile. There were too many, and most of them were the same: mud, and reeds, and then the river bank, and then the river road.

But I want to tell what the roads were like.

Ossery went first, the way he had in the reeds, with his stick. Not on the river road itself, where the Hand of Roads had his shrines and his chains. On the other roads. The small ones. The drovers' lanes and the field paths and the old tracks between villages that nobody had walked straight through in a hundred years, because why would you walk straight through anywhere if you weren't allowed to be lost.

And at every one of those small crossings, there was a stone.

Most were still face down. Under shrine floors, or under the turf, or set into a wall where somebody had put them to get them out of the way. But a great many of them were shining. Silver, around the edges, the way the stone at Kell Ford had shone. Some of them had been turned over. Some had been dug out of the walls and set back up at the corners where they belonged, by people who'd never been told to do it.

And some of them had things on them.

A heel of bread. A candle stub, burned down. A child's shell. A twist of blue thread. A flower, in the middle of winter, a dry one, from somebody's kept store. A clay cup with water in it, on the stone at the edge of a village called Hask, and Ossery stopped beside it and stood looking at it for a long time with his stick in both hands.

"Nobody's ever left me anything," he said at last. Very low. "Not once. Not in a thousand years. You don't leave things for the road. You just walk on it."

He bent down and touched the cup. He didn't drink it. He left it where it was.

"Thank you," he said, to nobody. To Hask.

* * *

And they were singing.

Not loud. Never loud. But we'd come into a village at dusk and a woman would be at her door shaking out a cloth, and she'd look at us, five strangers coming out of a field path in the half-dark with an old man with a stick at the front whose footprints were shining, and she'd stop. And look at the old man. And look at the stone at the corner of her village, which was shining too.

And then, very quietly, under her breath, she'd hum it.

Just the first bar. Just enough.

And if Jory hummed it back, she'd go inside and come out with bread.

We didn't ask once. We didn't need to. At every village between the coast and Ferrow's Reach, somebody hummed the first bar, and Jory hummed it back, and somebody brought us bread. And twice somebody brought us further than that: a man with a cart who took us twelve miles in the dark along a farm track without a word, and a woman who let us sleep in her byre and sat up all night at her own door with a lamp, watching the road.

"The kettle's on," she said, when we left in the morning. Not a question. Not a password. Just a thing you say.

* * *

I didn't fold. Not once. Not a mile.

I could have. Every hour of every day I could have. Ferrow's Reach was forty miles up the river from the city; I could have folded it in a breath on any morning of my life at home. Even here, where the folds pushed back like a hand on your chest, I could have done it. I'd done fifteen miles on Skerrick when I was angry enough.

But I'd told Brisa. No god-powers. And more than that: I'd been walking with Carol in the bleaching-shed in my head every night since she drew the fish scales, and I'd understood something she hadn't said out loud.

If I folded to Mirewood, I'd get there. And I'd get them out. Probably. And I'd fold home again, with Mags and the girls, and nobody between the coast and Ferrow's Reach would have hummed anything, or left anything on any stone, or sat up all night at her door with a lamp.

It would just be a god, doing a thing.

That was what Malachar was. A god, doing things, for a thousand years. Holding. Taking. Deciding. Folding the world small around him.

I didn't want to be that. Not even for Mags.

So I walked. And my right arm ached where the stitches were, and my head ached where the fifteen-mile fold had been, and Carol walked beside me with her bad arm in its sling and her silver streak tucked under her hood, and neither of us said a word about folding the whole way.

* * *

Ferrow's Reach is a galley-town. It's where the river comes down out of the hills and widens and slows, and the big galleys that go up and down to the city tie up at long stone quays to change their rowers.

It's an ugly town. It smells of tar and sweat and old rope. There's a great black shrine at the head of the quay with a hand on it as big as a cart, and beside it the rowing-house, where the oarsmen sleep, chained by the ankle, a hundred to a room.

We came down to it at dusk on Tuesday, along a field path on the hill above the town, and stopped at the top of the hill to look.

There were six galleys at the quays. Five of them had their oars shipped and their crews down, the usual way, Jory said, at dusk.

The sixth didn't.

The sixth had every oar out. Not rowing. Just out. Lying flat on the water on both sides of her, like a great dead insect with its legs spread. And on her deck, by her stern, there was a fire. Not a cook-fire. A big one, built in an iron pan, burning high and yellow in the dusk where every soul on the quay could see it.

And around the fire, sitting on the deck, there were men.

A great many of them. Fifty? A hundred? Sitting in the open on the deck of a galley in the middle of Ferrow's Reach, with the shrine looking down on them and the rowing-house behind them, sitting with their arms around their knees and their chains still on their ankles, not rowing, not moving, just sitting around the fire.

And at the stern, standing over them, a big man in a galley-master's leather coat.

"That's Hollin," said Jory. His voice cracked. "That's Master Hollin. That's the galley I was on."

* * *

Dace was waiting for us at the bottom of the hill, in the lee of a fishhouse, where Ossery's footprints came down off the field path.

He looked worse than when he'd left Skerrick. Thinner. There was a cut over one eye, not deep. But he grabbed my good arm with both hands when he saw me, and held on.

"He sat down," said Dace. Jory put it into our language. "Hollin. The day I came. I came on board in the night and sang it to the galley. Under my breath, at the oars. Just the tune. And they knew it. Every one of them. Every man on the oars had a mother who sang it at a stove." He shook his head. "And in the morning, Hollin came down the gangway to give the call to row, and the whole galley was humming it. Under the call. All of them."

"And he sat down," said Carol.

"He listened to it for a long time. He was standing at the top of the gangway. And then he sat down on the deck. Right there. With the whip in his hand. And he said—" Dace stopped. "He said, my mother sang that. He said it to nobody. And then he said, ship oars. And they shipped them. And he said, they're not going anywhere. And they haven't. Four days."

"Four days." I looked at the galley with its oars out flat on the water. "And the Hand of Roads? The priests?"

"They came." Dace touched the cut over his eye. "The second day. Six of them. They stood on the quay and asked Hollin whose he was. And Hollin said—" He laughed, short, almost frightened. "Hollin said, I'm sitting down. That's whose I am. I'm sitting down."

"And they didn't take him?"

"They tried. They came up the gangway." Dace looked at the galley. "And a hundred and twelve men in chains stood up."

Nobody said anything.

"Just stood up," said Dace. "Didn't do anything. Didn't touch anybody. Just stood up between the priests and Hollin, all at once, with their chains on. And the priests looked at them. And went back down the gangway. And they've been in the shrine ever since, with the door shut, waiting for somebody to tell them what to do." He wiped his face. "Nobody's come. Not yet."

* * *

We went down to the galley in the dark. Dace took us. Nobody stopped us on the quay. The other five galleys had their crews down, and there were lamps in the rowing-house windows, and faces at every one of them, watching.

Hollin met us at the top of the gangway. He was a big man, as big as Ignatius, with a gray beard cut short and a face like a slammed door. He looked at Dace, and at Jory, and at Ossery's shining footprints coming up the gangway, and then at Carol and me.

"You're the light," he said. In Kethran. "The red light on the coast. The one they all hold candles up to."

"No," I said. "That's my wife. In the tower. I'm the one who holds his hand up to her."

Jory put it into Kethran. Hollin's face did something.

"That's worse," he said. "That's much worse." And then, unexpectedly, he held out his hand. "Come aboard. Sit down. Everyone else has."

* * *

We sat with them by the fire on the deck of Hollin's galley half the night.

Jory found the bench he'd rowed on for a year, and the man who'd rowed beside him, and they held on to each other for a long time without saying anything. Loki sat down among the oarsmen and started talking and within an hour had a dozen of them laughing so hard their chains rattled. Ossery sat on an upturned bucket with his stick and told them where they were, which nobody had ever told them, because galley-men aren't supposed to know where they are; they're just supposed to row. Ferrow's Reach. Forty miles up from the city. The hills on your left going upriver. The sea behind you. And they sat around him like children, listening.

And Carol went from man to man along the benches, in the firelight, and asked their names.

Every one. A hundred and twelve. She didn't write them down. She just asked, and listened, and said each one back to them. Bram. Toller. Ness. Old Haddock, they call me Haddock, I don't know the other. Some of them had to think. One of them couldn't remember, and sat there with his mouth working, and Carol sat down beside him on the bench and held his hand until he did.

Corley, he said at last. I'm Corley. From Hask.

"Hask," said Ossery, from his bucket. Very softly. "They left me a cup of water."

* * *

When it was very late, and most of the oarsmen were asleep on the deck by the fire, I sat down by Hollin at the stern.

"Mirewood," I said.

He didn't answer for a while.

"The Keeping House," he said at last. Jory was asleep; Dace put it into our language. "Two days up. The river narrows past the falls, and you go up through the forest. My galley carries the priests' supplies there, every month. I've seen it from the water. I've never set foot in it." He was looking at the fire. "There are children there. I've heard them. From the river. Through the trees."

"Will you take us?"

He looked at me.

"They'll know," he said. "The Hand of Roads. If my galley goes up the river with oars out and nobody rowing to his call. They'll know where we're going before we get there."

"Then we'll walk," I said. "Ossery's roads. Through the forest."

"There are no roads through Mirewood."

"There's always a road," said Ossery, from his bucket, not opening his eyes. "There's always somebody who got lost there once."

Hollin looked at him. Then at me. Then at the fire.

"I'll take you to the falls," he said. "On the water. With my oars out. And let them know. And let them come." He stood up, and looked down the length of his galley at the hundred and twelve men asleep in chains by the fire, and something in his slammed-door face came open. "Let them see a galley go up the Kell that nobody's rowing to his call. Let them see that."

* * *

At ten past nine that night, on the deck of Hollin's galley, I'd held up my hand.

Forty miles. I couldn't see the tower. I couldn't see the window. There was nothing to the south but dark hills and the river going away.

But the coal in my pocket was warm. And when I held up my hand, with nothing to see, the coal pulsed against my palm. Once. Long. The way it did when she held hers. And then again, red, deeper, the forge-red that was her father's, steady, beside it.

She's lit. Go and get that woman's children.

And all along the deck of the galley, a hundred and twelve men in chains who'd never in their lives been allowed to know where they were held up their hands with me.

* * *

Ossery woke me before dawn.

He was standing over me with his stick, very still, with his face turned back the way we'd come. Down the river. Toward the coast.

"Garrick," he said. Very quietly. "Something's on my roads."

I sat up.

"Behind us," said Ossery. "Coming up. Not on the river road. On the small ones. On mine." His voice had gone thin. "I can feel the stones. One after another. Going dark. The ones that were shining." He shut his eyes. "Something's walking along behind us and putting them out. As it comes."

"The lead carts?"

"No." He opened his eyes and looked at me, and I'd never seen Ossery frightened. Not in the empty shrine. Not on Skerrick when he was fading. "Not carts. It's walking. One thing. On foot." He gripped his stick. "And it isn't asking any of them where it is. It knows exactly where it's going."

He looked up the river. Toward Mirewood.

"It's following us," he said.

* * *

From Mary's book. Monday and Tuesday. Mary's hand, small and steady:

Monday. Sel's twenty-ninth tree.

Monday, at 9:10 p.m., at the stone: Davren says Garrick's light has moved. For the first time since he went into the reeds. Away from hers. North and east. Inland. Up the river. Davren had to turn the stone. Hers was there. Long. And Ignatius's red beside hers. And Cerys's white one above. But Garrick's was somewhere else entirely, and very faint.

Tuesday. Sel's thirtieth. She says thirty is a number, and she's going to keep going.

Tuesday, at 9:10: further still. And around his, Davren says, a great many tiny lights very close together, more than sixty, more than a hundred, like a whole boat full of people holding up their hands.

Uriah watched it for a long time. Then he said: he's gone to fetch somebody. Evelyn said: who? Uriah didn't answer. He went down to the harbor in the dark and found Wynn, who was mending nets with Benjamin, which he does most evenings now, and sat down on the quay beside him and helped him with the net for an hour without saying anything. Benjamin says Uriah's very bad at mending nets. Benjamin says Wynn didn't seem to mind.

Twelve days since midwinter. Thirteen.

And under that, in a hand that's careful and plain and a little cramped, the hand of somebody who learned his letters late and practices them every night so that his mother won't be ashamed of his letters when she reads them:

Wynn. I'd like it noted that the master came down to the harbor tonight and helped with the nets. I'd like it noted that he's very bad at it. I'd like it noted that my mother would have had him doing it properly in half an hour, and that she'd have been kind about it, and that she'd have made him do it again. I'd like it noted that I don't know why he came. I'd like it noted that I think I do.