Chapter 31: Night Talk

I couldn't sleep.

That isn't unusual for me. I've never been a good sleeper. Carol says it's because I spend all day folding things into other places and my body doesn't know where it's supposed to be at night. Mother says it's because I'm my father's son, and he hasn't slept through a night since the stream. Seraphina says it's because I think too loudly and she can hear it through the pillow.

That night, three days after the north tower, all three of them were right.

Our rooms are on the east side of the old keep, over the east wall. Three rooms in a row, with doors between: our bedroom, and the little sitting room with the window seat, and the nursery on the end, which used to be a linen cupboard and is still the warmest room in the castle because the kitchen chimney runs up behind its back wall. Helena chose it. She said a baby wants a warm wall more than a view, and a mother wants her baby close enough to hear him turn over.

I was standing in the nursery doorway, in the dark, listening to him turn over.

Little Uriah sleeps on his front, with his bottom in the air and his face squashed sideways against the mattress and one fist up by his ear. He's done it since he was born. Grandpa says I did it too. Above the cradle, hung from a hook in the ceiling on a silver thread, Carol's little light was burning the way it has every night of his life: a soft, steady glow about the size of a plum, warm white, the color of candlelight through a cup of milk. She made it the night he was born. It's never gone out. It doesn't flicker. It doesn't need anything. It just stays there, over him, keeping the dark a little way off.

I'd been watching it for an hour, to make sure it didn't move.

It hadn't. Not a hand's width. Not a hair.

I still couldn't go back to bed.

* * *

"You're doing it again," said Seraphina, behind me.

I didn't jump. I've been married to her since her twenty-first birthday, and I've known her since before either of us could walk, and I've learned that if you jump when Seraphina comes up behind you in the dark, she'll do it again every night for a month to see if she can make you do it twice.

"Doing what?"

"Thinking loudly." She came and leaned on the other side of the doorframe, in her nightgown and my old brown jersey, with her hair down her back and her arms folded against the cold. "I could hear you through the wall. You were thinking is it still there, is it still there, is it still there."

"Is it?"

She looked past me at the light over the cradle. "It's still there."

"I know. I've been checking."

"I know you've been checking." She tipped her head against the doorframe. "You've been checking since the north tower. You check it before bed, and after bed, and at two in the morning, and at four. You checked it at dinner last night. You excused yourself from the table to go and check it. Mother noticed. She didn't say anything, which is how I know she noticed."

I didn't say anything either.

"Garrick," said Seraphina. "Come and sit down. You're letting the cold in, and he hates the cold, and if he wakes up he's going to want jam, and there isn't any, because Helena's hidden it again."

* * *

We sat in the window seat in the little sitting room, the way we do when neither of us can sleep, with the door to the nursery open so we could see the glow of Carol's light on the ceiling. Seraphina pulled her knees up and tucked her cold feet under my leg without asking, which is the one thing she's allowed to do without asking, and has been since we were six.

Outside, the east wall ran away along the dark toward the north tower. There was a light in Carol's window, up at the top. There's always a light in Carol's window now.

"Tea?" said Seraphina.

"There's no fire."

"There's me."

She held out her hand, palm up, and the little brass pot we keep on the sill began, very quietly, to tick and creak as it warmed. I watched her do it. I've watched her do it a thousand times. The First Flame doesn't look like fire, when Seraphina uses it gently. It looks like nothing. It looks like a woman holding out her hand. And then the iron is hot.

"Borrow?" I said.

It's an old word between us. One of the oldest. She knew what I meant.

She looked at me sideways, and smiled a little, the way she does when she's decided to be kind about something she could tease me for.

"Take," she said.

So I took.

I don't know how to explain that, either. I've tried for Caitlin, and Caitlin wrote it down, and then she crossed it out and wrote ask Carol, and Carol couldn't explain it any better than I could.

Here's the plainest way I can say it. Carol and I aren't storm gods, like Father, or flame gods, like Seraphina, or gods of rivers or harvests or harbors or doors. We were born with something else. Aurelia was the first to give it a name, when we were very small and nobody could understand why two babies in a cradle in a broken castle kept sparking with Father's lightning, and then Mother's healing light, and then Thor's thunder, depending on who was leaning over us.

Mimicry, she called it. Our whole domain. We're the gods of being like.

When a god is near us, we can do what that god does. Not a little of it. Not a shadow of it. All of it, as well as they can, as if it had always been ours. Carol stood near Thor for the first three years of her life and she can call lightning down out of a clear sky. I sat in Seraphina's lap every day for as long as I can remember, and I can fold a room bigger inside than out, and if she's near me I can burn. When we were three years old, at the stream, Varrick stood near us holding every domain he had ever stolen, and for one long terrible afternoon, so did we.

Aurelia says that makes us the most powerful gods there are. She doesn't say it proudly. She says it the way you'd tell a child that the river behind the house is very deep. Because you're every god in the room, Garrick. Whoever's in the room. All at once, if you want it.

That's why Rysa came, when we were small. That's why we had the rules before we could read. Name. Want. Permission. Stop. Friend. Because two children who can become anyone they're standing next to need to learn very young, and very hard, that the person next to you is a person, and not a well you can drink from whenever you're thirsty.

So I ask. Every time. Even with Seraphina. Especially with Seraphina.

Borrow?

Take.

I held out my own hand toward the teapot, and felt her fire come up inside me, warm and bright and very, very sharp, sharp enough to cut stone, the way it always feels: like stepping into a room in your own house you'd forgotten was there. And the little brass pot began to sing.

"Show-off," said Seraphina.

"You said take."

"I meant take a little." She reached over and poured, and the steam came off the cups in curls, and she handed me mine and wrapped both her hands around her own, and looked at me over the top of it in the dark.

"All right," she said. "Talk."

* * *

I didn't, at first.

We sat with the tea and watched the glow on the nursery ceiling and the light at the top of the north tower, and I tried to work out where to start, and couldn't, and drank my tea instead. Seraphina waited. She's better at waiting than she pretends. She pretends to be impatient because it makes people hurry up and tell her things, but really she could sit in a window for a week.

"We could do the game," she said at last.

"We're not ten."

"We weren't ten when we invented it, either. We were seven. And it worked." She held up one finger. "One fear each. Out loud. No arguing with the other person's fear, no telling them it's silly, no fixing it. You just say it, and the other one says yes, that's a real one, and then you drink your tea. And then we go to bed."

"And we always go to bed."

"We always go to bed." She looked at me. "You first."

I looked down into my cup.

"It knows where the seeds are," I said.

Seraphina didn't say anything. That's the rule.

"Carol said it. On the end of her bed, with Helena's tea going cold. He knows where they are now. He knows the way in." I turned the cup in my hands. "She meant hers. But they're not just hers, Sera. We kept them together. At the stream. Half each. Whatever touched her in that river, it touched the place where we keep them. I felt it. Through her. Like a finger on the inside of my wrist." I swallowed. "And I keep thinking. Every god we mended can find the seeds when the work's too heavy. That's what they're for. That's why we kept them. So nobody's alone. So there's always a door." I looked up at her. "And now there's something on the other side of the sea that knows where the door is. And it doesn't knock."

Seraphina was quiet for a moment.

"Yes," she said. "That's a real one."

I drank my tea.

* * *

"Your turn," I said.

She didn't answer straight away. She looked through the open door at the nursery, at the soft glow on the ceiling and the edge of the cradle and the little humped shape of our son under his blanket, and I watched her face in the dark.

"The letter," she said. "The first one. Severin's. The one that came with the fleet."

"Who carries the First Flame."

"He asked for Carol by name. In whom lightning sleeps." Her voice was very steady. "And he asked for me. By what I carry. Not my name. Just the fire." She turned her cup a little. "And I was so angry about that, Garrick. I was so angry that he'd ask for me like a lamp, like a stove, that I didn't think about it properly until the phoenix came." She paused. "Until Serevan sat on the fountain and bowed to the ground in front of our son, and said the fire knows him."

I didn't say anything. That's the rule.

"Ignatius felt it too," she said. "When he held him. A banked coal, he said. And Aurelia felt it in his hand, months ago, and decided it was nothing, because she wanted it to be nothing." She looked down. "He ate a feather on fire, Garrick, and it didn't even make him cough. He sneezed smoke and said jam."

"I know."

"So I keep thinking. What if when Severin wrote who carries the First Flame, he didn't mean me?" Her voice cracked, very slightly, and she stopped it, the way you'd put your hand flat on a table to stop it shaking. "What if he never meant me? What if I'm just the one who was carrying it last?"

The tea had gone still in her cup.

"And I know what I'd do," said Seraphina quietly. "That's the other half of it. If anyone came for him. If anyone so much as asked. I know exactly what I'd do. I'd burn the sea. I'd burn the sea flat and the ships on it and the golden city on the far side and the river and the mountains, and I wouldn't stop until there wasn't anything left over there that could ever ask again." She looked at me, and her eyes in the dark were very bright. "And the part that frightens me isn't that I would. It's that I don't think I'd be sorry."

I put my hand over hers on the cup.

"Yes," I said. "That's a real one."

She drank her tea.

* * *

We should have gone to bed then. That's the game. One each, and then bed.

But I'd been carrying the other one for three days, and it had gotten heavier every day, and I think she'd felt it through the pillow.

"There's another one," I said.

"That's against the rules."

"I know."

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she put her cup down on the sill and turned around in the window seat to face me properly, with her feet still tucked under my leg.

"Go on, then," she said. "I'll allow it. Once."

"The ice," I said. "In Carol's room. When I folded us back."

"Ignatius told me. All eight windows."

"An inch thick." I put my own cup down. "Sera, that wasn't Carol's ice. Carol's frost is fern-shapes. It's pretty. It climbs. It melts the minute she smiles. That ice didn't climb. It was just there, all at once, every pane, sill to top, solid. It didn't melt for an hour, even with Ignatius in the room. It was held." I made myself say it. "It was like the river. Exactly like the river. Everything that should have gone, stacked up and kept."

Seraphina's face changed.

"We're mimics," I said. "That's what we are. That's all we are. We stand next to a god, and we become a bit of them. We can't help it. It's how we were made. Carol stood next to Thor, and she has lightning. I stood next to you, and I can burn." I looked down at my own hands. "And for about a minute, three days ago, my sister stood next to whatever it is that's holding that river by the throat. Close enough for it to touch her." I took a breath. "What if it works the way it always works? What if she took some?"

Seraphina didn't say anything.

"And it's not just her. Every god we're near, we become. That's the gift. That's the curse. Aurelia says we're the most powerful gods there are, and she's right, but she only ever says half of it." I looked up. "We're the most powerful gods there are because we're whoever we're standing next to. So what happens, Sera? What happens if one day we're standing next to him? Malachar. The thing in the mountains. Who Holds." My voice had gone very quiet. "What do Carol and I become then?"

The light in the nursery glowed steadily on the ceiling.

Seraphina reached out and took both my hands in hers. They were very warm. Hers always are.

"That's not a fear," she said. "That's a question. And I can answer a question. That's not even against the rules."

"Then answer it."

"You become whoever you're standing next to." She held on. "So when that day comes, Garrick Grey, you make sure I'm standing closer."

* * *

Little Uriah woke up at that point, which was very like him.

He doesn't cry when he wakes. He never has. He just announces himself. A loud, cheerful, inquiring noise from the cradle, the noise of someone who has been asleep for a while and would like to know what everyone has been doing without him. Seraphina says he gets it from me. Carol says he gets it from Father. Helena says he gets it from Helena, and nobody has ever had the courage to argue.

"I'll go," I said.

"You'll go," Seraphina agreed, and picked up her tea again, and tucked her feet under the cushion where my leg had been.

He was sitting up in the cradle when I got there, holding the rail with both fists, with his hair standing up on one side and the mark of the blanket pressed into his cheek, looking at Carol's light with enormous interest, as though it had arrived just now, specially, for him. When he saw me, his whole face opened.

"Da."

"Hello, you."

"Da." He let go of the rail with one hand, wobbled, and held his arms up. "Up."

I picked him up. He's heavy now. He's past a year, nearly, and solid as a loaf of bread, and warm, the way small children are always warm when they first wake up. He put his face in my neck and his fist in my collar and sighed, the way he does, as if he'd been waiting for this all night and could finally relax.

And then I felt it.

It wasn't the first time. I'd felt it before, faintly, over the last few weeks, when I held him. I'd told myself it was nothing. Just a warm baby. Babies are warm.

But that night, in the dark, with my sister's ice and my wife's fear still sitting in my chest, I held him against my neck and I felt it, properly, for the first time. The way I feel Seraphina's fire when she's near me. The way I feel Father's storm, or Thor's thunder, or Aurelia's light. The way I feel any god, when I'm close enough.

Something in him, small and banked and patient, like a coal under ash. Warm. So warm. Warmer than Seraphina's fire, which is sharp, and warmer than Ignatius's, which is kind. This was older than both. It didn't cut and it didn't heal. It just burned, steadily, the way a hearth burns in a house where people are home. The way the very first fire must have burned, the first one anyone ever lit, in the first dark, to keep the cold a little way off.

It came up to meet me. That was the thing. It felt me there, the way the rivers had felt us through the seeds, and it lifted its head, and it came up out of him toward me, curious and friendly and enormous, the way he'd held his arms up out of the cradle. Up.

I could have taken it.

That's what mimicry is. That's what Carol and I are. A god was in my arms, closer than any god had ever been, and all I had to do was let it in. I could feel exactly how. It would have been the easiest thing in the world. Easier than borrowing from Seraphina. Easier than breathing.

I stood very still in the dark nursery with my son against my neck.

"Borrow?" I said. Very quietly. Into his hair.

He lifted his head and looked at me. His eyes were very dark in the glow of Carol's light. He considered the question seriously, the way he considers everything.

"Jam," he said.

I laughed. I couldn't help it. It came out of me shaking.

"No," I said. "No, love. That's not a yes. That's not a no, either. That's jam." I put my hand on the back of his head. "You don't know what I'm asking yet. You can't say yes to a thing you don't understand. So I don't take it." I kissed his forehead. "That's the rule. That's the whole rule. If they can't say no, you don't ask, and you don't take. You just hold them."

So I held him.

And I felt the fire in him settle down again, slowly, back under the ash, the way a dog lies down again by the door when it realizes you're not going out after all. Not disappointed. Just patient. As if it had all the time in the world.

Behind me, in the doorway, I heard Seraphina let out a breath she must have been holding for a long time.

* * *

We all three ended up in the window seat.

Little Uriah fell asleep again almost at once, between us, with one fist in my jersey and the other in Seraphina's hair, and a look of great satisfaction on his face, as if this had been his plan from the beginning. Seraphina pulled the blanket off the back of the seat and put it over all three of us. The tea went cold on the sill. Neither of us moved to warm it.

"You felt it," she said, after a long while. Very softly, so as not to wake him.

"I felt it."

"How big?"

I thought about how to answer that honestly.

"Bigger than me," I said.

She didn't say anything for a long time. I felt her hand find mine under the blanket.

"That's a real one," she said.

"I know."

"Garrick?"

"Mm."

"You asked him." Her voice was very quiet. "You could have just taken it, and he'd never have known, and nobody would ever have known. And you asked him." I felt her turn her head against my shoulder. "That's the answer to your question. The other one. The one about what you'd become, standing next to him." She was quiet for a moment. "Whoever you stand next to, you still ask first. That's not something you mimic. That's just you."

I didn't answer. I couldn't, quite.

Out past the glass, at the far end of the east wall, the light at the top of the north tower was still burning. And over the cradle in the empty nursery behind us, Carol's little light burned too, steady, warm, not a hair out of place.

We fell asleep there, all three of us, sometime before dawn.

* * *

Helena found us at six, when she came up with the tea.

She didn't wake us. Seraphina told me afterward. She just stood in the doorway of the sitting room for a while, with the tray in her hands, looking at the three of us asleep in the window seat under one blanket. Then she put the tray down very quietly on the table, and went into the nursery, and came out again a moment later with a little frown between her eyebrows, and went back down the stairs without a word.

When I woke up an hour later and went in to see what she'd been frowning at, I didn't see it at first.

Then I did.

Grandpa's rocking horse. The oak one, with the carved mane, that he'd made for little Uriah's name day and set by the nursery window, exactly where the morning sun comes in, so the first thing our son would see when he woke up was a horse in the light.

It was a hand's width to the left.

Out of the sun. Into the shadow.

I stood and looked at it for a long time. Then I went and got Seraphina, and showed her, and she stood and looked at it too.

She didn't say anything. She just knelt down, and put both her hands on it, and moved it back. A hand's width. Into the sun.

Then she stayed there, kneeling beside it, with her hands on its carved oak mane, until little Uriah woke up.