The Greykeep Chronicles

At nine o’clock my father’s hands began to shake.

Nobody else saw it. He was still on one knee at the end of the north pier with both hands on the haft of the frost hammer and the head of it pressed against the stone, and Brannoc was still kneeling beside him with one huge hand flat on his shoulder, and the frost was still pouring out of him, a mile across the sea and up the face of the frozen wave. From the harbor wall he looked like a statue somebody had carved and left there.

But I was at his left shoulder, where he could see me. And I saw.

* * *

”Father.”

”I know,” he said. Very quietly. Through his teeth. ”It’s all right.”

”It isn’t.”

”No,” said my father. ”It isn’t.” He didn’t take his eyes off the wave. Out in the dark, a mile off, a shadow the size of a hill turned slowly under the ice, and pushed. The whole wall groaned. A crack ran up the face of it, white in the starlight, and stopped. My father’s knuckles were white on the haft. ”He’s very strong, Garrick. Stronger than I thought. He’s been pushing for five hours and he hasn’t got tired once.”

”Can you hold him till dawn?”

”Yes,” said my father. And then, after a moment: ”Probably.”

My father has never said probably to me in my life.

* * *

I knelt down beside him on the wet stones. On his other side from Brannoc.

I didn’t touch him. Not yet. I held my hand out, open, palm up, low, beside his on the haft, where he’d see it.

”Borrow?” I said.

He looked at my hand for a long moment. Then at me.

”It’s a lot,” he said. ”It’s very cold.”

”I know. I’ve had your frost before. In the autumn. You said I pour it like I’m angry with it.”

”You do,” said my father. Something almost like a smile went across his gray face. ”You pour it like you’re angry with it, and it sings anyway.” He breathed out, long and slow, a cloud of white. ”You’d have to hold it the way you held Roderic’s stair. Not hitting. Just standing.”

”I know how to stand now,” I said. ”Avarn’s been teaching me.”

My father closed his eyes.

”Take,” he said.

* * *

I put my hand on the haft, below his.

And the winter came into me.

* * *

I’ve borrowed my father’s frost before. A little. A cupful. Enough to cool a forge, or freeze a puddle, or put a white fern on a window. I’d never felt the whole of it. Nobody had, except him.

It was like putting my hand into the sea in January and finding the sea went all the way down. Cold that had no bottom. Cold that had been there before the world was warm and would be there after. It came up my arm and into my chest and filled me so fast I couldn’t breathe, and for one moment I thought I’d drown in it.

And then I remembered what Avarn says. Not to push. Not to hit. Just to stand. To put your weight where it belongs and let the thing come to you and not be where it’s going.

So I stood. Inside. I let my father’s winter come into me and go out of me and down the haft and into the stone and out across the sea. Not pouring. Not angry. Just going where it was sent. The way a river goes.

And I felt the wave.

* * *

All of it. The whole frozen length of it, horizon to horizon, a cliff of ice taller than the castle. I felt it the way you feel your own arm. And behind it, under it, against it, I felt Draum.

Huge. Cold in a different way from my father’s cold. Not winter. The cold of very deep water where nothing has ever been warm. And angry. Not like a person is angry. Like a tide is. Patient and endless and without any thought at all except push.

He pushed. I felt it come through the ice and into the stone and up the haft into my hands.

And I didn’t push back. I just stood.

The crack that had started up the face of the wave stopped halfway.

* * *

Beside me, my father let out a breath. A long one. The longest I’d heard from him in five hours.

His hands were still on the haft. But they’d stopped shaking.

”There,” he said. Very quietly. ”That’s my son.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I was too busy standing.

But I felt Brannoc’s other hand come down on my shoulder, flat and heavy and warm, the way it had been on my father’s all night. And through it, the hold. The old shield god’s gift. Not strength. Staying. The thing that lets a wall be a wall for a thousand years without once thinking about falling down.

So there were three of us on the end of the north pier. One wall, and one wall behind the wall, and the wall’s son between them.

* * *

At eleven o’clock, the lamp on the flagship’s stern rail began to move.

* * *

It came down off the ship. Slowly. Down over the frozen side of the hull, and onto the ice, and out across it toward the shore. One small steady flame, about the height of a man’s hand from the ground, coming across a mile of frozen sea in the dark, under the curl of the wave.

Nobody on the pier moved.

”Tamar,” said Edric, from his crate on the harbor wall. Very low. ”Your rule.”

”I know,” said Tamar.

Nobody speaks to the ships. Not a question. Not a greeting. Not good evening. Not a word. It’s been nailed to the harbor office door since the summer.

The lamp came on. Past the first line of long black ships. Past the shoals. Across the ice of the harbor mouth. Until it was close enough that I could see the hand that held it. And the arm. And the tall bare-headed figure in gray, walking on the frozen sea very slowly, as if it hurt.

He stopped at the foot of the steps at the end of the north pier. On the ice. Just below us.

And he waited.

* * *

He was taller than my father. Thin. Very thin, the way old trees get thin. His head was bare and his hair was gray and cropped very short, like a prisoner’s. He wore a shirt and trousers of plain gray cloth, and no coat; he’d given his coat to Hobb Kitto, months ago, the night Hobb rowed out and asked him if he was cold. On his left wrist, there was a single small link of black iron chain.

The Lockwarden.

He held the lamp up a little, so we could see his face. It was a long, plain, tired face. The face of a man who’s stood outside a great many gates.

He didn’t speak. He never does, first. He stands outside the gate, and he waits, and he never touches it, until somebody inside asks what he wants.

Nobody on the pier asked.

* * *

I couldn’t. I was holding the wave. My father couldn’t. Neither could Brannoc. Carol was on the harbor wall above us with Thor and Avarn, and she looked at me, and I looked at her, and neither of us said anything, because Tamar’s rule was nailed to the door and Tamar was right there, and it was Tamar’s harbor.

The Lockwarden stood on the ice with his lamp and waited.

And then Edric got up off his crate.

* * *

He came down the harbor wall steps very slowly, an old man in an old coat, with ink on his thumb and his fishing line in his hand, trailing behind him. He walked out along the pier past Carol and Thor and Avarn. Past my father and Brannoc and me. To the very end. To the top of the steps.

And he looked down at the tall gray god on the ice with the lamp.

”Evening,” said Edric.

* * *

The Lockwarden looked up at him.

”Hobb used to say that to you,” said Edric. ”Every night. Off the end of the pier. Evening. He told me. He said it wasn’t asking anything, so it wasn’t against the rule. Good evening is a question, he said. Just evening is a fact.” Edric shifted his line to his other hand. ”He’s in Greykeep tonight. Eating Helena’s bread. He’d have come, but my daughter put him through the gate with everybody else.”

The Lockwarden’s long tired face changed. Just slightly.

”Is he well?” he said.

His voice was very low and very rough, like a key turning in a lock that hasn’t been opened for a long time.

”He’s well,” said Edric. ”He’s just Hobb.” He looked down at him. ”And it seems to me, now that I’m standing here, that a man who walks a mile across frozen sea in the middle of the night with a lamp in his hand might be cold. And might want something.” He paused. ”So I’ll ask. My daughter can put it in the book against me tomorrow.” He drew himself up. ”What do you want?”

* * *

The Lockwarden was quiet for a long time.

Then he set the lamp down on the ice at the foot of the steps. Very carefully. And straightened up. And looked past Edric, along the pier, at my father on one knee with the hammer, and at me beside him, and at the frozen wave behind us all.

”I want to knock,” said the Lockwarden.

* * *

Nobody said anything.

”I have stood outside gates for three hundred years,” said the Lockwarden. Slowly. Each word like a key in a stiff lock. ”Every city that would not open for him. I stood outside it, and I did not touch it, and I waited, until someone asked what I wanted. And then I told them. And they opened.” He looked down at his hands. ”I never once asked to come in. I never once knocked. I only waited for them to ask me. It was very clever. It was his idea.” He looked up. ”It is the same thing your Aurelia said about the other one. He has never once asked to be let in. I heard that. I was listening. I am always listening.” His long face twisted, just slightly. ”I don’t want to be the other one.”

* * *

He climbed the first step.

Slowly. The way you’d climb a step with something heavy in your arms. Then the second. Then he stood on the third, just below the top, where Edric was standing, so his face was level with Edric’s, and he lifted his right hand. Open. And then closed it. Not into a fist. Just enough to knock.

There was no door. Just the end of the north pier, and a bollard, and an old man with a fishing line.

The Lockwarden knocked on the bollard. Three times. Very softly.

”May I come in?” he said.

* * *

Edric looked back along the pier at my father.

My father looked at the Lockwarden. At the link of black iron on his wrist. At his long plain tired face. At the lamp on the ice.

He couldn’t take his hands off the hammer. He couldn’t get up. He couldn’t even turn around properly.

But he could say it.

”Come in,” said my father.

* * *

The Lockwarden came up onto the pier.

He stood on the black wet stone at the end of it, where Pim stands, and he looked around him, slowly, at all of us. At Carol and Thor and Avarn on the wall. At Tamar, who’d come down too and was standing with her bad hand at her side and her face unreadable. At Brannoc. At my father and me, kneeling, with our hands on the hammer and the winter pouring out of us across the sea.

He looked at me for a long time.

”You opened the towers,” he said. ”With the girl’s gift. And a wooden sword.” He nodded slowly. ”I saw. I was in the stern cabin. With him.” He paused. ”He did not stop you. I want you to know that. He could have. He is very strong, when he holds. He could have held your sister’s hand to the glass and never let her go. He did not.” He looked out across the ice at the flagship. ”He has not moved since. He is sitting on the floor of the cabin with his back against the wall. The way he sits on the floor of the glass room.”

* * *

”What do you want?” said my father. From his knee. ”Edric asked. You said to knock. You’ve knocked. You’re in.” His breath smoked. ”What else?”

The Lockwarden turned to him.

”To lock one more thing,” he said. ”The last thing. And then to put down my key.”

He held up his left wrist. The black iron link on it caught the starlight.

”Draum is chained,” he said. ”He said yes to the first asking, like me, like all the Chained. Every one of us has a link. Malachar holds the other end of all of them. He holds Draum’s chain very lightly, mostly, so Draum can hold the sea flat for the ships.” He looked at the frozen wave. ”But tonight someone else took hold of Draum’s chain. Someone colder. Someone who doesn’t knock. And he pulled. And Draum stood up the sea.” His voice went very low. ”Malachar did not do this. I was beside him when it happened. I saw his face. He did not know.”

”Ovaren,” said my father.

The Lockwarden flinched at the name. The way Malachar had flinched at his.

”Yes,” he said.

* * *

”I am the god of locks,” said the Lockwarden. ”I was, before. Every door in Kethra was a little bit mine. I can lock anything. I could lock Draum.” He looked down at the ice, at the dark shape moving slowly under it. ”In the deep. Behind a door at the bottom of the sea, where no hand can reach his chain. Not Malachar’s. Not the cold one’s. A good door. A kind one.” He paused. ”One he would have to knock on, to come out.”

Carol, on the wall above us, made a small sound.

”And then you could let go,” said the Lockwarden to my father. ”You could stop holding the wave. It would stay ice. It would melt in the spring, slowly, and go back to being the sea. Nobody would drown.” He looked at me. ”Neither of you would have to kneel here till dawn. And then do it again tomorrow. And the day after.”

”Why?” said my father.

It was the same word Malachar had said to me on the flagship. The same quiet, ordinary voice.

The Lockwarden looked at him for a long time.

”Because a man came out to me in a small boat in the summer,” he said, ”and said evening, and asked if I was cold. And did not want anything. Nobody had ever not wanted anything from me before. I kept him twenty-four nights, because I did not know how to let him go, and he told me about gulls.” His rough voice cracked. ”And then a girl opened a god’s hand at one hour old. And then a boy opened eleven towers with a wooden sword. And then a girl said my master’s name to his face. And I thought: if they can open things, perhaps I can close one thing that ought to be closed. Kindly.” He held out his hands. ”And then put my key down. And never lock anything again.”

* * *

My father looked at me.

I was still standing, inside. Still holding. Draum still pushing against the ice, slow and endless and patient.

You can say no, I thought. To the Lockwarden. To my father. To myself.

”A kind door,” I said out loud. ”One he has to knock on.”

”Yes.”

”Like the one Iselle wants for Malachar.”

”Yes,” said the Lockwarden. ”That is where I heard it. In the glass room. Severin carried it home in his report, and the lady Cerys read it aloud to him. Iselle wants you behind a kind door, where you have to knock. He laughed. And then he did not laugh.” The Lockwarden looked at me. ”I have been thinking about it ever since.”

My father closed his eyes.

”Do it,” he said.

* * *

The Lockwarden walked back down the steps to the ice.

He picked up his lamp. He walked out, slowly, across the frozen harbor, past the shoals, past the long black ships, until he was standing at the foot of the frozen wave. A tiny gray figure with a tiny light, at the bottom of a cliff of ice as tall as the north tower.

He set the lamp down.

He put his left hand flat on the ice. On the face of the wave, where the dark shape of Draum was pressing against it from the other side.

And he took a key out of his shirt.

* * *

I couldn’t see it from the pier. Nobody could. Thora told me later what it looked like; she saw it with the knowing. A very small key, she said. Plain iron, black with age. Old as the first door in Kethra.

He put it into the ice.

And turned it.

* * *

I felt it. Through the haft. Through the stone. Through the ice, all the way out across the sea.

Draum stopped pushing.

Not all at once. Slowly. The way a tide turns. The pressure against the inside of the wave eased, and eased, and went down, and down, and down. Into the dark. Past where I could feel. Deep, deep down, to the very bottom of the sea, where nothing has ever been warm. And somewhere down there, very far below, I felt a door close.

Gently. Like a door closing on a room where somebody’s asleep.

And a lock turn.

* * *

My father let go of the hammer.

It went back into the air in a little whirl of snow and was gone. He sat down, hard, on the wet stones at the end of the north pier, with his back against the bollard the Lockwarden had knocked on. His hands were open on his knees. They were shaking again, but it was a different kind of shaking now.

The frost stopped pouring.

And the wave stayed.

A wall of ice. Taller than the castle. All down the coast. Hanging over the fleet with its curled green lip catching the starlight. Not falling. Not cracking. Just ice. Very cold, very still, and empty behind.

”It’ll melt in the spring,” said Brannoc, very quietly. He sat down beside my father. ”Slowly. Like he said.” He looked at the wall. ”Gods. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

”Neither have I,” said my father. ”And I made it.”

* * *

I was still holding the haft that wasn’t there anymore. My hands were frozen in the shape of it. Carol came down off the harbor wall and knelt in front of me and took my hands in hers and held them until they were warm, and didn’t say anything.

My father put his arm around my shoulders without looking at me.

”Thank you,” he said. ”For standing.”

”You taught me.”

”Avarn taught you,” said my father.

”Avarn taught you,” I said. ”First.”

My father laughed. Tired. Hoarse. But a laugh.

* * *

Out at the foot of the wave, the tiny light went out.

Then came on again. Moving. Back across the ice toward us.

The Lockwarden came up the steps without knocking this time; he’d been let in. He didn’t say anything. He just laid something down on the top of the bollard beside my father’s head: a very small key, plain iron, black with age. Then he picked up his lamp and walked back down the steps and out across the ice toward the flagship, slowly, the way he’d come.

Nobody touched the key. Nobody has, since.

And at dawn, when the light came up gray behind the town and showed us the frozen wall in all its terrible length, glittering, running north and south out of sight, there was a line of people on the ice.

* * *

Hundreds of them. Then more. Coming down off the long black ships, down the frozen hulls, onto the ice, and walking toward the shore. In their gray sea-coats with the closed hand on the shoulder. Sailors. Ship’s boys. Cooks. Carpenters. Not running. Not marching. Walking. In ones and twos and little groups, the way people walk home from a fair.

All of them with their hands held out in front of them. Open.

Caitlin started counting. And stopped. And started again.

”They’re asking,” said Tamar.

She was standing at the top of the north pier steps, where Edric had stood, with her bad hand out of her pocket for once, at her side, in the open air.

”Harbor-right,” she said. ”Old coast law. Older than the Hold. Any vessel in distress that comes and asks gets the harbor. No questions of flag.” She looked out at the hundreds, the thousands, walking across the ice toward her harbor with their hands open. ”I said that about Selvane, in the autumn. In the hall. Everybody said aye.” She swallowed. ”Every one of those ships is in distress. Every one of those people is asking.”

”It’s your harbor,” said my father, from the bollard.

”Yes,” said Tamar. ”It is.”

And she lifted her bad hand, the one she hid for twenty years, the one her father once said he’d like to see her stop hiding, and held it up, open, over the harbor.

”Come in,” said Tamar Vale.

* * *

They came in.

All morning. Across the ice, up the steps, onto the north pier, along the harbor wall, into the empty town. Goss sat at the end of the pier with a fresh ledger on his knees and wrote every name, and when a sailor didn’t know how to spell his, I wrote it for him, or Carol did, or Caitlin. Edric made tea in the harbor office on the little stove, more tea than I’ve ever seen, until he ran out of cups and started using the herring buckets. Dunmore’s crew handed out blankets from the chandlery. Selvane walked along the south mole with her lamp and every sailor who passed her bowed, because they knew who she was. Every Kethran sailor knows who Selvane is. She’s in their songs.

At noon, Caitlin finished counting.

”Nine thousand, eight hundred and twelve,” she said. ”Out of about ten and a half.”

”And the rest?” said my father.

Caitlin looked out at the ice.

”Still aboard,” she said. ”The Chained, I think. And the officers. And the ones who are too frightened.” She paused. ”And him.”

* * *

The flagship sat at the back of the line, under the curl of the frozen wave, with its closed-hand banner hanging stiff at the masthead.

Nobody had come off it. Not one sailor.

But at noon, as Caitlin finished counting, the stern lamp on its rail went out.

And on the masthead, the banner came down. Slowly. Hand over hand. Until the mast was bare.

And in its place, very small, very slowly, somebody ran up a plain gray cloth. No closed hand. No gold. Just gray. The color of an old coat, or a long plain face, or a door that hasn’t decided yet whether it wants to be open.

”What does that mean?” said Roderic.

Nobody knew.

Iselle did, later. She came through the Hold gate from Greykeep at one o’clock, because she’d felt it, she said, the banner coming down, all the way from the west range, like a fist unclenching somewhere a long way off. She stood on the end of the north pier and looked out at the gray cloth on the bare mast for a long time.

”It’s a valley thing,” she said at last. ”Not a court thing. When somebody in the valley is very sick, and they don’t know yet if they’ll get better, the family hangs a gray cloth on the door. So the neighbors know not to knock.” She swallowed. ”Not go away. Just not yet.” She held her hands together, open. ”He’s saying not yet.”

* * *

Mary’s book. Friday. Westmere. She’d been awake for two days. Her hand was very bad.

Thursday night. Uriah’s hands shook at nine. Garrick asked to borrow. Uriah said take. They held the wave together. Brannoc held them both.

Eleven o’clock: the Lockwarden came across the ice with his lamp. Edric said evening, and asked what he wanted. He said: to knock. He knocked on the bollard. Uriah said come in.

He locked Draum behind a door at the bottom of the sea. A kind one. Draum has to knock to come out. Then he put his key down.

Uriah let go. The wave is still there. It will melt in the spring.

Dawn: 9,812 Kethran sailors walked across the ice with their hands open. Tamar gave them harbor-right. Edric ran out of cups.

Noon: the flagship took down the closed hand and put up a gray cloth. Iselle says it means not yet.

And under that, in a hand that was very upright and very rough, every letter pressed down hard, like something being locked, or unlocked, for the very last time:

The Lockwarden. I knocked. I’d like it noted that I was let in. My key is on the bollard at the end of the north pier. I would like it to stay there.