Chapter 21: Worthy

Frankie

I had bought coffins before.

Usually somebody else had done the explaining.

Oren’s coffin stood beside Tovin’s under the church’s restored windows. Light fell across the wood; flowers covered the places where the carpenter had worked too quickly.

Elin sat with her children in the first row.

I sat behind them with my hat in my hands. Didn’t know where else to put it.

Aldric said their names and talked about Oren’s kids, about Tovin teaching Jory to tie a wheel on a wagon. He didn’t say God needed them more.

Good. I wasn’t up for hearing that.

His hands rested on the lectern. Still ordinary hands. I had heard people whisper fallen when he passed. None of those people had stood in the weighing house.

I had.

I kept my eyes on the coffins.

Afterward, Oren’s little boy found me beside the door.

“You make the dead men walk.”

I crouched.

“Somebody else does. I just tell ’em where to stand.”

He looked back at the coffin. I understood before he asked.

“Could they do it for Dad?”

People kept moving around us, whispering condolences. Somebody passed with an empty vase.

I looked for Elin.

No help there. She was holding the other kid.

“It wouldn’t be your dad,” I said.

“It would look like him.”

“Yeah.”

He thought about that.

“Would he know the scarf?”

I remembered Oren tying the knot twice.

“No, kid. I don’t think he would.”

Elin came and put a hand on his shoulder.

I stood.

“The money’s arranged,” I told her. “The house is yours. Nobody collects tribute from it.”

“We’re leaving.”

I nodded too fast. “Your brother’s?”

“Yes.”

“I could—”

She waited.

Could what? Put the boy’s father back at the table?

“I’ll get you a wagon.”

“I don’t want a ceremony.”

“There won’t be one.”

She looked at me for a long time.

“He trusted you.”

“I know.”

She took her children outside.

I nearly called after her.

The boy had hold of her skirt. She had enough to carry.

* * *

Three other families left that week.

I signed their travel papers, paid the wages we owed, and sent escorts as far as the boundary where my seal stopped being useful.

One family asked about leaving, then found out the wife’s brother had no room. They stayed.

Dren put them down as staying.

I wrote no room beside the name and told him to keep asking.

Mara heard them out. She didn’t tell them what I had risked or remind them how bad things used to be. She asked what they needed for the road and wrote it down.

When the last wagon left, she came back to the office and closed the ledger.

“You can sit down now.”

“Was I standing?”

“For an hour.”

I sat.

I caught her hand as she reached for the accounts.

“Leave those. You been on your feet since morning.”

“So have you.”

“Then we’re both sitting down.”

I pulled her chair close and kissed her.

She glanced toward the open door afterward.

“Someone will see.”

“Good. Saves me telling ’em.”

She tried to look scandalized. The smile spoiled it.

For a minute, the office was just a room with the two of us in it.

Then somebody knocked because a governor couldn’t even be happy without signing something.

* * *

We went walking after supper.

No escort. No ledger. Hobb watched us leave with a grin I intended to discuss at payroll.

Mara took me to a little patch of ground behind the tavern. The old kitchen garden had gone wild. Weeds climbed the wall. A cracked basin held rainwater and a frog with clear opinions about visitors.

“This could grow things,” she said.

“Looks like it’s doing fine without us.”

“Useful things.”

She knelt beside the wall, tested the soil, and described what belonged where. Herbs near the door. Beans against the trellis. Flowers where the sun reached in the afternoon.

“Tomatoes,” I said.

“When you find some.”

When. I liked the way she said it.

She stood and brushed dirt from her fingers.

“Rosella says this was a good kitchen garden once. I could have it ready by spring.”

Beans. Flowers. Somebody expecting me for supper.

I used to sit in a car outside a warehouse and watch lights come on in the houses across the street. Wonder what they were having.

Never figured I’d be worrying about a garden.

“House could go along that wall,” I said.

Mara looked where I pointed.

“Rosella will object if you take all her sunlight.”

“Other wall, then.”

“That wall is better.”

She said it without teasing me.

“Room for a kitchen. A decent stove. Window over the sink.”

“Why a window?”

“So you can look out at something besides dishes.”

She watched me for a moment.

“I would like that.”

I reached for her hand. There was a little dirt beneath one nail. I brushed it away with my thumb, taking longer than the job required.

“And a door that shuts,” I said. “Someplace nobody comes asking me to sign anything.”

“You would last two evenings before wondering how the tavern was doing.”

“Could find something to keep me occupied.”

Her eyes met mine.

The color rose slowly in her cheeks.

“I expect I could.”

Christ, I liked this girl.

I bent and kissed her. She caught the front of my coat and held me there after I’d meant to straighten.

Somewhere beyond the wall, a cart rattled past. Neither of us looked.

“You ever think about getting old?” I asked.

“More often lately.”

“That used to sound like a threat.”

“It still might be. You will complain constantly.”

“I complain now.”

“You are preparing.”

I put an arm around her. She leaned against me, settling in slowly.

“What if you didn’t have to?” I asked.

She went still.

“Get old?”

“Lose things.”

Mara looked toward the church roof.

“Immortality doesn’t seem to have taught Azrath how to keep anyone.”

I’d been hoping for a different answer. She knew it.

“I would rather grow old beside you than have him make you like himself.”

“Yeah,” I said.

But I was thinking about the boy asking whether his father would remember a scarf.

Suppose that boy never had to ask it. Suppose Mara and I could have this garden without one of us ending up alone in it.

She was warm beneath my arm. Alive. I could turn my head and kiss her whenever she looked up at me like that.

I’d never had so much to lose.

In Chicago, I used to sleep with the gun where I could reach it. That took care of some things. Didn’t stop my mother dying. Hadn’t helped Oren. Wouldn’t do a damn thing if one morning Mara couldn’t catch her breath and Al’s hands came up empty.

I looked toward the fortress.

The Boss had found a way to keep a man alive. Maybe he knew more than one.

Maybe a man who’d done what I had oughta take what he was offered. Quit worrying about what sort of man deserved a garden. Keep the girl. Keep everybody fed. Make sure nobody could take it away.

Mara lifted my hand to her cheek.

“What are you thinking?”

“About the house.”

She smiled.

I let her.

Wouldn’t hurt to hear the price.

* * *

Aldric asked to speak with me the next morning.

He had placed two chairs in the little courtyard behind the church. No desk between them. No papers to sign unless I asked for them.

That made me suspicious.

“You’re selling something.”

“Offering.”

“Worse. At least a salesman admits he gets paid.”

He let that pass.

“You have seen what his affection permits.”

I sat.

“I told him it couldn’t happen again.”

“And you believe that ends your responsibility?”

“No.”

The answer surprised us both. He leaned forward.

“Then there is work to do. Begin with the people harmed by your orders. Tell the truth about what happened. Make restitution where it can be made. Stop lending your strength to the thing that keeps causing the wound.”

“Then take your oath.”

“If you choose it. If you understand it. An oath is not a clean coat you put over the same man.”

I looked at the sword resting beside his chair.

“And the light?”

“I cannot promise you power.”

“You said I could become like you.”

“I believe you could learn to keep such an oath. Whether the light answers is not mine to decide.”

He wasn’t asking for the tavern or even asking me to join his church before he helped.

Just quit the Boss. Start fixing what I could.

He sat there like it was possible.

“He trusted me,” I said.

Aldric sat back.

“So did Garran. He trusted me to get him out. Oren trusted you to keep him safe.”

I would have preferred anger to the patience in his voice.

“You think I can just turn on him?”

“I think refusing a wrong is different from denying a kindness.”

“He gave me the authority to free those people. Anet’s friends. Liora. I turn in the seal, who’s left to sign the next release?”

“You put that seal on my confinement.”

“I know.”

“Then you know it can do more than one thing.”

I looked at his hands.

“Does any of this help you? The people you’ve got out. Taking Garran home. All the work here.”

“Yes.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, Frankie. It helps me. Even with the sword dark.”

A little beetle met the same obstacle twice in a crack between the courtyard stones. It backed up and tried another direction.

Even the damn beetle could find another way.

“I can’t,” I said.

“You can.”

He waited until I looked at him.

“You are choosing not to.”

I got up.

He didn’t stop me.

* * *

The royal invitation arrived that afternoon.

An audience to discuss preparations for the Gift.

At the same time, Liora brought the account for our new winter coats, and Mara asked whether we could afford timber for the garden beds.

I said yes to the timber before checking the balance.

Then I opened Azrath’s letter.

I set the invitation beside Liora’s bill, then moved it when the black seal covered the price.

Mara was talking about the garden. I was still hearing Al.

The Boss had written my boy at the top.

I read it again.

I folded the invitation carefully.

“I’ll be back before supper,” I told her.

She looked at the black seal.

“I hope so.”

* * *

Thrak

The parcel arrived while I was deciding where to put the next checkpoint.

Lou set it beside the map.

“From the house.”

I knew which house.

A cloth covered the dish. Mrs. Bellafonte had tied it herself, unless somebody else in the kitchen made the same unnecessarily complicated knot.

“Take it back.”

“You don’t know what it is.”

“I did not order it.”

Lou left his hand on the parcel.

“She’s just sending you supper.”

The word brought back the table. Lucy defending my right to the last potato. Her brother asking why I had never seen the film.

I moved the dish off the map.

“Then you eat it.”

For a moment I thought he would speak again.

He took it away.

* * *

My original bindings were no longer sufficient.

A corpse could follow simple commands at some distance. Carry this. Guard that. Walk until you reach a wall, then remain inconveniently against it until someone corrects the instruction.

Complicated work required attention.

Attention was limited.

I had spent weeks correcting that.

In each warehouse, I placed an iron token bearing a portion of the binding pattern. Orders traveled through the pattern. Each token gave the dead a fixed point from which to judge distance and direction. I could maintain several groups without holding every finger and foot in my thoughts at once.

The tokens did not make them clever.

One guard, ordered to admit nobody without my permission, had prevented me from entering until I gave myself permission aloud.

I corrected that too.

I tested the new relay with a living foreman and six dead laborers.

The dead carried crates from the wagon to the tally desk. The foreman checked each number. Nothing broke. Nothing disappeared. When I changed their destination, all six turned at once.

Excellent.

Then the foreman asked to leave.

His wife had been taken ill. A neighbor had come to fetch him. He could return by the evening unloading, probably.

“How probably?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Then find out.”

“I have to go there to find out.”

He had been reliable. Lord Bellafonte would have let him go. I could hear the words, the easy permission, as if asking nicely made a man more likely to return.

In the house, a broken glass would have been swept up and a spilled meal replaced. Nobody would count what it cost to keep reassuring people who failed at simple things.

I had spent years learning not to fail.

The foreman waited.

“Your father lives above the tobacco shop.”

His face changed.

“Yes.”

“He can wait here until you return.”

“He can’t unload crates.”

“I did not ask him to.”

The man looked at the six dead laborers.

I explained that his father would be given a chair. He could go home when the evening work began.

He went to fetch the old man.

* * *

They brought a chair from the club.

It was too high for the foreman’s father; his feet scarcely reached the floor.

I sent for a box to put beneath them.

Lou watched me do it.

“What?” I asked.

He shook his head.

I went back to the relay. The laborers were still waiting for their next command. Six upright bodies. Six pairs of hands. All their attention available when I required it.

Behind me, the old man asked whether anyone had heard about his daughter-in-law.

Lou went to find out.

I gave the dead their order.

They began together.