Chapter 22: The Cost of Forever

Frankie

Two mornings before the first marker arrived, Aldric asked me to carry a bed.

I had brought money for the church roof.

He put it on the table and pointed toward the vestry.

“The narrow one. It must go upstairs.”

Anet’s friend from the dungeon had a room above the baker’s now. Sleeping among the sick was doing her no good, Rosella said. She needed quiet, a window, and a door she could open herself.

Al took one end of the bed. I took the other.

Halfway up the baker’s stairs, he had to stop.

“Arm?” I asked.

“The hand.”

I looked at it. The skin had split where he’d gripped the arm holding the stone above Anet. He had wrapped it in linen before we started. There was red coming through.

I’d forgotten that day could still make him bleed.

“Put it down.”

“We are nearly—”

“Put the damn bed down.”

We rested it across a step. I went below, took more of the weight, and told him to steer. We got it through the door with only one new mark on the plaster.

The woman stood beside the window. She drew back as Al approached, and he stopped.

“Here?” he asked, pointing to the wall.

She nodded.

We set the bed there.

She thanked him. When I straightened, she turned away.

Al took the old mattress downstairs. I followed with the ropes.

Outside, I told him he ought to have asked Hobb.

“He was repairing the bridge.”

“You used to lift heavier things.”

“Yes.”

I nearly apologized. It had become a thing I did when I wanted a conversation to stop hurting.

Al sat on the baker’s step and unwound the bloody linen.

“You still praying?” I asked.

“Every morning.”

“Answers?”

“Not the kind you mean.”

He folded the bandage, then unfolded it again.

“Some mornings I put my hand over that wound and wait. As though I can catch Him forgetting what happened.”

I sat beside him.

“You’re angry.”

“Yes.”

“With me.”

“With you. With the covenant. With men who will tell this story in years to come and make it sound as though I understood it while it happened.”

A cart passed. He waited until we could hear each other again.

“I know which woman is alive. I know whose name Garran called. Some days that is all I know.”

“Then why swear it again?”

He looked up at the window.

“Because when somebody asks whether I will keep them safe, I still mean to answer yes.”

“You can do that without the light.”

“I am trying to.”

Anet’s boy came running from the church with clean linen. Al thanked him and held his injured hand still while the boy wrapped it.

No light came.

When the bandage was tied, we went back for the woman’s belongings.

* * *

Aldric renewed his covenant on the morning the first marker arrived.

Anet had asked me to stay at the back of the church.

I did.

Garran’s name was read aloud. So were the names of the people who had shared his captivity. His sister’s letter confirmed that he was buried at home, in the coat she’d brought. She thanked Aldric for telling her what had happened.

There was no message for me.

Since his return, Al had found the displaced prisoners somewhere to live and heard their accounts. He’d arranged work for those who wanted it and medicine for those who hadn’t the strength. He had written down what remained undone, including things that might take years.

That list lay on the altar beside his sword.

“This remains my responsibility,” he said.

Anet stood before him.

“You can’t give him back.”

“No.”

She looked toward me, then returned her attention to Al.

“Neither can I.”

He bowed his head. She put a hand on his shoulder and said something too quietly for me to catch.

I stayed at the back.

Aldric spoke his vows again, without changing the words that had cost him. When he lifted the sword, a thin line of light ran along its edge.

He stood very still.

Nobody cheered.

Afterward I found him folding the list of unfinished work.

“So you’re square?”

“With whom?”

I glanced at the sword.

“The covenant is renewed,” he said. “Garran is still dead. Don’t confuse the two.”

Anet’s boy called from the doorway. Al put the list in his coat and went to help him carry a basket.

* * *

The first marker went beside the well.

It was black stone traced with silver lines. The royal work crew’s paperwork was so complete I should have been suspicious immediately.

They said it was part of the protection for the coming ceremony.

I asked whether it interfered with the water.

They said no.

I asked whether people would be charged.

They said the crown would meet every expense.

I signed the placement order.

By evening, the woman selling apples beside it couldn’t lift her baskets.

* * *

At first, it looked like sickness.

People complained of tiredness, headaches, cold hands. The symptoms passed when they went home, unless a second marker had been placed near their house.

Mara noticed that part.

She laid the complaints over the work crews’ route and drew circles around the places where they overlapped.

Brannik inspected the well marker.

Liora watched its silver lines brighten when the square filled for market.

“It isn’t keeping anything out,” she said.

“What’s it doing?”

“Drawing something in.”

Brannik brought back the technical schedule. Someone at the fortress had described the process as a temporary contribution of vital force. Carefully measured. Distributed among the population. Restored naturally after the ceremony.

“How much?” I asked.

“That setting isn’t controlled here.”

“Then turn it off.”

He tried.

The silver lines flared. The stone cracked the paving around its base and settled deeper into the earth.

Brannik withdrew his hand with a burned palm.

“It answers to an authority above yours.”

I looked at the seal on my coat.

My seal, my town, and I couldn’t switch off a rock.

* * *

The Boss received me in a gallery I hadn’t seen before.

Paintings lined the walls. A younger Azrath stood in one, alive, dark-haired, with a woman beside him and a boy holding a wooden sword. In another, he addressed a crowd from the steps of a hospital.

“Before,” he said when he saw me looking.

“Before what?”

“Several things.”

He led me past a map of canals and old roads. Some of the villages on it were still there. Others had vanished from the names Mara knew.

“I ended three famines with those waterways,” he said. “Built granaries. Paid physicians. Every ruler before me began again because death had removed the man who remembered how things worked.”

“People can write things down.”

“They can. They can also choose not to read them.”

I had managed employees.

That was an aggravatingly good point.

He touched the map.

“Imagine what you could do with two hundred years, my Eye.”

Two hundred years. I’d got the roads fixed in six weeks.

Build that house behind the tavern, for a start. Have time to live in it.

Then I remembered the apples.

“Your markers are making people sick.”

“Tired.”

“Sick.”

He gave me a little nod: fine, sick. Now could we get on with it?

“An undertaking of this magnitude requires preparation.”

“And they recover?”

“The present draw is within mortal tolerance.”

That wasn’t the question I had asked.

I knew it.

“I need the settings reduced.”

“I will have them adjusted.”

He said it so reasonably that I caught myself thanking him.

* * *

The settings changed.

For one day, the square felt warmer. The apple seller returned. Dren reported fewer complaints. I told Mara the apple seller was back.

Told Brannik too.

See? I could still get things done.

Then the crews installed more markers.

The headaches returned.

A child fainted outside the bakery. A carter fell from his seat and broke a wrist. Aldric could heal again, but the light came in brief, exhausting efforts. Within two days he could barely keep food down. The people he treated went home and were drained again.

I went to see him.

He sat on the vestry floor, back against the wall, looking older than the man who had beaten me in the square.

“Don’t,” he said before I spoke.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“I can see which explanation you brought.”

I sat beside him. “He reduced the draw.”

“And increased the number of mouths drinking.”

Outside the door, a woman began coughing. Someone called for water. I waited for her to stop so I could finish explaining.

She didn’t stop.

“You can’t heal everybody,” I said.

“No.”

“You oughta rest.”

He turned his head.

“You ought to stop giving me patients.”

I stayed until the woman stopped coughing.

Then I went back to work.

* * *

We moved the market.

I declared two streets closed for repairs, shifted the stalls to the common pasture, and had Brannik rig carts to carry water away from the well. It made collecting money harder and delivering goods ridiculous.

It helped.

So the next crew installed a marker beside the pasture.

Mara brought the order to me.

It bore my ring’s authority, copied into the margin beneath the crown’s command.

“I didn’t sign this.”

“They do not require you to.”

I read it again, as if better attention might make it less true.

People who once brought complaints into my office now stopped outside and looked at the door. They knew I cared. They were less sure that caring changed what happened when the black carts arrived.

I’d told them what they owed and promised nobody would come around for more. Now black carts came every morning with my seal on the orders.

“We’ll move them again,” I said.

Mara closed the door.

“Where?”

“I’ll find somewhere.”

“And then another marker arrives.”

“What do you want me to do?”

She looked down at the third order she’d brought me that week.

I was yelling at the girl carrying the mail.

“Sorry,” I said.

She sat down.

“You don’t have to know how to fix everything before you admit who is doing it.”

I looked at the letter from the fortress.

“He says it’s necessary.”

“Do you think it is?”

* * *

Liora called me upstairs that evening.

The new coat hung over a padded form. Not the one I wore to the promotion. Another, heavier through the lining, with tiny metal plates no larger than coins stitched where nobody would see them.

Brannik stood beside it holding a piece of chalk.

“I began after the attack,” Liora said. “You continue offering persuasive reasons to finish.”

“Armor?”

“A suit.”

“That stops swords?”

“Some swords. Some of the time. If you expect cloth to make you invulnerable, I suggest a career in funeral arrangements.”

Brannik tapped the hidden plates.

“The lining spreads force. The runes spend stored energy preventing penetration. Once that energy is gone, the garment becomes an expensive explanation of why you should have ducked.”

“How many hits?”

“Depends what hits you.”

“A sword.”

“Depends who swings it.”

“You’re enjoying this.”

“Yes.”

Liora adjusted a seam.

“I need your measurements checked.”

I took off my jacket.

We argued about the pockets for a while. Brannik wanted room for another plate. I wanted room for another magazine. Liora told us both to hold still.

I could’ve stayed there all night.

Move a pocket, fix a problem. Beautiful.

When we finished, Brannik put a map beside the coat.

The markers formed a net around the town.

At the center, every line led toward the fortress.

“Maintenance channels,” he said. “The original network was designed to move power outward. Someone has reversed the flow.”

“Can you reverse it back?”

“Not from here.”

He left his finger on the fortress.

* * *

Mara was in the garden when I came down.

We had timber now. No beds yet. She knelt beside the stack, tying a piece of string between two pegs.

“You’re stealing Rosella’s sunlight,” I said.

“These are beans.”

“Right. My mistake.”

She looked up at the new suit. Her fingers stopped at the knot.

“Does it fit?”

“Liora says so. I’m afraid to disagree.”

“Come here.”

I went down the steps. She stood and brushed her palms against her skirt before laying them on my lapels.

For a moment she only looked at me.

“You do make it difficult to finish a day’s work.”

“Been hoping.”

She smiled and ran a finger over one of the plates beneath the cloth.

“This will keep you safe?”

“Safer.”

Her hand stayed there.

I covered it with mine.

“The man who made it threatened to hit me with a hammer if I tested it myself. I figure that’s a recommendation.”

“Frankie.”

“Yeah.”

“Come back wearing it.”

I looked at the string between the pegs. The patch of wall where we’d talked about a house. She had already left room for the path to its door.

I hadn’t asked her to do that.

I took both her hands.

“Sit with me a minute.”

There wasn’t a bench yet, so we sat on the timber. I spread my coat beneath her, which would have killed Liora if she’d seen it. Mara moved close enough that her skirt covered my knee.

The kitchen window was open. Rosella was singing something she only remembered half the words to. Benny supplied the missing ones until she told him he remembered them wrong.

“Remember that first night?” I said.

She looked at me.

“You asked about Sunday dinner. Kept asking, even when I ran out of things worth telling.”

“I liked hearing you talk about them.”

“I’d been thinking if I could just get through the night, maybe I’d find a way back in the morning. Then you asked another question, and I forgot to watch the door.”

“You smiled.”

“You remember that?”

“Yes.”

She rested her cheek against my shoulder. In the kitchen, Benny began the verse again, louder.

I listened a while.

“Mara, when I got here, I figured if I could stay useful, I could stay alive.”

“You were rather persuasive about it.”

“Had practice.”

I rubbed my thumb across the little mark the string had left on her hand.

“Get the money straight. Get the boys paid. Make sure nobody came around hurting people without checking with me first. I knew how to do all that.”

She waited.

“I liked being needed. Liked walking in here and having somebody glad to see me. You’d tell me what went wrong, I’d take care of it, and at supper there’d be a place for me.”

“There still is.”

“I know.”

That was the trouble. I had started depending on it.

“Then it got to where I’d come downstairs and look for you before I looked at anything else. Rosella could have the whole damn kitchen on fire. I’d be wondering where you’d gone.”

Mara looked down, smiling.

“I used to find work near the stairs.”

“You did?”

“Those accounts did not require nearly so much carrying about.”

All that time I’d thought business was improving.

I lifted her hand and kissed her fingers. This time she didn’t look away.

“I’ve had women look at the suit before,” I said. “The money. What I could get done. Didn’t mind it. Wasn’t offering much else.”

Her fingers tightened around mine.

“You had a dreadful suit when I met you.”

“Been through a lot.”

“So had you.”

I tried to answer and found I couldn’t do it while looking at her.

Across the garden, the kitchen light made a square on the wall. The house would have a light like that. A window people passed on their way somewhere else. Inside, she might be waiting for me.

I wanted it so much it hurt.

“I keep thinking about that house,” I said. “I can see you in it. I can see myself coming home. Then I think about the sort of business I bring through a door.”

“Frankie—”

“Let me get this out. I’m liable to lose my nerve.”

She went quiet.

“I used to know what kind of man I was. Boss pointed, I went. Fellow gave me trouble, I gave him more. Long as I paid my debts and didn’t hurt anybody I didn’t have to, I could sleep.”

I looked down at our hands.

“Funny how often I had to.”

The words stayed between us.

“I can’t talk like that anymore. Not after what I did to Garran. Not after Al offered me his hands and I kept going. I knew better. That didn’t stop me.”

Mara sat very still.

“I’ve changed since I came here. I know I have. But sometimes I catch myself reaching for the same old answer. Put somebody in a room. Make him afraid. Get what I need and call it taking care of people.”

My voice had gone rough.

“I don’t want that man walking through our door.”

Our door.

I’d said it before I could think better of it.

She looked toward the path she’d marked.

“Neither do I.”

“I ain’t a good man, Mara. But I’m trying to be. I don’t know how much of that I’ve got right yet.”

She turned to face me, gathering her skirt beneath her. With her free hand she touched my cheek.

“Frankie, you’ve always been a good man to me.”

I started to shake my head.

She kept her hand there.

“I think what you’re trying to be is a great man. And I know you’ll get there.”

Nobody had ever said it to me like that.

The Boss praised me when I brought him something. Vincent too, most times. I knew what to do with praise. Say thank you. Stand a little straighter. Remember what earned it.

Mara was looking at me in a half-dug garden, with dirt on her skirt and nothing in my hands but hers.

“How can you know that?”

“Because I know you.”

She smiled a little.

“Even when you make it very difficult.”

I let out a breath that had been hurting for longer than I knew.

“When did you get so sure of me?”

“I wasn’t always sure.”

Her thumb moved against my cheek.

“I saw what you did for Elias and his father. I watched you pretend Hobb’s debts were a business opportunity. You listened when I spoke, even when you had a room full of men waiting for your answer.”

“You usually had the best one.”

“Yes. I did.”

I laughed. Couldn’t help it.

She leaned closer.

“And you remember how I take my tea. You move my chair back beside yours. You look for me when something makes you laugh.”

I hadn’t known she noticed that last one.

“I want to be the woman you come home to, Frankie. I’ve wanted it for quite some time.”

I cupped the back of her neck. Her hair was warm from the last of the sun.

“I love you,” I said.

There it was.

I knew how to make a room listen. Had made fine speeches to men who owed me money.

Three words, and I could hardly get them out.

Mara’s eyes shone.

“I love you too.”

I drew her to me and kissed her.

She came into my arms with a little sound that finished whatever was left of my composure. Her hands caught at my shoulders. I held her close enough to feel her breathing through the new waistcoat, and for once I was glad I hadn’t found anything clever to say.

When I lifted my head, she touched her forehead to mine.

“You took your time.”

“Wanted to get it right.”

“You have.”

I kissed her again, slower this time.

The evening bell began while she was still in my arms.

We stayed on the timber until the light left the wall. She told me where the kitchen door ought to go. I told her I wanted a bedroom that faced the morning. She blushed and said she would rather be woken by sunlight than Rosella calling up the stairs.

I remembered every word.

At the back door, Mara stopped with her hand on the latch.

Beyond the wall, the nearest marker had begun to shine.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“The whole price, Frankie. Whatever he tells you.”

I looked at the black line above the houses.

There wasn’t much point promising her a home if I wouldn’t ask what was happening to it.

“I’ll get the truth.”

She straightened my collar, though it didn’t need it.

Then she went inside with me.