16. Chapter 16
Chapter 16
J ulia felt utterly exhausted. The magnificence of the evening had quietly burned down to embers as the last of the guests departed - the highborn ones, whose residences were far away, to the comfort of their guest chambers; the merely moneyed ones, whose residences were in the town of Greyharbor itself, to the comfort of their homes. The smell of sweat, perfume, and exhausted spices was lingering in the air.
Something attracted her eye then, as she walked the emptied ballroom - once the great hall - slowly.
The great fireplace. It was dimming.
Unthinkingly, Julia leaned down and fed the flames some of the well-cut logs lying discreetly nearby. Her mother would have warned her most sternly against keeping her delicate hands so close to the open flame, but - and the thought made her smile a little - her mother was not here.
She heard the footsteps behind her - they were hard to miss. There was no answering tension beneath her skin, and not simply because she was too tired to react.
She knew these footsteps well by now. Knew them, and felt only relief.
Julia turned her head a little when her husband, looking as worn-out as she felt, crouched down beside her, and joined her in keeping the fire of his ancestors burning.
“Your forefathers must have been eccentric men,” Julia commented on the fact. “Or else men of lavish tastes.”
“Hardly.” Athelstan’s pale face was unusually bright and golden in the firelight, his eyes made clear. “Especially given their past. I suppose they wanted this as a thing of safety.”
“Safety from what?”
“Cold and damp and squalls, the ever-enemies of those who builds their homes by the sea. Some say the fire reminded them of faraway lighthouses that saved their lives in the years before.”
“All the more reasons for me to keep it burning.”
“We will, yes. Father Telmen would tell you that, in the days of old, the ladies Waite only had other fires in the castle lit from a brand taken from this one.”
“What, even the kitchen hearth?” She smiled a little.
“Perhaps. You should ask him.”
“I think he wishes I was doing the same as those ladies of old. Sacred firebrand, stoicism, and gowns of undyed wool.”
“He is a man set in his ways. Perhaps, when I reach his age, I would distrust anything new just as much.”
“You don’t need to advance in years than greatly for that, Athelstan”.
His hands were free; otherwise she would not have attempted to kiss him.
They kissed for a long time, his arms locked primly behind her back. There was no ravenous desire in it - only relief, and the great sense of coming home.
Julia wondered if that was how the Waites of old felt when they came back into the harbor, and saw the banners of their family streaming in the wind above the battlements of Greyharbor.
“Did you like the evening?” She whispered against her husband’s lips, feeling the prosaic unravelling the sublime very quickly.
“Quite a lot. I would have liked it better if not for the usual duties of such events. But then, I suppose I might as well complain that the sea is blue.”
“Usual duties like talking to people?” She teased.
“Usual duties like talking to the most ingratiating creatures, the creatures who I know would have stabbed me in the back had the war gone differently.”
Julia was silent at this. She had little doubt that this was an apt description of many of them.
“No dissension?” Now was his turn to raise his eyebrows. “No lectures on the power of courtesy, dear Julia? On the sweetness of honey?”
“Honey is good for cakes, and it seems for little else. I have thought... I have thought that I could shield myself from my family. That courtesy could be fashioned into an armor, maybe even a weapon. That, as long as I stay gracious enough, I would remain... safe.”
“Some creatures, some people, only respect a force that is direct and blunt. It doesn’t mean...” The reluctance was practically seeping through his voice, and yet he finished the phrase, “that courtesy cannot be fashioned into a weapon. Though I would always prefer the honest steel.”
“I hope to be this for you, from this day onwards. A thing of honest steel. Someone you could trust as you would your right hand.”
“I hope to have that, too. More than anything, Julia. More than anything.”
“What are we to do about Roxane?”
A pause.
“She can talk to the diver women. Not alone.”
“No, of course not.” She could not keep the gladness from her voice, the relief like a sigh from the stone.
“She won’t be able to dive herself. It’s too dangerous a task. Too uncharted a water.”
“Does that mean that, on other occasions...”
“We can talk of this later. I am not greatly amused at the perspective. I can tell you that now.”
“We have no choice, in this case. There are precious few ways to recover sunken ships that do not involve wading into water.”
“It sounds like a saying on the need for regrettable methods.”
“Perhaps, we should make it into one.”
“I have almost lost Roxane to the siege, Julia. There are dreams I see at times. Nightmares. They are long, and leached of all color. My coming to Greyharbor to find her body. Or never coming here at all, but only riding towards the castle in an endless effort, the sea on the horizon never getting closer. I have no desire to reenact them in the flesh.” Athelstan took her hand, kissed it heavily. “The two of you seem to be intent of disrupting my peace of mind.”
“Some peace is only a desert by any other name. I am sure you would be the first one to agree with it.”
***
Had Athelstan not known better, he would have thought that the occasion was a holiday.
The sunlight on the waves, the women with their loose hair about the ears and shoulders; their diving shifts of light wool, no doubt spun finely enough so as not to pull them down once water-sodden. There was some laughter, too - the sea-silk divers walking the stones, preparing for their mission. He sensed giddiness like sparkles in the air.
“No wonder they are so disposed,” he remarked to Julia, standing by his side in her demure gown of white, looking on. “The reward we’ve promised them would feed their families for a long time.”
“Romantic as always, my heart.”
“I see the world as it is.”
“ I think they are happy because they can finally do something great, something that would change things - for their families and for Greyharbor. After the war…”
“The war was hardly devoid of action.” Sometimes he wished it was. Sometimes he wished there was no such place on the map as Redstone Pass.
“For you, naturally. For these women, the wives and daughters of fishermen besieged in their harbor? There was only the stewing in their own helplessness. Month in, month out.” She spoke with such disproportionate vehemence, he could not help but smile, if very slightly.
“You are speaking of the helplessness of your own.”
“Am I so easy to read?”
“Sometimes you are.”
Roxane was standing listlessly by their side. He thought that bringing her here might be a treat in lieu of actually participating, but, given her longing looks, it seemed to have been a mistake.
She had taken his stipulations remarkably well - no tears, very little sulking. She prepared for her task of talking to the sea-silk divers with all the earnestness a serious-minded child could possess.
Roxane’s speech had not been long, even if it was slightly rambling. She had shared rather more of the enterprise than her brother would have liked. He would have preferred that the explanation these people were given was the same as they were to give others - that his was merely an eccentric desire for ancient artefacts, no different from the pastimes of the lords beyond the Glittering Sea.
His sister, instead, claimed that it was a mission to help defend their homes from the northern raiders - that, if successful, could save Greyharbor as much as their husbands’ efforts on levied ships would.
I know how it’s so terrible, to have to sit and do little while others fight for you, she said then, her voice catching with some feeling of her own. But it doesn’t have to be this way. It won’t be this way. Not this time.
There was little of that fire left in her now. Her lips were pressed together, her eyes scanning the horizon.
One by one, the women Roxane no doubt knew from her forbidden excursions had gone into the water.
The waiting started.
It was senseless to spend all those hours standing on the shore. He wanted to make sure the start went well, but he could do nothing further. The strange, dark, luminous realm under the water was not his. He had no power there, and no vision.
The sense of helplessness was maddening. Athelstan Waite was little used to it.
He could see what his wife meant, at least dimly.
He knew that the powers sustaining them without breathing for a long enough time must have been good enough. After all, most of them had been diving this way for most of their lives. Yet still, yet still. There was no actual, proper mage who had studied at the Alexian Academy down in the south here, after all. The powers must have been coming from some local wise-woman, no more.
That was something Roxane had been entrusting her life to. That was something all these women - who belonged, after all, to the people he had sworn to protect - had been entrusting their lives to.
And that was something the success of their task, the possibility of protecting Greyharbor, was entrusted to now, too.
Athelstan did not like it one bit.
There was a splash as one of the divers, a woman younger than Julia, her blonde hair darkened by water, surfaced. A regular swimmer would have drawn in a hungry breath of a living air at this, but in her case the charm must have still held.
Which was a good sign at least.
“We’ve sighted something,” she told him as he came closer, the rocks slippery under his feet. “A great shadow. Might be a ship. We don’t know.”
“You should see.” He paused, and added, “Perhaps, not today. How long do these spells hold for?”
“A few hours.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
“Your Lordship,” she hesitated, “are you sure? These old places… I’ve heard terrible things might be sleeping there.”
“I can deal with those,” Athelstan said aloud.
What he thought, however, was Terrible things are precisely what I am looking for.