The Last Night

The supper was held in the Palace kitchen, because nobody could bear to hold it anywhere else.

It had begun as a formal dinner in the Banqueting Hall, with forty places laid and a herald and a string quartet. Within a quarter of an hour the Duchess Elowen had stood up from her chair, announced to the room at large that she had not eaten a meal in her life that was improved by a string quartet, and marched through a side door with a dish of roast pheasant in her hands. The King had followed with a decanter. Cassian had followed the King. Then Halloway, with a tablecloth. Then Dain, dragging a bench. And by the time Lyra and Kaelen came down the back stair, hand in hand, at half past eight, they found a dozen people crowded round a vast scrubbed oak table in the warmth of the Palace's great old kitchen, under strings of onions and copper pots, eating off whatever plates came to hand.

"There they are!" cried Tobias, waving a drumstick. "The runaways! Come in, come in! The cook has run away with the footmen, we're making do!"

"Majesty—"

"Don't Majesty me. I'm in my shirt-sleeves. Sit."

She sat. She had worn Saoirse's gown. She had not planned to; it had simply been there, folded on the bed, with a sprig of fresh rosemary tucked in the fold. The Duchess had said nothing about it. But she had looked up as Lyra came in, and her eyes had met Lyra's across the long table, and something passed between them that did not need translation.

Lyra thought: I have forgotten eleven languages. And I understand that perfectly.

…

It was the loudest, happiest, most disorderly meal of her life.

Torrin Redmayne told a story about a goat. Halloway corrected the details. Cassian interrupted to say that none of them was true, and that he had been present, and that the goat had been a bishop. Dain, flushed with wine, performed an imitation of the late Lord Marshal that made the Duchess laugh until she cried. Wren sat at the end of the table in her ugly new hat, stuffing her face with dumplings, with her feet swinging above the floor, and every few minutes someone would lean over and pour her more cider and call her Keeper.

"I've not slept in a bed for a week," she said happily. "I've had two thousand letters of congratulation. One of them was from my mother."

"Your mother?"

"She thought I was dead." Wren reddened. "She was quite cross."

"I should imagine."

"She wants me to come home for Candlemas." She sniffed. "I said I'd think about it. I said I had a great many duties. And she said, Wren Tamsin, you are nineteen years old, and if you imagine for one moment that you are too grand to eat my apple cake—" She stopped, and wiped her nose. "I'm going to go home for Candlemas."

"Good," said Lyra.

"I'll bring you some."

"I won't be here."

"I'll send you some." The girl's chin trembled. "I'll find a way. I'll... I'll write you a letter every week. I'll draw you pictures. I'll write it in big print, so you can read."

"Wren."

"Don't cry. I'll cry. We'll all cry. And the pheasant will get cold."

Lyra took her hand across the table and held it hard.

Nobody said anything for a while.

…

They gave their presents after the pudding.

Tobias went first. He stood on a chair, to the consternation of the footmen, and produced from his coat a scroll of heavy cream parchment, tied with a blue ribbon. He read it aloud, in a ringing voice, in a series of impressive pauses, and it declared that Kaelen Varn and Lyra of the Archives, together with their lieutenant and companions, were hereby granted free passage on any road, in any port, in any ship of the realm, by order of the Crown, and that any man who impeded them would be required to explain himself personally to the King.

"It also says," said Tobias, "in the third paragraph, that you may be hanged for nothing at all. But I thought it was important to be balanced."

"That's not what it says."

"Cassian wrote it. I couldn't be sure."

Halloway presented Kaelen with a small blue glass vial stoppered with wax. "Seawater," he said, with a grave air. "From the harbor. It's enchanted, a little. If you pour it on the ground and ask it for the way, it will find you the nearest river. Poor thing. It is homesick. I thought you might take it to see its relations."

Torrin Redmayne dragged a long bundle out from under the table. It was wrapped in oilcloth. Inside lay a sword, plain and sturdy, a hand-and-a-half blade with a black leather grip, and no ornament anywhere. There was no sunburst on the pommel. There was no cross. Only, at the base of the blade, a single small stamp in the steel: a heron, wings spread.

"Cast it myself," said Torrin gruffly. "Out of the last of the Foundry iron. It doesn't lie. I put that in the temper."

Kaelen held it for a long time. His thumb moved over the heron.

"Thank you," he said. His voice was very rough.

"It's not for killing," said Torrin. "It's for carrying. A man ought to have something to carry, even if he never draws it." He coughed. "Don't tell the Duchess I wept."

"I saw it," said the Duchess.

"I did not."

"There were tears, Torrin."

"It was the onions."

The Iron Duchess came last.

She did not stand. She sat very upright at the end of the table, in her steel-gray coat, with her silver hair brushed and her hands in her lap, and looked at Kaelen across the candles. The talk had died. The kitchen had gone still.

"I have nothing to give you," she said.

"Mother—"

"No. Let me." She drew a long breath. "I've been thinking about what I could give, and I find there is almost nothing. A keep that is half burned. A name that has been dragged through the mud. Four hundred swords that don't belong to me." The corner of her mouth twitched. "You have a sword already. You have a woman. You have, I gather, a quite appalling lieutenant."

"I resent that," said Dain happily.

"I give you three things," said Elowen. "First. The North will always be there. It has been there for a thousand years and will be there when you are old. You will go to the sea. You will go where the scholar wants. But the day you wish to come home, there will be a hearth." Her voice did not waver. "Second."

She rose. She took from her coat a small, flat, wrapped bundle, and laid it on the table, and unwrapped it.

A brooch lay in the linen. It was silver, old and tarnished, no bigger than a thumb: a heron, wings spread, neck extended, one claw lifted as if to step. The eye was a small garnet. It had been cast with a skill that had gone out of the world.

"It was your father's," said Elowen. "He wore it every day. I found it in the ashes of the hall, in the place where he fell. I cleaned it with my thumb." She picked it up. "It will have to be pinned somewhere. Lyra, I think. She'll lose it."

"I won't."

"You will. And Kaelen will find it. That's what it's for."

She pinned it at Lyra's shoulder, with fingers that shook only slightly. Then, stepping back, she smiled, and her whole hard weathered face lit like a window.

"And third," she said. "Your sister's gown. It's yours, girl. Keep it. Wear it to the sea. Let it get wet." She looked at her son. "She would have loved it. A gown in the surf. She'd have called it a scandal."

Nobody spoke.

Then Lyra rose, and walked around the table, and put her arms around the Iron Duchess of the North.

For a moment the older woman stood rigid. Then she bent her head, and held on.

…

They said goodbye in the courtyard, at midnight, by torchlight, with the stars very bright over the Palace wall.

There were no speeches. Tobias hugged Kaelen so hard that the Captain grunted. Cassian kissed Lyra's hand with extravagant gallantry, and murmured something in her ear, and she laughed and swatted him. Halloway bowed. Torrin clapped Dain on the back so hard that the lieutenant staggered. Wren cried all over the front of Lyra's gown and said she was not crying, and gave her a small wrapped parcel and made her promise not to open it until the sea.

And last, Elowen took her son's face in her hands.

She said nothing. She looked at him, for a long time, in the torchlight, as one looks at a thing one is trying to memorize. Then she kissed him on the forehead, once, hard, and let go.

"Go on," she said.

"Mother."

"Go. Before I make a scene."

"I'll write."

"You'll write badly."

"I'll learn."

"You'll learn." The Iron Duchess's eyes were brilliant. "You've a good teacher. Don't waste her." She turned abruptly, and strode away across the courtyard with her cloak snapping, and did not look back, and the black heron on her shoulder was the last thing Lyra saw.

…

The room at the top of the Palace was lit by a single candle.

He had banked the fire. The window stood open on the river, and the night air came in cool and sweet, smelling of rain and mud and distant roses. A great bed with a faded canopy stood against the wall. On the table lay two packs, a coil of rope, a map, a sword in an oilcloth. Everything they owned.

Kaelen closed the door.

He stood with his back to it. He had not spoken since the courtyard. His hands, at his sides, were not quite steady. He looked at her across the room: the small figure in the silver gown, with the heron brooch gleaming at her shoulder and her loose hair falling over it, standing in the candlelight and watching him with her pale, grave eyes.

"You're afraid," said Lyra.

"A little."

"Of what?"

"Of getting it wrong." His mouth twisted. "I'm very good at fighting. I'm very good at killing. I have no practice at this. I was brought up to think that it was..." He stopped. "I don't know what I was brought up to think."

She crossed the floor.

She came and stood in front of him, so close that the hem of her gown brushed his boots, and took his hands in both of hers. Her fingers were cool. Her thumbs moved over his knuckles, slowly, one after the other, tracing the old scars.

"I can't read," said Lyra.

"I know."

"I've lost eleven languages. I can't tell a B from a D. I've forgotten the poem about the boy and the heron. I'm not who I was." She lifted her eyes. "But I know what this is. I don't need a word for it. I never did."

"No?"

"There's a word in the First Tongue," she said softly. "I don't remember it. Only the sound. It means stay."

"Anhara."

"Say it again."

"Anhara."

"Say it like that," said Lyra, "all night."

He drew her in.

…

The candle burned down.

It was a long time, afterward, before either of them spoke. The night went by outside the window, soft and dark, and the river slid under the Palace wall with its small continuous murmur, and somewhere very far away a watchman called the hour. The bed was warm. The quilt had slid to the floor. He lay on his back with his arm round her, and she lay with her cheek on his chest and her ink-stained hand spread over his heart, listening.

"It's steady," she said.

"Is it?"

"Like a clock."

"It's been going a long time."

"It has." She was quiet. "Kaelen."

"Hm?"

"Do you think we'll be all right?"

He considered. It was an honest question, and it deserved an honest answer. He looked at the canopy, at the faded gold suns that someone had stitched there a century ago, and thought of the road, and the sea, and the long unmapped country beyond.

"No," he said. "I think we'll be hungry, and wet, and lost, and sometimes very frightened. I think you'll lose your temper at the alphabet. I think I'll be bad at reading aloud." He turned his head and kissed her hair. "And I think we'll be happy."

"That's all?"

"It's rather a lot."

"It is." She tilted her face up. In the last of the candlelight her eyes were enormous and clear. "Say it once more."

"I love you."

"No. The other."

He smiled in the dark.

"Anhara," said Kaelen.

"Yes," whispered Lyra. "That one."

And outside, over the sleeping city of Aethel, under a sky full of the first cold stars of winter, the bells began to ring the dawn.