The Confession

It took them sixty days to cross the sea.

Garrick would remember them afterward as the strangest weeks of his life: the longest, the quietest, and the happiest. The Albatross ran south before the trade wind, with her black sails full and the long blue Atlantic swells lifting under her keel, and the winter fell away behind them like a coat dropped from the shoulders. They passed the Azores in a squall of warm rain. They passed Madeira under a blaze of stars. The air softened. The water turned from slate to sapphire. The flying fish rose in silver shoals from the bow wave, and the porpoises ran beside them, grinning, and the days settled into the slow, golden, unhurried rhythm of a ship at sea with nothing to fear but the weather.

Odette climbed the shrouds on the nineteenth day.

He had not been there to see it. He had been in the chart-room with Gale, squinting at a column of figures, when Jory burst in white-faced and breathless to say that Miss Wynmore was aloft. He had run on deck with his heart in his throat. And there she was, thirty feet above him on the ratlines of the mainmast, in a sailor's jacket and canvas trousers rolled at the ankle, with her braid streaming in the wind and her face lifted to the sun.

"Garrick!" she shouted. She was laughing. "Garrick, look! I'm not even out of breath!"

"Come down!"

"Why?"

"Because you'll fall!"

"I shan't fall. I'm perfectly well. I'm better than perfectly well." She climbed higher. "Do you know, I can see the whole sea from here? It goes on forever. You never told me it went on forever."

He stood on the deck with his hands clenched and his heart pounding. Pike materialized at his shoulder, quiet and dry, with his arms folded.

"Her lungs are clear," the physician murmured. "I listened this morning. It's been three weeks, and there's not a trace. Not a whisper. If she were anyone else, I'd say she'd never been ill."

"And the stone?"

"Is in Ixara's cabin. A good twenty yards from where she's standing." He paused. "I've been wondering about that. I had thought... well. That it might fade. That the cure might need the stone to be close."

"And?"

"And it doesn't." Pike's voice was odd. "It's as though she's been rewritten. As though something has been taught to her body, and her body remembers."

Garrick looked up at his sister, small and brown-faced and radiant against the blue.

He did not say a word.

…

They were on the line on the fifty-fifth night.

It was the middle of February. The wind had died three days before, and the Albatross lay becalmed on a sea of black glass, motionless under a canopy of stars so thick and low that he could have fancied he might reach up and touch them. The sails hung in loose folds. The rigging ticked. The watch had retired to the forecastle, and the deck lay silent, warm, and sweet with the smell of tar and sun-baked wood.

He found Ixara in the stern gallery.

It had been repaired. Carpenter Dunn had worked a week on the shattered timbers, and the new planks were still pale against the old. The cot had been moved forward, to a cabin in the lee of the bow. In its place stood a small table, a lamp, a pair of canvas chairs, and a wide window thrown open to the night. Ixara sat in one of the chairs with her feet drawn up and her face turned to the stars. She wore a thin cotton gown. Her hair was unbound. The Aurelith lay on the table beside her, in a shallow dish of water, glowing a soft sea-green.

The baby was asleep in a basket at her feet.

"Sit with me," she said, without turning her head.

He sat.

For a time neither spoke. The ship rolled gently on the swell. A fish leaped somewhere in the dark and fell back with a small bright splash. The lamp burned steady. He watched the glow of the stone ripple across Ixara's cheek, and thought: She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

And I am about to lose her.

"I have something to say," he said.

"I know."

"You know?"

"You have been wanting to say it for a week. You walk the deck at night. You stop at the stern, and you turn back." She looked at him at last. In the half-light her eyes were dark and still. "It is the walk of a man with a stone in his shoe."

He laughed, shakily.

"I have told you a good deal," he said. "In the cell. In the boat. I have said I was sorry. I have said I would put it right." He drew a breath. "But I have not told you everything. There are things I have kept back. Not out of cunning. Out of cowardice. I should like, before we reach the island, to set them down."

"All of them?"

"All of them."

"Then begin."

…

He began with the mountain.

He had not meant to. He had thought to begin with Oxford, or the smoking-room, or the sailor with his story of a blue stone. He had rehearsed it all. But the words that came out of him were not the ones he had prepared. They came slowly, haltingly, in a low voice, as though from a long way down.

"I told you that I went up alone," he said. "That Pike and the others stayed at the beach. It was true. What I did not tell you is that I had been there before."

She was very still.

"Three weeks before. In the last days of February. We had put in at the cove for water, and I walked inland, by myself, to look at the trees. I'd never seen anything like them. They were enormous. They sang. I followed the sound up a valley, and across a ridge, and through a gate of living wood, and I came out on a terrace of white stone." He looked at his hands. "And there was a shrine. And in the shrine, on a dais, with the sun on her face, an old woman. She was sitting cross-legged with her eyes shut, and a feather cloak, and a bone knife. And in front of her, in a niche in the wall, the Heart."

"Oma Teyra," said Ixara softly.

"I did not know her name. I stood in the trees and watched. She didn't see me. I watched her sing, for an hour. And I felt..." His voice cracked. "I felt as I had never felt in my life. As if I were a boy again, in the dark of a church, and the organ had begun. I knew in that moment that it was real. I knew that the stories were true. I knew that if I took it, I would be taking the thing that held the world together."

"And you went back to the ship."

"I went back. And I lay in my cot for three weeks and did not sleep." He swallowed. "I told myself I would barter. I put it to the quartermaster. I drew up a list of trade goods. I told myself that if I asked, with sufficient respect, they might give me a fragment. A chip. A splinter. I tried to compose the speech. I tried so hard."

"And?"

"And every night, I heard Odette coughing."

The lamp flame wavered.

"I knew," said Garrick, "that they would say no. I knew it as I knew my own name. No people on earth would give up the heart of their world to a stranger with a bag of mirrors. I knew that if I asked, I would be refused, and I would have to sail home, and my sister would die. And I knew—" He broke off. His breath was coming fast. "I knew that I could not bear it. I could not bear it. So I did what a man does who cannot bear a thing. I decided to make it not my fault."

"By stealing."

"By making it necessary." He wiped his face. "I waited for the Blood Moon. Brandt had heard the sailors' tale of it, from a man in Lisbon. I knew you would be in the shrine. I knew it would be dark. And I brought the gold. I told myself that if I left enough, it would be a purchase. I told myself it was a fair price. I wrote it in my book. One chest of Spanish dollars, being the full value of one blue mineral specimen." He gave a short ugly laugh. "I wrote it as an entry in an inventory."

Ixara said nothing.

"I went up in the dark. I let myself in. And you were lying on the floor."

His voice failed.

…

She did not move. She sat with her hands clasped round her knees and her eyes on his face, unblinking, and he thought: This is the place where she will leave me.

"You were so young," he said at last. "I had thought you would be old. A crone with a cane. I had pictured it for weeks. And instead there was a girl, twenty-three or twenty-four, in a cloak of purple feathers, with her hair in braids and her face turned up to the roof. You were lying on your back, and the smoke was rising from your mouth. And you looked—"

"What?"

"Like someone in a painting. A saint. A thing that ought to be protected." He closed his eyes. "I knelt beside you. I did not mean to. I had meant to go straight to the niche. But I knelt, and I looked at you, and I thought: I am going to do this to her. I thought: She will wake and the world will be gone. I put my hand on your cheek. I don't know why. I think I wanted to apologize."

"You said, Forgive me."

"Yes."

"You said, I'll bring it back."

"I said I would. I believed it. I thought: I will take it, and cure her, and bring it back. As if it were a book borrowed from a library." He opened his eyes. "And I stayed there. Ixara. For a long time. Longer than I have ever told. I knelt by you for, I should think, half an hour, with my hand on your face, and I thought about turning back. I thought: I can leave. I can walk out of here. I can go home and tell Odette I failed."

"And you took it anyway."

"And I took it anyway."

The words fell into the silence like stones into a well.

He waited for her to speak. She did not. She sat looking at him, her eyes bright, her mouth set, and a single tear gathered at the corner of one eye and slid, slow and shining, down her cheek.

"I looked at you," said Garrick, "and I saw a person. I saw a face. I knew that you were real, that you had a mother and a name and a life. And I took her heart. Not because I did not know. Because I did. That is the thing I cannot forgive. I did it with my eyes open."

…

She stood up.

She did it quite slowly, with a hand on the arm of the chair. She crossed the little gallery to the open window, and stood with her back to him, looking out at the stars. Her shoulders were rigid. He saw a tremor run through them. For a long moment she did not speak.

"I want to hit you," she said.

"Then do."

"I want to scream. I want to throw this chair into the sea."

"Do it."

"You would not even duck."

"No."

She turned.

Her face was wet and fierce and white. She came back across the floor and stood over him, shaking, and for a moment he thought she would strike him. He did not close his eyes. He sat very straight and looked at her, and waited.

She struck him.

It was an open-handed blow across the cheek, hard enough to turn his head. The sound cracked like a whip in the silent cabin. The baby stirred in her basket. Ixara stood with her palm stinging and her breath coming in sobs.

"That is for the dais," she said. "That is for my mother's shrine."

"Yes."

"That is for the half-hour."

"Yes."

She struck him again, on the other cheek.

"And that," she said, in a voice that broke, "is for the part where you were kind. For the part where you knelt, and touched my face, and made me think—" She stopped. "That is for the part I cannot forgive."

She sank down, all at once, onto the floor.

She put her face in her hands.

He did not move. He did not dare. He sat in the canvas chair with the imprint of her fingers burning on his face and watched her weep, and thought that he had never in his life loved anyone so much.

…

When she spoke again, her voice was thick and low.

"I will tell you my side."

"Ixara, there's no need—"

"There is every need." She lifted her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, and quite steady. "You have told me yours. I have heard every word. It is only fair."

"What is there to tell?"

"Everything you suspected."

He stared at her.

"I knew you," said Ixara. "That is what I never told you. I did not meet you in the hold. I knew you before. The smoke showed me your face the night of the Blood Moon, as I lay on the dais, in the last instant before I went under. I saw a man in a dark coat. I saw his eyes. And I saw a child, a girl, with a gray eye and a green. I saw it all in a breath." She wiped her cheek. "The old women had told me for years that the Gate would open one day. That the stranger would come. That I would bear his child, and that child would be the key."

"The key."

"To the Heart. To the island. To all of it." She spoke steadily, in a monotone, as a witness recites. "I thought it was a terror. I thought it was a curse. I was twenty-four, and a priestess, and I had never so much as kissed a man. And I was told that I was to give my body to an invader, to a thief, in order to save my people. I hated it. I hated you. I hated the whole prophecy, and I resolved to defy it. I swore that I would take the Heart back with my own hands, by force, by guile, by any means but that."

"And then?"

"And then I got on your ship." A bitter smile. "I told myself it was a rescue. I told myself I would slip into the hold, and steal the stone, and be gone before the sun. And instead I found myself in a cargo bay, in the dark, with a storm over my head and the Heart at the other end of the ship, and you came down the ladder with a lantern." Her voice shook. "And I looked at your face. And the smoke whispered: Now. And I knew I was going to do it."

"Do what?"

"Seduce you."

The word fell between them.

"I did not use the ashbloom," said Ixara. "I swore it. I swore to myself I would not, and I did not. But I did everything else. I watched you. I studied you. I learned how you took your coffee. I learned the way you stood outside your sister's door. I waited for the moon. I put on a gown the color of the night, and I let you take me to a ball, and I stood on a balcony and said, I know. And I told you a thing that was true and left out the thing that mattered." She was weeping again, quietly, steadily. "I stood in your hall and said, I am asking you because I want to. And it was true. God help me, it was entirely true. But I also wanted the child. And I did not say so."

He sat very still.

"I used you," said Ixara. "I used you for my people's sake. And then I loved you, and it was too late to stop."

…

The silence went on for a long time.

The ship rolled. The lamp burned low. Far off, a night bird called, a thin sweet note, and was answered. Garrick sat motionless in the chair with his hands on his knees and his heart going slow and hard in his chest. He did not feel angry. He did not feel betrayed. He felt, strangely, nothing but a vast sad tenderness, like the feeling at the end of a long illness, when the fever has gone and one lies light and empty on the pillows.

"I knew," he said.

She looked up.

"I think I always did." He smiled, a little. "Not the prophecy. Not the child. But I knew there was a reason. I knew you were hiding something, and I knew it was large. I lay awake over it for weeks. Pike told me, and I told him I would be content to be defrauded." His voice was very gentle. "I was. I am. If I had been asked, in the library, on the night of the masquerade, I think I would have said yes anyway."

"You cannot know that."

"No." He shrugged. "But I believe it. And I have no way of testing it. Which is, as you once told me, a thing I find very difficult."

A tear and a laugh broke from her at once.

"You are a fool."

"Yes."

"A great, stupid, honorable fool."

"I have been told."

She crawled to him on her knees. She put her hands on his face, the hands that had struck him, and kissed the red marks on his cheeks, one by one. Her mouth was salt. Her fingers trembled.

"I forgive you," she said. "For the dais. For the half-hour. For the kindness."

"I do not ask—"

"I know you do not. That is why I give it." She drew back. "And I ask you to forgive me. For the seduction. For the silence. For the lie."

"There is nothing to forgive."

"There is, Garrick."

He closed his eyes.

"Then I forgive you," he said.

…

There was no ceremony to it.

There were no words, and no vows. They sat on the floor of the stern gallery in the lamplight with their foreheads touching, breathing together, and the stars wheeled slowly over the open window. He was aware of her hair against his hand. He was aware of the scent of her, plum and iron and the sea. He was aware that something had been lifted from both of them, a weight that neither had known they carried, and that in its absence there was only the quiet, and the dark, and the other person's face.

No more masks, he thought.

No more of it. No more Captain. No more Calla.

Only this.

She kissed him. It was not like the first time, hurried and fierce and desperate. It was slow, and deep, and unhurried. He drew her into his lap. The lamp guttered. Somewhere in the basket at their feet, the baby slept on, and the sea breathed against the hull, and the Aurelith pulsed softly in its dish of water, green and blue and violet, keeping time with them both.

They did not speak again until morning.

…

The land came up out of the mist on the sixtieth day.

It was a gray dawn. A fine cold rain was falling, out of a sky without color. The sea had turned flat and leaden. Garrick stood at the weather rail with a telescope in his hand and his coat collar turned up, watching a smear of paler gray that thickened on the horizon, a low dark line, with a ragged crest.

"There," said Ixara.

She stood beside him, wrapped in a blanket, with the baby in her arms. She had not slept. Neither had he. They had talked all night, and held each other, and he had told her of the stars, and she had told him of the shape of the shore, and now the shape was rising out of the sea, exactly as she had described it.

Corvane.

He lifted the glass.

It was larger than he had remembered. It lifted from the water in a great long ridge, mountainous, fold on fold, black-green and shadowed. A white line of surf marked the shore. A cove curved in, with a crescent of pale sand. And behind it, filling every valley, climbing every slope, swallowing every hill, was the forest.

He had never forgotten the forest. He had dreamed of it for a year. He remembered the color, an extravagant, impossible, shimmering green, a green so alive that it seemed to breathe. He remembered the trees, bigger than any he had seen, with trunks like cathedral pillars and crowns that rose into the clouds.

He lowered the glass.

"Ixara."

"What?"

"It's gray."

She did not answer.

He lifted the glass again. He looked at the long ridge, the crest, the sweep of the valleys. He looked for a long time. It was the same island, the same coast, the same shapes. But it was not the same color. The great trees stood bare, their branches black against the rain. The lower slopes were brown. The valleys were matted with a dull gray mist that did not move, and the whole vast green rampart of the forest, that he remembered pulsing in the sun, had gone dim and flat and lifeless, like a painting left too long in the damp.

And there was no sound.

He lowered the glass slowly. He stood with his hand on the rail, listening. A year ago, on that very beach, he had heard birds. A thousand of them, an uproar, a chorus that came across the water a mile out to sea. He had heard the wind in the leaves, a vast green hush. He had heard something under it, a note, deep and slow and ancient, like the lowest string of a harp.

Now there was only the wash of the surf, and the creak of the rigging, and the rain.

The island was gray and silent.