The Castle Behind Thorns (18 page)

It took all his willpower to nod and mean it, to not secretly tell himself in the back of his mind that he would lie to her, that he would make the promise and then break the promise.
No. No lies, not to her, not to yourself.
“I promise,” he said bitterly, but meant it.

Perrotte nodded. “Good. But I don't plan to be taken prisoner or executed, Sand. Whatever agreement we make with that army needs to be ironclad, and bound by impartial witnesses, someone who'll protect us when we're free and in Jannet's grasp.”

32

Mending

S
UNSET CAME, AND
P
ERROTTE AND
S
AND CLIMBED
the guard tower to parley.

Unexpectedly, Gilles ran behind the men who approached with the white flag. Two women rode with them as well: Sand's stepmother, bound and gagged, and Jannet.

Perrotte's whole gut lighted with fear at the sight of her father's wife.

“That's Agnote. What are they doing with Agnote?” Sand fretted.

Perrotte shook her head, feeling faint. “I don't like this. I don't like any of this.”

“You can do it, Perr,” Sand said, and took her hand.

She looked down on the assembled people and waited, expecting Jannet to say something. Her father's wife had grown older, but was far from withered and ancient. Perrotte realized with a jolt: Jannet had been very young when she married the Count.

Jannet said nothing, and Perrotte got tired of waiting.

“Our demands!” Perrotte said. “We will surrender this castle one week from today. Provided that there is a witness from the court of the Duchess of Bertaèyn to oversee the peaceful exchange, we will bring down the thorns, and leave the treasury intact for you. In return, you must let us go free, as well as your prisoners, Sir Bleyz and . . . Agnote?” She glanced at Sand.

Jannet didn't move. She wasn't looking up at Perrotte at all, in fact. Her hands were clasped around a rosary, and her lips moved constantly in silent prayer.

Perrotte stared at her.

Jannet gave one nod.

The knight out front said, “We accept these terms!”

“The witness you choose must be known to Perrotte or Sir Bleyz!” Sand shouted from beside her. “An impartial witness and a person of unimpeachable character!”

Another nod from Jannet. “Agreed!” the knight said.

It was done.

Perrotte left the tower, going slowly. She felt dizzy with pent-up grief and anxiety.

Sand took her hand. “What on earth did Agnote do that she's a prisoner?”

Perrotte shrugged. She had no capacity to speculate on anything.

“We need to get to work,” Sand said.

 

T
HEY WORKED TOGETHER IN
companionable, urgent silence, as late into the night as they could. Sand wedged four of the biggest anvils together in a tight cluster, and took apart four forges, rebuilding them into one enormous forge.

The first link of their giant chain was bigger around than Sand's upper arms.

When Sand finally called a break for sleep, Perrotte stretched her back, wiping a hand across her forehead, then shook the kinks and pains out of her hammer arm, before finally rubbing her tong hand. She'd never worked this long at the forge.

They slept. Perrotte slept as long as Sand for a change, but he didn't sleep as long as usual, either. They got up and went back to work. They brought each other water and food. Sand went and looked at the army periodically, and brought updates; Perrotte would not go. They gave up on sleeping in beds, just making pallets on the floor of the smithy, and slept in snatches.

Days passed. They kept track with hash marks in soot on the wall, afraid they'd miss their deadline.

They forced each other to take breaks for Merlin's sake, if not their own. They climbed the towers and hunted the falcon, watching the army in the distance. Rain came. Rain went. Sand and Perrotte worked metal side by side at the forge, groaning with fatigue, drowning in chain.

“We're out of metal,” Perrotte said at last.

“Hardly,” Sand said, and together they went through the kitchen and the rest of the rooms and stole back all the steel and iron implements that Sand had repaired over the weeks he'd been in the castle, and turned those things into chain as well.

“Pretty soon now, we
really
will run out of metal,” Perrotte said, while they munched on onions roasted at the forge.

“Soon,” he agreed, and swallowed his last bite.

“You never asked me what it was like to be dead,” Perrotte said conversationally as they got back to work.

Sand, too distracted by the trial that lay just ahead, nodded, and was more forthright than she expected. “You are right. It seemed rude. Also—” He shuddered. “It's frightening, honestly.”

“It wasn't scary at all, to
be
dead. Much scarier to die.” Perrotte pumped her bellows fiercely. Sand made an objecting squawk.

She slowed down. Too much air did odd things to the metal and interfered with welding. Sand had told her this several times over the week. “Sorry, I forgot.”

“When I was younger,” Sand said, “I thought it was too much heat that ruined a weld. And Grandpère and my father both let me think it. Oh, they gave me hints. Grandpère wondered aloud how there could be too
much
heat in a process that required sparkling white metal. So I thought maybe the trouble lay in the metal heating too fast. And they let me think that, for a while. But I started doing everything based on that, and my father reminded me that there are
four
elements in the world.”

Perrotte pumped the bellows and tried to figure out what Sand was trying to tell her with his story.

“I worried over that comment for days,” he said. “I pumped the bellows slower and slower during heating, and failed
all
my welds. I thought about the elements over and over. I figured: fire was obviously not the answer. I couldn't be on the right track with that theory, if my father had to remind me that there were
four
elements. Earth, well, that was the element from which we draw iron, and perhaps that was the issue, but what
about
earth? Everything in blacksmithing is about earth! Even more than it's about fire! Water? No, no—the problem had nothing to do with water, because the quench was long after the welds failed.

“So I pumped the bellows and thought. That's when it came to me. Air. Air had to be the complicating factor. Certainly, air from the bellows feeds the fire, but air also rushes over our steel as we heat it. I wondered: Could too much
air
really complicate the issue of welding?

“I asked Papa, who grunted. That always means I've finally found the right answer. I asked him: Why didn't you just tell me? He said, ‘If I tell you, you'll just forget at some critical point. If you figure it out for yourself, you'll always remember.'”

Perrotte watched her heating iron. “You think you've explained too many things to me, while you've taught me smithing? And not let me figure enough things out for myself?”

He shrugged. That meant yes.

She nodded. She agreed. But they hadn't had the time for her to learn slowly, to figure things out for herself.

“It doesn't matter—you aren't planning to be a smith,” he said.

She thought about the work they'd done on the spherical astrolabe. She could see working on things like that for the rest of her life, and she would always be grateful to Sand for what he'd taught her. And for what she hoped he would continue to teach her. And for what they might learn together.

“Well?” Sand asked.

“Well what?”

“What was it like to be dead?” Sand asked, and grinned. “Enough time passed that I thought it would seem spontaneous if I asked now.”

She told him. About a field of lilies, and a woman without a face, and stars in a marsh.

“But what about Heaven?” he asked.

“Well, if I had been in Heaven, I don't think I could have been brought back to life,” Perrotte said.

“It sounds like a dream.”

“It mostly feels like one too. But now it's time to weld.”

She lifted the incandescent metal out of the fire and brought it to her anvil, while he swung around the other side to meet her with his sledgehammer. She held the link in her tongs, indicated the spot she wanted with a light tap, and waited while he brought the sledge down.

The spark of welding shot between them, and she sighed.

“What?” Sand asked.

“Whatever happens,” Perrotte said, “I mean, unless our plan fails and Jannet has me executed or locked up for life, which is actually pretty likely if things go wrong—but whatever
else
happens—will you still be my friend?”

She asked the question in a voice that was trying not to be plaintive, but no matter how brave she tried to sound, she knew he could hear the sadness and fear and loneliness beneath.

Sand regarded her carefully. “I'll always be your friend, if you'll allow it. My lady.”

“Ugh,” she groaned. “Please. Never call me that again.” But she smiled.

“I'll always be your friend, Perrotte,” Sand repeated.

“And I yours, if you allow it,” she replied.

 

T
WO MORE LINKS AND
they were done with the chains. Then came the rope making, but eventually, they finished with that, too.

The crossbow bolts came out well enough, with their weird needle-eyes on one end. The arrow tips on the end of the bolts didn't look as good as they should, but Sand assured her that they would work for his plan.

Sand directed her to tie ropes to each end of their chains: four ropes, two chains. Then they attached the ropes to each of the four crossbow bolts.

Together, they moved the crossbow to where Sand pointed. He aligned and realigned the weapon, sighting this way and that.

Perrotte fidgeted.

“I don't really know how crossbows work, I guess,” he said.

“You knew enough to repair them.”

“It's a bit different to shoot.”

“Well, what's the worst that can happen?” Perrotte asked. “We might have to try again?”

Sand checked one more time, and fired.

The bolt flew out, rope trailing after, and sped into the open window at the top of the tower. Sand's aim had been good, his planning worthwhile, and his imagination better. Perrotte waited while Sand ran up the stairs and started hauling up the rope, the chain trailing after. On the other side of the tower, the rope dropped out another window, and Perrotte ran to catch it, and help pull. Her muscles strained, but the chain came up, threading through the tower windows.

Sand did the same thing with the other chain and another tower on the other side of the split keep.

“I can't believe it worked,” Perrotte said.

“It worked.”

“I can't believe how much of those chains
I
forged!”

“You forged a lot of that chain,” Sand agreed.

“And now . . .”

“And now.”

The next step was fiddly. They moved the crossbows into place and staked them there. The plan involved using the winches of the great crossbows to wind the ropes taut, to draw the chains tight around the towers, and, eventually, to pull the towers together, sealing up the crack between them.

The winding was long and arduous, and in the end, Perrotte could not get the winches wound quite as far as Sand could, so he had to take over for her.

“But that's right and proper,” Perrotte said. “You're the one with the mending magic.”

Sand shrugged, and kept winding, grunting with effort, while Perrotte watched.

“It shouldn't work,” Sand muttered. “I don't think it will.”

“It's magic,” Perrotte reminded him.

“It is magic. And there's the other piece.”

“The forgiveness piece.” She sighed. “I could forgive your father, I think. For your sake. But I really don't know how to forgive Jannet, Sand. When I think of just not hating her, of not being angry . . .”

Sand glanced at her over the edge of the winch, grunting as his muscles strained to turn it. He stopped, bent over with hands on knees, and panted a moment.

She handed him a cup of water, and he drank it down. Sweat dripped into his eyes, and he wiped it away. “Perrotte,” he said.

“You want me to turn the winches with you?”

Sand nodded. “Yes. I want that. But also . . . in regards to forgiveness . . .” He put the cup down, speaking to the ground as he said his next words. “You have an imagination. Use it.”

She didn't know how to answer that. He moved back to the winding winch, and she moved to the opposite side. They threw their weight against the wooden handles, and continued winding, tightening the ropes and chains around the keep.

“Imagine your life!” Sand cried. “Imagine what it would be like if you forgave her!”

Perrotte closed her eyes, pushing on the handles of the winch, rotating it another few inches. And then another. Her palms ached, as well as her legs and shoulders.

Perrotte directed her thoughts away from the pain in her body. Forgiveness. Forgiving was as hard as turning the windlass, but she supposed . . . she could see how to forgive her own mother for dying. Her father for marrying Jannet. Gilles for being duped. The path to those kinds of forgiveness seemed etched out before her on the floor of the castle in her mind. But where did the path to forgiving Jannet start?

The windlass ground forward. Across from her, Sand grunted unhappily.

What would it be like? To be free of the pain and grief she felt, the anger that welled in her every time she thought about the thing that had happened to her, the death she'd received, the years and people she had lost?

Another few inches.

What would it be like to remember the past without wanting to scream and to cry? Without feeling like a burden rested on her shoulders and her heart?

A few inches more.

Would life feel like it did when she stood shoulder to shoulder with Sand at the forge, creating the spherical astrolabe? Engrossing. Involving. Full of possibility and joy and friendship?

She had thought she was already pushing against the handles as hard as she could, but she found a well of strength in her legs. Thighs burning, she leaned in harder.

“It's moving! Keep going!” Sand shouted.