Rafe got back into the boat and lit and hung a lantern in the bow, then used one of his oars as a pole to move them through the narrow crevice. Barrick felt completely encased, as though the stone that surrounded him were the body of a living thing, a sleeping ogre or dragon.
But Southmarch was a living thing, he realized for the first time. It was not the Qar voices that told him so, because to Fireflower phantoms everything in the world was as alive or dead as everything else—being “dead” or “alive” was, they seemed to feel, a largely meaningless distinction. Barrick didn’t know why he suddenly knew it, too, or why it seemed so significant, but Southmarch was indeed alive, and in a way that almost nothing else was. It was alive because it was full of doorways, and it was full of doorways because it was curiously, even uniquely alive. The gods, the Qar, even the late-coming humans, had not made this place the heart of so many happenings. They had all come here because the place itself was as vital as a beating heart.
How had he lived here all his life and never known that? How had his own ancestors lived here for so many centuries and not recognized it? Because they could see only the colors they had been given to see. But now that had changed, at least for him.
Barrick could see it now, at least a little, but could he make sense of it? And would it make any difference if he could?
The short trip along the watercourse was a dreamlike inversion of their trip from M’Helan’s Rock, but the waves that rose above them this time were not made of water but of dark granite sprinkled with white limestone foam. They followed their own lantern light through a tunnel of naked rock until they found themselves at last prevented from going forward by a heavy iron grille set in a wall of dressed stones. On all sides, stone-and-clay water pipes opened out of the walls, although in this season they all seemed dry.
Rafe gestured toward the heavy grille, thick with rust and mud. “Beyond lie the backwaters of the castle, under the Lagoonside houses and suchnot. Then comes the lagoon. But you’ll not be going there. Far too dangerous for such as you, Your Majesty.” He looked at Barrick and frowned in confusion. “Your Majesties, I should say, Egye-Var’s pardon on me.”
“And so… ?” Barrick asked him.
“We wait.” Rafe seemed pleased to be able to announce this. He sat back in the bow with his long, thin arms crossed. The Rooftoppers in their box murmured in anxious voices to each other, so that Barrick felt as though he sat beside a hive of sighing bees. “Some are coming to lead us the rest of the way.”
They did not wait long. Barrick heard their approach even before Rafe did, and saw them as they approached the end of the pipe, their little torches glowing; none brighter than an Orphan’s Day taper. It was another crowd of Rooftoppers—hundreds, as far as he could tell, crowding up against the lip of the pipe.
Rafe stood up abruptly, which made the small boat rock, then lifted out the box and its surprised passengers. He put it down carefully on the brick ledge beside the canal and opened the door along its bottom. The first Rooftopper guards filed out, looking around warily, followed shortly by the impressive if slightly rumpled figure of Duke Kettlehouse.
A squadron of Rooftopper engineers, as if prepared, dropped a ramp into place to bridge the difference of height between the end of the pipe and the brick ledge, then the rest of the Rooftoppers made their way down it, most on foot, but a few dozen seated on hopping birds. The last one to hop forward was the most decorated, and its passenger wore a tremendous headdress on top of her curly red hair. A tiny man stepped out in front of her and held up an equally tiny speaking-trumpet. “Greetings, Saqri of the Fireflower, great Queen. Her Uproarious Highness Queen Upsteeplebat of Rooftop, Wainscoting, and Rooftop-Over-Sea bids you welcome back to your home, Saqri of the Ancient Song.”
Welcome back? wondered Barrick, but then a moment later he saw it as if he had been there himself—which something that was now part of him had, he realized—the young Saqri, slim as a birch tree, hair dark as the space between stars, walking along an ancient passage that wound down into the depths beneath Southmarch… Beyond this image, like a succession of mirrors looking on the reflections of other mirrors, the daughters of Crooked’s blood, all the queens of Qul-na-Qar, stretched back along those same stairs, each one individual, but also part of a single, many-legged thing that spread forward and backward through time… or at least backward.
Because there may never be another, said a voice in his head, a clear, familiar voice. It ends with her…
Ynnir? he asked, if one could truly ask anything of another part of one’s own heart and thoughts. But the blind king’s presence was gone again.
“You are kind, sister,” Saqri said in her calm, quiet voice. Far below her, Upsteeplebat smiled as Saqri continued: “It has been too long since our two peoples met in concord.”
The gathered Rooftoppers, even Kettlehouse’s people, made little murmurs of approval and contentment. Barrick could only guess how important it was to such small creatures to be treated as equals.
The little queen took the speaking-trumpet from her herald. “We have much to speak about,” Upsteeplebat said to Saqri. “But first we have other business, if you will forgive us.”
“Of course.” Saqri nodded.
“Duke Kettlehouse—my dear uncle, you are most welcome back!” said the Rooftopper’s queen.
Kettlehouse stepped toward her as her grooms helped her down from her beautiful gray dove. She waited for him as he approached, then watched as he at last knelt before her. “I thank the Lord of the Peak heartily for this happy day.”
The little queen bent and threw her arms around the bearded man’s neck, encouraging him to stand, then kept her grip on him for a long moment. “Too long have the tides splashed between us,” she said. “Now our family is whole again.”
A great cheer went up from the assembled Rooftoppers—Old Duke Kettlehouse even seemed to be weeping, but he waved his arms and shouted, “So be it! Huzzah for the Wainscoting! Huzzah for the Great Green Drapery! We are one again!”
“Come, then,” said Queen Upsteeplebat when the shouting had died down, remounting her dove. “We have prepared a place for all of you in the tunnels beneath the castle. We will settle you and feed you, then we shall talk of how we can aid you, great Queen of the People.” She turned to smile at Barrick as well. “You and the other noble guardian of the Fireflower.” She waved and the entire contingent of Rooftoppers, mounted and afoot, men at arms, women, children, and old people mounted back up their ramp and into the circle of the great clay pipe. The engineers stayed behind to dismantle their ramp, but even they finished and left in what felt like a very short time.
“Where did they go?” Barrick said.
“We will see Upsteeplebat again, and soon,” Saqri told him.
“But why didn’t they… why aren’t we… ?”
“Didn’t say we were waiting for them, did I?” said Rafe, who had hung back during the meeting. “Just said we were waiting.”
“So who are we waiting for, then?” Barrick asked, but Saqri did not answer.
Rafe spoke in her place. “Somebody else,” he said, grinning. “Oh, aye, somebody well else.”
The farmer’s wife was reluctant to let Qinnitan go. “Are you certain, child? If you stay, you can eat with us again tonight.”