Chapter 7: Too Late, Kneeling

The whole harbor had come out to see the whale.

Fishing boats bobbed along the pier with their lanterns lit.

Dockers leaned on the rails of the fish market with their pipes.

The old woman with the gutting knife was there, and she was still holding her pie.

Caldrion stood at the end of the planks in the rain, and he was shaking.

"Ilsa," he said.

Then he dropped to his knees.

He did it all at once, in his torn white coat, with his hands open on the wet wood.

The murmur along the pier died.

"I was wrong," Caldrion said.

His voice carried, because he had spent four hundred years learning how to carry it.

"I didn't see you."

"I looked at you in the Hall and I saw a gifted mage."

"I should have seen the one person I needed."

Ilsa stood in the doorway of the boathouse with a shirt thrown over her shoulders.

She said nothing.

"Come back," he said.

"I'll cut Tuva loose tonight."

"I'll go before the Archmage and say the Trial was a mistake."

"I'll give you the Hall, the Crown's seat, anything you name."

"Just be my mage."

A fisherman whistled low.

"He's begging," someone said.

"I thought whales were proud."

Ilsa folded her arms.

"This morning you smiled at me and said we'd do great things," she said.

"I meant it," said Caldrion.

"I know you did."

She took a step onto the planks.

"Do you want to know what I thought when you said it?"

He waited, eyes lifted, and he looked so sincere that a woman on the pier sighed.

"I thought you had very nice hands," said Ilsa.

"They stretch when you're about to hurt someone."

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