Scarecrow

I built a porch.

That’s the first thing. Risa told me to, and I did. Not on the crooked house, because the crooked house was where the four of them were meeting Andraste, and Risa said if she saw me within a mile of it she’d hit me with lightning, and she meant it. So I went down to the town under the garden wall and built a porch on the long hall where the Sheln children’s windows looked out, because Tally said the Lir children wanted somewhere to sit in the evenings that wasn’t the floor.

It took me about an hour.

Then I sat on it.

For the whole of the rest of the day.

Pip found me there at noon. With the iron basket. With bread.

”You’re sulking,” she said.

”I’m not sulking.”

”You’re sitting on a porch you built in an hour,” said Pip. ”On your own. With your chin on your knees. Like Risa.” She sat down beside me and put the basket between us. ”That’s sulking.”

I took a loaf.

”What are they saying?” I said.

”I don’t know,” said Pip. ”Nobody knows. Risa put a cloud over the whole house. A big one. Nobody can hear anything through it.” She broke a loaf in half. ”Mum took tea up at ten. She said they were all laughing.”

”Laughing?”

”Laughing,” said Pip. ”Mum said Andraste laughs like a door falling off its hinges.” She considered. ”Mum said she liked her.”

I’m going to write what happened at the crooked house the way they told me.

Not all of it. They didn’t tell me all of it. Risa said some things were for the five of them. But they told me a lot, that night, on the porch, one at a time, interrupting each other, laughing, the way the four of them tell things. And Garnet wasn’t there to draw any of it, which Garnet says is the greatest tragedy of her life.

Andraste came up the long road at nine in the morning.

Alone. Without her twelve. Without her armour. In plain dark cloth, with her arms bare and scarred, and her short black hair, and her boots in her hand because she’d taken them off at the bottom of the hill. She said on Hyrran you don’t wear boots into another First Blade’s house.

Luna met her at the gate.

”I’m not a First Blade,” said Luna.

Andraste looked at her. A long time. Up and down.

You made a path of ice across the sky at the Hathri world, she said. Forty miles. With children on it. I have heard.

”Yes.”

Then you are a First Blade, said Andraste. Whether or not anyone has asked you to fight. And came in.

They sat in the kitchen.

All five of them. Round the table. Luna and Sera and Risa and Hana and Andraste. With Elin and Goldie in the iron basket by the oven, and the others with Mother and Maura on the plain for the day, because Mother had taken one look at Risa’s face at breakfast and gathered every child in the crooked house and left.

Andraste looked round the kitchen for a long time.

At the stove. At the window with frost going up one side and steam coming down the other. At the drawings on the wall: Garnet’s, the children’s, the one Garnet made of Father from Mother’s memory. At the long scorch mark on the ceiling from the year Ash learned to sneeze.

This is where he lives, she said.

”This is where we live,” said Risa.

Andraste looked at her.

And smiled. Crooked. With the scar.

Good, she said. That is the right answer.

Sera said it was easy after that.

”She’s funny,” Sera said. On the porch. That night. With Goldie asleep on her shoulder, glowing faintly. ”Nobody told us she’d be funny. Konrad made her sound like a—like a sword with legs.”

”She is a sword with legs,” said Risa.

”She’s a funny sword with legs,” said Sera. ”She told us about her mother’s six husbands. All of them. By name. With what each one was good at.” Sera started to laugh. ”One of them was good at nothing. Nothing at all. Her mother married him because he made her laugh, and every time anyone asked why, she said, the First Blade of Hyrran is permitted one indulgence.”

”She asked what Lucas was good at,” said Hana.

”What did you say?”

The four of them looked at each other.

”We said he was very good at building porches,” said Luna. Very gravely.

And then, Risa said, about an hour in, over the second pot of Maura’s tea, Andraste said something.

Looking at Luna. Very directly. With her iron-sea eyes. The way she’d looked at me on the salt.

You are very beautiful, she said. All of you. I did not expect it. On Hyrran we are told that the women of other worlds are soft. She looked at Sera. At Risa. At Hana. Back to Luna. You are not soft. And you are beautiful. That is a dangerous thing to be. I approve of it.

Luna went pink.

Luna doesn’t go pink. Luna’s gone pink about four times in her life and three of them were on our wedding day.

”Thank you,” she said.

I mean it, said Andraste. On Hyrran, there are more of us who love women than love men. It is not remarked upon. I have loved both. She drank her tea. I am telling you this so that you know what I am looking at when I look at you. It is not only my husband’s other wives.

”There was a silence,” said Risa. On the porch. ”A really long one.”

”And then?” I said.

”And then,” said Sera, ”Risa said—”

”Don’t,” said Risa.

”Risa said,” said Sera, ”Well, that’s all right, we’ve all been in the same bed anyway.”

I didn’t say anything.

There wasn’t anything to say. It’s true. It’s been true for a while now. Since the second winter in the crooked house. It wasn’t anything anybody planned; it just happened, the way most of the important things in the crooked house have happened, one night, without anyone deciding. Luna and Sera and Risa and me.

I’ve never written it down. It didn’t seem like a thing for the notebook.

I’m writing it now because of what happened next.

”Hana,” said Luna. On the porch. Very gently. ”Tell him what you said.”

Hana looked at her hands.

Hana’s never been in the same bed with all of us. Not because anyone said no. Because nobody ever said anything. She came to the crooked house after; after the three of them had already found their way to each other and to me, and asked her, and she said yes, and married us. And then she was pregnant with the twins almost at once. And then there were the twins. And then the war. And she’d had her own room, and I’d gone to her, and she’d come to me. Just the two of us. Always.

She’d thought, Sera said, that that was how they wanted it.

”I said,” said Hana. Very quietly. To her hands. ”Nobody invited me.”

Sera said the kitchen went completely silent.

Then Risa put her teacup down.

”Hana,” she said.

”It’s all right,” said Hana. ”It’s all right. I understand. You three were—you were already you three. Before me. And I came in after. And I didn’t want to—”

”Hana,” said Luna.

”—to get in the way of something that was already—”

”Hana,” said Sera. ”We didn’t invite you because we thought you’d say no.”

Hana stopped.

”You’re—” said Risa. And stopped. And put her face in her hands. ”You’re so good. All the time. You hold the water in the room still when someone’s being born. You give people air. You married the four of us and you’ve never once asked for anything.” She took her hands away. Her eyes were wet. ”We thought you’d think it was—too much. That we were—”

”Greedy,” said Luna. Quietly.

”Greedy,” said Risa. ”We didn’t want you to think we were greedy.”

Hana looked at the three of them.

And then she started to laugh.

”She laughed so hard she had to hold on to the table,” said Sera. On the porch. ”And the kettle filled itself. Three times. And Goldie woke up and cried and Elin woke up because Goldie did. And Andraste just sat there watching all of us with her tea.”

”What did she say?” I said.

The four of them looked at each other again.

Then Risa said it. In Andraste’s voice. Which is very good, it turns out; Risa does a very good Andraste.

On Hyrran, a First Blade’s wives and husbands share one bed. All of them. Always. It is how the house knows it is one house. If there is a door in a house that any of its people cannot walk through, it is not a house. It is a garrison. A pause. I will not marry into a garrison.

”So,” I said.

On the porch. Very carefully. Because they were all four looking at me. And it was dark, and the lanterns were low, and the children were asleep in a heap on the big rug in the hall, and Mother had very pointedly taken Father’s chair inside an hour ago and shut the kitchen door.

”So,” said Risa.

”What did you decide?”

The four of them looked at each other.

Then Hana reached out. And took my hand.

”Yes,” she said. ”We decided yes.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time.

”All four of you?”

”All four,” said Luna.

”Not for the alliance,” said Sera. ”I want you to know that. Not for forty thousand soldiers or the walking engines or what Doctor Bell said. If it were only that, we’d have said no, and let Konrad find another way.”

”Then why?”

”Because we like her,” said Risa. Simply. ”All of us. She’s honest. She’s funny. She’s never once been afraid of anything in her life, and she sat in our kitchen and told us she loves women as well as men like it was the weather, and then she told us off for not inviting Hana.” She looked at me. ”And she looked at you on the salt and saw you shaking. Before any of us did. And she didn’t want you to stop.”

”She asked what you were afraid of,” said Luna. Very quietly. ”At the end. Before she went. She asked each of us. What frightens him.” She looked at me. ”We all said the same thing.”

”What?”

”That you’ll go so small you won’t come back,” said Luna.

I didn’t say anything.

Hana held my hand.

”She said,” said Hana. ”Then I will guard that door. The fifth wife guards the door. That is what it is for.”

So I married Andraste.

On Hyrran. Because she asked for it to be on Hyrran, and because, Konrad said, a First Blade’s marriage on any other world wouldn’t count to forty thousand soldiers who’d never been off it. And because Mother said if we were going to do this we were going to do it properly, in front of everyone, both worlds, with the grandparents, and she wasn’t having anyone say afterward it was done in a corner.

It wasn’t done in a corner.

We went through the door.

That was the first time. I should write about the door, because it’s changed everything since, and it was the wedding that made it happen.

The Hyrrani had them.

Not doors exactly. Doctor Bell nearly fainted when she saw. Arches. Iron and stone. On every mountain on Hyrran, one in every city, worked very fine, like Andraste’s armour, with the same water pattern in the metal. And when the Hyrrani’s queen sang under the mountain, and a First Blade put her hand on the arch, the space inside it opened.

Onto somewhere else.

Another city. Another mountain. The other side of the world. One step.

”That’s how they won,” said Doctor Bell. On the Long Legs’ ramp, the morning Andraste showed her. With both pairs of spectacles off and her hands shaking. ”That’s how they won. For a thousand years. The houses came down on one mountain and the whole of Hyrran stepped through onto it. Forty thousand soldiers. In a minute.” She sat down very suddenly on the ramp. ”It’s not a ship. It’s not an engine. It’s not anything I’ve got a word for.” She looked up at me. ”Dask, I’ve said that before. About the Kethri interceptors. I’d like to stop saying it.”

”Can we build one?” said Okafor.

Andraste answered. Through Dot.

Not build. Ask. She put her hand on the arch. The arches are cut by the Hyrrani. But they open because our queen sings them open. Our queen, under the mountain. It is her song. Her silver in the stone.

Your queens could sing them too, she said. If they knew the song.

They knew the song in a day.

The Hyrrani queen sang it to them. Down the thread. Through the voice. Through Tally, who sat on the floor of the long ward with the voice in her ear and the Hyrrani queen on the other end, very old and very strong and not tired at all, the first queen any of ours had met who’d never once been taken. And the old queen listened. And the Scarecrow queen. And the heavy queen. And all of them.

And the Hyrrani cut the first arch on Avalon.

On the red glass. At the foot of the steps of Scarecrow. Out of the red stone from the cliffs above the seventh lake, worked very fine, with the water pattern in it. Twelve of them cut it, in a night, with tools I’d never seen.

And in the morning, the Scarecrow queen sang it.

And Andraste put her hand on it.

And it opened.

Onto a mountain on Hyrran.

I’ll write what it was like. The first time.

Not like the rope. Not like scattering. Not like anything. You walk up to an arch of red stone on the red glass with the morning light coming through it. And the light through it changes. Goes iron-coloured. Mountain-coloured. And there’s a wind on your face that wasn’t there a second ago, cold and clean, with snow in it. And you take one step.

And you’re on Hyrran.

Just like that. Standing on a mountain in the snow, with an iron-coloured sea below you and a city of stone behind you and forty thousand women in armour on the ridges, all turned to look.

Mother took the first step.

Of course she did. Holding the General’s hand on one side and Ingrid’s on the other.

She stood on the snow and looked round at Hyrran for a long time.

”Well,” she said. ”That’s going to save a great deal of time.”

The wedding was on the ridge.

The highest one. Over the hall where the Hyrrani queen lives. With the snow and the iron sea and the wrecks of a thousand years of Sorn ships on the mountains all around, grown over with green. The Hyrrani said it was the right place. That every First Blade had been married there, in front of the wrecks, so the houses would know.

Everyone came.

Through the arch. From Avalon. All of them.

The grandparents first. Mother, in a new dress that Maura had made her and Nan Vey had ironed. Ingrid, in her flight jacket, because she said she wasn’t wearing a dress on a mountain, and Konrad beside her in his coat. Maura and Rory. The General, in his old uniform, with every medal. Lotte Quint. Abena and Efua and Kwame Osei. Marian and Dennis Haddon with Clare. Nan Vey. Teshka, who’d come back through the Ammaru rope for it.

Then the children.

All of them. Dory in front. Holding Trevor’s hand and Ash’s. Small Sigmund behind with a cloud over him he’d been told very firmly to keep small. Efua and Kwame. And Elin and Goldie in the iron basket, carried by Pip, who said it was the most important thing she’d ever carried and she’d carried bread to a correctors’ war.

Genny and Garnet. Garnet with her drawing board, of course. Genny with volume fourteen.

And everyone else. Okafor. Holt. Halloway. Toby and Wren. Liam and Anja. Sigmund and Jessa, with Inga. Doctor Bell, still not over the arch. Brock and Saska. The Vey twins. Callum flew an interceptor over the ridge as the ceremony started, very low, with Rowan in the second seat for once, and both of them waving.

And the queens.

The Scarecrow queen came through the arch, and the old queen, and the heavy queen with the Ground walking behind her like a great sleeping animal that had woken up for this. And the coral queen, and the ash queen, green and gold. And the Hyrrani queen came up out of her hall under the mountain for the first time in a hundred years, very old and very strong, with silver like snow, and lay down on the ridge beside them.

And Andraste’s mother.

Kyria. The First Blade before her. Very tall. White-haired. With six husbands standing behind her in a row, one of whom was very obviously the one who was good at nothing, because he was the only one laughing.

She looked at me for a long time.

Then she said something to Andraste in Hyrrani. And Andraste laughed. Like a door falling off its hinges.

”What did she say?” I said.

Dot told me.

She says you’re shorter than she expected for a world-breaker.

I’m not going to write down all of the wedding.

Mother says some things should stay where they happened. On the ridge. With everyone who was there.

I’ll write what Hyrrani weddings are.

You fight.

Not to the yield. Not really. It’s a dance, Andraste said, the night before, in the kitchen of the crooked house. With the four of them watching. The two First Blades fight before everyone, and everyone sees that neither will win. And then they stop. And that is the marriage. That they could not beat each other and did not try to.

So we fought.

On the snow. In front of everyone. Andraste with a new blade, which the Hyrrani forged for her in a night, which I didn’t turn to sand. And me with nothing, because I don’t carry blades.

And it was a dance.

She came at me and I wasn’t there and she knew I wouldn’t be. I reached for the atoms of the snow and made it rise round her like a wall and she went through it like it was mist. She was very fast and I was very everywhere. And after about a minute, Andraste started to laugh. In the middle of it. With her blade up.

And so did I.

And we stopped.

Facing each other. On the snow. Both breathing hard. Neither of us having won.

And forty thousand Hyrrani on the ridges of Hyrran struck their blades on their shields. All at once. A sound like the mountains falling.

That was the marriage.

Then Andraste turned round.

To the four of them. Standing at the front of everyone, in the snow, with the children.

And she walked to them. Barefoot. And knelt down on the snow in front of them.

And said something in Hyrrani. Very clearly. So the whole ridge could hear.

Dot translated it for everyone. On both worlds. Because Okafor had asked her to put it into everyone on Avalon too, all three hundred thousand, through every wall and table and window.

I am the fifth door, said Andraste. I guard it. I will guard it for you as I guard it for him. For as long as I live.

Risa pulled her up.

Off the snow. By both hands.

And kissed her.

In front of forty thousand Hyrrani and everyone from Avalon and the queens and Andraste’s mother and six husbands.

And then Luna did. And Sera. And Hana, last, on her toes, because Andraste is very tall.

And the Hyrrani on the ridges struck their shields again. Louder.

And Kyria, at the front, said something to the husband who was good at nothing. And he laughed so hard he had to sit down in the snow.

”What did she say?” I asked Dot. After.

She said, said Dot, that her daughter has married into a house with no garrison. And that she’s never been so jealous in her life.

We had a feast on the ridge until the stars came out. Maura and Rory cooked, with Hyrrani cooks, through the arch, so the bread came from the bakery and the meat came from the mountain and nobody could agree which was better. The General and Kyria’s third husband got into an argument about a battle from before either of them was born and settled it by arm-wrestling, and the General won, and Kyria said it was the first time anyone from another world had beaten one of her husbands at anything.

Mother danced with Konrad.

Nobody expected that. Not even Konrad.

Ingrid watched them with her arms folded, and when it was over she walked across the snow and took Konrad’s hand and danced with him herself. Badly. Both of them. Because neither of them had danced since the war.

And the grandchildren ran in and out of the arch all night. To Avalon and back. Just to do it. Dory holding it open with her hand on the stone whenever the Scarecrow queen got tired of singing.

They started the palace the next morning.

I didn’t know about it. Nobody told me. I came through the arch onto the red glass at dawn, with Andraste beside me, and there were two thousand Hyrrani on the plain north of Scarecrow, past the seventh lake, a mile or two from the town, on the long gentle rise where the grass goes up toward the hills.

With iron. And stone. And the walking engines, carrying both.

And they were building.

”What is that?” I said.

My bride-gift, said Andraste. On Hyrran, the First Blade who marries builds the house. She looked at me sideways. Crooked. I am told you build everything on Avalon. With your hands. Lucas Dask builds the houses. A pause. You will not build this one.

”Andraste—”

You will not, said Andraste. It is mine to give.

I went to Mother.

She was on the porch of the crooked house. In Father’s chair. With her cup. Watching the walking engines on the far rise, very small, carrying red stone.

”She won’t let me help,” I said.

”No,” said Mother. ”Good.”

”It’s going to be enormous.”

”Yes,” said Mother. ”It has to be.” She drank her tea. ”She asked me. Last night. On the ridge. While you were dancing with Sera.” She looked at me. ”She asked who lives in the house. And I told her.”

”What did you tell her?”

Mother put her cup down.

”Everyone,” she said.

She’d told her everyone.

The five of them. And me. And the children, all eight, and however many more there’ll be; Andraste had said, very matter-of-factly, more. Dory, who holds. Trevor, who frosts. Ash. Small Sigmund. Efua and Kwame. Elin and Goldie.

And the grandparents. All of them. Mother. Ingrid and Konrad. Maura and Rory. The General. Kwame and Abena. Because, Mother said, she’d told Andraste that from now on the grandparents were going to be in the children’s lives every day, not once a week, not when they could manage it; every day; at breakfast; and Andraste had said, then they live in the house.

And the broods.

The queens. The Scarecrow queen and the old queen and the heavy queen and all the rest. With their young. Because, Mother said, she’d told Andraste that the queens thought of the children as their brood too. And that the children thought of the young as brothers and sisters. And that Dory was the tie, and I was before her, and nobody in the crooked house could tell you where the family stopped and the broods began.

And Andraste had said, then the broods live in the house too.

It took them five weeks.

I’ve never seen anything built like it. Not by me. Not by anyone. Two thousand Hyrrani with walking engines and iron and the red stone from the cliffs, working through the night under lamps that ran on the first of Doctor Bell’s small suns, which she brought out to the rise in a box on the third night and set going on a stone pillar so the Hyrrani could see.

Andraste wouldn’t let me look.

She put Brock on the road up the rise. To guard the door, she said. Brock said she’d asked him because she’d heard he was good at standing still while people tried to get past him, and he took it as a compliment. Saska stood with him. Neither of them let me past. Not once. Saska knew a heartbeat ahead every time I was going to try.

On the thirty-sixth day, Andraste took my hand at dawn and walked me up the rise.

It’s not a palace.

That was the first thing I thought. Standing at the top of the road with Andraste beside me and Brock and Saska standing aside.

It’s a house.

An enormous one. Red stone, worked very fine, with the water pattern in it everywhere, like Andraste’s armour. Long and low. Not tall. Not a tower. Like the long hall of the Vaeli and the crooked house and the orange house in the town under the garden wall all at once. Going along the top of the rise for half a mile, with courtyards in it, and gardens, and every roof flat and wide so you could sit on it.

And windows. Everywhere. Big ones. With shutters you could open yourself. No white anywhere.

And porches.

Porches. On every side. All the way round. Deep and wide and long, with rails you could sit on and steps going down to the grass.

”Mother told you,” I said.

Your mother told me, said Andraste, that the porch is where you say it. Every night. In order. She looked at me. I wanted there to be enough porch for everyone.

Inside, there’s a kitchen.

One. In the middle. Very big. With Rory’s ovens, which he’d come up the rise on the twentieth day to build himself, because he said nobody else was going to bake in an oven he hadn’t made. With a table down the middle long enough for everyone. With a basket by the oven door. Iron.

And round the kitchen, the rooms.

Ours. The bed Andraste had made. Hyrrani, very low and very wide, for six, with room for more. Mother looked at it on the first day and said, very drily, ”Well, nobody’s going to fall out.”

The children’s. Eight rooms, opening onto one big one in the middle where they can all sleep in a heap, because they do anyway, with Dory in the middle, holding. And empty rooms beyond them. Waiting.

And the grandparents. A whole wing. On the south side. Where the sun comes in all morning. With a door from each of their rooms straight into the children’s. Mother’s. Ingrid and Konrad’s, with a ladder up to a roof terrace, which Konrad looked at for a long time and then climbed. Maura and Rory’s, beside the kitchen. The General’s, at the end, with a door straight down to a path to the seventh lake, and the jetty, and two rods leaning in the corner already.

And the broods.

That was the thing that made Mother cry.

Not inside. The queens don’t live inside. Under. Andraste had asked the heavy queen where queens like to be, and the heavy queen had said down, and the Hyrrani had cut down. Under the whole of the house. Into the rock of the rise. A great hall. Like the one on Hyrran where their queen lives. Warm. With the red stone glowing faintly. With water running through it from the seventh lake, for the coral queen. With a grove of trees growing in the middle, under a shaft of light from the roof, for the ash queen and the Scarecrow queen. With room. So much room. For every queen on Avalon and every one of their young.

And stairs. Going up from the hall. Wide and shallow. Into the middle of the children’s room.

So that the young could come up at night and sleep in the heap. And the children could go down.

The Scarecrow queen went down the stairs first.

Slowly. Very old. And lay down in the grove under the light. And looked round the hall for a long time.

This is a house, she said.

Yes, said Andraste. Kneeling at the top of the stairs. Not a garrison.

No, said the Scarecrow queen. Not a garrison.

And sang.

And every queen on Avalon came.

We moved in on the fortieth day.

All of us. Down the long road from the crooked house with everything we had, which isn’t much, and the children running ahead, and the grandparents arguing about who got which room even though their names were already carved over the doors, and the broods coming up out of the ground on the rise behind the house where the Hyrrani had cut them a way in, hundreds of them, small and grey and shining.

I asked Mother if she minded. Leaving the crooked house.

She thought about it for a long time.

”No,” she said. ”It was your father’s and mine. And then yours.” She looked down the long road at it. Small. Crooked. With the porch. ”It’ll be Genny’s now. And Garnet’s. Whoever needs it next. That’s what houses are for.”

There’s an arch in the courtyard.

Red stone. With the water pattern. The Hyrrani cut it last. In the middle of the house. So that when Andraste puts her hand on it, and the Scarecrow queen sings, it opens. Onto the ridge on Hyrran. Onto the red glass. Onto the long ward. Onto the map room. Onto anywhere there’s another arch.

There are eleven on Avalon now. Doctor Bell’s cutting more. With the Hyrrani. As fast as they can.

Okafor walked through the one in the courtyard on the forty-first morning. From the map room. Straight into our kitchen. At breakfast. With the slate under her arm.

She looked at the long table. With everyone at it. All five of my wives and all eight children and the grandparents and Genny and Garnet and Pip and the General’s fish from the night before. And the young coming up the stairs from the hall under the house, one at a time, to sit by Dory.

”Well,” she said. ”This is going to save a great deal of time.”

”That’s what Mother said.”

”Your mother,” said Okafor, ”is usually right.” She sat down. Maura gave her a plate. ”Andraste. Forty thousand. I need to talk to you about where they go.”

Through the door, said Andraste. Wherever you need them. In a minute. She passed Okafor the bread. That is what a door is for.

I said it that night.

On the porch. The long one, on the west side, where the sun goes down over the seventh lake. In order.

It took a very long time.

When I got to the five of them, I said it to each. Separately. Luna. Sera. Risa. Hana. Andraste.

And then to all five at once.

Andraste looked at me. Crooked. With the scar.

On Hyrran, she said, the First Blade does not say this out loud. It is understood.

”On Avalon,” said Risa, ”he says it every night. You’ll have to get used to it.”

Andraste considered this.

I will get used to it, she said.

And then, very quietly, in our language, which Dot had given her on the first day, and which she’d never used out loud until then:

”Me too.”

Days 3881–3925. The Fifth Door.

I built a porch in an hour and sulked on it all day. In the kitchen Andraste told the four of them they were beautiful and that she’s loved women as well as men; Risa said we’ve all been in the same bed anyway; Hana said nobody invited her; they hadn’t, because they thought she’d say no. Andraste: a house with a door any of its people can’t walk through is a garrison. All four said yes. Not for the soldiers. Because they like her. The Hyrrani arches open when a queen sings them; ours learned the song in a day. Mother took the first step. The wedding was a fight neither of us won, on the ridge, in front of the wrecks. Andraste knelt to the four of them: I am the fifth door. Risa kissed her first. Kyria was jealous. Then the house: half a mile of red stone and porches, the grandparents’ wing, a hall under it for every queen and brood. The Scarecrow queen: not a garrison. Okafor came through the courtyard arch at breakfast.