Scarecrow

Ilka heard it first.

Not Wren. Not Vessa. Not Tally with her pieces or Konrad with his sheet. Ilka, at the far edge of the Watch, on the moon past Root where she put the first ear, a long time ago now, with a grey cup of something she says is tea in one hand and the other flat on the black stone.

She called it in at the dawn count.

Through the ears. Through Hearth’s listening silver. Through the arch with two faces. Into the map room, where Okafor was standing at the slate with the chalk in her hand, looking at the small square door at the edge of the map.

”Singing,” said Ilka.

Okafor didn’t turn round.

”A piece?” she said.

”No,” said Ilka. ”That’s the thing.” A pause. Ilka doesn’t pause much. ”Not a piece. Not a tower. Not the note. A queen. A whole one. Singing on her own, under her own world, the way ours sing under the garden.” Another pause. ”And she’s not on any list I’ve ever seen.”

The eldest answered before anyone could ask her.

From the heart of Root. Through every thread. Very quietly.

Isca, she said.

And then, in a voice I’d never heard from her. Not angry. Not grieving. Something that I think, in anyone else, I’d have called afraid.

My last.

I’ll explain what she told us. Because it took her a long time, and because she’d never told anyone, not even the Scarecrow queen.

Before the houses. Before the Sorn were the Sorn. When the eldest was young and the first of her daughters were going out from Root to the worlds round it to sing under them, there was one who went further than the rest.

The youngest. The last one the eldest ever sent.

She went a very long way. Further than any of them. To a world on the far side of everything, where nothing had ever sung. And she went down into it. And she sang very quietly. So quietly that the eldest stopped being able to hear her.

I thought she had died, said the eldest. For a long time. Longer than your kind have had names for time. And then, when the houses came, and began to cut my daughters into pieces, I was glad. A pause. I was glad she had gone so far and sung so quietly. Because it meant that if she was alive, nothing would ever find her.

Nobody said anything.

She has been singing so quietly for so long, said the eldest, that I had forgotten what she sounded like.

”And now she isn’t,” said Okafor.

No, said the eldest. Now she is singing as loud as she can.

”Why?”

The eldest didn’t answer at once.

Because they are coming, she said. All three. And she has never been able to be loud before, and now she has nothing left to lose by it. A long pause. She is calling for help.

Crane said it before anyone else. Of course he did.

”They’re coming because of Morvane.”

Everyone looked at him.

”The Hungry came to Morvane for forty-one pieces of the eldest,” said Crane. Very quietly. With his hand flat on his spanner. ”All of them. Everything. And when they got there, there was nothing to find. Ingrid had them hushed.” He looked at Ingrid, at the end of the table. Not unkindly. ”They didn’t go home. They don’t have a home. They went looking. Wider. Further. Everywhere at once.”

He looked at the map. At the grey edge of it.

”And they found her,” said Crane.

Ingrid didn’t say anything.

Konrad, beside her, put his hand over hers on the table.

”And the houses?” said Okafor.

The middle has heard Isca, said the Overseer. From the doorway. With the dog against its legs. Twice. Since dawn. Beside a word it has never heard beside any world before.

”What word?”

Whole, said the Overseer.

Nobody needed that explained.

Ten thousand pieces of one queen, on ten thousand worlds. That’s what the houses built everything on. The towers. The note. The collars. The keys, in their boxes, holding doors. All of it out of queens cut into pieces, a long time ago, when there were still queens to cut.

And there was one left. Whole. That nobody had ever cut.

”How many people,” said Okafor.

”Three million, six hundred thousand,” said Ilka. ”I think. It’s very far. I can hear the queen; I can only just hear them.” A pause. ”They’ve never been tithed. They’ve never been found. They don’t know what a Hand is.”

Okafor stood at the slate for a long time.

Then she wiped the small square door off the edge of the map with the side of her hand. Not all of it. Just enough. And drew a new circle, past it. Further than anything. At the very edge of the slate, where the slate ran out.

And wrote Isca beside it.

”Everyone,” she said.

Not quite everyone.

I want to say who stayed. Because it matters for what came after, and because some of them have told me since that staying was worse.

Risa stayed. With Kesh, who’s five weeks old. On the interceptor field, at the arch, where she’d fly the wing from with her eyes shut, the way she always does. Through the arch, through the silver.

Wren stayed. On the long ward, with Rafe. Counting.

Konrad stayed. On his stool. With the sheets.

Jessa stayed, because she’s carrying twins the ordinary way and Halloway said if she went through an arch she’d tie her to the bed. Halloway stayed with her. And with the long ward, and Callum, and the two children by the window who were keys.

Dory and the queens stayed. To sing the arch. To hold it open from our side.

And Vessa stayed. With Risa. Because Andraste said she was going through, and if she was going through she was going with her blade and not with a baby on her chest, and Risa said give her to me before anyone else could.

Everyone else went.

Isca is a long way.

Further than Halcro. Further than the far yard, Okafor thinks, though nobody knows where the far yard is. It took me most of a day to go up the thread to it, scattered, the long way, past the edge of everything I’d ever reached. Past the grey on Okafor’s map. Past the worlds the Hungry had eaten to the rock, which I didn’t stop to look at.

And then, a very long way out, in the dark, I heard her.

I’ve heard a great many queens. On Avalon, under the garden. On Hyrran, under the ridge. In pieces, in trays, in towers. The eldest, at the heart of Root.

I’d never heard one like this.

She was singing as loud as she could.

Not the note. Not anything the houses had ever made a queen sing. Her own song. The one she’d been singing very quietly, under her world, for longer than there had been houses. Out. All at once. Into the dark. As loud as a queen can sing.

It went through me like light through water.

And under it, very faint, three million six hundred thousand people. Who’d never been found. Who’d never been tithed. Who’d lived their whole lives on a world at the edge of everything with a queen singing very quietly under them, and never known she was there.

And who’d heard her, two days ago, start singing out loud.

And were frightened.

I came back together on a hill.

It’s a green world. Isca. Greener than Ostrel. Old, very old, with hills worn down round and soft and forest on all of them, and long rivers between, and the sky a pale clear blue with two small moons in it.

And on the hill where I came back together, a city.

Not like anything on the tithe worlds. They don’t build like the houses build; they’ve never seen how the houses build. They build out of the hill itself. Stone, terraced, round and round the hill from the bottom to the top, with gardens on every terrace and steps between and water coming down from the top through channels in the stone. Old. Very old. As old as the queen.

They call it Tor Isca. The Hill.

And under it, under the hill, in the dark, the queen.

Singing.

There were people on every terrace.

Looking up. At the sky. Because they’d been looking up for two days, since she started singing. They didn’t know what was coming. They just knew that something under the world they’d lived on all their lives had started singing out loud, and that it sounded like someone calling for help.

And then I came back together on their hill.

Out of nothing. Out of the air. A man in a coat, all at once, on the top terrace, beside the channel where the water comes down.

An old woman was standing there. With a basket of something green. She looked at me for a long time.

Then she said something. In Iscan. Which I didn’t have yet.

Dot gave it to me. From very far away. Through the silver. Faint.

”She says: are you the one she was calling?”

”Yes,” I said.

The old woman put her basket down.

Her name is Merrit. She’s the eldest of the people of the Hill; they don’t have councils or governors or senates; they have the eldest, one on every terrace, and the eldest of all of them on the top. She’s a hundred and four. She told me afterward she’d lived on the top terrace of Tor Isca all her life and been the eldest of it for forty years and never once in all that time been surprised by anything.

”Until you,” said Merrit. ”And then everything else.”

I put my hand on the hill and found Avalon. The long way. Further than I’d ever reached.

Here, I said.

Kyria’s cutters cut the arch. Kyria and twelve, on the top terrace of Tor Isca, beside the water.

And every queen on Avalon sang it. Dory sang it. And under the hill, the queen of Isca heard them sing, and stopped. In the middle. For the first time in two days.

And then sang with them.

I’ve never felt an arch open like that.

It wasn’t like cutting a door. It was like two people who’ve been calling to each other across a very long way finally hearing each other answer. The queens on Avalon. And the queen under the Hill. Singing the same thing at the same time, from opposite ends of everything.

And the arch opened.

And everyone came through.

I’ll say who. Because everyone matters, in what comes next.

Roan first, with his hands out, onto the frame. Hesk with her hammer and her tea, and a second smith back to back with her, the way Odra sends them now.

The Mom Squad. All ten. Mother at the front, with her hand up. Ingrid with Konrad’s hat on, because he’d put it on her at the arch and said bring it back. Maura with bread in eleven pockets. Teshka with her blade. Kyria, already there, with her cutters. Rhiannon with her wings and her basket. Cleopatra. Asha talking. Eve. Tiamat.

Forty thousand Hyrrani in Odra’s iron, with Andraste at the front of them and her blade on her back and no baby on her chest for the first time since Vessa was born.

Brock, iron. Saska half a step ahead of him.

Luna, with frost in her hair. Sera, with her hands warm. Hana, with the air going round her. Sigmund. Garnet with her pencils and her blade. Tally with her bag.

Bree with her ribbon of fire round her wrist.

Okafor. With the chalk.

And Hearth. All of it. Through the arch with two faces and then through ours. Hearth’s three. Dinraal and Isolde. The First Weapon, a corgi, very low, at Dinraal’s heel. Aurelius with his shield. Aramaeis beside his sister. Arcturus, with his wings folded and his visor up, looking at the sky.

And the wing. Forty of them. Rowan at the front, alone, because Callum is still on the long ward. Coming through the arch low over the top terrace of Tor Isca one after another and going up into the pale blue sky between the two moons.

With Risa flying them. From Avalon. With her eyes shut. With Kesh in the basket at her feet and Vessa on her chest.

Merrit watched it all. From the top terrace. With her basket at her feet.

When the last of them were through, she turned to me.

”All these,” she said. Through Dot. ”For us?”

”For you,” I said. ”And for her.” I looked at the ground. At the hill. At the queen under it, singing. ”She called.”

Merrit looked at the hill too. For a long time.

”We didn’t know she was there,” she said. ”All my life. My mother’s life. Her mother’s.” She put her old hand on the stone of the terrace wall. ”We didn’t know there was anyone down there at all.”

The queen of Isca spoke then.

Not to me. To all of us. Through the hill. Through the arch. Through every queen on Avalon and every thread to Root.

I’d never heard her speak. Only sing. Her voice was very old and very young at once, the way the eldest’s pieces sounded on the long ward.

Mother, she said.

And at the heart of Root, a very long way off, the eldest queen answered.

I’m not going to write what she said. Some things are only for the two of them.

Then the queen of Isca told us what she needed.

I cannot come through your door as I am, she said. I am too old. I am too deep. I have grown into the roots of this world the way your trees grow into rock. A pause. If you pull me up, I will break.

”Then how—” said Okafor.

I will fold, said the queen. Into something small enough to carry. Every part of me. My brood. My song. All of it. Into a seed. A pause. The way the first of us came out from Root, before there were worlds.

The Scarecrow queen, through the arch, from the garden, made a very small sound.

I have never done it, said the queen of Isca. Nobody has done it since the beginning. But I remember how. A pause. It will take two days.

”Two days,” said Okafor.

Two days, said the queen. If I am not interrupted.

Okafor looked at the sky. Pale and blue. With the two small moons in it. Empty.

”Then the people go first,” she said. ”All of them. Through the arch. Today. Tonight.” She took out the chalk. And knelt down. On the stone of the top terrace. And drew. ”And we stay. Round her. For two days.” She stood up. ”And then we bring her home.”

So the people went.

The children first. The way they always do. Down the terraces and up the terraces, from every side of the Hill, to the top, where the arch was. Holding hands. Merrit’s people had never drilled for anything in their lives; they’d never needed to. But the eldest on every terrace knew every child on it by name, and they came up the steps in their rows, one terrace after another, with their eldest at the front and Mother at the top with her hand up.

Luna’s ice from every terrace. Maura with bread. Brock iron at the top of the steps, catching. Ingrid hushing the whole Hill so nobody screamed.

And through.

By noon a million were through.

By dusk, two million, two hundred thousand.

Wren counted, on Avalon. Faint. Very faint. The furthest she’d ever heard. With Rhiannon’s hand on her arm, until Rhiannon came through to Isca, and then Hana’s, and then Rhiannon reaching back through the arch from Isca to Wren with both hands so Wren could reach further still.

”Two million, two hundred and nine thousand,” said Wren. At dusk. ”One million, three hundred and ninety-one thousand still on the Hill.” A pause. ”The old terraces. At the bottom. Where the eldest live.”

The bottom terraces are the oldest. They’re where the old go, on Isca, when they’re too old to climb. Merrit told me. Their whole lives, the people of the Hill live higher and higher up, and then when they’re old they go down, a terrace at a time, until they’re living at the bottom, where the hill is warmest. Closest to the queen. Though they never knew why.

They were coming up. Slowly. The way old people come up steps.

Okafor looked at the sky.

”Tonight,” she said. ”They’ll be up by morning.”

Vessa turned at dusk.

On Avalon. On Risa’s chest. At the arch on the interceptor field, a very long way off.

Risa told me afterward. She said Vessa had been asleep all day, with her small fist in Risa’s leathers, while Risa flew the wing over Isca with her eyes shut.

And then she woke up.

And turned.

Not toward the arch. Not toward Isca. Toward everything. Her small head going round, very slowly, on Risa’s chest, as if she were looking at the whole sky at once.

And she didn’t cry.

She made a sound. Risa says. A sound like Andraste makes on the ridge when she’s about to draw her blade.

Ashen, said Risa. Into the silver. Through the arch. Very level. Andraste. Vessa says Ashen.

And then:

She says all of them.

They came at dusk.

Out of the sky over Isca. Out of nothing. The way they always come, low, no lights on them. Not a hundred. Not two hundred.

I stopped counting at a thousand.

They didn’t come for the arch.

They didn’t come for the Hill.

They went up.

I didn’t understand at first. Nobody did. A thousand Ashen ships, coming out of the dark over Isca, and none of them coming down. All of them going up, very high, into the pale evening sky, until they were only dark specks between the two moons. Spreading. Very fast. In every direction. Round the whole of the world.

And then their wave went out.

Not down. Not at us.

Across.

From every ship to every other ship. A thousand of them. All round Isca. Joining.

I’ve seen the Ashen wave end the Hungry. I’ve seen it go dark on Dinraal’s silver and Aurelius’s dome. I’ve seen it do a great many things.

I’d never seen it do this.

It closed over the sky.

All of it. From every horizon. A dark that wasn’t cloud and wasn’t night, joining over our heads from every direction at once, very fast, until it met in the middle, high over Tor Isca, between the two moons.

And the moons went out.

And the sky went out.

And Isca was inside a lid.

And the arch died.

I felt it.

Everyone did. On the Hill and on Avalon. Roan’s hands on the frame, holding, and Hesk’s hammer, and Dory singing on the other side with every queen on Avalon, and the queen under the Hill singing with them.

And then nothing.

Not the arch falling. The arch didn’t fall. Roan held it; it stood on the top terrace of Tor Isca, red-grey stone with Kyria’s water pattern in it, perfectly whole.

But there was nothing on the other side of it.

Just the dark. The lid. Through the arch, where Avalon had been, where the red glass of the interceptor field had been with Risa standing on it with her eyes shut, there was the same dark as the sky.

I reached for the thread.

The long way. The way I’ve reached for it a thousand times. Up. Out. Toward Avalon.

And it wasn’t there.

I don’t know how to describe it. Vessa’s arch, on the ridge, felt like stepping off a stair you thought was there. This was like reaching for your own hand in the dark and finding you don’t have one.

I reached again.

Further. Harder. Into the lid.

And the lid ended it.

The way the Ashen wave ends the Hungry. Not burning. Not breaking. Ending. Whatever I sent up into it, it ended. Every thread I reached for. Every atom of me I tried to send the long way. It went up into the dark and the dark took it and it was gone.

I came back down into myself on the top terrace with my hands on the stone and I couldn’t breathe.

Mother’s hand was on my back.

Of course it was.

”Risa,” I said. Into the silver. ”Risa. Wren.”

Nothing.

”Dot.”

Nothing.

Dot’s always there. Dot’s in every one of us, everywhere, through every arch and every thread.

Not under the lid.

I looked up.

At the dark where the sky had been. With the arch standing on the terrace beside me, whole, open, with nothing in it.

And for the first time in my life, I didn’t know where home was.

And up in the dark, very high, the wing felt her go.

Forty interceptors. Rowan at the front. Flying in a long line over the Hill with Risa’s voice in every one of them, the way it always is, left, down, with me. And then not. All at once. Forty pilots in forty cockpits under a lid, and nobody flying them but themselves.

Rowan says three of them nearly went into the forest before they remembered how.

Then Arcturus’s voice came into every cockpit. Not through Dot. Not through the silver. Through Hearth’s links, the old way, from his wings to every ship. In his own language, which none of them had. And then, slowly, in ours, which he’d been learning from Risa on the interceptor field for two months, very badly.

”Left,” said Arcturus. ”With me. I am not her. I will try.”

”Lucas,” said Okafor.

She was standing beside me. With the chalk in her hand.

She didn’t ask if I could reach it. She’d seen my face.

”How many,” she said. Not to me. To the Hill. To whoever could count. ”How many of us. How many of them. Now.”

Tally answered. Tally, who counts towers and pieces and has never once been asked to count people.

”One million, three hundred and ninety-one thousand on the Hill,” said Tally. Very steady. ”Mostly old.” She looked at her notebook. ”And all of us.”

Okafor looked up at the lid for a long time.

Then she looked at the arch. Whole. Open. Empty.

Then at the Hill. Round and round, down and down, terrace after terrace in the dark, with the old coming up the steps very slowly toward an arch that didn’t go anywhere any more.

And under it, the queen. Still singing. Because she had two days of folding to do and nobody had told her to stop.

”Then we stay,” said Okafor.

Nobody argued.

”Two days,” said Okafor. ”She said two days. She’s folding. She can’t stop.” She put the chalk in her pocket. ”So we hold the Hill for two days. All of it. Every terrace. Round her.”

”And then?” said Crane. Very quietly. Beside her.

”And then Lucas finds a way through that,” said Okafor. And pointed straight up. At the lid. ”Or somebody on the other side does.”

She looked at me.

”They will be trying,” said Okafor. ”Right now. Kyria’s here, with her cutters. But Dory’s there. And every queen. And the eldest.” She looked back at the lid. ”And Risa. Who has never in her life let anyone stay on the other side of an arch.”

The Hands came an hour after dark.

We saw them through the lid.

That’s the strangest thing. The lid was dark, from the inside, like the inside of a closed eye. But the Hands came through it. Down. One after another. As if it were a door that opened for them and nobody else.

”Of course,” said Crane. Very quietly. ”It’s in the terms.”

Three hundred of them.

Not coming for the arch. Not burning the terraces.

Coming for the hill.

For the queen under it.

”Whole,” said the Overseer. Beside Okafor. It had come through the arch with everyone; I hadn’t seen it. With the dog against its legs. Very quiet. ”That was the word. They have never had a whole one.” A pause. ”They will cut her here. Into pieces. On her own world. Before she can fold.”

And then, an hour after the Hands, from all round the lid at once, the Hungry came.

They came through the lid too.

Not because it let them. Because there were so many of them that it couldn’t end them all. Everything hungry in the universe, coming down out of the dark on Isca from every direction at once, toward the loudest thing that had ever sung. The swarm hit the lid from outside and the lid ended them and ended them and ended them and there were always more, and some of them came through. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Coming down out of the dark onto the forests round the Hill, onto the rivers, onto the bottom terraces where the old were still climbing.

Toward the queen.

All three.

On one world.

With us in the middle, and nowhere to go.

”Now,” said Okafor. ”Everyone. Everything we’ve got.”

I’m going to write all of it. Every terrace. Every one of them. Because everyone fought on the Hill those two days, and everyone fought the way only they can, and if I don’t write it down nobody will ever believe it.

But I can’t write it all at once.

So I’ll start where it started. At the bottom.

The bottom terrace.

The Hungry came down on the forest at the foot of the Hill first. Through the lid. In the dark. Like rain, Asha said afterward, if rain were alive and wanted to eat you.

And the old were still on the bottom terrace. Nine hundred thousand of them. The ones who were warmest. Closest to the queen. Coming up the steps very slowly.

Andraste was at the bottom.

She’d gone down at dusk. Before the lid. When Okafor said they’ll be up by morning. She’d taken five thousand of the Hyrrani down the terraces to the very bottom and spread them out along the lowest wall, all the way round the Hill, in iron, to walk the old up.

So when the Hungry came down out of the dark onto the forest at the foot of the Hill, the first thing between them and nine hundred thousand old people on the bottom terrace was the First Blade of Hyrran.

With no baby on her chest.

I’ve seen Andraste fight before. On the ridge. On Vantle. On the north field in drill, when she and Teshka and Kyria go round each other with their blades so fast you can’t see the edges, and the Hyrrani watch and don’t breathe.

I’ve never seen her like that.

She went over the wall.

Not along it. Over it. Down into the forest at the foot of the Hill where the Hungry were coming down, alone, with her blade out, before any of the Hyrrani could follow her.

And she didn’t stop.

Asha told me afterward. Asha’s instruments were in the air over the bottom terrace, reading everything. She said Andraste went into the swarm at the foot of the Hill and the swarm opened.

Not because she was cutting it. Because she was cutting it so fast that there was nowhere left in front of her for anything to be.

A long line through the dark forest. Straight out from the wall. Her blade going round her so fast it was a sheet of light, iron and silver and something else, something that was just Andraste. And the Hungry coming at her from every side and not reaching her. Not one. Not for a long way.

She went out a hundred yards into the swarm.

Then two hundred.

Then she stopped. In the middle of it. In a clearing she’d made in the forest out of nothing but how fast she was. With the Hungry all round her in a ring. Coming in.

And she turned round.

And looked back. Up. At the wall. At the bottom terrace. At the five thousand Hyrrani along it in iron, staring at their First Blade in the middle of the swarm.

And said, in the voice she uses on the ridge, that goes through mountains:

”Well? Are you coming?”

They came.

Five thousand. Over the wall. All at once. Down into the forest. In iron. Shouting.

The Hyrrani don’t shout. Not in drill. Not on the ridge. Not on Vantle. They are the most silent army I’ve ever seen. Teshka says it’s because a thousand years of standing in rows teaches you that noise is a thing you spend, and you don’t spend it until you have to.

They spent it on Isca.

And Teshka came down the steps behind them.

Not running. Teshka doesn’t run. She walked down the last terrace and stopped at the wall where the old were climbing. With her blade on her shoulder.

An old man was on the step in front of her. Very old. Older than Merrit. With a stick. Climbing very slowly, one step at a time, with the Hungry coming over the wall twenty yards to his left where the Hyrrani hadn’t reached yet.

Teshka looked at him.

Then she put her blade down. On the wall.

And picked him up.

She carried him up the steps. One terrace. Two. With one arm. An old man with a stick, held against her side like a child, and her other hand empty.

And at the top of the second terrace, the Hungry came over the wall in front of her.

She didn’t put him down.

She didn’t have her blade. She’d left it on the wall at the bottom.

So she hit them.

With her empty hand. Teshka, who stood in rows for eleven generations, who has a granddaughter she’d step in front of the light for. Hit the first thing that came over the wall so hard with her open hand that it went back over the wall and into the dark and didn’t come back.

And the second.

And the third.

With the old man under her other arm. Not putting him down. Walking. Up the steps. One at a time. Hitting.

At the top of the fourth terrace she put him down. Gently. On a bench. In a garden. Beside the water channel.

He looked up at her for a long time.

Then he said something in Iscan. And Garnet, who was on that terrace with her pencils, drawing, because Garnet draws everything, wrote it down in the corner of the drawing.

Dot gave it to us later. When there was a Dot again.

”He said: my wife used to carry me like that. When I was ill. Forty years ago.”

Teshka didn’t say anything.

She went back down the steps for another one.

She carried forty-one old people up four terraces that night.

With one arm.

Hitting things with the other.

She never went back for her blade. Garnet drew her. All night. Forty-one times. She says it’s the best thing she’s ever drawn.

The middle terraces.

The Hands came down on the middle of the Hill.

Not the bottom. They didn’t care about the old. Not the top. They didn’t care about the arch. The middle, where the hill was steepest, where the terraces were narrowest, where the shafts went down. Into the hill. To the queen.

Three hundred Hands. Coming down out of the lid with their fire lit and their ramps opening and the house men coming out of them in black.

With cutting tools.

I’d never seen house men fight. Not like that. Not on the ground. On every world we’d ever been to, the houses fought with Hands, from the sky, with fire. They don’t come down. They send.

On Isca they came down.

Because they’d come for the one thing they’d never been able to send for. A whole queen. And you can’t cut a queen from the sky.

Hearth’s three were on the middle terraces.

I’ll write them one at a time. Because they fought one at a time, the way they do, each of them a whole army, and then all at once, the way only they can.

Gilgamesh was on the steepest terrace.

The one with the widest shaft. Where the steps went down into the hill toward the queen, wide enough for four house men abreast. He stood at the top of it with every weapon on his back and the dark coming down on him.

And when the first of the house men came off the ramp of the first Hand onto the terrace with their cutting tools, he reached over his shoulder without looking.

And it was a sword.

And then it was an axe. And then a spear, very long, going out over the terrace in a line and coming back. And then a hammer the size of a door, coming down on the ramp of the Hand so hard the ramp folded. And then two swords. And then a bow, and the arrows were silver and there were a great many of them and every one went where he looked.

And he never once looked down at what he was holding.

He just reached. And it was the right thing.

The house men came at him in fours. Then tens. Then everything the first nine Hands had in them. Down the ramps onto the terrace in black with their cutting tools and their fire, between him and the shaft.

There wasn’t a between.

There was just Gilgamesh. At the top of the shaft. Reaching over his shoulder.

He held that terrace for nine hours.

Alone.

He said one thing, the whole time. At the end. When the last of the house men from the ninth Hand went back up the ramp without their cutting tools, and the Hand lifted, and went back up into the lid.

He sat down. On the top step of the shaft. With every weapon on his back. And looked at the empty terrace.

And then he reached over his shoulder one more time.

And it was a crate.

Nobody asked for it. Nobody ever does. He put it down on the step beside him and opened it and it was full of bread. Hearth’s. Dark and heavy, with seeds in it.

”For after,” said Gilgamesh. Dot gave it to us later. ”There is always an after. Someone should bring the bread.”

Alexander was in the air over the middle terraces.

With his hundred blades.

Not a hundred. More, that night. Dinraal says the most he’d ever seen Alexander hold was four hundred. On Isca it was more than that. Rhiannon was on the terrace below him with her hand up, the whole time, making his silver more, and the blades kept coming. Out of the air round him. Out of his cape. Out of nothing.

Silver. Every one. Swords and spears and lances and blades with no names.

In formation.

He flew them the way Risa flies the wing.

That’s what everyone says. Andraste said it. Arcturus said it, and Arcturus flies every ship in Hearth’s fleet at once. Alexander stood in the air over the middle of the Hill with his crested helmet and his cape and his hands out, and the blades went out from him in long silver lines across the dark, all turning together, the way starlings turn.

And came down on the Hands.

Not on the house men. On the Hands. The ships. Three hundred of them, coming down out of the lid onto the middle terraces with their fire.

A line of silver went through the first one from nose to tail. And it came apart in the air in two halves and fell on either side of the terrace into the forest.

Then the second.

Then a whole row of them.

Asha counted. She always counts. She says Alexander’s blades brought down a hundred and twelve Hands over the middle of the Hill on the first night.

She says that’s not the number that matters.

She says the number that matters is that not one of the hundred and twelve fell on a terrace.

He brought every one of them down into the forest. Away from the Hill. Away from the gardens and the steps and the old people climbing them. A hundred and twelve ships, steered as they fell by four hundred silver blades, so that they came down in the dark trees at the foot of the Hill and nowhere else.

”Of course,” said Alexander. When Asha told him. Dot gave it to us later. He was sitting on a garden wall on the fifth terrace with his helmet off and his face very young and very tired. ”There were gardens.”

And Julius held the shaft.

Not the terrace. The shaft. The central one. Where all the others met. Where the steps went down and down into the hill, deeper than any of the others, to the place where the queen was folding.

He was at the bottom of it.

On the last step. In the dark. In the warm. With the queen singing behind him, through the rock, very close. And in front of him, coming down the shaft from the top, everything that had got past Gilgamesh and Alexander and the Hyrrani on every terrace.

House men. With cutting tools.

And Hungry. That had come through the lid and down the Hill and found the shaft and smelled what was at the bottom of it.

Both. Coming down the same shaft. At the same time. Toward the same queen.

And Julius.

His cloak went out.

Across the whole width of the shaft. Wall to wall. Floor to ceiling. Silver. Bright. A wall of it, with Julius behind it and his short sword in his hand, and the queen behind him.

And nothing came past.

Not the house men. Not the Hungry. Not when they came together. Not when they turned on each other in the shaft in front of him and the house men’s fire went into the Hungry and the Hungry went into the house men and the whole shaft above him was full of both of them, tearing at each other, and the fire coming down.

Nothing came past his cloak.

I went down the shaft at the end of the first night.

When the Hands had gone back up into the lid. When the Hungry on the middle terraces were burning, or ended, or gone. When the old on the bottom terrace were all the way up to the fourth, and Teshka was sitting on a bench beside the water channel with her empty hand in her lap, and Andraste was coming back up the steps from the forest with her iron black and five thousand Hyrrani behind her, fewer than five thousand, not as many fewer as there might have been.

I went down the shaft. Into the hill. To the bottom.

The steps were black. All the way down. Burned. And worse.

And at the bottom, on the last step, Julius was standing exactly where he’d been at dusk. With his cloak across the shaft. With his short sword in his hand. Very straight.

He’d been standing there all night.

He didn’t turn round when I came down. I don’t think he could.

”Julius,” I said.

He said something. In his own language. Very quietly. Without taking his cloak down.

I didn’t have Dot. I didn’t have anyone. Just Julius at the bottom of a shaft in the dark with a wall of silver across it, and the queen of Isca singing behind him, through the rock, very close. Folding.

But I knew what he said.

I knew because Dot told me once what he says, under his breath, the whole time. The only word he needs.

Discipline.

He’d said it all night.

Over and over. At the bottom of the shaft. In the dark. With both of them coming down on him at once.

And behind him, through the rock, very close, the queen of Isca had heard him say it.

And folded.

One night’s worth. Not interrupted.

One day left.

Days 4603–4604. The Lid.

Ilka heard her first: a whole queen, singing out loud. The eldest: Isca. My last. She called because they were coming, all three, and it was our fault, Crane said; Morvane sent the Hungry looking. 3,600,000 people who’d never been found. Merrit, a hundred and four, on the top terrace: are you the one she was calling? She sang the arch with our queens. She can’t come as she is; she’ll fold into a seed, in two days. 2,209,000 through by dusk. Then Vessa turned toward everything, and a thousand Ashen closed the sky. The arch stood, with nothing in it. No thread. No Dot. Okafor: then we stay. The Hands came through the lid for her; then the Hungry. Andraste: well? are you coming? Teshka carried forty-one up the steps with one arm. Gilgamesh held the steepest terrace nine hours, then brought bread. Alexander’s blades put 112 Hands in the forest; there were gardens. Julius held the shaft all night. Discipline. One night folded. One day left.