Scarecrow

I’ll tell you what the long way is like when there’s nothing at the other end.

It’s dark.

Not the dark of a room with the lamp out. Not the dark under a lid. The dark between things. Where there isn’t anything to be dark in. I’ve been through it more times than I can count, scattered, every atom of me apart, going along the thread. But there’s always been something at the other end. A queen singing. A hill. Avalon, with the red glass and Mother’s hand on my back.

This time there was nothing.

And there was Dinraal.

I had him.

All of him. Every atom. A river of something like light, going along beside me in the dark, very fine, very far. Not like the stations. The stations were quiet. The stations let me carry them and didn’t say anything.

Dinraal’s silver talked the whole way.

Not to me. To itself. Every atom of it, remembering. This is a wrist. This is the bracelet his father left him. This is the place on the sill where his elbow goes. This is the boy’s hand on the armour. Warm.

Over and over. All the way. Very quietly.

So it wouldn’t forget.

I don’t know how long it took.

I’ve tried to work it out since. Okafor asked. Asha asked. Risa didn’t ask; she was on the red glass with her hands out, holding the other end, and she says she counted every minute and doesn’t want to say the number.

Long.

Long enough that somewhere in the middle of it I started to lose the edges of myself. The way Hana said I would. The way I did the first time, a long time ago, before I knew how. The pieces of me going a little further apart than they should. A little less sure which ones were mine.

And then Dinraal’s silver said something different.

This is Lucas.

I felt it. In the dark. Every atom of his silver, all at once, stopping its remembering. And turning. Toward me. Toward the pieces of me that were going too far apart.

This is Lucas, it said. This is his hand on my shoulders on the red glass. This is him asking. This is the window he made with the crack in the third pane. This is the second sun at noon. This is him on his knees with his nose bleeding and Hana’s scarf.

Hold on, said Dinraal’s silver. I remember you too.

So I held on.

And at the end of the long way, there was something to aim at after all.

Him.

We came back together on ice.

I didn’t know it was ice at first. I didn’t know anything. I came back together all at once, the way you wake from a fall, and I was lying on my back on something very hard and very cold, in the dark, and I couldn’t remember for a long moment which way was up.

Then something put its hand on my chest.

Silver. Warm.

”Lucas,” said Dinraal.

He was kneeling beside me. In his armour. Whole. Every piece. I checked, the way I’d check a station, every atom, before I said anything. His wrists. His father’s bracelets. The armour. His face, very tired, very still, with frost already on his eyebrows.

All of him.

”You came back together first,” I said. My voice didn’t work properly.

”My silver did,” said Dinraal. ”It knew the shape. Then it waited for you.” He looked at me. ”It said you were going too far apart. In the middle. It said it had to remember you.”

”It did.”

”Good,” said Dinraal. And sat back on his heels. And closed his eyes. And didn’t say anything for a long time.

I sat up.

We were in a crevasse.

Deep. Narrow. Blue-black walls of ice going up on both sides, a long way, to a strip of sky very high above. Grey sky. Not dark. Not light. Grey, the way a sky is grey when it’s been grey for so long it’s forgotten anything else.

And cold.

I’ve been cold. I’ve been on Tiran in winter and Morvane in the wind and the Kesh ford, almost, in Ingrid’s stories. This was a cold that went into you and stayed. That didn’t come from the air. That came up out of the ice, out of the ground under the ice, out of the world, as if the whole of it had been cold for so long that it didn’t know how to be anything else.

Cold, Ithel said. In the map room. With his hand up under one silver point.

Long. Cold. A long cold place, said Ione.

We were here.

One.

I put my hand on the ice.

Not to reach for Avalon. Not yet. Okafor said: find somewhere quiet first. Then reach. I put my hand on the ice to listen.

And felt One.

It’s a big world. Bigger than Avalon. All ice, almost. Ice on everything, kilometres deep, over grey rock, over a heart that had gone cold so long ago it barely turned. A dead world. A world nothing would ever choose to live on.

Except it wasn’t empty.

There was a building.

I felt it before I saw it. Through the ice. A long way off. Forty miles, maybe. Fifty. Something on the surface so heavy that the whole of the ice round it bent under it, the way a mattress bends under a sleeping man. Black. Very big. Bigger than a city. With its roots going down through the ice into the rock, deep, and something in it that hummed.

And round it, other things. Smaller. Lots of them. Pens. Halls. Yards. Slips, like Halcro. Landing fields. Ships, coming and going, all the time. Hands. And other ships, darker, with no lights.

The Ashen.

And above all of it, the front.

I didn’t need to feel that through the ice. I could see it. When I stood up in the crevasse and looked up at the strip of grey sky very high above, I could see it moving.

The sky was fighting.

All of it. All the time. Very high. Hands and Ashen ships and other ships, ones I’d never seen, long and grey and very plain. And between them, round them, all through them, the dark. Moving. Turning. Coming down and being driven back up and coming down again.

The Hungry.

”The far yard,” said Dinraal. Beside me. Looking up. Very quietly. ”It was never a place. It was a front.”

”It’s both,” I said.

We climbed out of the crevasse at dusk.

Not far. Just to the top. Just enough to see.

Dinraal went first. His silver made claws on his hands and his feet, and he went up the blue-black ice the way a cat goes up a tree, and at the top he lay flat and looked for a long time, and then reached down a silver hand for me.

I lay flat beside him. On the ice. In the wind.

And looked.

I’ll write it once.

A plain of ice, grey-white, going to the edge of everything. And on it, very far off, black, the building. You couldn’t see the top of it. It went up into the grey and the grey swallowed it.

And round it, the yards. Lit. Long lines of light going out from the foot of it in every direction across the ice, like the spokes of a wheel.

And on the spokes, people.

Lines of them. Very long. Moving very slowly. Toward the building. From every direction at once.

I couldn’t see them properly from that far. Just shapes. Just the way they moved. Some of them tall. Some of them small. Some of them with wings, folded. Some of them so big that even from forty miles off I could see they were bigger than anything I knew.

All of them walking the same way.

All of them with something round their necks.

And out of the building, on the far side, the other way, something else.

Tall. Grey. All the same.

Walking out in lines of their own. Not slowly. Not with their heads down. Very straight. Very even. In step. Across the ice to the landing fields. Up the ramps of the long grey ships. And up.

Into the sky.

Into the front.

I watched one of the long grey ships go up.

It went up out of the landing field and into the grey and into the dark of the Hungry where they were thickest, very high. And didn’t come back down. And didn’t burn. And didn’t come apart.

It went into the dark and the dark went round it.

And out of the ship, the grey ones came. Out into the sky. Into the Hungry. Not in armour. Not with weapons I could see.

And the Hungry came at them.

And the grey ones didn’t lose.

Not won. I want to be careful. Not won. The Hungry went round them and over them and some of the grey ones went into the dark and didn’t come out. But the rest of them held. In the sky. In the middle of the dark. Holding a place in it, the way Julius held the shaft on Isca.

Almost even.

Almost.

Dinraal didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then: ”Ithel saw this,” he said. Very quietly. ”Through an open lid. From a field. When he was four.”

I didn’t say anything.

”Four,” said Dinraal.

We went back down into the crevasse when it was dark.

And I put my hand on the ice.

And listened for the children.

Wren can hear everyone. Every heart through every open arch. She’d have heard them in a breath. She’d have counted them before I’d asked.

I’m not Wren.

I can hear the ground. The ice. The rock. The heart of a world, the way it turns. I can hear a tower that’s tired, and a moon that would rather keep holding. I can hear queens.

I’d never tried to hear children. Not on purpose. Not one at a time, through forty miles of ice.

Dinraal knelt down beside me.

And put his silver hand flat on the ice next to mine.

And the silver went in.

The way it went into the plain on the first day. Roots. Very fine. Very wide. Out through the ice in every direction. Listening. Not to Dinraal. To One. To every footstep on the ice. To every heartbeat coming up through the soles of everyone walking on it.

And it gave them to me.

I’ve never heard anything like it.

Millions. Down every spoke of light, in every line, walking toward the building. Hearts. All kinds. Fast ones and slow ones and ones with three beats where I’d expect two and ones so slow and so big they sounded like the sea. Every one of them tired. Every one of them grey from the note, coming down through the collars.

And on the far side of the building, the other kind.

Too slow. Too even. All the same. Like the soldiers in grey who came down the ramp behind the Overseer on the apron, a long time ago, with a disc behind their left ears. Like a clock.

”Where,” I said. To Dinraal. To his silver. ”Where are they.”

His silver went further.

Under the building. Not in it. Under. Down, through the ice, into a long place cut deep into the ice below the black, very long, very cold.

A long cold place. Down. To the room, said Ione.

And in it—

Rows.

Small hearts. Very small. Very many. Lying in rows on the floor of a long hall cut out of the ice, under the building, very deep, in the cold. Not walking. Not in a line. Waiting. Grey. Slow. With the note coming down on them from somewhere.

Children.

From everywhere. Every kind of heart. Some of them with three beats. Some of them so small and fast they were like birds.

And among them, in one corner of the long hall, together, a great many hearts I knew.

I didn’t know them. Not one at a time. But I knew what they were. I’d held my hand on enough ground on enough tithe worlds, Imber and Orrin and Vantle and Halcro. I’d felt a million hearts like that walk up a hill to an arch.

Ours.

”Count,” I said.

Dinraal’s silver counted.

It took a long time. His silver isn’t Wren. It had to go one at a time, the way you’d count stones. But it didn’t stop. Kneeling beside me on the ice in the crevasse in the dark, with his eyes shut and frost on his eyebrows and his hand flat, Dinraal counted.

And when he’d finished, he said it.

In our language. His own words. Very slowly.

”One thousand, nine hundred and sixty.”

I didn’t say anything.

I couldn’t.

”All of them,” said Dinraal. ”Every one.” He didn’t take his hand off the ice. ”They haven’t gone in.”

”The children go last,” I said.

”Yes.”

”How long is the line?”

Dinraal’s silver went back up. Through the ice. To the spokes of light. To the lines going in.

He was quiet for a long time.

”Not long,” said Dinraal.

Then I reached for Avalon.

I didn’t know if I could. Hana said I might not. Okafor said if I couldn’t, Dinraal would bring me back. I knelt on the ice in the crevasse with my hand flat beside his and went up. The long way. Back the way we’d come. Through the dark between things. Further than I’d ever reached.

Looking for something to aim at.

And there it was.

Very far. Very faint. The furthest I’ve ever been from it. But there.

Not the red glass. Not the arch. Not the queens, though they were singing; I could hear them, very faint, very far, under everything.

Risa.

Standing on the red glass. With her hands out. Palms up. Toward the sky. The way she stood for two days when I was under the lid. Holding the other end.

With every bit of lightning she had, gathered in her hands, waiting.

And beside her, very small, very cross, in a basket at her feet, with a small grey cloud over her head going round very fast, the way a storm goes round before it breaks—

Kesh.

Frowning at the sky.

With her hands out.

Lucas, said Risa.

Here, I said.

And I felt Risa feel me. And then Dory, with her hands on the frame. And every queen on Avalon, singing. And Kyria’s cutters, on our side, with their tools, already cutting.

And on this side, under my hand, in the ice, Dinraal’s silver.

Making a frame.

That’s what it did. While I held the place, the long way. His silver came up out of the ice of the crevasse in two long strands and went up the blue-black walls on either side, and met, very high, in a curve. An arch. Silver. Holding its own shape.

Not cut. Not sung. Made. Out of what Dinraal had, because there was no Kyria on this side and no stone.

And Kyria’s cutters, on the other side, cut toward it.

And Dory sang.

And Risa held.

It opened.

Not wide. Not like Ostrel. Narrow. The width of a door. Very tall. A long thin arch of silver in the bottom of a crevasse in the ice on a dead world at the front of a war older than anything, with the grey sky very high above it.

And on the other side—

The red glass.

Risa came through first.

She didn’t wait. She never waits. She came through the arch as lightning, out of Avalon, onto the ice, and stopped, and was Risa. In her flying leathers. With her one grey cloud. And the cold hit her and she didn’t even notice.

She looked at me.

”You’re late,” said Risa.

”I was holding a planet,” I said.

”No you weren’t,” said Risa. ”You were lying in a crevasse.” And put her arms round me so hard I couldn’t breathe.

And then Holt.

I want to write Holt properly. Because nobody ever writes Holt properly. He doesn’t let them.

Captain Ezra Holt. Who had a table under a map, a long time ago, before the map room. Who said he’d stand beside whoever was at the top and not one inch in front. Who took six ships to the Hathri and closed the ramps with thirty-one of his own people still on the grass, because if he’d waited they’d all have died. Who went down first into the hollow under the black steppe, a year later, on his knees, to Corporal Dace Hollin. I closed the ramps. Who slept, after.

Who carries a stick he doesn’t need.

He came through the arch walking.

Second. Right after Risa. Before the Mom Squad. Before Hearth. Before the Hyrrani. In his old coat, with his collar up, with his stick in one hand and nothing in the other.

He’d asked. Okafor told me afterward. At the long table, at dawn, after Dinraal and I had gone. He’d come up the stairs very slowly, with his stick, and stood at the end of the table, and said: Second through. After the girl. Before anyone.

Okafor said: Ezra. You’re sixty-one.

Holt said: I closed the ramps, Maris. I’m never going to be anywhere but first again.

Okafor wrote it on the slate.

He stood at the foot of the arch on the ice and looked up.

At the walls of the crevasse. At the grey sky, very high. At the front, moving in it.

Then down. At me. At Dinraal, kneeling with his hand still on the ice, holding the arch.

”Son,” said Holt. To me. ”Report.”

So I reported.

The building. The lines. The grey ones. The front. The long cold hall under the building, very deep. The rows.

One thousand, nine hundred and sixty.

Not long.

Holt listened to all of it without moving. Leaning on his stick. In the cold.

When I’d finished, he looked at the crevasse for a long time. Up and down. At the ice. At the arch.

”Right,” said Holt.

And turned round.

And put his head back through the arch. Onto the red glass. And said, in the voice I’d forgotten he had, the one from the table under the map, the one that made men nineteen with clipboards stand up straight:

”Everyone. Now. Quietly.”

They came.

The Mom Squad. All eleven. Isolde last, with her hand on her middle and her eyes on her husband, kneeling in the ice with his hand flat. She went straight to him and knelt down beside him and put her hand on his back and didn’t say anything.

The Hyrrani, in iron, silent the way they are. Andraste at the front.

Hearth. Hearth’s three. Aurelius. Tiamat and Aramaeis, in their woman’s and man’s shapes, because the crevasse was too narrow for dragons.

The wing didn’t come. The crevasse was too narrow. Risa said they’d come when there was sky.

Bree and Roan. Brock and Saska. Luna. Sera. Hana, who came through and looked at me once, very hard, at my nose, and then took my hand and didn’t let go of it.

Okafor. With the chalk.

Crane.

Crane stopped at the foot of the arch.

On the ice. In the cold. With his spanner in his hand.

And looked up. At the walls of the crevasse. At the grey. At the front, moving very high.

His face did something.

Holt was beside him. Holt’s always beside him, at the end. Since the apron. Since Hal. Ezra. You’re still alive.

”Hal,” said Holt. Very quietly.

Crane didn’t move.

”You’ve been here,” said Holt.

It wasn’t a question.

Crane didn’t answer for a long time.

”Once,” he said. In the end. ”When I was nineteen. With a clipboard.” He looked at the spanner in his hand. ”Before the collar. Before Scarecrow. They sent us. A class of us. To see what we were for.”

Nobody said anything.

”They showed us the building,” said Crane. ”From the landing field. They said: this is where the stock goes. They said: this is the front. They said: this is why.” He looked up at the grey. ”They said the Hungry would eat everything, and the only thing that would stop them was this. And we should be proud.” His voice didn’t change at all. ”I was proud.”

He looked at Holt.

”I went home and signed for other people’s children for thirty years,” said Crane. ”Proud.”

Holt didn’t say anything.

He put his hand on Crane’s shoulder. The way he did on the apron, a long time ago, when Crane came down the ramp in front of the Overseer with his face stopped and his hands perfectly still.

”Are you all right, son?” said Holt.

And Crane’s face broke.

Not for a moment, this time. All the way.

He stood on the ice at the bottom of a crevasse on One with his old captain’s hand on his shoulder and the front moving very high above him and wept. The way men weep who haven’t since they were nineteen. Not making a sound. Just standing there with it coming out of him.

Holt didn’t take his hand away.

Nobody looked. The Hyrrani turned their faces to the ice walls, all of them, at once, without being told. Hearth looked at the arch. The Mom Squad looked at each other.

Mother, at the back, put her hand on Maura’s arm.

It took a long time.

When it was over, Crane wiped his face with the back of his hand. The one without the spanner.

”I know the way,” he said. Very hoarse. ”To the hall. Under the building. They showed us that too. The long way down.” He looked at Holt. ”They said the children were the most valuable stock. Because they take the longest. Because what comes out is the strongest.” He swallowed. ”I know where the doors are.”

”Good,” said Holt. ”Then you’ll walk beside me.”

”Ezra—”

”Beside me,” said Holt. ”Not behind. Not in front.” He took his hand off Crane’s shoulder. And picked up his stick. ”That’s where I’ve always wanted you. Since the clipboard.”

Then the stock came.

Not all of it. One.

He came down into the crevasse at midnight. From the far end, where it opens out onto the plain. Very slowly. Climbing down the ice the way you climb when your hands are too cold to feel it.

Andraste had her blade out before anyone else saw him. The Hyrrani were round him in a breath. Teshka was in front of him before Andraste was, with her empty hand up.

He didn’t run.

He stopped. On the ice. And looked at them. All of them. Forty thousand Hyrrani in iron, and Hearth in silver, and the Mom Squad, and the arch with the red glass on the other side of it.

And sat down.

He was old.

I think. I don’t know what old looks like for his people. Tall. Very thin. Grey-skinned, but not like the grey ones; a soft grey, like the inside of a shell. With long hands with too many joints in the fingers. With eyes very large and very dark. With a collar round his neck, black, close, with a stone in it.

And the note coming out of the stone. Into his throat.

He sat on the ice and looked at the Hyrrani round him and didn’t move. He didn’t look frightened. He looked as if he’d stopped being frightened a long time ago, the way you stop being cold.

Holt walked through the Hyrrani.

They let him. They always let Holt; Kyria says the Hyrrani know a captain when they see one, whatever the iron. He walked through them with his stick and stopped in front of the old man on the ice.

And looked at him for a long time.

Then he did something I didn’t expect.

He sat down too.

On the ice. Very slowly. The way a man of sixty-one sits on ice. With his stick across his knees. Opposite the old man. Not close. Not far. The way you’d sit across a table from someone.

The old man looked at him.

Holt looked back.

Neither of them said anything for a long time.

Then Holt took off his coat.

His old coat. The one with the collar he turns up. The one he’s worn since the table under the map. He took it off, in the cold, on the ice, at midnight on One, and leaned across, and put it round the old man’s shoulders.

The old man went very still.

Holt sat there in his shirt. In the cold. And didn’t say anything.

”Lucas,” said Holt. After a while. Without looking round.

I came.

”The collar,” said Holt.

I knelt down beside the old man. Slowly. So he could see me. And put my hand out. Not touching. Just there. The way Ingrid holds hers out over the girls.

He looked at my hand for a long time.

Then at Holt.

Holt nodded.

And the old man, very slowly, the way Ione reached for Ingrid’s hand, leaned his throat toward me.

I turned it to sand.

He breathed in.

The way Ione did, in the box. As if he hadn’t for a long time. As if he’d forgotten how.

And let it out.

And put his long hand with too many joints at his throat, where the collar had been. And found nothing there.

He said something.

In a language none of us had. Long. Very soft. Like water going over stones.

Dot was on the other side of the arch, on the red glass. She heard it through the silver. And was quiet for a long time, the way she’s quiet when a language is new, getting the shape of it.

Then she gave it to us.

”He says,” said Dot. ”You sat down.”

Holt didn’t say anything.

”He says,” said Dot. ”Nobody sits down. Not here. Not ever. The grey ones stand. The stock walks. Nobody sits down.” A pause. ”He says he came down into the ice to sit down. Because he’s very old and he’s walked a long way and he’s going into the building in the morning and he wanted to sit down once, first.” Dot’s voice went. ”And you sat down with him.”

Holt looked at the old man for a long time.

Then he held out his stick.

The one he doesn’t need. The one he’s carried as long as I’ve known him, that everyone knows he doesn’t need, that nobody’s ever asked him about.

He held it out across the ice. To the old man. Who did.

The old man looked at it.

Then he took it.

And held it across his knees. The way Holt holds it.

”Ask him,” said Holt. Very quietly. To Dot. Through the arch. ”Ask him his name.”

Dot asked.

The old man said it. Long. Soft. Like water.

Dot couldn’t get it into our letters. Nobody could. Garnet’s tried since. The nearest is a sound like Tavvan, and the old man says that’s close enough, and it’s what we call him.

”Ask him,” said Holt, ”if he knows the long way down. Under the building. To the hall where the children are.”

Dot asked.

Tavvan looked at Holt for a long time.

Then he said something. And Dot gave it to us. And her voice did the thing it’s done three times now.

”He says,” said Dot. ”He swept it. For forty years. Before he was too old. He swept the floor of the hall every night while the children slept.”

A pause.

”He says he knows every one of them by the way they breathe.”

Holt didn’t say anything.

He looked at Crane. Standing at the edge of the Hyrrani, with his spanner, with his face still wet.

Then at me.

Then back at Tavvan, with Holt’s coat round his shoulders and Holt’s stick across his knees, sitting on the ice at the bottom of a crevasse on a world called One, the night before he was meant to walk into the building.

”You’re not going into the building,” said Holt.

Dot gave it to him.

Tavvan looked at Holt.

”Nobody is,” said Holt. ”Not tomorrow. Not ever. Not you. Not them.” He didn’t raise his voice. He never does. ”I closed the ramps once. On thirty-one of mine. Because if I’d waited, they’d all have died.” He looked at the ice. ”I went back for them. Nineteen came home.”

He looked up at Tavvan.

”I’m not closing anything again,” said Holt. ”Not on anyone. Not on a single one of them. Not on you.”

Tavvan looked at him for a very long time.

Then he put his long hand out. Across the ice. With too many joints in the fingers. And laid it on Holt’s knee.

And said something.

And Dot didn’t translate it.

Holt didn’t need her to.

Rhiannon got there first.

Of course she did. Across the ice. Through the Hyrrani, who let her, because nobody doesn’t let Rhiannon. With her basket. She knelt down beside Tavvan in her winged dress, on the ice, and took out a piece of Hearth’s bread, dark and heavy with seeds in it, and held it out.

Tavvan looked at it for a long time.

”He hasn’t eaten,” said Rhiannon. Through Dot. Very sharp. ”Not properly. Not for years. I knew from the top of the crevasse.”

Tavvan took the bread.

He held it in his long hands for a long time. Then he ate it. Very slowly. On the ice. In Holt’s coat. With Holt’s stick across his knees.

And Mother came and stood over Holt.

He was still sitting on the ice in his shirt. In the cold. With his arms folded. Not shivering, because Holt doesn’t, in front of people.

Mother looked down at him.

”Ezra,” she said. ”You’re sixty-one.”

”So Maris keeps telling me,” said Holt.

Mother didn’t say anything. She took off her own shawl. The grey one, that she wears over her apron when it’s cold on the porch. And put it round his shoulders.

Holt looked up at her.

”Dorothy,” he said.

”Don’t,” said Mother. ”Just wear it.”

He wore it.

And Maura came, with her hands warm, and knelt down behind him on the ice and put them on his back, both of them, the way she warms the hollows. And told the cold to go sideways.

And it did.

Days 4697–4700. One.

The long way, with nothing at the end, and Dinraal’s silver remembering itself all the way; then remembering me. This is Lucas. Hold on. We came back together in a crevasse on One. The building, forty miles off, bending the ice. Lines going in, all kinds, with collars; grey ones coming out, all the same, into the front; almost even. Ithel saw this when he was four. Dinraal’s silver listened for me: 1,960 in a long cold hall under the building. All of them. Not long. Risa and Kesh with their hands out. His silver made the frame; Kyria cut toward it; it opened. Risa: you were lying in a crevasse. Holt, second through: report. Crane had been here at nineteen, proud. Are you all right, son? He broke all the way. Then Tavvan came down to sit once before the building, and Holt sat with him, and gave him his coat and the stick he doesn’t need. Tavvan swept the hall for forty years; he knows every one of them by the way they breathe. Holt: I’m not closing anything again.