Scarecrow

I asked Aune on the roof.

Seven of us, the way it is now. A warm night, late in the summer. Risa had a little storm out at sea for the light. Sera had the slates warm. Luna had the drinks cold. Hana was breathing for everyone without meaning to. Andraste was sharpening Holdfast.

Aune was lying on her back between Risa and Hana with her long grey hair spread out on the warm slates, looking at the stars. She does that. She says on Ister you couldn’t see them; the lamp was always on. She says she’s making up for a hundred years.

“Aune,” I said.

“Mm.”

“Do you want any more?”

She didn’t ask more what. She’s been on the roof long enough now.

She didn’t answer straight away. The Aldri never do, with anything that matters. She lay there and looked at the stars for a long time, and the others went quiet, the way they do when one of us is thinking something through.

“Yes,” said Aune. In the end. “One. Maybe two, if your old queen’s right about the twins.”

Sera laughed.

“But not yet,” said Aune.

“When?”

“After Tiri and Corin are married,” said Aune.

I looked at her.

“You sound very sure,” I said.

Aune turned her head on the slates and looked at me. The way she looked at me on the porch, the night I asked her. Very bright eyes. Very patient.

“Lucas,” she said. “Have you seen them?”

“Every day.”

“Then you know,” said Aune. “He was five. She was seven or eight; she says eight, Ilas says seven and a half. He mended her bird on the porch, and she sat on the floor beside his chair, and she hasn’t sat anywhere else since.” She looked back up at the stars. “They’ve been inseparable for seven years. They hold hands on the step without looking. She hums his notes. He walks her to the red glass every term and mends the bird she breaks so it’ll need mending.”

“They’re children.”

“She’s fifteen,” said Aune. “He’s twelve. They won’t be children for very long. Not even with two hundred and thirty years.” She smiled at the stars. “And she’s Aldri.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means she’s decided,” said Aune. “The Aldri don’t change their minds, Lucas. Not about that. Once we’ve made them up, they stay made. It’s why we’re so slow to do it.” She turned her head again. “Ilas made up her mind when she was nine. She married him at a hundred and twelve. She’d never once looked at anyone else, and she never has since.”

“And you?”

“I made up my mind about you,” said Aune, “the first time I came down through the arch. You didn’t look up.”

Risa laughed so hard the storm out at sea lit up all along its edge.

“So,” said Aune. “I’ll wait. I’d like Tiri to have her day first. Her mother there, and not too round to dance at it.” She closed her eyes. “Then we’ll see.”

“That could be years.”

“Yes,” said Aune. “I’m Aldri. I’m good at years.”

Sera rolled over on the warm slates and propped her chin on her hands.

“Well,” said Sera. “Some of us aren’t.”

Everyone looked at her.

“I told Halloway this morning,” said Sera. “She checked twice. She says it’s early. She says it’s definitely.” She grinned. The Calder grin. “That’s three. One more and I’m at four.”

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Then Luna threw an ice cube at her, and Sera caught it, and it melted in her hand, and everyone was talking at once.

Hana didn’t say anything.

She was lying on her back on the slates with her hands folded on her middle, very still, breathing very slowly. And I saw her look at Sera, and then at her own hands, and then at me.

Andraste had stopped sharpening.

She was looking at Sera too. With her thumb on Holdfast’s edge. The way she looks at something on the ridge on Hyrran she’s decided she’s going to climb.

“Hm,” said Andraste.

Risa saw it. Of course she did. She sees everything from up there.

She leaned over to me and said, very quietly, in my ear: “You’re not going to get much sleep this year, love.”

“No,” I said.

“Good,” said Risa. “I’ll call a storm. It’ll cover the noise.”

Sera told Maura the next morning. In the kitchen. Before the names.

Maura put down the bread she was cutting. Very carefully. And looked at her daughter for a long time.

“Three,” said Maura.

“Three,” said Sera.

“Your gran had eleven,” said Maura. “I had three. Liam, you, and Pip. You’ve been dawdling.”

“I’ve been fighting the Hungry, Mum.”

“So was your gran,” said Maura. “In her way. Eleven children in a two-room house on the edge of the dust is fighting something.” She picked the bread knife back up. Then put it down again. And came round the table and put her arms round Sera, flour and all, and didn’t let go for a long time.

Pip came up the hill at noon with Davo. Pip had heard from Maura, who’d told Liam, who’d told everyone in the market by ten. Davo was carrying a cake. He’d won it. At Pip’s stall. The first time he’d ever won anything there.

“She let me,” said Davo. Very red. All over his freckles. “She said it was a special occasion.”

Pip didn’t say anything. But she was holding his hand. Four fingers in five.

Sera looked at that for a long time.

“Oh,” said Sera. “Oh, Pip.”

“Don’t,” said Pip.

“I’m not saying anything.”

“You’re thinking it very loudly,” said Pip.

Mother, at the stove, cut the cake.

Tiri heard. Of course she did. Somebody always hears on that roof; sound carries down the chimney into the wing.

She came down to breakfast the next morning very pink, the colour of the inside of a shell, and sat down beside Corin, and didn’t say anything for the whole of breakfast. Corin didn’t notice. He was mending her bird.

Aune noticed. She looked at her daughter across the long table over her cup.

“You told him,” said Tiri. Afterward. In the courtyard. I wasn’t meant to hear; I was on the porch.

“He asked,” said Aune.

“You said after we’re married.”

“Yes.”

“Like it’s just going to happen.”

“Isn’t it?” said Aune.

Tiri didn’t answer for a long time. She stood in the courtyard in the morning light with her bird in her hands and her short grey hair sticking up, the same grey as her mother’s, and looked at the porch where Corin was sitting on the top step, humming.

“Yes,” said Tiri. Very quietly. “It is.”

Then she went and sat beside him. On the step. Without looking. And held his hand.

Corin kept humming.

Hana came and found me the next evening. On the porch, at the turn, with Mother lifting it a finger’s width and Oona lifting the step.

She sat down beside me on the top step. And didn’t say anything for a long time.

“I said yes,” said Hana. In the end. “On the roof. Before Aune came. A girl who breathes. Who stays in the house.”

“I know.”

“Sera’s pregnant.”

“I know.”

“I’m not jealous,” said Hana. Very quietly. She was. She knew I knew. “I’m just saying.”

Mother, beside us, put the porch down.

“That’s Dory’s,” said Mother. Not looking round. “The just saying. Everyone in this house has caught it.”

Hana laughed. Then she put her head on my shoulder.

“Soon,” she said.

Andraste didn’t ask at all.

She doesn’t, with things she’s decided. She came up from the forge on Hyrran that night with soot on her hands and the white ribbon on Holdfast’s hilt, and hung the blade on its hook by the kitchen door, and looked at me across the kitchen.

Just looked.

Then she went upstairs.

Mother, at the stove, didn’t turn round.

“Well,” said Mother. “Go on, then.”

I’m not going to write any more about that. Some things go in the notebook and some things don’t.

I’ll write that Risa called a storm. A big one. Out at sea. It went on for most of the autumn, every night, and the fishing boats on the coast south of Thera complained, and Okafor wrote Risa: weather on the slate and underlined it twice, and Risa said she had no idea what anyone was talking about.

Okafor came up onto the roof about it. Once. In the third week. In her coat, at midnight, with the storm going out at sea and the fishing boats’ complaint in her hand on a sheet of paper.

She looked at the seven of us on the slates.

She looked at the storm.

She looked at the paper.

“Risa,” said Okafor.

“Mm,” said Risa.

“The Thera fleet says they haven’t been able to go out after dusk for three weeks.”

“Very unusual weather,” said Risa. “For the time of year.”

Okafor looked at her for a long time. Then she folded the paper in half, and then in half again, and put it in her pocket.

“Move it two miles further out,” said Okafor. “They’ve got families too.”

She went back down the ladder. At the bottom, very quietly, we all heard her laugh.

Risa moved it four miles out. Just to be safe.

The Refined were cutting another queen.

Dory heard her on the first morning of the autumn. At the count. On the red glass, with Ysse humming under the glass the way she does every morning, one long note from far away.

Dory stopped in the middle of the names.

Mother looked at her.

“Another,” said Dory. Very white. “Another one, Gran. Holding a thread out.”

She was further than Ysse. Further than anything. The other side of the Collective’s web, Halvane said afterward; past its centre, on a world so far out that the web there was thin.

Her name was Arreth. She was planetary. Like Ysse, like the eldest. She’d been on a frame for four years.

I’ll write it short. Because it was the same.

The hall. The racks. The frames. The queens on them, opened, pinned, emptied. Fewer than on Ithre. Sixty. Then the round room at the end, and Arreth in the light, half opened, with the silver going out of her in lines into the people round her.

Twelve of them. Tall, pale, white-haired, with their silver on the outside and tarnished at the edges.

They knew who I was. That was the difference. They’d heard. The Collective had told them.

They didn’t attack. Not at first. One of them stood up, very tall, very calm, and held something up. A seal. Bright. Old.

“We are here under the seal of the Collective,” she said. “Lawfully. You have no standing on this world, Lucas Dask. Leave, or be named a criminal again.”

“I’m already named,” I said.

I asked the silver out of them. The same as Ithre. Not cruelly. All twelve.

Dory held Arreth. I gave her silver back and closed her. One atom at a time. Dory pulled the pins out with her hands.

You came, said Arreth.

They always say it.

One of them spoke. At the end. While the silver was coming out of her.

The tall one with the seal. She looked at me with her bright eyes going dim, the way the tall one on Ithre looked at me, and said, very calmly, as if she really wanted to know:

“Why do you care? They’re only queens. There are always more.”

I thought about the Scarecrow queen. With her head on the garden wall. Every evening of my life.

“My mother pours for them,” I said.

She didn’t understand. I could see it. She didn’t understand a single word.

Then she wasn’t there.

We laid the sixty down in rows. On the grass, the way Mother taught us. Arreth took their silver into her and sang to it. Dory cut an arch. Arreth’s people, the few thousand left, under her hills, came through onto the red glass.

Mother poured.

Their eldest poured the first one out.

Wren wrote it down.

The Collective answered eleven days later.

Not the white ship. Not the Prime. Something new.

A voice. On every band at once. Not to me. Not to Avalon. To everyone. Every world in the Hedge. Every world on the edge of the Watch. Every world, Tiamat said afterward, that the Collective’s web could reach from where it sat. Millions of worlds. All at once.

The same voice. The woman’s. Very clear, very formal.

“To all worlds of the Bright Reach and beyond it,” said the voice. “This is the Assize. Hear the charges.”

I’ll write them exactly. Okafor asked me to. She wrote them on the slate first, as the voice said them, in chalk, very small, so they’d fit.

That the worlds called Avalon and Ister, and the man Lucas Dask, and the Aldri elder Halvane, did knowingly and with intent destroy the people called the Sorn.

That they buried the houses of the Sorn, who were their government and their memory, alive, beneath the world called Root, where they remain, unheard.

That they caused the finished Sorn, called the grey ones, millions in number, to fall silent and fail, by removing the voice that sustained them.

That they destroyed the vessels of the people called the Ashen in their hundreds, without parley, without warning, and without quarter; and that the Ashen have not been heard from since.

That the man Lucas Dask has, on the worlds called Ithre and Arreth, killed citizens of the Collective in good standing acting under its seal.

That these acts, together, constitute the deliberate erasure of two peoples from the record of the living.

Genocide.

The kitchen was very quiet.

Okafor stood at the slate with the chalk in her hand and looked at the word for a long time.

“They had every child on two thousand eight hundred and six worlds in collars,” said Ithel. From the doorway. Very quietly. He’s at Miss Pell’s school now; he’d come up the hill at the noise. “They took them in. They made them into grey ones. They took my whole world.”

“I know,” said Okafor.

“The Ashen ended the spokes on One,” said Ithel. “They ended Ferrin. They tried to end Avalon.”

“I know.”

“And the grey ones aren’t failing,” said Ithel. His voice had gone very high. “They’re swaying. They’re coming back. Gran sits with them every morning.”

“I know, love,” said Mother. From the stove.

Ithel stood in the doorway with his fists closed.

“Then why does it say that?” he said.

Halvane answered him.

He was at the long table. He’d come through the arch from Ister when the voice started; every Aldri on Ister had heard it too. He was sitting very still with his long hands flat on the wood, the way Okafor sits.

“Because it isn’t for us,” said Halvane.

Ithel looked at him.

“It isn’t meant to be true,” said Halvane. “It’s meant to be heard.” He looked at the slate. “By every world the Collective can reach. Millions of them. Who don’t know anything about us. Who’ve never heard of collars, or the making, or the spokes, or a little girl who breathes in a long ward.” He turned his cup round. “All they’ll hear is the word. And who it’s about.”

“Then tell them,” said Ithel.

“We will,” said Halvane. “But they’ll hear the Collective first. And the Collective is very loud.”

The Overseer came up the hill. In Holt’s cap. With the dog.

He’d heard it at the red glass. He’d been sitting with Crane at the end of the line, the way he does now in the mornings, watching the trains. He came up the hill faster than I’ve ever seen him walk, and stood in the kitchen doorway beside Ithel, and looked at the slate.

At the word.

“I’m Sorn,” said the Overseer. Very quietly. “I sat in a room at the edge of the middle my whole life and listened to the houses decide which worlds to take.” He took Holt’s cap off. Turned it round in his hands. “I’m one of the people they say you destroyed.”

Nobody said anything.

“So I’ll go,” said the Overseer. “To the Assize. If they’ll let me in. I’ll stand up in front of them and tell them I’m Sorn, and I’m here, and nobody erased me. Somebody gave me a cup.”

He put the cap back on.

“And then I’ll tell them what the houses did,” said the Overseer. “All of it. In order. I remember every word. I was in the room.”

Holt was behind him in the doorway. He’d come up the hill behind him, slower, the way he walks now, without stopping.

He put his hand on the Overseer’s shoulder.

“Then I’m coming too,” said Holt. “Somebody should go first.”

The voice wasn’t finished.

The man Lucas Dask and the elder Halvane of Ister are summoned to stand before the Assize, at its seat, in person, to answer.

They will be given safe passage.

They have thirty days.

If they do not appear, the Assize will issue its warrant. The warrant of the Assize is carried by the Collective. All of it.

The voice stopped.

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Okafor wrote one more line on the slate. Under the charges. Under Genocide.

30 days. Or war.

She put the chalk down.

“It’s a trap,” said Andraste.

“Yes,” said Okafor.

“They’ll never let him come back.”

“Probably not,” said Okafor.

“And if he doesn’t go,” said Andraste, “it’s war. With all of it. Millions of worlds.” She looked at me. “He told you. The Prime. You can take pieces out of us and we won’t notice.”

“He did,” I said.

Halvane stood up.

Very slowly. Very tall. The way the Aldri stand, for a long time.

“I have run,” said Halvane. “For eleven thousand years. My people. My mothers’ mothers. Every time something came, we moved Ister and ran.” He looked out of the kitchen window. At Ister’s lamp, low in the east, beside Root. “We ran from the Sorn. We ran from the Ashen. We ran from the Hungry. Seven times in eleven years.” He turned back to the table. “I didn’t know there was anyone to run to. And then there was.”

He looked at me.

“I’m too old to start running again,” said Halvane. “And Ceren’s on the wall, and I’d like to be able to look at his name.”

“So you’ll go.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Halvane. “Very carefully. The Aldri are slow to make up their minds.” He looked at Aune, at the end of the table, with Tiri beside her and Tiri’s ribbon on her wrist. “But once we have, they stay made.”

The grandmothers came the next morning.

Not ours. Everyone else’s.

Through every arch. At the count. From Caddoc, the Caddi with their lamps. From Tiel, the washing grandmothers with their sheets folded over their arms. From Ostry, walking in a line holding each other’s sleeves. From Sedge, the Ennet, with their cups. From Kiln’s people on Hyrran and the Marrah in their city and the walkers on the eastern plain and the Lenn on their new grass, very tall, very grey, with Ollin at the front.

From Ithre. Oss, with her ears up. From Arreth’s few thousand, who’d been on Avalon eleven days.

They stood on the red glass. Hundreds of them. In front of Mother.

The oldest Caddi grandmother stepped forward. With her lamp.

“We heard it,” she said. “On every band. The word.”

“So did we,” said Mother.

“We don’t believe it,” said the Caddi grandmother.

Mother didn’t say anything.

“We came to say so,” said the Caddi grandmother. “Out loud. Here. In front of you. So that whatever the Collective says on every band to every world, there’s somebody who said the other thing.” She held up her lamp. “We all talked about it last night. Through the arches. Every world on the edge.” She looked round at the others. “You came to visit us. All summer. You and your grandmothers. You sat at our fires.”

“Yes,” said Mother.

“So we came to visit you,” said the Caddi grandmother. “That’s how you keep a street.”

Mother poured.

For all of them. It took the whole morning. Abbe came up from the rain valley with the big pot and filled it four times, and then a fifth.

Every grandmother on the red glass poured the first cup out.

And Wren, on the step, with her sheet, wrote a new line at the top. Not a number. Konrad showed me.

Said the other thing.

And underneath it, every world.

Kesh and Lio and Oona made the warm rain in the courtyard that morning. For the grandmothers. For every one of them who came up the hill after the count, slowly, the way the old come up hills, to sit on the bench by the kitchen door with Ilas and Abbe and Sefa and have a second cup.

It wasn’t a homecoming. Nobody was coming home. Kesh said that didn’t matter.

“It’s for people who came a long way,” said Kesh. With a cloud on her head. Very firmly. “That’s what it’s always been for.”

So the grandmothers of Caddoc and Tiel and Ostry and Sedge and Ithre and Arreth and the Lenn stood in the warm rain in the courtyard of the house on the rise, with their faces turned up, in the morning light.

Oss put her great white ears up into it. All the way. Like sails.

Ollin, very tall, very grey, held her hands out flat and let it run off her fur.

The oldest Caddi grandmother put her lamp down on the stones, and took off her hat, and stood there with the rain on her face and her eyes shut for a long time.

“We don’t have rain on Caddoc,” she said. In the end. “Not since the salt.” She opened her eyes. “I’d forgotten.”

Lio twisted a knot in her hair. A new one. She said it was for remembering things you’d forgotten.

Ilas caught Aune’s sleeve that evening. On the bench by the kitchen door, where she sits with Abbe and Sefa.

“After they’re married,” said Ilas. In Aldri. Dot turned it for me later. “You told him that.”

“Yes, Grandmother.”

“Good,” said Ilas. She let go of the sleeve. “I waited for your grandfather a hundred and three years. You can wait for your daughter a few.” She looked across the courtyard at Tiri and Corin on the top step. “It will be worth it. I’ve seen her face.”

“So have I,” said Aune.

“No,” said Ilas. “You’ve seen it from beside her. I’ve seen it from a hundred and ninety-four years away.” She smiled. Very slowly. The Aldri way. “It’s the face I had.”

I went up to the garden wall that night.

The Scarecrow queen was there. Of course. With her head on the stones.

You heard, she said.

“Everyone heard.”

The eldest heard, said the queen. Under Root. And the houses, under her. They heard their names said. On every band. By the Collective.

I hadn’t thought of that.

They are talking very fast, said the queen. Down there. In the dark. The eldest says she has not heard them talk so fast since they went in.

“What are they saying?”

The queen was quiet for a long time.

They are saying, she said, that someone is coming for them.

I sat on the wall until very late.

Dory came out. She sat beside me. With Dusk in her hand. She didn’t say anything. She just looked at the sky with her black eyes, past Root and Ister’s lamp, past everything, to the place where the web was, very far, very thin, too far for even her to see.

“You’re going to go,” said Dory. In the end.

“I don’t know yet.”

“You are,” said Dory. “I can tell. You’ve got the face Gran gets when she’s already decided to walk out first.”

I didn’t say anything.

“If you go,” said Dory, “I’m coming.”

“Dory—”

“They asked for you and Halvane,” said Dory. “They didn’t say who else.” She put Dusk on. “And I’m the only one who can bring you home in a breath if they shut the door.”

I went to Root before I went in.

Dory took me. Up the thread to the eldest’s plateau, at midnight, with the threads shining and the new range in the south with its snow on it. The way it always is.

Only it wasn’t quiet.

I put my hands flat on the grass. The way Mother does. And listened down. Past the eldest, who was very still, holding, the way she’s held for longer than there have been days. Down. All the way down. Under the range. Under the flat white field where the houses’ ship came down.

They were talking.

Not to anyone. Not to me. To each other. Hundreds of voices, very old, very fast, over and over, the same few words. I couldn’t understand them. I didn’t need to.

They heard their names, said the eldest. Very quietly. They know.

“Can they get out?”

No, said the eldest. Not unless I let them. A pause. But they know someone is asking for them now. They have never once in all their time been asked for. They have only ever asked. The ground under my hands was cool. It is very strange, child. They are frightened. And they are glad.

“Glad?”

Someone wants them back, said the eldest. Even if it is only to use them. A long quiet. I think that is the first time anyone has wanted them for anything at all.

Dory, beside me, took her hands off the grass.

“I don’t like it,” she said. Very quietly. “Dad. If the Collective wins, they come out. They come out and they go to the centre and they sit with the Prime.”

“I know.”

“And then everything they ever did, they’ll do again,” said Dory. “With all of it behind them.”

I didn’t say anything.

Then do not let it win, said the eldest. It is that simple, and that hard.

Risa found us at the arch when we came back.

She’d felt it. Dory going up the thread at midnight. She always feels it; she says it’s like a draught in her storm.

She looked at Dory. At me. At our faces.

“You’re going with him,” said Risa. To Dory.

“Yes, Mum.”

Risa didn’t say anything for a long time. The storm out at sea went very still.

“I can’t stop you,” said Risa. In the end. “I never could. You flew before you walked.” She put her hand on the back of Dory’s head. “So bring him back. In a breath. If they shut the door.”

“I will.”

“And bring yourself back,” said Risa. “That’s the bit you’ll forget. I know you. You’ll bring everyone back but yourself.”

Dory looked at her mother.

“I’m saying,” said Risa. “I’m just saying.”

Dory laughed. Then she put her face in her mother’s shoulder and stayed there a long time.

Mother was on the porch when I came in. Of course she was. With the pot.

She poured me a cup and didn’t say anything for a long time.

“Thirty days,” she said. In the end.

“Yes.”

“Well,” said Mother. “That’s thirty mornings of names. Thirty turns.” She looked out at the town. At the red glass, very dark, with Ysse and Arreth humming under it, one long note each, from very far away. “That’s a lot of time to think, love.”

“Is it enough?”

“It never is,” said Mother. “It’s what you’ve got.”

She put her cup down.

“Your father was summoned once,” she said. “Did I ever tell you? To the cities. Before the Act. They said if he came in and stood in front of them and told them what he’d done, they’d let us back inside.”

“What did he do?”

“He went,” said Mother. “He stood in front of them. And told them. All of it. Everything he could do, and why, and what he’d never once done with it.” She looked at me. “And they didn’t let us back in.”

“Then why did he go?”

“So they’d have heard it,” said Mother. “From him. Not from someone else. So that whatever they did after, they couldn’t say nobody told them.”

She picked up the pot.

“Drink your tea,” said Mother. “You’ve got thirty days.”

Days 8852–8913. The Subpoena.

On the roof, Aune: one more, maybe two if the queen’s right; but after Tiri and Corin are married. You sound very sure. He was five; she was seven or eight; she hasn’t sat anywhere else since. The Aldri don’t change their minds; once made, they stay made; Ilas decided at nine and married at a hundred and twelve. I made up my mind about you the first arch; you didn’t look up. Tiri should have her day first, her mother not too round to dance. Sera: Halloway checked twice; three; one more and I’m at four. Hana looked at her hands; Andraste said hm. Risa: you won’t get much sleep this year; I’ll call a storm, it’ll cover the noise. Hana on the step: I’m not jealous, I’m just saying; Mother: everyone in this house has caught it. Andraste just looked, and went upstairs; Mother: well, go on, then. Risa’s storm all autumn; the slate: Risa: weather; Okafor: move it two miles out, they’ve got families too; she laughed at the bottom of the ladder. Maura: you’ve been dawdling; Davo won the cake; Pip held his hand. Tiri: like it’s just going to happen; isn’t it? Yes. Then Dory stopped in the middle of the names: another. Arreth, past the centre of the web; sixty on the frames; twelve Refined with a seal: leave or be named a criminal again; I’m already named. Why do you care? They’re only queens. My mother pours for them. I asked the silver out of them. You came. Eleven days later the Assize on every band to millions of worlds: the houses buried alive and unheard, the grey ones silenced, the Ashen destroyed without quarter, citizens in good standing killed under seal; the deliberate erasure of two peoples; genocide. Ithel in the doorway: they took my whole world; the grey ones are swaying; then why does it say that? Halvane: it isn’t meant to be true; it’s meant to be heard; the Collective is very loud. The Overseer: I’m Sorn, and nobody erased me; somebody gave me a cup; I’ll go and tell them. Holt: somebody should go first. Lucas Dask and Halvane summoned in person; safe passage; thirty days; or the warrant, carried by all of it. Slate: 30 days. Or war. Halvane: I’m too old to start running again; Ceren’s on the wall; once made, they stay made. The grandmothers of every world on the edge came to the glass: we don’t believe it; you visited us, so we came to visit you. Wren: said the other thing. The warm rain for people who came a long way; the Caddi grandmother: we don’t have rain on Caddoc; I’d forgotten. Ilas: I waited a hundred and three years; it’s the face I had. The queen: the houses heard their names said, and are talking very fast: someone is coming for them. Dory: you’ve got Gran’s walking-out-first face; on Root the houses talking very fast, frightened and glad; the eldest: then do not let it win; Risa: bring yourself back, that’s the bit you’ll forget; if you go, I’m coming; they didn’t say who else. Mother: thirty mornings, thirty turns; it never is enough, it’s what you’ve got. Your father went when the cities summoned him, and told them all of it, and they didn’t let us back in. So they’d have heard it from him. Drink your tea.