Scarecrow

They laughed.

I heard it on the band. All twelve ships. Not loud. The Refined don’t do anything loud. A small sound, very calm, very amused, going from ship to ship along the line of them in Lantern’s dim sky, the way a joke goes along a table.

Then the voice. The man’s. Very pleasant.

Lucas Dask, it said. We’ve read the reports. Ithre. Arreth. Very impressive.

The ships kept coming. Down over the lake. Very white.

Fifty-two of our brothers and sisters, said the voice. In two rooms. Standing still. Drinking. A small pause. Amused. We are not standing still. We are not drinking. We are twelve ships, and in each ship are forty of us, and each of us has more gifts than you have ever counted.

You are one man, said the voice. In a doorway. With his mother behind him.

You cannot be beside twelve ships at once.

They moved.

All twelve. At once. Faster than anything I’d seen them do on Ithre or Arreth. They came apart from their line and went out over the lake in a ring, round the oldest town, round the arch, round me. Very fast. Very sure.

I felt them start to gather what they’d stolen. Inside the ships. Four hundred and eighty of them, with every gift a queen has. Lift, and fire, and storm, and weight, and the hush. All of it coming up at once inside twelve white hulls, ready to come down on the oldest town on Lantern and the three hundred and eleven lamps on the shore and the last few hundred families in the line and my mother at the back of it with the pot.

Dory, beside me, said very quietly:

“Dad.”

“I know.”

“They’re going to—”

“I know.”

I didn’t move.

I want that written down. Because Imre Oshan’s going to write it, and she’ll get it right, but I want my own notebook to have it too. I didn’t move. Not from the arch. Not one step. My feet stayed where they were, on the lake shore of Lantern, in front of the last of the line.

I didn’t need to move.

I’ll try to write it the way it was. I don’t know if I can. Hana says I should try, and say if I couldn’t.

I thought about the first ship.

And I was beside it.

Not went. Was. The way I was at the south wall on Root, only this time I didn’t leave the arch to do it. I was in the arch, with Dory beside me and Mother behind me, and I was beside the first white ship, close enough to touch its hull, in the cold dim air over the lake, both at once.

I don’t know how. I’ve thought about it a great deal since. The eldest says she does it all the time; she says it’s how she holds every thread at once, how she was under every world in the Hedge. She says she wondered when I’d find out I could.

I found out then.

I looked at the ship. Down into it. The white hull. The silver running along the outside, tarnished. Every plate and seam and engine. Every atom of the thing they’d built to carry them.

How it was held.

I asked it to stop being anything.

It did.

Not salt. Not light. Not falling apart. The ship was there, white, over the lake, very close. And then it wasn’t. There was a space in the dim air where it had been, the shape of it, very clean, and in the space, forty people.

Tall. Pale. White-haired. In white robes. With their silver on the outside, tarnished, bright. Hanging in the cold air over the lake where the ship had been, very surprised.

For about a breath.

Then the air of Lantern, which they’d come down into very high, much too high, where it’s thin and very cold, closed on them. And they had nothing round them any more.

They came apart.

I won’t write how. Nobody needs to know how. It was quick.

I was beside the second ship.

And the third. And the fourth.

I don’t know how long it took. Aune says it was less time than it takes to say their numbers. She was in the sky above all of it, very high, in her fighter, where she’d been for twenty-two days. She says from up there she saw a ring of twelve white ships round the oldest town on Lantern. And then there were eleven. And then nine. And then five. Faster than she could count, and she was counting, the way Wren taught her.

She says each one went the same way. There. And then a clean space in the air the shape of a ship, with people in it. And then not even that.

She says she didn’t see me move once. She says she looked down at the arch the whole time, between ships, and I was standing in it. With Dory beside me. Not moving.

And I was beside every ship too.

They tried.

I’ll say that for them. They weren’t standing still and they weren’t drinking. The ones in the later ships felt the first ones go, and they did what the Refined do. They gathered every gift they’d stolen and threw it. At the arch. At me. At the town.

Lift: the whole lake shore, coming up, under the houses.

I put it down.

Fire: over the oldest town, as hot as Sera.

I gave it back to the air as light.

The hush: at me. At Mother. At the line. A hand over every mouth on Lantern.

It didn’t find anything to hold.

And then there was one ship left.

I didn’t take it.

I was beside it. Close enough to touch the white hull. I could see the forty inside it, very clearly, the way I can see into anything now. I could see them very still at their stations with their tarnished silver very bright on their skin, very frightened. For the first time.

I could see something else too.

A light. Small. At the front of the ship. Recording. The way the Aldri listener in Halvane’s hand recorded the Prime. It had been recording the whole time. Every ship. Every space in the air where a ship had been. Sending it back. Along the band. Very far. Toward the centre of the web.

They’d been sent to eliminate a banished world. Of course somebody wanted to watch.

So I looked at it.

At the light. At whoever was on the other end of it, very far, at the centre, in a white room, by a window.

And I said, very quietly, the way Mother says things. On every band. Into the light.

“I told you what I would do.”

The ship was very still.

“Now I’ve done it,” I said.

I looked at the forty inside. Then back at the light.

“I’ll do it to anyone who comes for my people,” I said. “Anyone. Anywhere. However many ships you send. Whoever’s in them.”

A pause.

“My people,” I said, “are anyone who asked for help and got received.”

Then I let the last ship go.

Not let go. The other way. I let it leave. I took my hand off the hull and went back to being only in the arch, and the last white ship over Lantern hung very still in the dim air for a long time.

Then it turned round.

And went.

The last few hundred families were standing in the line behind me. Very still. With their lamps. Looking up at the sky where twelve white ships had been, and now there was one, going, very small, very fast, toward the edge of the system.

Nobody said anything.

Then Mother came up the line from the back. With the pot. Slowly. The way she walks.

She stopped beside me in the arch.

She looked up at the sky. At the last ship going. At the eleven clean places in the air over the lake where the others had been, which you could still see, very faintly, if you knew where to look. Like the shape a picture leaves on a wall.

She didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then she poured me a cup.

“Drink that,” said Mother.

I drank it.

“Now come home,” said Mother. “Everyone else first.”

The three hundred and eleven came.

Not all of them. Two hundred and four. They’d been on the shore watching. The old ones in the oldest houses, who’d said they’d been born there and would die there. They’d seen the white ships come, and the seal, and the voice saying eliminated, and they’d stood on their steps with their lamps and waited to be.

And then they’d seen the ships stop being anything.

They came down to the arch after the last family went through. Two hundred and four of them. Very slowly. With their lamps. The oldest of them, the old woman who’d poured for Ilas, stopped in front of me.

“You didn’t have to,” she said. Through Dot. “We said we’d stay.”

“I know.”

“You could have let them,” she said. “It was our choice.”

“Yes,” I said. “Staying was your choice. Being eliminated for it wasn’t.”

She looked at me for a long time.

Then she held out her lamp.

“Carry it through,” she said. “My hands are very tired.”

I carried it through.

Andraste was at the arch on the other side.

On the red glass. In her coat. With Holdfast across her knees, where it had been for twenty-two nights. And the other four beside her in a row, wrapped in coats. And Wren on the end with her sheet.

She stood up when I came through.

She didn’t say anything. She looked at me for a long time. The whole of me. The way she looks at a blade after a fight, for nicks.

“No door,” said Andraste. In the end.

“No.”

“I felt it,” said Andraste. “Through Dory. Through the net. Eleven of them.” She put Holdfast down on the glass. “I didn’t need to come through.”

“No.”

“I’m glad,” said Andraste. Very quietly. “I’m very glad, Lucas. I’d have been late.”

Hana didn’t say anything at all.

She just put her hands on my face. Very cold; the glass had been cold all night. And looked at my eyes for a long time. Black. Ordinary black. The way they’ve been since the cadet field.

“You didn’t go anywhere,” said Hana.

“No.”

“You were in eleven places at once and you didn’t go anywhere,” said Hana. “I was ready. I had the breath.” She didn’t take her hands away. “I didn’t need it.”

“Does that frighten you?”

Hana thought about it. Very honestly. The way she thinks about everything true.

“Yes,” said Hana. “Keep it frightening you too.”

Dory sat with me on the porch that night. At the turn. With Oona lifting the step and Mother lifting the porch, and the lamps of Lantern going up the hill from the red glass, very small, the last of them.

“I could see you,” said Dory. “Through the net. In all of them at once. And in the arch.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Neither did I.”

She was quiet for a long time.

“Could I?” said Dory.

I didn’t answer straight away. I looked at her. Twenty-two. With Dusk in her hand and her black eyes open, looking at the lamps.

“Yes,” I said. “I think so. One day.”

Dory looked at the lamps for a long time.

“I don’t want to,” she said. Very quietly. “Dad. I don’t want to find out.”

“Good,” I said. “Keep not wanting to.”

“Is that what you did?”

“Every day,” I said. “Until today.”

A hundred and seven stayed.

They’re still there. On Lantern. In the oldest houses on the shore of the biggest lake, with their lamps lit, under a thin red sun that the star-eater will reach in a little under a year, Mara Quell says.

Mother went back. Once more. With Ilas. To sit with them.

And Halvane went with her.

That’s the part I want to write next. Because it’s the part that matters most, and nobody on any band talks about it.

Halvane stood on the shore of the biggest lake on Lantern at dusk with a hundred and seven people who wouldn’t leave, and looked at their sun.

“How long?” he said. To Mara Quell, on the silver.

Eleven months, said Mara Quell. Maybe less. It’s getting faster.

Halvane turned round. To the hundred and seven. On their steps. With their lamps.

“You don’t want to leave your world,” said Halvane.

The old ones looked at him. Very tall. Very old. In his robe.

“We were born here,” said one of them.

“So was I,” said Halvane. “On Ister. Under the lamp.” He folded his long hands. “And when something came for it, my people didn’t leave it. We took it with us.”

Nobody said anything.

“There’s an engine,” said Halvane. “Under the deepest city on Ister. It moves a world. All of it. Its sea and its sky and its houses and its people, all at once, somewhere else.” He looked at the lake. “We’ve built them on Root and its moons. We could build one here. Under your lake.”

“How long?”

Halvane looked at Mara Quell’s numbers on the silver for a long time.

“If we start tomorrow,” said Halvane, “with every engineer on Ister, and every smith on Avalon, and every queen who’ll sing the ground soft for us,” he paused, “nine months.”

“That’s before the star,” said the old woman who’d poured for Ilas. She’d come back through the arch with Mother. She’d wanted to see.

“Just,” said Halvane.

They started the next morning.

I’ll write the engine, because it’s the most hopeful thing I’ve seen in a long time, and because Mother says I always write the fights long and the building short, and it should be the other way round.

Every engineer on Ister came. Halvane asked and they came, the way the grandmothers come, through the arch, with their cases. And every smith on Avalon who wasn’t needed for the walking engines. Ossel. Teel’s family. Odra, from the ridge, with Ash beside her, who said she’d never built anything you could move a world with and she’d very much like to.

Keir and Enna came. Enna very round now, with the twins due any week, sitting on a crate on the lake shore with her drawings on her knee and Keir telling her to go home and Enna telling Keir he was holding the drawing upside down. He was.

And the queens.

The heavy queen, in the Ground, came down on the lake shore of Lantern like a hill. The Drenn queen in the Scarecrow, very tall, her four arms folded. And the marsh queen. Standing on one leg at the edge of the biggest lake.

They sang the ground soft. Under the lake. Deep. So the Aldri could dig.

It took the first month just to make a place for the engine to go.

The hundred and seven watched. From their steps. With their lamps. Every day.

On the thirtieth day, the old woman who poured for Ilas came down from her step, very slowly, to where Enna was sitting on her crate.

She held out a cup. Her own pot. Her own tea.

“For the one who draws,” said the old woman. Through Dot.

Enna looked at it for a long time.

Then she poured the first one out on the lake shore. Without being told. And drank the second.

“I knew it would work,” said Enna. To Keir. Afterward. “The engine. I’ve always known. But that’s the first time I’ve known it was going to be worth it.”

Lantern isn’t the only one. That’s the thing Halvane said afterward, at the long table, with Okafor and Mara Quell and Senna Thale and Bell. That’s the thing that changed everything.

“Some of them won’t leave,” said Halvane. “On every one of Mara’s stars. Some of them will never leave. They were born there.” He put his long hands flat on the table. “We can’t carry everyone through an arch. But if we get there early enough, we can carry their world.”

“How early?”

“A year,” said Halvane. “For a small world. Two for a big one.” He looked at Mara Quell’s sheet. Hundred and sixty-three stars. “We won’t reach them all. Not in time.”

“Then we reach the ones we can,” said Okafor.

“Yes,” said Halvane. “And the ones we can’t, we bring home through the arches. And the ones who won’t come, and we can’t reach in time—” He stopped.

“We sit with them,” said Mother. From the stove. “Until they decide. Or until it’s dark.”

The Collective called me a monster.

On every band. The voice. Not the Assize’s this time. Another one. A man’s. Very grave. Very sorrowful.

Four hundred and forty citizens of the Collective, it said. Killed in a moment. In the sky over a banished world. By the man Lucas Dask, who stood in a doorway and smiled.

I didn’t smile. I’ve watched the recording. Imre Oshan made me. I didn’t smile.

He has shown what he is, said the voice. A weapon. In the hands of a world that answers to no law. Who kills our people in their hundreds and calls it protection. A pause. The Collective will not permit this. Any world that shelters Lucas Dask, or accepts the help of those who shelter him, stands with him.

The Collective is considering its response.

It played the recording. All of it. On every band. Every ship. Every clean space in the air.

It didn’t play the end. The part where I let the last one go.

On Ister, Imre Oshan says, the children took the figures off their shelves for a day. The ones with the light-up eyes. Some of them were frightened. Some of their parents were.

Then volume ten of The Asker came out. With the last ship on the last page. Turning round. Going.

They put the figures back.

But that wasn’t what happened at the back of the far hall.

They’d seen it too. The small worlds. The ones who sit at the very end behind a thousand others and get to stand up once every hundred years. The ones whose grandmothers asked and got received.

They’d seen a man stand in a doorway on a banished world at the very edge of the web, with ninety thousand of its people going home behind him and his mother at the back of the line with a teapot. And twelve ships come to eliminate them. And eleven stop being anything.

And they’d heard what he said.

My people are anyone who asked for help and got received.

Tiamat caught it first. On the old bands. The ones the small worlds use to talk to each other when they don’t want the Collective listening.

They were saying it.

Over and over. From world to world. In a hundred languages. Dot turned some of them, at the long table, very slowly, and they were all the same.

Anyone who asked and got received.

Anyone who asked.

Received.

Ingrid started another sheet. She said she didn’t know what to call it. In the end Konrad wrote the top line for her.

Asked.

And under it, one by one, as the old bands brought them in, the small worlds at the very back of the far hall. Sending threads. Very thin. Whispering. The way the twentieth world on Mara Quell’s sheet had whispered.

Is it true? Will you come?

There were forty-one by the end of the first week.

The Collective threatened war on the ninth day.

Not on the bands. To us. A ship came to the edge of the Watch. Not white. Grey. Very big. With the Prime’s mark on it, the plain one, the one on his coat.

It didn’t come in.

It sent one line. To the long table. Okafor read it out.

The worlds called Avalon and Ister, and every world of the Hedge, are on notice. Any further interference in the affairs of member worlds will be treated as an act of war against the Collective. All of it.

Okafor put the paper down on the long table.

“All of it,” said Okafor. “Millions of worlds. Trillions of people.”

“Yes,” said Senna Thale.

“Can they?”

Senna Thale didn’t answer straight away. She turned her cup round in her long hands.

“They’ve never had to,” she said. In the end. “In four thousand years. Nobody’s ever made them.” She looked at me. “I don’t know if they remember how.”

Okafor wrote it on the slate. Under Theirs too. Under Before the light goes out.

War?

With the question mark. She looked at it for a long time.

Then she rubbed out the question mark. With her thumb.

Then she wrote it back in.

“I don’t know,” said Okafor. To the slate. “I don’t know which.”

The Overseer watched the recording. The Collective’s. On the band, in Crane’s room at the end of the line, with the dog at his feet.

All of it. Every ship. Every clean space in the air.

He came up the hill afterward. In Holt’s cap. And stood at the bottom of the porch steps for a long time.

“They didn’t play the end,” said the Overseer.

“No.”

“You let one go,” said the Overseer. “With forty in it. With the recording.” He scratched the dog’s ear. “The houses never once let one go. Not in all the time I sat beside them. Not one ship. Not one world. Not one child in a line.”

“I needed someone to tell them.”

“I know,” said the Overseer. “That’s why the houses never did it. They never needed anyone to tell anyone anything. They just took.” He looked up at me. “You let one go so somebody could carry a message. That’s the difference. They’ll never understand it. I didn’t, for most of my life.”

He turned round. And went back down the hill. In Holt’s cap.

The star-eater reached its first Collective star on the fourteenth day.

Not one of the small ones. Not Hesketh or the twentieth or any of the forty-one who’d whispered. A bigger world. A member in good standing, with a seat halfway up the far hall, that had never once in its history asked for anything because it had never once needed to.

Its sun was small and red and old. Mara Quell had it on her sheet. She’d sent it a warning on the old band, the day after Lantern, with the date. It never answered.

It went out.

Nobody came. Not from the Collective. Not in time.

Six hundred million people. On a world with a seat halfway up the far hall and a Collective fleet three days away and the protection of the Assize.

Nobody came.

The swarms went in after.

I wanted to go.

I’d like that written down. The moment Mara Quell said the date, the moment Tiamat said the star over that world was dimming. I was on my feet at the long table. Dory was too.

Mara Quell stopped us.

“They didn’t answer,” she said. Very quietly. “Not once. Not the warning. Not the date. Not the second warning.” She put her hand flat on her sheet. “They’re a member in good standing. They believe the Collective will come. If you go, they’ll be banished for it. In front of the whole far hall. And they never asked.”

“They’re going to die.”

“Yes,” said Mara Quell. “And they’ve chosen to wait for the family.” She looked at me. “Your mother says that’s allowed.”

I looked at Mother.

Mother was at the stove. Very still. With her back to us.

“It’s allowed,” said Mother. Not turning round. “It’s the worst thing that’s ever been allowed. But it’s allowed.”

She added them to the names the next morning. All six hundred million. Not one by one; nobody knew their names. She said: and everyone on the world with the seat halfway up the hall, who waited.

Oona said: goodnight, love.

Then the second. Eleven days later. A member world. Larger.

Then the third.

I’ll write what happened on the bands. Because it’s the thing that changed, and Senna Thale says it’s the most important thing that’s happened in the Reach in four thousand years.

They were angry.

Not the small worlds. They’d always known. The big ones. The members in good standing. The ones with seats halfway up the far hall, who paid tithe and obeyed the Assize and had never once asked for anything. Watching three of their own go dark one after another. Six hundred million. A billion. A billion and a half. With the Collective three days away.

And nobody came.

Where is the Collective? said a voice on the old band. From a world nobody had heard from before. Big. Rich. A long way in. Where is the family?

It protects its members, said another. That’s what it’s for. Where is it?

Lantern was banished, said a third. And ninety thousand of them are alive.

Ingrid didn’t start a new sheet for those. She said there wasn’t a word for it.

Konrad did. He said there was.

Asking.

Bell came up the hill on the twenty-first night.

With her stick, which she doesn’t need, and a sheet of paper, which she does. She sat down at the long table across from me and put the paper down and looked at me over her glasses for a long time.

“You took eleven pieces out of one of those,” said Bell. “As big as worlds. And it didn’t notice.”

“Yes.”

“You can’t kill it by taking pieces,” said Bell. “It’s too big. It’d take you a month, and there are more of them, and they’re growing.” She tapped the paper. “So don’t take pieces.”

“Then what?”

“It eats stars,” said Bell. “Whole. It puts them in its mouth and swallows them.” She looked at me. “What happens to a star when it eats it?”

I didn’t know. I said so.

“Neither do I,” said Bell. “Not exactly. But it doesn’t go out all at once. Halvane says the sun round the Lenn took a day to go. It goes in slowly. Into the mouth. And for that day, the star’s inside it.” She turned the paper round so I could read it. “Still burning.”

It was sums. Bell’s sums. In her small hand, all the way down the sheet.

I don’t understand them all. I understand some. Father taught me the table; Bell taught me the rest, at the long table, the breaking and the joining, the part Father didn’t know.

At the bottom, she’d written one line. Underlined twice.

Small red stars can’t go supernova. They’re not heavy enough.

And under that:

Unless someone makes them heavy enough.

“You ask atoms to be other atoms,” said Bell. “All the time. You’ve done it since you were four. Water on the moon.” She leaned forward. “A star is atoms. Mostly hydrogen. You know what happens if you ask enough hydrogen in a star’s heart to be iron.”

I did. Father’s wall. The last of the light ones and the first of the heavy ones. Iron in the middle. Where stars stop.

“It falls in,” I said.

“It falls in,” said Bell. “All at once. And then it doesn’t.”

“It goes out.”

“It goes off,” said Bell. “Supernova. Brighter than anything. Brighter than a galaxy, for a moment.” She sat back. “Inside the thing that’s eating it.”

Nobody at the long table said anything for a long time.

Then Mother, at the stove, not turning round, said:

“Can he get out in time?”

Bell looked at her.

“I don’t know,” said Bell. “That’s the sum I haven’t done yet.”

She picked up her stick. And the paper. And stood up from the long table, slowly, the way she does now, though she doesn’t need to.

“I’ll have it by the end of the week,” said Bell. “Don’t do anything stupid before then.”

She looked at me over her glasses.

“That means you,” said Bell.

Days 9061–9118. I Told You.

They laughed: you’re one man in a doorway with your mother behind you; you can’t be beside twelve ships at once. They gathered every stolen gift. I didn’t move. I thought about the first ship and I was beside it, and in the arch, both; the eldest says she wondered when I’d find out. I asked it to stop being anything. A clean space the shape of a ship, and forty people in it, too high, in the cold; then not. Aune counted from above: eleven, nine, five; I never moved once. They threw lift, fire, the hush; I put it down; it found nothing to hold. The last ship had a light at the front, recording, sending to the centre. I told you what I would do. Now I’ve done it. I’ll do it to anyone who comes for my people. My people are anyone who asked for help and got received. I let it go. Mother: drink that; now come home; everyone else first. Andraste: no door; I’d have been late. Hana: you didn’t go anywhere; keep it frightening you too. Dory: could I? Yes, one day. I don’t want to find out. Good; keep not wanting to. Two hundred and four of the three hundred and eleven came: staying was your choice; being eliminated for it wasn’t; carry it through, my hands are tired. A hundred and seven stayed. Halvane on the shore: we didn’t leave our world; we took it with us; an engine under your lake; nine months, just before the star. Every engineer on Ister, every spare smith, Odra and Ash, Keir and Enna nearly due; the heavy, Drenn and marsh queens sang the ground soft under the lake; the old woman brought Enna a cup: the first time I’ve known it was going to be worth it. On Mara’s stars: if we’re early enough, we carry their world; the ones we can’t, Mother: we sit with them until they decide, or until it’s dark. The Collective on every band: four hundred and forty killed by a man who stood in a doorway and smiled; I didn’t smile; it didn’t play the end. Volume ten: the last ship turning round. On the old bands at the back of the far hall: anyone who asked and got received; forty-one threads in a week; Konrad: Asked. The grey ship with the Prime’s mark: any further interference is an act of war against all of it. Senna: they’ve never had to; I don’t know if they remember how. Slate: War? Okafor rubbed out the question mark and wrote it back. The Overseer: they didn’t play the end; the houses never once let one go; you let one go so somebody could carry a message; that’s the difference. The star-eater took a member world with a seat halfway up the hall: six hundred million; they never answered; Mara: they’ve chosen to wait for the family; Mother: it’s the worst thing that’s ever been allowed, but it’s allowed; and everyone who waited. Nobody came. Then a second, a third. Where is the family? Lantern was banished and ninety thousand are alive. Konrad: Asking. Bell: don’t take pieces; for a day the star’s inside it, still burning; small red stars can’t go supernova; unless someone makes them heavy enough; ask the hydrogen in its heart to be iron; it falls in, and then it goes off, inside the thing that’s eating it. Mother: can he get out in time? That’s the sum I haven’t done yet; I’ll have it by the end of the week; don’t do anything stupid before then; that means you.