Scarecrow

Luka lit his own candle.

I’ll put that first, because it’s what everyone on Ister knows about his first birthday now, and because it’s true, and because Halloway would like it on record that she was against it.

It was Sera’s idea. The birthday. Not the candle.

On Hearth they don’t do much for a first birthday. Sera says her mother made a cake and her father made a door, because he always makes a door, and that was that. On Earth, Mother says, you had a cake if there was flour, and there wasn’t always. On Hyrran the First Blade’s children are taken up the ridge on their first birthday and shown the whole world from the shelf, which Andraste is very much looking forward to, and Halloway is very much not. On Ister they don’t have first birthdays at all; the Aldri count from when a child first says its own name, which can be years.

But Sera said this was Avalon. And Avalon was everything at once. And her son was going to have a cake with a candle on it and every person he belonged to round the long table, and she didn’t care what anyone did on any other world.

Mother said that was the most sensible thing she’d heard all week.

The trouble was the candle.

Luka is a year old now. Very nearly. He has the Calder red hair, a great deal of it, sticking up at the back, which Mother says is my fault. He can stand, if he’s holding onto something. He can walk, if he’s holding onto two things. He’s very quiet. He watches. He watches everything, very slowly, the way Rory planes doors, and when he’s finished watching he reaches for it.

And whatever he reaches for gets warm.

Not hot. Not yet. Halloway says not yet in a voice that suggests she’s counting the days. Warm. His cup. His spoon. The rail on the porch. The edge of the long table where he pulls himself up. Sera says there’s a warm place on every piece of furniture in the house at the height of his hands now, and if you put your palm on the wall by the stairs you can feel where he went past that morning.

Sera moved all the candles months ago. Mother moved the matches. Rory put a little iron guard round the kitchen hearth, planed very smooth, so he couldn’t get close.

So the question was whether a boy like that should be put in front of a lit candle on his first birthday.

Halloway said no.

Sera said yes.

Andraste said she didn’t see what the argument was. Her daughter was going to the top of a mountain.

They compromised. Which in this house means everyone argued for three days and then Mother decided.

Mother decided there’d be a candle. One. In the middle of the cake. Unlit. And the cake would be on the long table, and everyone would be round it, and Sera would hold Luka on her knee, and Sera would light it, the way you’re supposed to, and everyone would sing, and Sera would blow it out for him, and that would be that.

Halloway said that was acceptable. Sera said it was acceptable. Andraste said it was very cautious. Mother said Andraste could take her own daughter up a mountain and shout at it, and the rest of us would have cake.

Everyone came.

I mean everyone. I’ve stopped being surprised by that. The long table was put out end to end on the grass with two more beside it, which Rory made the week before and planed, and every grandmother on every arch came through. Maura and Rory, of course. Rory brought a door. A very small one. On a frame. A door the right height for a boy of one, that opened and shut, with a little iron latch, so Luka could go through it and come back. He said he’d made a door for every one of his grandchildren on their first birthday, and he wasn’t going to stop now just because this one was warm.

Liam came, with his Rory, who sets fire to things, and who stood very close to Luka the whole afternoon and looked at him with enormous respect, the way the Calder boys look at each other.

Kyria came, with all six husbands. Taveth with the great iron pot, which Mother inspected at the arch and then let through without a word, which is the closest she’ll come to admitting defeat.

Halvane and Ilas came. Halvane sat down. On the bench. Between Kesh and Teo. Teo moved two of his arms without being asked.

Imre Oshan came, with a notebook. Wren came, with her slate. The eating hall woman came, which she’d never done before, because she’d said she didn’t leave Ister, she had a hall to run. She’d left it to her sister. She came up the hill carrying a gold box nearly as big as she was, and wouldn’t let anyone help.

The cake was Mother’s. Of course. With Maura helping. A tall round one, with red icing, because Sera asked for red, the Calder red. And one candle in the middle. White. Unlit.

Sera sat at the end of the long table in the chair with arms with Luka on her knee. And everyone round. Twenty children. Three babies. Six wives. All the grandmothers. Me at Sera’s shoulder.

Mother put the cake down in front of them.

Luka looked at it.

He looked at it for a long time. The way he does. The cake. The red. The candle in the middle. He looked at the candle longest. He looked at the wick. Very carefully. I saw his eyes go to it and stay.

“Right,” said Sera. And reached for the long match Mother had given her.

And Luka reached for the candle.

Not with his hand. That’s what I want written down. He didn’t touch it. He couldn’t have; it was too far across the cake, and Sera was holding him.

He just reached. With his whole small self. The way you’d reach for something across a room you weren’t allowed to cross. His hands came up off Sera’s arms, very slowly, both of them, open, towards the candle.

And the wick lit.

Very small. Very gentle. A single yellow flame, the size of a fingernail, standing up straight and still on top of the white candle in the middle of the red cake.

Nobody moved.

Sera still had the long match in her hand. Unlit.

Luka looked at the flame. And it looked, I swear, back at him. It stood very still. Not flickering. Not leaning. Just there. The way a dog sits when it’s been told.

Then Luka laughed.

It’s the first time he’d laughed out loud. I want that written down too. He’s a quiet baby. He smiles. He watches. He doesn’t laugh. Sera’s tried everything. Goldie’s tried everything. Ash once spent an entire afternoon pulling faces at him and he watched her the whole time with great interest and didn’t laugh once.

He laughed at his candle.

A big round surprised laugh. The kind that comes out of babies all at once, from the bottom, like they didn’t know it was in there. And when he laughed, the flame went up. Just a little. A finger’s width. And then down again. As if it were laughing too.

Halloway was on her feet. Of course she was.

And Sera put her hand up. Without looking round. Flat. The way she does on the ridge, Andraste says, when someone’s about to do something too fast.

“Wait,” said Sera.

Halloway waited.

Sera leaned down. Very close to Luka’s ear. And said, very softly, in the voice she uses for him and nobody else: “That’s yours, love. You made that. Isn’t it lovely.”

Luka looked at the flame.

“Now,” said Sera. “We have to sing. And then we blow it out. Can you let it go, for the singing? Can you keep it nice and small?”

I don’t know if he understood. Halloway says he can’t have. He’s a year old. Rory says he did. Rory says the Calder boys always understand fire before they understand anything else, it’s the first language they’ve got.

The flame stayed exactly where it was.

So we sang.

All of us. Round the long table on the grass. In about six languages, because the Aldri don’t have a song for it and sang the one they sing when someone says their own name, and the Hyrrani sang the ridge-call very quietly, and Kyria’s husbands sang it worse, Taveth worst, and Mother and Maura sang the Earth one and the Hearth one at the same time and they didn’t match and nobody minded.

And the flame stood on the candle. Still. Small. Yellow.

When the singing stopped, Sera leaned down again.

“Now blow,” said Sera. “Like this.” And she blew. Very gently. Not at the candle. At his cheek. So he’d feel it.

Luka looked at her. Then at the flame. Then he puffed out his cheeks, the way children do the first time, very serious, and blew. And nothing came out at all, because you can’t blow when you’re one, not properly, it’s just a face.

The candle went out anyway.

Not blown. Just out. Like someone had pinched it. A small thin line of smoke, going straight up.

The eating hall woman, at the far end of the long table, burst into tears. She said afterwards it was because her son had done the same thing. Not the fire. The blowing. The face. She said she hadn’t seen anyone make that face in forty years.

Mother gave her the first piece of cake.

Halloway sat down. Very slowly.

“He’s one,” said Halloway. To nobody. “He’s not even one. He’s one tomorrow.”

“He waited,” said Sera. Still holding him. Still with her face very close to his. “Did you see? He waited. He didn’t touch it. He didn’t make it bigger. He kept it small, for the singing, because I asked him.” Her voice went odd. “He listened.”

Maura was holding Rory’s hand across the table. Very tight.

“Liam set fire to his own cot,” said Maura. “At two. Didn’t listen to anyone. Not for years.”

“I remember,” said Liam. From down the table.

“Sera set fire to the curtains at three,” said Maura. “Didn’t listen either.”

“I remember that too,” said Sera.

“This one listened,” said Maura. She looked at Luka. At his red hair, sticking up. “At one.”

Rory didn’t say anything. He’s good at that. He got up and went round the table and knelt down in front of Sera’s chair, which takes him a moment now, and looked at his grandson for a long time.

Then he picked up the little door. The one he’d made. And set it on the grass in front of them. And opened it.

“There,” said Rory. “That’s yours too.”

Luka went through the door.

Holding Sera’s hand, and Goldie’s, one on each side. Through the little frame, on the grass, very slowly, very seriously, measuring it. And then turned round. And came back through.

And put his hand on the latch. Rory’s latch. Iron. Planed smooth.

It went warm.

Rory looked at the warm place on the latch for a long time.

“Good,” said Rory. “It’s meant to.”

The eating hall woman’s gold box was a soft one.

Of course it was. She said she’d had the toymakers make one specially. Not for the shops. Just one. A soft Luka, red, warm, with the little pad you heat on the hearth. But this one had something new. In his soft hands, stitched very carefully, the size of a fingernail: a little yellow flame.

“I didn’t know he’d do it,” said the eating hall woman. “When I ordered it. I swear I didn’t. I just thought he would. One day.”

“He did it today,” said Sera.

“I know,” said the woman. “I was there. I’ll never get over it.”

By the next morning, Ister knew. Of course.

By the end of the week, the toymakers had made ten thousand.

The soft Luka with a flame is called Luka’s First Birthday. It comes in a red box with a white candle printed on the side, and a small card inside, in Aldri and in ours, which says: He waited. He kept it small. Because his mother asked.

Halloway has seen the card. She says it’s the most dangerous thing she’s ever read, because now every child on Ister is going to want to light a candle on their first birthday, and the Aldri can’t, and there’ll be tears.

There were tears. Aune says. All over the second city. Little Aldri children, sitting in front of birthday cakes, very seriously, holding their hands up at candles, reaching, and nothing happening.

And then their mothers lit the candles for them. And said, there, you made that. And the children believed them.

Aune says it’s the most popular birthday on Ister now. The Aldri, who didn’t have first birthdays at all. She says the keepers of the long record have had to start a new column.

The long record, while I’m on it.

Luka, eleven months old, has a column of his own now. Halvane says the keepers have stopped calling it see first entry and started calling it the warm book. There are four thousand two hundred Lukas in the warm book. Halvane says forty of them have red hair, and the keepers can’t explain it, because Aldri don’t have red hair, and the mothers swear they haven’t dyed it.

Dory went and looked at one, on the plaza. She says it’s red. She says she looked all the way down and it’s really red, there’s nothing put on it.

She says she doesn’t know what that means.

Neither do I. I’ve put it at the back of the notebook. With the Kyrie list.

That was the first thing that happened. Luka’s birthday. Everything else that month happened on Ister.

Imre Oshan invited us to the plaza.

The film’s not finished. She said it would be another year at least, because the Aldri don’t hurry, and because Isar Thenn kept going back and doing the bread again. But they’d finished a part of it. A short part. She said they’d like to show it, on the great wall in the second city, the one they use for the very old films, to everyone on Ister at once. And she said they’d like us to see it there. With everyone. Not first, not in a room. In the plaza. Like anybody.

I said no.

Risa said yes. Before I’d finished.

I’ve stopped saying no. There doesn’t seem to be much point.

The plaza in the second city is very large. Aune says it can hold a million Aldri standing, which is what Aldri do in it, and that’s what they did that night. All of them. Standing. In the dark. Facing the great wall at the north end, which is as tall as the eldest’s plateau and as wide as the long table is long, many times over, and has been showing films to the Aldri since before the running.

They’d kept a space for us. Near the front. Not at the front. Aune said she’d asked for that. Nobody goes to the front.

And when we came into it, the whole family, through the arch and across the plaza, with three babies and the grandmothers and Halvane and Ilas and Kyria and the six husbands, the Aldri moved aside. A million of them. Very slowly. Without a word. And made a path.

And all the way along the path, as we went past, I saw children holding soft ones.

Of me. Of Dory, with her new nose. Of Mother with the pot. Of the queens, cat-sized, held in two arms. Of Taveth with his spoon. Of the three. Of Kyria, with iron in her blade, which the children held carefully, the way you’re meant to.

And a great many babies in very small dark glasses.

Halloway, behind me, made a noise.

They didn’t show the doorway.

I’d thought they would. I’d thought it would be the big part, the twelve ships and the arch and the forty surprised faces. It wasn’t. Imre Oshan said that was for the end, and the end wasn’t finished.

They showed the long table.

I’ll try and say what it was like. To stand in a plaza with a million people, in the dark, and look up at a wall as tall as a mountain, and see your own long table on it.

They’d built it. On Ister. A long table, the same length, the same wood, I don’t know how. With the bread on it, and the jam pot, and the honey. And a teapot with a chip in the spout. And a window behind it with a sill full of small things.

And Maelis Orr came in from the kitchen door, as tall as the plateau, in a long brown coat, with her grey hair pinned up the way Mother pins it.

And sat down. Very suddenly. At the end of the table.

The whole plaza laughed. A million people. Very quietly, the way the Aldri laugh, like wind going over grass. Because they all knew. Because they’d all read it. Because every one of them, somewhere, had a soft one of a woman in a brown coat who sat down very suddenly when something was too much.

Mother, beside me, in the dark, put her hand over her mouth.

Then Maelis Orr stood up again. And picked up the pot. And poured.

The first pour. And stopped. And the second pour, lower. A finger’s width. Less.

And then she put the pot down on the cloth. And turned the handle round.

Towards a child at her elbow. A small Aldri girl, playing Oona. Who reached out, without looking, and lifted it.

Mother made a sound I’ve never heard her make.

Not crying. Something under crying. She’d been watching herself for four thousand cups in Maelis Orr’s letters and she’d never once seen it from outside. The handle. The child. The pour.

“Is that what I do?” said Mother. In the dark. Very small. To me.

“That’s what you do,” I said.

“Every time?”

“Every time.”

She didn’t say anything else. She held onto my arm. All the way through.

Then he came in.

Isar Thenn. Through the porch door. Ducking, the way he has to. In my coat. With silver in his hair. And the face.

He stopped at the edge of the long table. And looked at it. All of it. The bread and the jam and the honey and Maelis Orr pouring and the child lifting.

And then he looked at the bread.

For about as long as it takes to say good morning.

The plaza went silent.

All of it. A million Aldri. Not laughing. Not breathing, nearly. Watching a man look at a piece of bread.

I don’t know how he did it. I’ve thought about it every day since. He didn’t do anything. He just looked at it. But you could see, in his face, everything. Earth, and the thin slices, and Mother cutting them, and the farm, and every morning there wasn’t enough. And then, on top of all of it, very quietly, as if it had only just occurred to him: that there was enough now. That it was just there. On the table. Every morning. That nobody had to cut it thin.

He picked it up.

He didn’t eat it. He just held it. For a moment. Like a good surprise.

Then he sat down at the long table, next to Maelis Orr, and she put a cup in front of him, and turned the handle round.

That was all. That was the whole of what they showed. It wasn’t very long. Imre Oshan says it was about as long as it takes Mother to pour for the whole table, which is a long time, but not that long.

The wall went dark.

And the plaza didn’t move.

A million Aldri. Standing. In the dark. Not moving. Not making a sound.

And then, from somewhere near the back, very far away, a child said, out loud, in Aldri, very clearly: “I do that.”

Aune told me what it meant. She said the child had said: I do that. With the bread.

And then another child said it. And another. And then, all over the plaza, children were saying it, in the dark, to their mothers, quietly, the way you’d tell someone a secret: I do that. I do that too.

I’d like to say I knew what to do with that. I didn’t.

I stood there in the dark. With Mother holding my arm and Dory on the other side of her and Risa behind me, and a million people saying, very quietly, that they looked at bread too.

“He’s better looking than me,” I said. Very quietly. To nobody.

“You’re fishing,” said Risa. Behind me. In the dark.

“I’m not fishing.”

“You’re fishing,” said Risa. “But you’re right.” A pause. “He is. And he’s never once been that man. And you have, every morning, since before I met you.” Her hand came onto my shoulder. “He had to watch you for a week to learn it. You didn’t have to learn it at all.”

Aune, on my other side, didn’t say anything. She just took my hand. In the dark. And held it. The way the Aldri do everything. As if it were important.

Isar Thenn found us afterwards. At the arch. He’d come through the crowd on his own, ducking, carrying his own bag.

He looked at Mother first.

“Was it right?” said Isar Thenn. “Maelis wanted to know. She’s too frightened to ask you herself.”

Mother looked up at him for a long time. All the way up.

“Tell her,” said Mother, “that I didn’t know I did the handle.”

Isar Thenn nodded.

“Tell her,” said Mother, “that I’ll never be able to do it again without thinking of her.” A pause. “And tell her that’s all right.”

Then he looked at me.

He didn’t ask if it was right. He didn’t need to. He’d been on the wall, as tall as a mountain, and heard a million people tell their mothers I do that.

“The bread,” I said.

“The bread.”

“It’s not about the bread,” I said. “You know that. You knew it before you did it.”

“I know,” said Isar Thenn. “It’s about there being enough.”

“It’s about being surprised,” I said. “Every morning. That there’s enough. And not getting used to it.”

He thought about that. The slow Aldri way.

“I’ll put that in too,” he said.

We came home through the arch at midnight. Okafor was waiting on the red glass.

She didn’t say anything about the film. She’d seen it; she said she’d watched it from the back of the plaza, standing, like everyone, and that it was very good, and that she’d like to talk about something else now, if nobody minded. She had her slate. She’d written a word on it. She’d rubbed it out and written it again so many times that the grey round the edges was nearly as dark as the letters.

Ready.

“Halvane,” said Okafor. “Kyria. Lucas. Dory. The long table. Now, please. While the children are asleep.”

So we sat at the long table at midnight, with the lamp lit and the bread put away, and the clay lamp from Lantern smoking on the kitchen sill. Okafor and Halvane, who sat down without thinking about it now. Kyria, in her armour. Varra, who’d come through the Root arch in the dark with two of the Kasrai behind her. Crane and Bell and Asha. Aune. Risa. Me and Dory. Mother at the end with the pot, because Mother said if there was going to be a meeting at her table in the middle of the night there was going to be tea at it.

Okafor put her slate in the middle. Face up. Where everyone could see the word.

“Mattick’s granddaughter,” said Okafor, “says the Prime sounds like him on the outside and nothing on the inside. Dory says there’s something under his voice. The Collective’s been considering its response for half a year. Mattick’s world burns toys in the square. And there are a hundred and sixty-three small red stars on the eater’s path with member worlds under them, and the Collective hasn’t moved one of them.”

She looked round the table.

“It’s coming,” said Okafor. “I don’t know when. I don’t know from where. But it’s coming. A people that’ll burn a child’s toy in front of her will do worse when it’s frightened, and it’s very frightened.”

Nobody argued.

“So,” said Okafor. “We get ready.”

“We are not the ones who start it,” said Halvane.

He said it very quietly. The way he says the things he means most. Everyone looked at him.

“Ister ran for eleven thousand years,” said Halvane. “We stopped running. We’re not going to start chasing.” He put his long hands flat on the long table. “If we build anything, we build it so nobody can come in. Not so we can go out.”

“Walls,” said Kyria. “Not spears.”

“Walls,” said Halvane. “And eyes. And something in the hand, for when the wall isn’t enough. But never the first blow.”

Kyria looked at him for a long time.

“On the ridge,” said Kyria, “we’ve never once struck first. In four hundred years of First Blades.” A pause. “We’ve struck last every time.”

“Then we agree,” said Halvane.

Okafor rubbed out the word on her slate. And wrote a different one.

Shield.

I’ll put down what they decided. It took until the first grey of the morning, and Mother made three pots, and I’ll put it down as plainly as I can, because I think it’s going to matter.

Eyes first. Dory’s net is the best early warning there is. Everyone agreed on that. When it’s out, nothing comes near Avalon or Ister or Root that she doesn’t feel. But Dory has to sleep. And Dory can’t be everywhere at once, not yet, not the whole Hedge, not all night every night.

So Asha and Ilka are making ears.

Not the Meridian’s. Smaller ones. Aldri listening posts, the size of a house, very quiet, that sit in the dark past every world on the Hedge and listen. For engines. For ships folding in. For the thin bands. For the voice. Asha says they’ll talk to each other in a ring, all the way round, and if one of them hears something it’ll tell the next, and the next, faster than a ship can fly, until the whole ring knows.

And at the middle of the ring, on Avalon: Wren’s slate.

That was Mother’s idea. She said the dawn count already goes round every arch every morning, and everyone already listens to it. So now, every morning, before the count, the ring tells Wren what it’s heard. And Wren writes it at the top of the slate. Under the stars.

Wren says she’s never had so much to count. She says she’s going to need a bigger slate. Crane’s making her one.

Then walls. The stations.

There are nine round Avalon already. Aldri stations, great slow white rings in the dark, that fired once each on the night the arm of the Hungry came, and made holes in it you could see through. And nine round Ister. And three round Root.

Now there’ll be more. Halvane says three round every Hedge world that wants them. Smaller ones. Built by Ister’s engineers, with the queens singing them ready, the way they sang Lantern’s engine, and smiths from Kiln and Odra’s forge for the iron.

And the walls. The Aldri wall, the one that went up in the ground in front of every company of the Standing on Root and held. Crane says they can make it bigger now. He says they can make it go round a whole city. Not all the time. Just when it’s needed. A wall you can’t see, standing in the air, that comes up out of the ground when Dory tells it to, or the ring does, or Wren.

Okafor asked how long.

Crane said a year. For Avalon and Ister. Two for the Hedge.

Okafor wrote it down.

Then people. The Standing.

Varra said it, in the end. Very quietly, in the Kasrai way, with her hand on her chest. She said the small worlds on the Hedge had stood up for us at the Assize. Had come to Root on the birthday. Had sent their grandmothers to Lantern. She said if the war came, it would come to them first. They were the edge. They were nearest the Collective and furthest from us.

“So we go and stand with them,” said Varra. “Before. Not after.”

So that’s what’s happening. A company of the Standing on every Hedge world that asks for one. Not to rule. Not to hold. To stand. Kasrai and Hyrrani and Hearth and Aldri, mixed, the way the Standing always is. Living in the towns. Eating at the tables. Learning the names.

Caddoc asked first. The salt-plain grandmothers sent a message the morning after Varra’s people started asking, two words long, the way the Caddi say everything.

Yes. Come.

Then the wings.

This is the part Aune and Risa had been waiting all night to talk about. I could tell. Aune had her hands folded in front of her the way the Aldri do when they’ve come about something serious, and Risa had her lightning sitting just under her skin, the way it does when she’s excited and trying not to be, so the hair on everyone’s arms stood up.

The fighters are old. Aune said so. She said the Aldri fighters are the best in the sky and they’re the same design her grandmother flew. She said that was fine when the Aldri were running, because a thing that’s been flown for four hundred years is a thing you know how to fly without thinking. But they’re not running now. And the Refined ships at Lantern were faster than anything she’d ever seen.

So Crane and Asha and Aune are making a new one.

Aldri engine, Avalon frame. Hearth guns, the ones Dinraal’s people use, silver, that the Refined’s tarnished silver doesn’t like. Kiln iron in the skin, struck three-short-one-long on Odra’s anvil first, because Odra says so and nobody argues with Odra. And a seat, Crane says, that’s shaped for whoever’s in it, not for a pilot four hundred years ago.

And for Risa’s wing, the storm-flyers, something else. Lighter. Faster. With nothing in it that lightning can break, because Risa’s wing fly inside their own weather and the old craft kept coming home scorched.

Aune’s been in the workshop every day since. She comes up the hill at dusk with oil on her hands and her grey hair tied back and a look on her face I’ve never seen. Hana says it’s the look Aune had when she was twenty and first in a cockpit. Aune says it’s the look of a woman who’s finally been asked what she thinks a fighter should be, after forty years of flying ones other people designed.

Then the hands. Suits. Weapons.

Odra came through the Hyrran arch for that part. At dawn. With her short white hair and her bare scarred arms, and a bundle wrapped in leather under one of them.

She put it on the long table. And unwrapped it.

It was a suit. Or the start of one. The Standing’s grey, the one they’ve worn since Root. But woven through it, so fine you could only see it when the lamp caught it, was silver. Not Sorn silver. Not ours, quite. The kind Hearth uses. Dinraal’s kind. Odra said she’d had it off Isolde, who’d sent a sack of it through the arch with a note saying for the ones who stand.

“Bell says it remembers,” said Odra. “Being hit. It goes hard where it’s hit, and stays hard, for a breath. Long enough.” She looked round the table. “I’ve made one. I’ll make a thousand. Then the Kiln forges will make the rest.”

“And blades,” said Kyria.

“And blades,” said Odra. “Holdfast’s steel. Not Holdfast. Nobody gets Holdfast. But the same ridge-iron, the same striking.” She looked at me. “One for every company. With a door in it. Small. For holding.”

“Can you do that?” I said. “The door?”

“No,” said Odra. “You can. You’ll come to the forge and do it. A thousand times.”

I said I would.

So that’s what Avalon and Ister are doing now. All of it. At once. Ears in the dark. Stations round every world. Walls that come up out of the ground. The Standing on the Hedge. New wings. New suits. New blades with small doors in them.

Okafor’s word for it is shield. Halvane’s is walls. Kyria’s is the old Hyrrani word for the last line, the one that doesn’t break.

Mother’s is the tea’s gone cold. She said it at dawn, when everyone was still sitting there, and made a fourth pot, and nobody had the heart to leave.

The toymakers found out about the fighter in a week.

Nobody told them. It’s meant to be a secret. Okafor was very clear. But Aune’s squadron eat at the eating hall, and the eating hall woman tells everyone everything, which is what she’s for, and somewhere between the eating hall and the toy shop, the new fighter got described to somebody who wasn’t meant to hear.

By the end of the month there was a toy.

It’s wrong. That’s the thing. Nobody’s seen the real one, so they made it from what they’d heard. It has four engines instead of one, and wings that fold the wrong way, and a seat on top, outside, which Crane says would kill anybody who sat in it. It’s gold. It makes a noise when you push it along the floor.

Crane is furious. He says it’s an insult to engineering. He says if they’re going to make his fighter they can at least make it fly.

Kesh has three.

Then the other thing. The one that wasn’t on Okafor’s slate that night, and should have been. Mother said so. At the fourth pot.

“You’re all talking about walls,” said Mother. “And that’s right. It’s right to keep the door shut on a dog that bites.” She poured. Turned the handle for nobody; Oona was asleep. Turned it anyway. “But the Hedge isn’t just a wall. It’s people. And half of them haven’t got enough.”

Nobody said anything.

“Caddoc,” said Mother. “They light the hollows with salt-oil and it’s running out. Sedge. Where the Sorn took everyone under fifty and left the old because they weren’t worth the time. There’s nobody young on Sedge to dig the reed beds. Ostry. Four million on twelve hills, and the hills were burned.” She put the pot down. “If the war comes, it’ll come to them first. Varra said so. So before it comes, somebody had better go and ask them what they need.”

“Ask,” said Okafor.

“Ask,” said Mother. “Not tell. Not bring what we think. Ask. And then bring it.”

Okafor looked at her slate for a long time.

Then she turned it over. To the clean side. And wrote, on the other side of shield:

Asking.

They go in sixes, the asking groups.

That was Mother’s idea too. A grandmother, because people tell grandmothers what they need. Someone from the long ward, because people don’t always know they’re ill. An engineer, from Ister or from Crane’s rooms, because a lot of what people need is something that’s broken. One of the Standing, because the roads aren’t safe everywhere. A child, because Mother says people answer a child honestly when they’d be too proud to answer anyone else. And someone who can ask the ground. Me, or Dory, or one of ours, or one of Lio’s, who’ve been learning.

They go to every world on the Hedge that stood with us. Every one that’s poor, or might be, or was before and never said. They sit down. Someone puts the kettle on. And the grandmother says: What do you need?

And then they write it down. Every word. On a slate. And bring the slate home to the long table.

And then it goes out on the morning trains.

The first slates have come back.

I’ll put down some of what’s on them, because I didn’t know. None of us did. Not really.

Caddoc needs lamp oil. That was first. Then ladders, because the old ones down into the hollows are four hundred years old and the rungs are going. Then a doctor who knows salt-lung, which the old Caddi get, which the long ward had never heard of. Halloway went herself. She’s been twice. She says she’s learning.

Sedge needs hands. Young ones. To dig the reed beds the Sorn left. The grandmothers of Sedge have been digging them alone for years, with their backs. Ferrin went, and Aske, who’s from there. And a hundred of the Kiln smiths’ sons and daughters, who’d heard. And Dory, who asked the reed beds to be less deep, and they were.

Ostry needs seed. And timber, to build where the hills were burned. And, Eska said, very quietly, sitting with Abbe at her table, someone to come and sit with the nine children who aren’t hers, in the evenings, who still don’t sleep. Abbe’s been going. Every evening. Through the arch. She says she sits and pours and doesn’t ask, and the nine are starting to.

The walkers’ world needs shoes. Very large ones. They’d never said. Their feet are cracked from the stone, and they’d thought that was just what feet were like. Rory’s making lasts. He says he’s never made anything that size and he’s enjoying it more than he can say.

Tiel needs nothing. Wenna said so. She sat with Mother at her table by the river and said Tiel had everything, they’d always had everything, they were a river people, they didn’t need a thing.

Then the child in that six, who was Fen, asked Wenna why her hands were shaking.

And Wenna looked at her hands for a long time. And then said her eyes had gone, these last two winters, and she couldn’t see to do the washing, and she hadn’t told anyone because a grandmother who can’t see to do the washing is no use to anyone.

Halloway went the next day. With Abena.

Wenna can see now. Not perfectly. But enough to do the washing. She sent Fen a soft one of Mother, which she’d had from the market, with the hem washed so many times it’s nearly white.

The toymakers have heard about the asking groups too. Of course.

They haven’t made a toy. Imre Oshan told them not to. She said some things you don’t put on a shelf.

But the long record has a new name in it, Halvane says. Rising faster than anything since Queenie.

It’s Asker.

The last thing that happened that month came on the thin band.

Ilka brought it down from the Meridian at dawn, the way she brought the laugh. Before the count. She found Sorrel first. Sorrel was on the red glass with Dory, waiting for Wren, with the girl’s name written on her wrist in ink, the way it’s been every morning since Mattick came.

It was a message. Very short. In the small worlds’ tongue, which Ilka read out loud, slowly. From Mattick. From Carrow.

Found her. She has it. The one with the paper on the coat. She has not let go of it since. Her name is Hesta. She is eight. Her father is home. She says to tell the girl with the green ears: thank you, and that it smells like somewhere else.

Sorrel didn’t say anything.

She looked at her wrist for a long time. At the name. Hesta. Written in ink, in the Collective’s script, a little smudged from the night, the way it had been every morning for weeks.

Then she licked her thumb. And rubbed it off.

Very slowly. Very carefully. Until her wrist was clean.

Then she put her face in Dory’s coat and cried. The way you cry when you’ve been holding something for a long time and somebody’s finally told you that you can put it down.

The other things. Quickly.

Luka is one. He walks now, holding two hands. Everything he touches is warm. The latch on Rory’s little door is the warmest thing in the house. Rory says that’s what it’s for.

Kyrie said her first word the day after Luka’s birthday. It was no. She said it to Halloway, who was trying to move Holdfast away from her basket. Andraste has had it written on a slate and hung it in the hall.

Queenie hasn’t said anything yet. She looks. Dory says she looked at the jam pot again yesterday, just the jam pot, for the length of a whole breakfast, and then looked at Dory, and smiled, and Dory says she knew what the smile meant. It meant: I can do it now. Whenever I like.

The stars said Not yet this morning. Two hundred and eighty-two.

Bell’s still doing the sum. She says she’s close. She won’t say to what.

Mattick is coming back. With the crates. He says there are more children under more floors than he can count, and he’s going to need a bigger ship.

Halvane says Ister will build him one.

Days 9502–9541. One.

Hearth makes a cake and a door; Earth had cake when there was flour; Hyrran takes them up the ridge; Ister counts from the first time a child says its own name; Sera: this is Avalon. Luka, nearly one, warms whatever he reaches for; a warm place on every piece of furniture at the height of his hands; Rory’s iron guard round the hearth. Mother decided: one candle, unlit, Sera lights it. Everyone came: Rory with a door the height of a boy of one; Liam’s Rory, with enormous respect; Kyria and the six; Taveth’s pot let through at the arch; Halvane on the bench; the eating hall woman, who never leaves Ister, with a gold box. Red cake, the Calder red. Luka reached, not touching, and the wick lit, small and still, like a dog that’s been told; and he laughed for the first time, and the flame laughed with him. Sera: wait; that’s yours, love; can you keep it nice and small for the singing? He did. Six languages; the Earth song and the Hearth song at once; he made the face, nothing came out, and the candle went out anyway. Halloway: he’s not even one. Sera: he listened. Maura: Liam’s cot at two, Sera’s curtains at three; this one listened at one. Rory’s door: that’s yours too; through and back, and the latch went warm; good, it’s meant to. The eating hall’s soft Luka with a stitched flame; ten thousand by the end of the week; He waited, he kept it small, because his mother asked; Aldri children reaching at candles and their mothers saying there, you made that; Ister has first birthdays now. The warm book: 4,200 Lukas, forty with red hair nobody can explain; Dory looked all the way down; it’s really red. The plaza in the second city, a million standing; they made a path; soft ones all along it, and babies in dark glasses. They showed the long table: Maelis Orr sat down very suddenly and a million laughed like wind on grass; she poured, lower, and turned the handle for the child. Mother: is that what I do? Every time. Isar Thenn looked at the bread for as long as it takes to say good morning, and held it like a good surprise. A child at the back: I do that. Then all of them. Risa: you’re fishing, but you’re right; he had to learn it in a week; you didn’t have to learn it at all. Mother: tell her I didn’t know I did the handle; I’ll never do it again without thinking of her; and that’s all right. It’s about being surprised every morning that there’s enough. At midnight, Okafor’s slate: Ready. Halvane: we are not the ones who start it; walls, and eyes, and something in the hand, never the first blow. Kyria: we’ve struck last every time. Shield. Eyes: Asha’s and Ilka’s listening ring round the Hedge, reporting to Wren’s slate before the count. Walls: three stations round every Hedge world that wants them; Crane’s wall round a whole city, a year for Avalon and Ister, two for the Hedge. People: Varra: we go and stand with them, before; the Standing on every Hedge world that asks; Caddoc: yes, come. Wings: Crane, Asha and Aune’s new fighter, Aldri engine, Avalon frame, Hearth silver guns, Kiln iron struck on Odra’s anvil, a seat for whoever’s in it; a lighter craft for Risa’s storm wing. Hands: Odra’s grey suits with Isolde’s silver, which goes hard where it’s hit; ridge-iron blades with a small door, which I’ll put in, a thousand times. Mother: the tea’s gone cold. The wrong gold toy fighter with the seat on top; Crane furious; Kesh has three. Mother: the Hedge isn’t just a wall, it’s people; ask, not tell. Asking. The sixes: a grandmother, the long ward, an engineer, the Standing, a child, someone who asks the ground. Caddoc: lamp oil, ladders, salt-lung; Sedge: young hands for the reed beds; Ostry: seed, timber, someone to sit with the nine; the walkers: very large shoes; Tiel: nothing, until Fen asked Wenna why her hands shook; she can see to do the washing now. No toy of the asking groups; some things you don’t put on a shelf. A new name rising in the record: Asker. Mattick, on the thin band: found her; Hesta, eight; her father is home; it smells like somewhere else. Sorrel rubbed the name off her wrist and cried into Dory’s coat. Kyrie’s first word: no, to Halloway, about Holdfast. Queenie: I can do it now, whenever I like. Two hundred and eighty-two. Halvane will build Mattick a bigger ship.