Scarecrow

Konrad’s sheet said Dov and Priya.

Not the fathers’ sheet. A different one. He keeps a great many sheets. This one lives in the drawer of the long table, under the tea towels, and it has every birthday on Avalon on it that Konrad has ever been told, and every wedding, and every day that anybody ever said was important to them. It’s very long. He adds to it every week. Ingrid says it’s the only thing in the house he’s never lost.

He took it out at breakfast and put his finger on a line near the top, very old, in very faded ink.

“Dov and Priya,” he said. “Thirty years. On the ninth.”

Mother put the pot down.

“Thirty,” she said.

“Thirty,” said Konrad.

Dov and Priya were married in the first years on Avalon. Before the city. Before the Hedge. Before almost everything. When Scarecrow was a few hundred people in tents and long huts on the plateau and the house on the rise was the only house with a proper roof.

Priya cooked. She came on the second intake, with her hands shaking from the stabilizer, and she cooked anyway, for everybody, in a pot that had been the shell plate of a kit, hammered into a bowl. Her hands stopped shaking in the green. She still keeps the pot.

Dov couldn’t walk properly when he came. Something the dome had done to him, or the war before the dome, or the stabilizer. He went everywhere slowly, with a stick, and never once complained about it, and helped her carry the pot.

I fixed his legs, in the end. In the early years, when I’d finally learned enough to know what was wrong. He walked into the kitchen the next morning without the stick and Priya dropped a whole tray of bread.

They were married that spring. On the plateau. With a ring Dov made out of a bit of kit wire, because there wasn’t anything else. Mother stood up for Priya. I stood up for Dov.

Thirty years.

“They’ll want a party,” said Maura.

“They won’t,” said Mother. “They’ll want everybody to leave them alone.”

“Then we’ll have a party,” said Maura, “and leave them alone at it.”

So we had a party.

On the plateau. Where they were married. The way it was then, as near as we could make it, which wasn’t very near, because there are a million people in Commonhold now and a city where the tents were. But the plateau’s still the plateau. The red glass. The long view down to the north field.

Priya didn’t know. Mother made sure. She asked Priya to come up to the plateau at dusk to help her carry a pot, which Priya has done nine thousand times, and Priya came up the path in her apron with her sleeves rolled up, grumbling, and got to the top, and stopped.

Everybody was there.

Not a million. The ones from then. The ones who were there in the tents. There aren’t so many of us left from the first years. Not because anybody’s died. Grandparents don’t, and we don’t seem to either. But because there were only ever a few hundred of us. And all of them came.

Holt with his cane he doesn’t need. Edda, who delivered half the babies on Avalon. Nessa. Toby and Wren. Juno. Keir and Enna. Liam and Anya, with Aoife smoking gently in a fireproof blanket. Big Sigmund and Jessa. The General, very straight. Konrad with his sheet. Ingrid. Maura and Rory. Mother.

And in the middle of them all, Dov. In his good coat. Without a stick. Standing where he stood thirty years ago, on the red glass, waiting.

Priya stood at the top of the path in her apron for a long time.

“Oh, you stupid man,” she said.

And went to him.

They didn’t make speeches. Nobody wanted them to. Mother poured. Maura fried things. The children of the people from the tents, and their children, sat on the edge of the plateau with their legs over the drop and ate.

Dov found the kit-wire ring. He’d kept it. Thirty years. It doesn’t fit any more; it never really did. He’d kept it in a drawer with the broken teapot lid from the first winter, the one Mother wouldn’t throw away.

He gave it back to her. On the red glass. In front of everybody.

“I’d make you a better one now,” he said. “Lucas could make you a better one. Anybody could.”

Priya looked at the bent bit of wire in her hand.

“Don’t you dare,” she said.

She put it on her little finger. It’s the only finger it still fits. She hasn’t taken it off since.

Later, when the dark had come down properly and the children had gone home, Priya came and sat next to Mother on the edge of the red glass with her feet over the drop.

“You stood up for me,” she said. “Thirty years ago. Right here.”

“I did,” said Mother.

“You were the only one I had. I didn’t have a mother. None of us did. You said you’d stand where a mother would stand.” Priya looked at the bent wire on her little finger. “You held my hands. Because they were shaking. Right up until he said the words.”

Mother didn’t say anything.

“They don’t shake now,” said Priya. She held them out. Flat. In the dark. Steady.

Mother took them anyway. Both of them. And held them. And they sat on the edge of the plateau like that for a long time, two old women holding hands, looking down at the lights of a city where the tents used to be.

Then Priya took the pot.

The kit pot. The one that was a shell plate. She’d been carrying it all evening without anybody noticing, the way she always does. She put it down on the red glass in the middle of everybody and took the lid off.

It was the stew. The first stew. The one she made on the plateau in the first winter, with whatever there was, in a pot that had been part of a machine, with her hands shaking. The one everybody ate who was there.

She’d made it that morning. With her hands steady.

Everybody from the tents got a bowl. Just a little. Just enough. And when they’d all got one, and were standing on the red glass in the dusk holding them, Priya looked round at them all.

“Thirty years,” she said. “Most of you weren’t even supposed to live five.”

Nobody said anything.

Then Holt raised his bowl. And everybody raised theirs. And drank.

It was terrible. It was exactly as terrible as it was the first winter. Toby says he could hear everybody on the plateau breathe in, before the first spoonful, all at once. He says it was the same breath as the first time. He says he’d know it anywhere.

The wives were very quiet on the way home.

All six of them. Walking down the plateau path in the dark in a long line, with me behind. Luna and Sera and Risa at the front, arm in arm, the way they’ve walked since we were cadets. Hana behind them. Andraste. Aune at the back, very tall, with her grey hair down.

Nobody said anything until we got to the porch.

Then Luna stopped on the bottom step and turned round.

“When’s ours?” she said.

I looked at her.

“Our anniversary,” said Luna. “When is it? The day.”

I opened my mouth.

I closed it again.

Sera laughed first. Then Risa. Then all of them. On the porch steps, in the dark, laughing so hard Hana had to sit down.

“He doesn’t know,” said Risa. “Look at him. He doesn’t know.”

“I know it was spring,” I said.

“It was autumn,” said Sera.

“It was the day after the first frost,” said Luna. “You’d been out on the north field all morning asking the ground not to freeze, and you came in with ice on your eyebrows, and I said that’s it, we’re doing it today.”

“I thought it was spring,” I said.

“You thought it was spring,” said Luna, “because you’ve never once in thirty years looked at a calendar.”

They sat on the porch until very late. All six of them. On the steps, in a row, the way the family sits. Mother came out with a pot and sat on the top step and listened and didn’t say anything.

“We’ve never celebrated it,” said Hana. “Not once. Any of us. Not properly.”

“There was always something,” said Andraste. “A war. A rescue. A queen screaming. A world falling into a star.”

“There’s always something,” said Luna. “There’ll always be something. That’s what Dov and Priya know.” She looked at the plateau, dark now, at the top of the path. “They had thirty years of always something. And they still went up there tonight and ate terrible stew.”

Nobody said anything for a while.

“Halloway says we’ll have a lot of them,” said Risa. “Anniversaries. Hundreds, maybe. Because of whatever it is that’s happening to all of us.” She put her chin on her knees. “I’d like to start counting.”

“So would I,” said Sera.

“So would I,” said Hana.

Andraste said it in Hyrrani, which takes longer. Aune didn’t say anything. She just put her hand up, like somebody at the Table.

Then they all looked at me.

“Yes,” I said. “Of course. Yes.”

“Good,” said Luna. “Then you’ll need to find out the dates.”

I went to Konrad.

Of course I went to Konrad.

He was in the kitchen in the morning before anybody, with the sheet out of the drawer and a pencil, as if he’d been waiting. He had. Ingrid had told him.

He didn’t say anything. He ran his finger down the sheet. Very slowly. And stopped.

“Luna, Sera and Risa,” he said. “The day after the first frost.” He looked up. “Luna’s right. It was autumn.”

“Hana?”

He ran his finger down. “The longest night. You were all four of you very nervous. Hana cried. Sera cried. Risa pretended she wasn’t.”

“Andraste.”

“Midsummer. On the ridge. Kyria said the words twice, the second time louder.”

“Aune.”

“Spring,” said Konrad. “On Ister. Halvane made a speech that went on for an hour. Ilas fell asleep.”

I stood in the kitchen and looked at the sheet.

“You’ve had all of them,” I said. “All this time.”

“Of course,” said Konrad. “Somebody had to.” He put the pencil down. “I’ve been waiting thirty years for you to ask.”

So now there are six anniversaries. Well. Four days. Luna, Sera and Risa share one, because they married me and each other on the same day, after the first frost. And then Hana’s, on the longest night. And Andraste’s, at midsummer. And Aune’s, in the spring.

So I was right about spring, Aune says. Just about the wrong wife.

Mother didn’t have a date.

I asked her. That night. On the porch. After Konrad had gone to bed with his sheet.

“Yours and Father’s,” I said. “When was it?”

Mother didn’t answer for a long time. She had her mending in her lap. She wasn’t mending it.

“I don’t know, love,” she said.

I looked at her.

“There wasn’t a day,” she said. “Not like that. Not like Dov and Priya. We were outside. On the ridge. There wasn’t anybody to marry us. The Council didn’t marry exiles. There weren’t any keepers. There wasn’t a book.” She turned the mending over. “There was a morning. Early. After a bad night. The gas had come over the wall and gone again and we’d sat up with the children who were coughing. And when it got light he went out and stood on the ridge and looked at the sky, the way he did. And came back in and sat down next to me on the step.”

She stopped.

“And he said, Dot, I think we’re married,” said Mother. “And I said, I think we are too.” She almost laughed. “That was all. That was the whole of it. I don’t know what day it was. I don’t know what month. I’ve never known.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Konrad asked me,” said Mother. “Years ago. For the sheet. I told him I didn’t know. He left a line for it anyway. With nothing on it.”

She picked up her needle.

“Every so often,” she said, “I go and look at the empty line. In the drawer. Under the tea towels.” She pulled the thread through. “I like that he left it.”

I went and looked, after she’d gone to bed. Near the very top of Konrad’s sheet. Above Dov and Priya. In his oldest, most careful hand:

Dorothy and Trevor Dask.

And then nothing.

And then, very small, in pencil, added later, so faint I nearly missed it:

A morning.

The first frost came nine days after Dov and Priya.

I didn’t know it was coming. That’s the truth. I woke up and the north field was white and the kitchen was cold and the kettle was on, and Luna and Sera and Risa were at the long table. In their coats. Waiting.

“Out,” said Luna.

“Where?”

“The north field,” said Sera. “You know what to do.”

I did. I remembered as soon as she said it. The morning after the first frost, in the third year. Out on the north field before light, with my hands flat on the ground, asking it very politely not to freeze. Because the winter crop was in and the ground was frightened and so was I.

So I went out. And lay down. And asked.

The ground didn’t need asking. It hasn’t been frightened of frost in thirty years. But it let me ask anyway. It was very kind about it.

When I came back in, there was ice on my eyebrows. There always is.

The three of them were standing in the kitchen doorway. Arm in arm. The way they’ve walked since we were cadets. Luna in the middle.

“That’s it,” said Luna. Exactly the way she said it the first time. “We’re doing it today.”

And then Risa laughed. And Sera. And Luna stopped trying to keep a straight face, and the three of them came down the step into the frost and put their arms round me, all at once, ice and all.

We didn’t do anything big. Luna said we weren’t to. We had breakfast. The four of us. At the long table. Before anybody else was up. Mother left the pot and went back to bed, which she has never done in her life.

Sera made the eggs the way she made them the first year, which was badly, on purpose. Risa put a small storm over the window so the light came through grey and soft, the way it did that morning. Luna froze the jam. It was always frozen, the first winter. We had no way to keep it warm.

We ate frozen jam on burnt toast in the grey light, the four of us, and nobody said very much.

Then Risa said, “Thirty years, near enough.”

“Near enough,” said Sera.

“And Halloway says hundreds more,” said Luna.

They looked at each other. Then at me.

“Same time next year,” said Risa.

“Same eggs,” said Sera.

“Same jam,” said Luna.

I said yes to all of it. I’d have said yes to anything. The kitchen was warm and the frost was on the north field and the three of them were laughing at me across the long table the way they’ve been laughing at me since we were cadets.

The first one came three weeks later. The longest night. Hana’s.

I didn’t know what to do. I asked Mother. She looked at me over the pot for a long time.

“What did you do the first time?” she said.

I thought about it. The longest night. The plateau, in the snow, with all four of them, and Hana in a coat too big for her, and the queens singing under the ground.

“I took her up to the top of the north field,” I said. “At midnight. And asked the snow to stop for an hour. So she could see the stars.”

“Then do that,” said Mother.

So I did.

At midnight on the longest night, I took Hana up to the top of the north field. In the snow. In her coat. It’s not too big any more. She’s had it altered.

And I asked the snow to stop. For an hour. All of it. Over the whole of the north field and the house and the garden and Next Door.

It stopped. In the air. Every flake. Hanging there in the dark, perfectly still, the way Trevor’s glass stopped on Sable. A whole sky full of snow, not falling.

And above it, the stars.

Hana stood in the middle of the north field and looked up for a long time.

“It’s the same,” she said. “It’s exactly the same.”

“I know.”

“You remembered.”

“Konrad remembered,” I said. “I’d forgotten the date. I never forgot this.”

Hana laughed. And then cried. And then laughed again. And then she put her hand up, very slowly, into the hanging snow, and touched one flake. Just one. And it fell, on its own, the only one falling, very slowly, down past her face to the ground.

She did that for the whole hour. One flake at a time.

At the end of the hour I asked the snow to start again. It fell all at once. On both of us. Very quietly.

Next Door’s children saw it from their windows, the ones who were awake. Mother says nine of them were at the windows in the morning asking if it would happen again.

It’ll happen again. Every year now. On the longest night.

Aune came to find me afterwards. In the kitchen, at dawn, while Hana slept.

She had her hands round a cup. She sat on the bench by the stove where Rue sleeps sometimes, very tall, with her grey hair down.

“Konrad has my date,” she said. “Spring. Halvane’s speech. Ilas asleep.”

“Yes.”

“On Ister,” said Aune, “a marriage has a word. The keepers write it in the long record. Trevor and Teva have Good morning. Sigmund and Tovi have Sorry.” She turned the cup round. “We don’t have one.”

I looked at her.

“We married with Halvane making a speech,” said Aune. “In front of half of Ister. It was a treaty as much as a wedding. Nobody thought about a word. I didn’t. I didn’t think I’d need one.” She looked at her tea. “I’ve been married to you for years now. I’d like one.”

“What word?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Aune. “That’s the point. You don’t choose it. You find it. Sabeth’s been looking for one for three hundred years.” She almost smiled. “I’d like to have found ours by spring. So the keepers can write it down on the day.”

“Then we’ll look,” I said.

Aune nodded. She drank her tea. Then she said, very quietly, the way Aldri say things they’ve been thinking about for a long time:

“And Tiri’s wedding. When it comes. I’d like to be there knowing ours.”

The General asked Sabeth on the same night.

Not about marriage. Not exactly. He told me afterwards. Very carefully. As if reporting to Okafor.

Sabeth has been on Avalon since the beginning of the winter. The winter that was supposed to last until the pod came back round the point. The pod’s been round the point twice since. Nobody’s said anything.

She lives at the end of the wing, by Luna. She reads her books about deepbacks and walks every morning to the great lake and stands on the shore and watches the water, very straight, in her brass glasses, the way she stood on her porch on Ister. She has supper with the General every night now. Not every ninth night. Every night.

On the longest night, while I was on the north field with Hana and the snow, the General and Sabeth were on the porch of the wing. Watching it stop.

“He’s very good at that,” said Sabeth. “Your son-in-law.”

“He is,” said the General.

They watched the snow hang in the air for a long time.

“Dov and Priya,” said the General. “Thirty years.”

“Yes,” said Sabeth.

“I was married to Luna’s mother for nineteen,” said the General. “Before the war took her.” He didn’t look at Sabeth. He looked at the snow. “I thought that was all I’d get. I thought nineteen was the whole of it.”

Sabeth didn’t say anything.

“Halloway says I’ll have a great many more years than I expected,” said the General. “She won’t say how many. She looks at me as if I’m a puzzle.” He put his hands behind his back. “I find I don’t know what to do with them. The years.”

“What would you like to do with them?” said Sabeth.

The General was quiet for a long time.

“How do you feel about it,” he said. “Marriage. In general. On Ister.”

Sabeth took her glasses off. She does that when she’s thinking very hard. She folded them and held them in her lap.

“On Ister,” she said, “you marry once. You choose a word. The keepers write it down. You say it to each other for the rest of your life. Which on Ister is a long time.”

“I know,” said the General. “I was at Trevor’s.”

“I never married,” said Sabeth. “Three hundred and some years. I was asked. Twice. When I was young. Good men. I said no to both.” She turned the glasses over. “I said no because I couldn’t think of a word. Not one. Nothing I wanted to say to either of them for the rest of my life.”

“Ah,” said the General.

“And then I went to the end of the rocks,” said Sabeth, “and watched the deepbacks. For two hundred years. And I thought that was the whole of it.” She looked at the snow. “And then a very quiet man came down the rocks one night and sat in my chair without being asked.”

The General didn’t say anything.

“I’ve been thinking about words,” said Sabeth. “For a while now. Since the pod came round the first time. Since you sat in my chair.” She put her glasses back on. “I haven’t found one yet. But I’m closer than I’ve ever been.”

“How close?”

Sabeth looked at him for a long time over her brass glasses.

“Ask me again,” she said, “when the pod comes round in the spring.”

The General told me all of this the next morning. On the porch. Standing up. Very straight. As if he was making a report.

At the end he said, “She said ask her again in the spring.”

“Yes.”

“That’s not a no,” said the General.

“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”

The General stood on the porch for a long time. Then he did something I’ve never seen him do. Not once in forty years.

He sat down. On the porch step. Without being asked. And put his elbows on his knees. And looked at the north field.

“Spring,” he said.

Luna came out of the wing with a cup of tea and found him there. She stopped in the doorway. She didn’t say anything. She put the cup down next to him on the step and went back in.

I heard her crying in the kitchen. Happily. The way Hana cries.

And Pip got engaged.

Pip’s young man is called Davo.

He’s Aun. Short and broad, the way the Aun are, brown with copper freckles all over and four fingers on each hand and wide gold eyes. He’s from the cliff city on the coast south of Thera. He works on the trains. He’s the grandson of Captain Amu, the old one with the stick who sat down on the red glass and cried when Wren said the number, the first day the Third Patience came. His sister’s the Meridian’s navigator.

He came to Pip’s stall on a Tuesday, years ago now, on his day off, on his own, because all his friends were on shift. Bread-dough balls and tin cups. He paid for three throws and missed all three. He paid for three more and missed all three. Pip watched him do it for an hour.

“You’re doing it on purpose,” she said. In the end. With her arms folded.

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?”

He went the colour of his freckles. All over.

“Because if I win,” he said, “I’ll have to go.”

He’s been at her stall every Tuesday since. And every Sunday. And, Maura says, most other days. He’s never won once. Not in all those years. He’s missed on purpose so many times the tin cups have a dent in the board behind them where his balls hit.

Iolo Venn came to the stall once, on a Tuesday, while Davo was there. Iolo, who argued for me at the Assize, the handsome one, who could win anything. He paid for three throws and won all three. Then he looked at Davo, who’d missed his three, very carefully, the way he always does.

“You won,” said Davo. “So you have to go.”

Iolo looked at him for a long time. Then he bowed. To Davo. A proper Assize bow. And gave the prizes back to Pip.

“I’ve never seen anyone lose so well,” he said. And went.

Pip says that was the day she decided. She didn’t tell anybody. She didn’t tell Davo. She says she was going to let him win, one day, when she’d made up her mind.

She’d made up her mind years ago. She just never told him.

He did it at the stall. Of course he did.

Nobody saw. That’s the thing. It was the longest day of the year, at the park, with ten thousand people going past, and nobody saw it, because Davo did it the way he does everything, very quietly, without making a fuss.

He bought nine balls.

He threw them at the tin cups.

He hit nine.

Pip looked at the nine knocked-over cups for a long time. He’d never hit one. Not once. Not in all those years.

Then she looked at him.

“You won,” she said. Very quietly. “So you have to go.”

Davo’s face was the colour of his freckles. All over. His four-fingered hands were shaking.

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I’ve never done it.” He looked at the cups. “I’ve been practising. At home. At the depot. With rail bolts. For a year.” He looked back at her. “I wanted to win properly. Just once. So I could ask you something.”

“What?”

“If I have to go,” said Davo, “will you come with me?”

Pip didn’t say anything for a long time.

“Go where?” she said.

“Anywhere,” said Davo. “Home. The cliff city. The house at the bottom of the hill road. The end of the north field. I don’t mind.” He swallowed. “I just don’t want to go anywhere you’re not.”

Pip didn’t tell anybody for three days.

On the third day she came up the hill road to Maura and Rory’s, and stood in the kitchen doorway the way Liam does, and Maura looked up from the fried things and saw her face.

Maura dropped the fried things. Again. The second time Davo’s made her do it.

“Pip,” she said.

“I said yes,” said Pip. “Three days ago. At the stall. He hit all nine.”

Maura didn’t say anything for a very long time. Then she sat down at the kitchen table and put her face in her hands.

Rory came in from the shed. He looked at his wife. Then at his daughter.

“Davo,” said Rory.

“Davo,” said Pip.

Rory went back out to the shed. Nobody saw him for an hour. When he came back he had a box under his arm. Small. Wooden. Planed so smooth it shone.

He gave it to Pip. She opened it.

It was empty. With nine small compartments inside, each one just big enough for a bread-dough ball.

“For the nine,” said Rory. “The ones he hit. You’ll want to keep them.” He went red. “I’ll make you a bigger one. For the house. This is just to start.”

Pip held the box for a long time. Then she put her arms round her father. He let her. He doesn’t usually.

That’s six, Liam says. Six hugs in Rory’s life. Liam’s counting now.

They’ll be married in the spring. On the plateau, Pip says, because that’s where everybody from the tents got married, and she’s from the tents, even if she was only small. Captain Amu’s coming from the cliff city with his stick. Davo’s sister’s coming down from the Meridian. Mother says she’ll pour. Rory says he’ll plane the long table again, specially, even though it doesn’t need it. Maura says she’s knitting. She won’t say what.

Davo asked Konrad to put the date on the sheet. Konrad did. In ink. Before they’d even decided the day. He says some things you can just tell are going to happen.

Davo came to the long table on the Sunday. Maura brought him. Rory walked behind them with his hands in his pockets, very gruff, like a man who’s been asked to escort a prisoner and secretly likes the prisoner very much.

Davo stood in the kitchen doorway with a basket under his arm. From the cliff city. Small hard honey cakes, the kind the Aun make for the long train runs, that keep for a month and taste of the sea.

“I brought these,” he said. “I’m sorry. My grandmother says you never go to anybody’s table empty-handed. Even if they’ve got more than you.”

Mother looked at the basket. Then at Davo. For a long time.

Then she took a honey cake. And broke it in half, which nobody can do, they’re like breaking a stone, and dipped it in her tea. And waited.

Everybody at the long table waited.

After a while the cake went soft. Mother ate it.

“That’s a very good cake,” said Mother.

Davo went the colour of his freckles.

Taveth, at the end of the long table, very slowly put down his spoon and looked at the honey cakes, and then at his own soup, and then at Davo.

“Do they go with soup?” he said.

“They go with anything,” said Davo. “They’re for the long runs. You put them in whatever you’ve got.”

Taveth looked at him for a long time.

“Even mine?”

Davo looked at Taveth’s pot. He’d heard. Everybody’s heard.

“Especially yours,” he said. “I should think.”

Taveth stood up. He came round the long table. He took Davo’s four-fingered hand in both of his and shook it, very solemnly, for a long time.

“Welcome to the family,” said Taveth.

Pip, behind Davo, put her face in her hands.

Liam came up the hill road that night with a bottle. The third time ever.

He sat down on the step. He poured two. He handed me one.

“My sister,” he said.

“I know.”

“To a man who missed on purpose for years so he wouldn’t have to leave.”

“I know.”

Liam drank his.

“He hit all nine,” he said. “He practised for a year. With rail bolts.” He looked at the north field. “I don’t think I’ve ever liked anybody so much in my life.”

Maura’s knitting again. Five things. Four of them are for later, she says. One is a pair of gloves, very thick, for Davo. For the hot iron on the trains. She says his hands are too good to burn.

The leagues, for Toby:

In Stile, the long season’s half done. The Hill have won six and lost three. Caul’s Haze have finally lost a game, to Brannock’s Fell, in the snow, nine to eight; Hesper Daine threw all nine innings and then sat down on the mound and refused to get up until Gilgamesh came and stood next to her, which he did. Lumi was in the stand at the Hill’s last game, on Trevor’s knee, with her black eyes very wide, and breathed in before every throw. Toby says she’s never missed one.

In Ring, the Commonhold Gales have won five in a row. The tiny Next Door boy grew. Not much. Enough to reach the hoop on his toes. He scored for the first time last week, and the whole hall went very quiet and then very loud, and he burst into tears, and Kesh picked him up and carried him round the hall on her shoulders. It rained a little. Nobody minded.

In Ridge, the Ridge-Ends are third. Kyrie’s the top scorer in the whole league. Okafor has started writing the scores on her slate without being told them. Holt says she listens for them on the band.

In the Long Way, the Lumi beat the Kethri. Once. By a breath. Halvane stood on the roof of the third city and shouted, which nobody on Ister has ever heard him do. The Kethri say next time.

In the Run, Liam’s racer is fourth. He’s bought it a hat. Maura knitted it.

And the Fours: Caul says the six million seats are sold. Hanne Brisk says they’re building three million more. She says she’s never seen anything like it. She says people are coming from the Collective, from the edge worlds, from past everything, and that some of them have never seen a Stile game in their lives and just want to be there when everybody breathes in.

Next summer.

The stars said Not yet this morning. A thousand and thirty-one.

Wren wrote it. And under it:

Dov and Priya: thirty.

Pip: yes. (Nine cups.)

The General: spring.

Days 13019–13116. Thirty Years.

Dov and Priya, married on the plateau in the first years with a kit-wire ring, kept their thirtieth there with everyone from the tents and Priya’s first terrible stew. The wives realised they’d never once celebrated their own anniversaries, Konrad had all the dates, and on the longest night I stopped the snow for Hana again. The General asked Sabeth how she felt about marriage and she said to ask her in the spring. Pip said yes to Davo, who’d missed on purpose for years so he wouldn’t have to go, and then hit all nine.