Chapter 115 The Burning Ridge

I didn't go round.

There wasn't any round. The ring went all the way round the bottom of the ridge, four deep, five, a dark band in the green as far as I could see in both directions, and the only way to the top that didn't go through it was over it.

So I went over it.

I took the spoon up. Higher than I'd ever taken it. Thirty meters. Forty. Up where the wind was, where the bucket weighed twice what it weighed lower down and my nose went straight away and didn't stop. I came in over the ring from the west with the sun behind me, and I looked down past the rim of the spoon, once, at what was under me.

Faces. Wedge heads, turned up. Hundreds of them. Turning, all together, the way the fronds turned, following me across the sky.

They knew what I was.

I looked back into the spoon and held it, and went.

The fire went out when I was still a hundred meters off.

I saw it go. The thin gold sheet over the edge of the wall, wavering, leaning, and then not there. Just her hand, out over the drop, with nothing coming off it.

And the first of the climbers, on the slope below the wall, three of them, stopped. Lifted their heads. Felt it, the way they felt everything, through the silver, body to body.

And came.

I didn't salt them. I didn't have time to look. I was looking at her.

She'd gone down on one knee. Then the other. Her hand was still out, over the wall, as if she'd forgotten to take it back. Her head went forward. Her red hair, black with smoke, came down over her face.

I let go of the bucket.

Not all of it. Most of it. The spoon dropped the last twenty meters onto the little flat place at the top of the ridge and hit the glass hard enough to crack it, and skidded, and stopped, and I was out of the straps before it had stopped moving, and on my good knee beside her, and she was falling sideways, and I caught her.

She weighed nothing.

That was the first thing. Liam's sister. Seraphina Calder, who'd held a whole corridor of cadets still with the heat coming off her. Who'd stood beside me in the pool with her hand on my back. Who'd said fine about everything and meant a hundred things by it. She weighed nothing at all, in my arms on the top of the ridge, with her head against my shoulder and her eyes shut.

Her hands were burned. Not by anything else. By herself. The palms red and blistered and cracked across, the way skin goes when it's been asked to carry more heat than skin can carry, for too long.

She was breathing.

I looked into her. I couldn't help it. All the way in. Her heart going very fast and very thin, like a bird's. Her blood thick and slow. Her muscles burned down to nothing, the way Liam's had been, the way Halloway's notes said happens when someone's been running on fire instead of food. And deep in her, under the ribs, the place I'd learned to find in the Calders, where the fire lived.

Empty.

Not cold. Not gone. Just empty. The way a cistern's empty at the end of a dry season. Every drop of it used.

She'd held the ridge until there was nothing left to hold it with.

The three climbers came over the wall.

I looked up from her face and they were there. On the glass. Fourteen legs, blade arms, wedge heads, three meters away.

Salt.

Salt.

Salt.

And then the next three, behind them, coming up the slope. And behind them, more.

I put her down. Gently. With her back against the slab of glass where she'd been sitting in the wing's picture. I took the scarf off and folded it and put it under her head. And then I stood up on my bad leg, with my stick, at the edge of the wall where she'd stood, and looked down the slope.

The ridge was narrow. That was the trouble.

I saw it straight away. Standing at the top, on the flat place where the walls met, I could look down one side of the ridge. The north side. The whole slope, from the wall to the ring at the bottom. Every climber on it. Every one, in my wedge.

But the ridge had two sides.

And behind me, down the south slope, where I wasn't looking, where Sera had been holding her other hand out for nine days, they were climbing too.

The enemy goes where my eyes don't.

I turned round. I saw the south slope. Twenty, thirty, coming up it fast. I salted the first ten.

Behind me, on the north slope, I heard glass crack.

I spun back. Salted four on the north wall. Spun again. The south. Six more. Back.

I couldn't do it. I knew that in about a minute. I could do it for a minute, two, ten, spinning on my bad leg on the top of the ridge with my stick and my nose running, but I couldn't do it for an hour, and I couldn't do it for a day, and Liam and Dot were a day away. And every time I turned, the side I'd turned from got a little closer.

They'd learned it at Scarecrow in forty-one minutes. They'd learn it here faster. They'd learned it already, from her. Nine days of her holding one side with one hand and the other side with the other, and her hands burning.

I salted three more on the south side and turned and the north wall was black with them.

I didn't think about it. If I'd thought about it I wouldn't have done it.

I looked at the glass.

Not at the Teeming. At the wall. Sera's wall, green-black and gold, the long poured slab of it running along the north edge of the ridge between me and the slope. I looked into it. All the way. The glass, and the little bricks of the glass, sand and fire and her.

And I asked the back of it to be silver.

It cost. It always costs. A whole wall of it, ten meters long, a few atoms of silver laid down along the back face of the glass the way Dot had laid it on the back of the mirror on my wrist. I felt it go out of me like water out of a cracked jar.

But when I turned round to face the south slope, and looked at the wall behind me on the far side, the south wall, the one on the other edge of the ridge, I could see in it.

The north slope. Reflected. Behind me. Every climber on it, black against the green, coming up toward the wall where I wasn't looking.

A mirror.

And I looked into the mirror.

And the thing went out of me, and into the glass, and bent.

I'd done it once before, with a mirror the size of my hand, at night, on one grain of iron, a hundred meters behind me. It had cost me as much as a hundred square meters of glass looked at straight on. It had been blurred and weak and wavering, like looking at the bottom of a pond through moving water.

This was worse.

The wall was rough. Poured in a hurry. The silver went on it unevenly, in streaks, so the reflection broke and swam and doubled. Everything I saw in it was wrong, a little, bent, the way a spoon in a glass of water looks broken.

But it was there.

And I could see the north slope while I was facing south.

I salted the first one through the mirror and my knees went.

I came down on them on the glass. Kept looking. Salted another. My nose was pouring now, and something behind my eyes was making a sound I could almost hear, a high thin note, like a wire too tight.

South. Straight ahead. Salt. Salt. Salt.

North, in the mirror, behind me. Blurred. Wavering. Salt.

South.

North.

I didn't count. I couldn't. I just knelt on the top of the ridge between two walls with Seraphina Calder asleep against the glass beside me, and looked in front, and looked behind through the wall, and salted whatever moved.

They stopped at about four in the afternoon.

Not all at once. They didn't do anything all at once except come. They slowed. Fewer came over the bottom of the slope. Then fewer. Then the ones on the slopes stopped climbing, and stood, very still, among the white heaps of salt, and lifted their heads.

Then they went back down.

Not running. Walking. Down both slopes, between the white heaps, to the ring at the bottom. And they fitted themselves back into it, in their places, fourteen point two meters apart, and sat down.

Measuring.

I knelt on the glass and watched them go. I didn't salt them. I couldn't have. There was nothing left.

I crawled over to her.

She hadn't moved. Her head was on the scarf where I'd put it. Her burned hands were in her lap, palms up. Her breathing was very shallow and very fast.

I had water in the rack under the spoon. Four liters. I'd brought it for her. I got it out and wet the end of the scarf and put it to her lips, the way Halloway's notes said, a little, then wait, then a little, and she swallowed without waking. I did it again. And again. For an hour.

Then I looked at her hands.

I couldn't do much. Burns are hard. Halloway's notes said so, in capital letters. Burns: don't be clever. Keep them clean. Keep them wet. Keep them covered. The body knows what to do with burns better than you do. But I could see where the skin had cracked, and I could ask the edges to come together, a little, cell by cell, the way I'd asked the vessel in my own thigh. Not to heal. Just to close. So nothing could get in.

It took everything I had left. It wasn't much.

When it was done, I wrapped her hands in strips of the scarf, wet, very loosely. Garnet's scarf. The lumpy bits and the smooth bits.

Then I lay down on the glass beside her, between her and the north wall, so that anything that came over it would have to come over me first.

And I don't remember anything after that.

I woke because something was singing.

That's the only word for it. A long low note, very deep, coming up through the glass under my cheek. Not a sound you heard with your ears. A sound you felt in your teeth.

It was dark. The stars were out, and the big gold moon, and in its light the glass walls of the ridge glittered all round me, green and black and gold. Sera was where I'd left her, against the slab, with her wrapped hands in her lap. Still breathing.

And under us, the ridge was singing.

I put my hand flat on the glass. Then I looked down into it.

The ridge wasn't rock.

Not all of it. Under the glass walls, under the little flat place where we were lying, the inside of the ridge had been hollowed out. Not dug. Melted. Long smooth tunnels, glassy and dark, running down into the heart of the hill like the inside of a seashell. And at the bottom of them, a hundred meters down, in a round room of black glass with the walls still faintly warm, a kit.

Gray shell. Five arms. Folded legs. Its grille glowing very softly.

And all round it, threaded through the glass walls of the round room and up the tunnels and into the walls of the ridge above, silver. Fine. Bright. Awake. Humming.

That was the singing.

"Query," said a voice.

Not out loud. Through the glass, through my hand. Very faint. Level. Not quite anybody's. And under it, faint as the burr under Dot's voice when she'd spoken in Maura's, another voice.

I knew it. I'd know it anywhere.

Sera's.

"Query," said the kit, under the ridge, in a voice that was almost Sera's. "Is that the operator's friend? The one she counts?"

I lay with my hand flat on the glass and couldn't answer for a long time.

"Yes," I said at last. Out loud. I didn't know if it could hear me. "Yes. It's Lucas."

"Logged," said the kit. "She said you would come. She said: Lucas will come. She did not say when." A pause. "This unit did not believe her. This unit apologizes."

The sky went green over the east at about five.

And with the green came the ring. Not up the slope. Not yet. Just standing. All round the bottom of the ridge, every one of them, getting up off the ground in the half-light and turning to face the top.

I got up too. On my good leg, with my stick. My head felt like the inside of a bell. My nose started before I'd even looked at anything.

I looked at the north wall, the silvered one. It was still silvered. In the green dawn light it showed me the south slope, behind me, blurred and swimming.

I could do it again. For an hour, maybe. Not for a day.

The first of them started up the slope.

And then, from the west, from the far edge of the ring, came the fire.

It didn't come straight. It never did, with Liam. It came in a long roaring curve, low over the green, white at the heart and orange at the edges, leaning in the wind and flickering and going everywhere the air went, wild and ugly and hot enough that I felt it on my face from a kilometer off.

And it came through the ring like a scythe through wheat.

I saw the Teeming at the western edge of the ring turn. All of them, together, through the silver. Turn away from the ridge. Toward the fire.

And through the gap it had burned, in the green, came Dot.

Gray shell. Five arms out. Six hands round her in a ring, and on the frame between them, sitting up, with his leg out straight in its titanium splints and both hands lifted and pouring fire, Liam Calder.

Screaming his sister's name.

"SERA!"

He didn't stop. He didn't stop burning and he didn't stop shouting, the whole way across the green, and the Teeming came at the frame from both sides and he burned them, and they came again and he burned them again, and Dot walked straight through the middle of it all with her arms out and the little rivers going very fast and her hands round her in a ring, steady, careful, not stopping, the way she did everything.

And I saw what they needed.

In front.

I turned round on the top of the ridge and faced west, down the slope, toward the frame coming through the ring. I looked at everything in front of Dot. Every one of them between her and the bottom of the slope.

Salt.

I made her a road.

Behind me, on the ridge, something moved.

I didn't turn round. I couldn't. I was holding the road. But I heard it. The scrape of a wrapped hand on the glass. A breath, very sharp, through the teeth. And then a voice, rough as a rasp, cracked, furious, and so much like Liam's that for a second I thought it was him.

"Liam?"

She got up.

I don't know how. There was nothing in her to get up with. I'd looked. But Seraphina Calder got up off the glass on the top of her ridge, with her hands wrapped in strips of my sister's scarf, and stood at the western wall beside me, swaying, and looked down the slope at her brother on the frame in the middle of the fire.

And she put one wrapped hand out over the wall.

And the wild, leaning, flickering roar of Liam's fire, the fire that went everywhere the air went, straightened.

I've never seen anything like it. I don't think anyone has.

It didn't get hotter. It didn't get bigger. It just went where she told it. All of Liam's fire, every scrap of it, pulled into a line, straight as a ruler, in front of the frame, the whole width of the slope. A wall of it. Moving up the hill with Dot and her hands, so close in front of them that the Teeming on the slope had to turn back or burn, and the ones that turned back ran into my road and were salt.

Liam's fire. Sera's hands. My eyes.

Dot came up the slope inside it like a boat in a lock.

They got to the top at a quarter past six.

The hands put the frame down on the flat place between the walls. Dot stopped. The fire went out, all at once, the way a candle goes out with a cup over it.

Liam got off the frame.

Not well. He fell half off it and caught himself on the crutch and nearly went down again and didn't. He stood on the glass on his one good leg and his straight one, filthy, burned at the edges, his hands still smoking, and looked at his sister.

She looked at him.

Then Seraphina Calder walked across the top of the ridge, three steps, swaying, and punched him in the face.

Not hard. She didn't have anything to do it hard with. But she meant it.

"Ow," said Liam.

"Where were you?" said Sera. Her voice was a wreck. "Forty days. Forty days. Nobody came. Nobody called. Not one word, Liam. Not one. I thought you were dead. I thought you'd landed in the trees and broken your stupid neck, and I sat on this ridge and held it and I thought, Liam's dead, and Luna told me to stay put, so I stayed put, and I held it, and you were alive the whole time?"

"I broke my leg," said Liam.

"I don't care," said Sera.

And then she put her arms round him, both of them, wrapped hands and all, and held on so hard I heard his ribs creak.

He held on too.

They stood there in the middle of the top of the ridge in the green dawn, the two of them, with the ring at the bottom of the slope watching and Dot behind them with her arms folded and the little rivers running very slowly, and didn't let go. Liam was saying something into her hair, over and over, very quietly. I didn't hear what. It wasn't mine to hear.

I looked down the slope instead. At the ring. In front.

Somebody had to.

After a long time, she let go of him.

She stepped back. She looked round. At Dot, standing in the middle of her ridge. At the spoon, bent, with the crack in the glass under it. At the white heaps of salt all down both slopes. At the north wall, silvered, glittering in the dawn like a long mirror.

And then at me.

I was standing at the edge of the western wall with my stick. My nose had bled all down my front again. I had no scarf, because it was on her hands. My leg was out straight and wouldn't bend. I hadn't slept properly in three days.

I must have looked terrible.

She looked at me for a long time. Her face, under the smoke, didn't move at all.

And then it crumpled.

All at once. Like paper in a fire. Her mouth went, and her chin, and her eyes, and she put both her wrapped hands over her face and sat down on the glass, right where she was, very suddenly, as if her legs had been cut, and cried.

Not quietly. Not the way she did everything, without fuss. Great ragged ugly sobs, with her shoulders heaving and the sound coming out between her fingers, on the top of a ridge she'd held alone for forty days with a ring of the Teeming at the bottom of it.

Liam stared at her.

I stared at her.

"Sera," said Liam slowly. "Are you—are you crying?"

"No," said Seraphina Calder, through her hands, through the sobs. "It's the smoke."

There was no smoke. The fire had been out for five minutes. The air on the top of the ridge was green and cold and perfectly clear.

Nobody said so.

I went over and sat down on the glass beside her. Not too close. Just beside. The way she'd stood beside me in the pool, with her hand on my back, the night I couldn't float.

After a while, without taking her hands from her face, she leaned sideways until her shoulder was against mine.

And stayed there.

"It's the smoke," she said again, much later, when the sun was up and her face was dry and we were all sitting in a row on the top of the ridge with Dot behind us. "For the record. I want that written down. In your notebook. It was the smoke."

"I'll write it down," I said.

"Accurately," said Sera.

"This unit witnessed it," said Dot. "This unit can confirm that there was no—"

"Dot," said Liam and I, together.

The little rivers ran.

"This unit can confirm," said Dot, after a moment, "that it was the smoke."

Day 343–344.

Over the ring at forty meters. Her fire went out as I came in. I caught her.

Her hands burned by her own fire. The place the fire lives: empty. She held until there was nothing.

The ridge has two sides. I have one pair of eyes.

So I silvered her wall. Looked into it. It bent. Blurred, swimming, wrong, but there. Front and back at once.

They stopped at four. Sat back down in the ring. Measuring.

Water, an hour. Closed the cracks in her palms. Wrapped them in Garnet's scarf.

Night: the ridge sings. Her kit is under it, a hundred meters down, threading silver through the glass. It speaks almost in her voice. "She said: Lucas will come. She did not say when."

Dawn: Liam's fire through the ring like a scythe. Dot through the gap. I made a road in front.

Sera got up. With nothing left. Put her hand out. Liam's fire went straight.

Liam's fire. Sera's hands. My eyes.

She punched him. Then held on.

Then she saw me.

It was the smoke. (She asked me to write that down. Accurately.)

It was not the smoke.