Chapter 143 The Queen's Chamber

For a little while, we sat where we'd stopped.

The light on the far wall didn't move. That helped. I kept looking at it between looking at Toby, as though daylight might decide to leave if I didn't pay attention.

Sera sat beside me. Her hand was black with soot, and there was a cut across the back of it I hadn't seen happen.

“You're doing it again,” she said.

“What?”

“Trying to work before you've stopped shaking.”

I looked down.

She was right.

I put my hands between my knees.

Across from us, Liam had opened one of the bags and was passing out the last of the bread. Holt took a piece, looked at the mud on his fingers, and ate it anyway. Toby accepted his without arguing about who needed it more.

That frightened me almost as much as the wall had.

Then he looked at mine.

“Eat it,” he whispered.

I felt better.

Luna went to the edge of the shelf with Risa.

Not right to the edge. There was a line in the stone where the outer part had begun to separate, and she stopped behind it. Dot's hand walked ahead of her, lamp low, feeling each place before putting its weight down.

The pale creature lay below us.

From here, I could see how large it was. The part we'd seen from the first ledge had only been the front. Its body continued beneath an overhang on the opposite side, thick plates disappearing into shadow. Silver strands came out between those plates and entered the walls at different heights.

Some were taut.

Some hung slack, their light barely visible.

A strand near the water had broken. Its free end lay over a stone, moving each time the creature breathed, if that was what the movement meant.

I hadn't known they could break.

I hadn't known any of this could get tired.

Holt followed my eyes.

“More light in it before,” he said.

“When you were here?”

“Aye.”

“How much more?”

He considered that. He'd stopped giving me quick answers about this place.

“Enough I didn't need a lamp. Could see the far wall from where I was standing.”

We could barely see the upper half of it now.

Below, the stone-bringer went down a narrow track along the shelf. It reached the creature and laid one front limb against a plate. Stayed there. Then withdrew and went to one of the bundles gathered near the wall.

The bundle moved.

A small limb appeared, hooked around the larger creature's wrist, and vanished again.

Holt watched until it was gone.

“I thought it was keeping them here,” he said.

“Maybe it was.”

He looked at me.

“Before the roof broke. Somewhere safe.”

His mouth moved without making a word.

Then he nodded.

Luna came back.

“Tell me what you need.”

I made myself swallow the bread before answering.

“A better look. That shelf continues behind the rib. If we can get past it, I think there's a way to the light.”

“And the rib?”

“It needs a foot. Something wide enough that it won't drive straight through the shelf when the weight comes onto it.”

“Can you make one?”

“I can make the shape. I need to see what it'll stand on.”

Risa rubbed at her eyes.

“The seams are everywhere down there. I can follow one, but I can't tell you which rock is carrying which. Not through all that silver.”

“I need light,” I said. “Not a map.”

She looked across the chamber.

Then at the little lamp in Dot's hand.

“How much?”

“All of it.”

She didn't answer immediately.

I was glad of that too.

The last time she'd tried to give us everything, we'd had to make her lie down. This time she looked at the water first. At the strands in the walls. At Toby, sitting with his tuning fork across his knees.

“Not through the rock,” she said.

“No.”

“And nobody touches me.”

Luna nodded.

Risa held her hands apart. A short white thread jumped between two fingers, bright enough that the chamber appeared and disappeared behind it. Then she stopped.

“Like that. A few breaths. I can't keep it.”

“I don't need you to.”

“You always say that.”

“I know.”

She studied my face for a moment.

“Then look properly.”

We moved back from her.

Liam took the bags and sat beside Toby. Sera put her fire out. The sudden absence of its orange light made the silver in the walls seem colder.

Risa stood on the dry inner part of the shelf, feet apart, shoulders hunched.

“Eyes down until I say,” Luna told the others.

I shaded mine with my hand so I wouldn't be looking straight into the flash. Dot's hand turned its lamp away. Its small mirror opened toward the chamber.

Risa lifted her fingers.

Light filled the space.

White. Hard. Every shadow driven back against the thing that made it.

For the first time, I saw the whole chamber at once.

There were shelves above the shelves.

Empty now, most of them. Shallow hollows worn into the walls, lined with something fibrous and pale. Tracks connected them, crossing and dividing and crossing again. Along the lowest wall were pools with raised rims, each fed by a narrow groove from the next.

A nursery.

I couldn't prove it. I didn't know what all of it did. But I'd seen what the Teeming carried out, and the hollows were the right size, and some of the smaller ones still held the pale wrapping.

The largest hollow was directly beneath the broken rib.

Empty.

The thing Holt had called a queen had put itself between that hollow and the roof.

I looked up.

Saw the broken end. The missing shoulder. The washed stone beneath. Saw where the remaining shelf broadened into the wall, and where an old crack cut across its outer edge.

There was room.

Not where I'd first thought.

Farther in.

“Enough,” I said.

The light went out.

Risa sat down hard.

Luna caught her elbow after the last spark had gone. Toby leaned forward, then stopped himself when Liam put a hand out.

“I'm all right,” Risa said.

“You're sitting,” said Luna.

“I can be both.”

She sounded annoyed. That was encouraging.

I kept looking into the dark afterimage of the chamber.

The silver threads had appeared to enter random places before. In the white light I'd seen the pattern. Most went toward the pools and the hollows. Only the thickest group climbed to the broken rib.

Those were brighter than the others.

The small strands were going dim so the big ones could hold.

I thought of our lamps. Of taking the last working cell out of one thing to keep another alive.

It wasn't proof of anything.

It was enough to make me want to hurry.

“The outer shelf won't take it,” I told Luna. “There's a crack behind it. If I put the prop where I was going to, we lose the shelf as well.”

“Where, then?”

I pointed farther into the wall.

“Two feet. One there. One close to us. Joined. The weight has to go into the wall, not over the edge.”

She crouched, drew two marks in the dust, and waited while I added the curve between them.

“Under it?”

“Under and round the end. Like a cradle.”

“Room to pass?”

“Inside the curve. One at a time.”

Holt leaned over from where he sat.

“Your father used to draw things in mud.”

“Did they work?” Liam asked.

“Some of them.”

I looked up.

Holt's mouth twitched.

“The bridge did.”

I couldn't make the support out of nothing.

There was loose rock on our shelf, but not enough. Most of what had fallen from the rib was on the chamber floor, scattered between the pools and the creature's body.

I needed it here.

Dot's hand could move small pieces. We could carry more. None of us should have been climbing down to do it.

The stone-bringer was watching us.

I picked up a piece beside my boot and set it on the first mark Luna had made. Then another. I pointed to the loose stone below.

It looked where I pointed.

For a while, nothing happened.

Then it came up the track carrying a flat fragment against its chest.

Put it beside my two pieces.

Waited.

“Yes,” I said.

I didn't think the word mattered. I took the fragment, fitted it against the others, and pointed again.

It went back down.

Three more followed it.

Liam stood.

“Where do you want ours?”

“Anything loose along this side. Don't pull anything out of the wall.”

“I have met a wall before.”

“It's been a difficult day for your relationship.”

He looked at the ceiling.

“Fair.”

Sera went with him. Luna stayed between them and the cracked edge. Holt passed the smaller pieces along from his seat, refusing to let anybody tell him it was helping until Toby handed him another one without comment.

For a few minutes, the chamber sounded like work.

Stone scraping. Boots. Liam complaining when a fragment caught his thumb. The many small feet on the track below us.

The huge body shifted once.

Everybody stopped.

A silver strand drew tight. Dust sifted off the rib.

Then it settled.

We started again, more quietly.

I made the first foot from the inside out.

Not the whole pile. A thin layer, spread wide over the solid place I'd seen. I cleaned away the mud first, moving it aside until Dot's lamp showed the rough surface underneath.

Then I changed the loose stone.

Red glass spread over the rock in a low, broad pad, filling the small hollows I could see. I left its upper surface rough. Added another layer. Thickened it where the support would rise.

The familiar material helped.

I knew what it looked like when it went right. I knew the little cloudy streak that meant I had hurried. When one appeared near the edge, I stopped and worked that part again before adding anything above it.

This wasn't a room wall. If it failed, it would fail with all of us beside it.

Sera brought the next stone and crouched behind my shoulder.

“How much?”

“Most of what they're carrying.”

“I meant you.”

I looked at my hands.

“Enough for this foot.”

“Then do this foot.”

It rose slowly.

A thick sloping shoulder of glass, broader below than above. I left the silver strands clear, building beside them instead of enclosing them. One crossed exactly where I wanted the second foot, and I had to shift the whole shape a little to leave it room.

I couldn't tell whether cutting one would hurt the creature, or make it let go, or do something worse.

I wasn't going to find out because my drawing had been neater another way.

Dot's hand climbed onto a small ledge and angled the mirror down. I used that view to shape the back of the first support where my own sight stopped.

The reflection pulled at me harder than the direct view.

I worked. Closed my eyes. Opened them and checked.

Worked again.

Toby asked for water.

I thought he wanted a drink until Liam put the cup in my hand.

By the time the second foot stood level with the first, there was blood on my upper lip.

Sera wiped it away with the clean inside of her sleeve.

Luna saw.

“Stop.”

“It isn't carrying anything yet.”

“Then it can wait.”

We sat.

Below us, one of the Teeming brought another piece of stone and set it beside the unfinished glass. It waited there while I drank. Its head turned toward my face, then toward the support.

I wondered whether it understood tired.

Then I looked at the body on the floor and felt foolish.

“How long do you think it's been doing this?” I asked Holt.

He shook his head.

“Wasn't broken when I saw it. Not like that.”

“The tunnels started opening before we came down.”

“Aye.”

I thought about the floor of our canyon falling away. The Teeming climbing out with their young. All of us standing above a thing we couldn't see, trying to work out why the ground had stopped behaving like ground.

We'd put our beds over somebody else's failing roof.

That didn't make the old attacks harmless. It didn't bring anybody back. I could remember the emptied kits and the bodies as clearly as I could see the little creature wrapped against its carrier below us.

Both had happened.

I didn't know how to put them together yet.

For now, there was a roof to fix.

When I could stand again, I joined the two feet.

Low at first. A broad arch with room beneath for a crouching person. Then a second thickness over it, blending into the shoulders so the weight wouldn't meet a thin joint.

The top still stopped short of the rib.

Between them, the silver strands trembled.

I needed to see the gap clearly. The lamp couldn't reach behind the broken end from where it was, and the mirror gave me only a narrow slice.

“Risa.”

She opened her eyes.

“Again?”

“Smaller. Just there. One breath.”

Luna looked at her.

Risa flexed her fingers before answering.

“One.”

This time everyone knew to look away.

The flash showed me something caught between the broken stone and the threads.

A long splinter. Dark. Almost invisible in the silver light.

It would come down first when the rib settled. Point downward, straight onto the center of the glass.

I saw it.

Changed it while I could.

The sharp end softened into a rounded bluntness. The loose crumbs beside it became one smooth surface, wide enough to meet the cradle without stabbing through it.

Then the light was gone.

“Done,” I said.

Risa lowered her arms.

“That had better mean done.”

“With you. Yes.”

“Good distinction.”

She sat beside Toby. He held out the water without trying to get up.

I brought the glass the last little way toward the stone.

Slowly enough that I could stop when the first point touched.

A shiver went through the arch.

Not a crack. A sound. A low, clear note that I felt through the hand I had resting against the wall.

The rib had found it.

Some of the weight was ours now.

I thickened the contact along the visible edge, working from one end toward the other. The glass took the shape of the stone above it. No narrow point. No small ledge carrying everything.

My bad leg began to tremble.

Sera put her arm round my waist.

“Keep looking,” she said.

I did.

The creature moved.

A plate lifted beneath us. One of the thick strands slackened, then drew tight again.

The arch rang.

Luna pushed Liam back from the edge. Holt pulled his boots under him. Toby stayed seated, his hands flat on his knees, the small shimmer still close round his shoulders.

Nobody asked him for a wall.

I watched the glass.

There was a pale line inside the left shoulder.

Too narrow to tell whether it had been there before. I could see its ends. I changed that part, thickened the outside, spread the foot another hand's width over the rock.

The line disappeared.

The strand loosened again.

This time it stayed loose.

I hadn't told the creature what to do.

I didn't know how.

But it was lowering the rib onto what we'd made, a little at a time, pausing after each movement. The smallest strands along the wall began to brighten while the thick ones lost their hard white glare.

“It can feel it,” Risa said.

I looked toward her.

“The weight changing,” she said. “It must.”

That seemed right.

It wasn't waiting for instructions from us. It was testing the thing under the stone in the only way either of us could.

A little more.

Wait.

A little more.

I kept my eyes on the glass until tears blurred it and Sera told me to blink.

The last strand sagged.

The rib settled.

A small stone fell into the water below with a splash so ordinary that Liam laughed once, softly, as though somebody had made a bad joke.

Nothing else fell.

The creature's plates lowered along its back, one after another.

For the first time since we'd seen it, the pale body lay still.

The arch stood over the shelf, red in the silver light.

I sat down where I was.

Sera sat with me because I still had hold of her sleeve.

We waited.

I wanted to say it was finished. Luna wouldn't let me.

She made us watch while dust stopped falling from the broken end. While the water found its way round the new feet. While the Teeming below moved nearer the body and the little lights in the wall became steady.

Dot's hand walked beneath the arch. Stopped. Turned its lamp upward.

The underside was whole.

“Tell her,” Luna said to me.

I hadn't thought about Dot above us for several minutes.

I felt ashamed of how long that was.

“Seven,” I told the hand. “We're still seven. The support's holding. We're looking for the way out.”

The lamp tipped up.

Down.

Then up again, faster.

“I know,” I said. “Us too.”

The stone-bringer came up the track.

It passed beneath the arch, brushing one limb against the glass as it went. Then it stopped beside the far wall and waited.

Luna went first.

Not all the way. Just far enough to see behind the rib. She crouched under the lowest part, put a hand against the wall, and looked up.

“Steps,” she said.

“Made?” Holt asked.

“Worn. I can't tell.”

She went three more paces.

“Open at the top.”

The words went through us faster than anything Risa could have done.

Toby shut his eyes.

Liam picked up both bags.

I tried to stand and discovered Sera had been holding more of my weight than I'd thought.

“Slowly,” she said.

I was beginning to dislike that word.

I obeyed it anyway.

Before we went, I looked down once more.

The pale creature had turned the part of itself nearest us.

There wasn't a face I knew how to read. No eyes I could meet. A narrow seam between two plates opened, showing a dull silver surface beneath, and closed again.

One of the strands beside the shelf lifted away from the stone.

Stopped short of the glass.

I held still.

It touched the new support.

A soft light passed through the arch, caught in its thickness, turning the red almost gold for a moment.

Then the strand withdrew.

“Lucas,” Luna said.

“I see it.”

“That isn't what I meant.”

I turned toward her.

The way out was open. My people were waiting.

I left the creature with its roof.

The climb was ugly.

The steps were too shallow in some places and too far apart in others. Liam went ahead with Holt, finding somewhere secure before pulling him up the next rise. Luna stayed close to Toby. Risa followed Dot's hand with one palm against the wall.

Sera and I came last.

Halfway up, my bad leg refused a step entirely.

I stood there with my knee shaking and tried to pretend I was examining the stone.

Sera waited three breaths.

“Lucas.”

“I know.”

“Then let me.”

I put my arm over her shoulders.

She took enough weight that I could move.

Neither of us said anything about it after that.

The rectangle of light became a crack between two leaning slabs, broad at the bottom and narrow above. The straight edges had made it look made from below. Up close, there were roots in it and weathered stone and a tuft of silver-green growing out toward the sun.

Luna went through sideways.

Then her voice came back.

“Ground. Clear.”

Holt. Liam. Risa.

Toby stopped in the opening, one hand on either side.

For one dreadful moment I thought he couldn't move.

Then I saw his face.

He was looking at the sky.

It was late afternoon.

There were clouds.

Ordinary pale clouds, moving very slowly over the canyon, with nothing holding them up that I needed to understand.

I came out behind Sera and sat on the first piece of ground that didn't slope.

The air smelled of leaves and sun-warmed rock.

I hadn't realized how much the chamber had smelled of standing water until I breathed something else.

Liam was lying on his back.

Holt sat beside him, hands on his knees. Risa leaned against the slab with her eyes closed. Luna counted us again, touching each shoulder as she passed.

Toby took his hand off the rock.

“Seven,” he whispered.

“Yes,” she said.

Dot found us before we could work out the whole path home.

One of her wings came over the ridge, turned so sharply I thought it had struck something, and vanished again. Then she appeared above us with all eight arms lifted clear of the ground, as if she'd run out of places to put them.

She came down the slope carefully.

I could see the effort it cost her to be careful.

“This unit has received incomplete reports,” she said.

“I know.”

“This unit has counted seven.”

“So have we.”

She stopped in front of Toby.

One arm reached toward him and stopped just short of the shimmer.

“This unit would like to carry someone.”

Liam raised a hand from the ground.

“There's a queue.”

Dot carried Toby.

Not because he couldn't walk. He told us that twice. Because the way back was uneven, and he had done enough walking, and when Dot lowered herself he sat on her back without saying it a third time.

Her hand climbed up beside him with the lamp and mirror.

Holt took Liam's arm. I kept Sera's. Luna went ahead to find the easiest ground, and Risa walked beside Dot, one hand resting on her shell.

From the ridge we could see the north camp.

People were coming toward us.

I tried to count them and lost track when the first one started running.

It didn't matter. Luna would count properly when we reached them.

For now, I watched the moving figures and the cookfire behind them and the tall red tower catching the last sunlight.

There was still a place to go home to.

Wren reached us with a blanket over one arm and a face that said she'd decided not to shout until everybody was sitting down.

“Out?” she said.

“All of us,” Luna answered.

Wren looked at Toby. At the mud on Liam. At the blood Sera hadn't quite wiped from my face.

Then she put the blanket round my shoulders.

“The others?” I asked.

“At camp.”

“The line.”

Her expression changed a little.

“Still there. Still waiting. I told them we'd send again at dawn.”

I nodded.

She tightened the blanket, harder than she needed to.

“First you get to it.”

I wrote after we ate.

Not much at first. My hand kept making the letters too large, and Toby, lying under a blanket nearby, told me that was because I was supposed to be asleep.

His voice was still rough.

It was there.

Beyond the camp, Old Son flashed thirty-one from beside the tower as the sun went down.

I watched the light cross the canyon.

Then I looked at Toby again, and wrote the number seven before I wrote anything else.

Day 426. The queen's chamber.

Risa lit it. All of it. Pools. Small beds in the walls. Empty now.

The thing lay beneath the biggest one. Holding the roof.

Wrong place for the first foot. Saw the crack in the white light. Built farther in.

The Teeming carried stone. Liam hurt his thumb. Holt helped from where he sat.

Red glass. Two broad feet. An arch. Left room for the silver.

Second light. Saw the splinter. Blunted it before the weight came down.

It lowered the rib onto the glass a little at a time. It could feel the change.

The small threads brightened.

No one asked Toby to hold anything.

The way behind the rib went up. Daylight. Seven.

Dot wanted to carry someone. Toby let her.

Wren kept the line. The others are still waiting. Dawn tomorrow.

The queen touched the glass before we left.

I don't know what that meant.

I know it was able to let go.