Chapter 253 The Night Before

Keir showed me the seed on Day 757.

Not the seed I'd made on the edge of the bed. That was still in my pocket, heavy and smooth and grey. This was the other one. Keir's name for it. The one Keir and Aster had been building in the back of the transport hangar for nine days, with the doors shut and Aster's pale green lamps turned down low so nobody could see the light through the cracks.

"Don't laugh," said Keir.

"I'm not going to laugh."

"You'll want to," said Keir. "Everyone does. Dane laughed. Then he stopped." He pulled the tarpaulin off.

I didn't laugh.

It was small.

The size of a cart. Smaller. Long and narrow and rounded at both ends, like an egg that had been stretched. With no windows. No engines. No wings, no rotors, no landing struts. Nothing sticking out of it anywhere.

Grey.

All of it. Every inch. The grey I'd been making every night on the canyon rim for the shield, sheet by sheet, with Sera's heat and Risa's lightning. Keir had asked me for the offcuts. The pieces that came out wrong, too thick or too narrow, that wouldn't fit the dome. I'd given them to him without asking what for.

He'd built a ship out of them.

"There's one seat," Keir said. "And a door on the side that seals when Risa runs her lightning along it. Aster worked that out." He patted the hull. "And there's nothing inside to make it go."

"Then how does it go?"

Keir looked at me.

"You," he said.

Aster explained it.

She'd been listening, she said. Every night for nine days. To me and the old one on the mountain, through our queen, through the stones, while I slept. She couldn't follow the brood-speech. But she could follow the shape of it. The way Dot followed the shape of the queen's teaching even when she couldn't translate the words.

"The old one is teaching the operator to fold weight," Aster said. "To make a thing lean toward its own floor. The way the spine-queen makes the station lean toward its decks." Her lamps flickered. "If the operator can make a thing lean toward its floor, the operator can make it lean toward anything."

"Up," said Keir.

"Up," Aster agreed. "No engine. No burn. No heat. Nothing that the station's instruments can see. Only a grey egg, made of the material their instruments cannot see into, leaning gently toward the sky."

I put my hand on the hull.

It was cool. Smooth. Seamless, the way the Overseer's shell was seamless. I could feel the weave of it under my palm, tight and dense, the fold I'd been learning every night.

And I could feel, very faintly, the place where it could lean.

"Have you tested it?" I said.

"We can't," said Keir. "It doesn't go without you." He folded his arms. "So you're going to test it. Tonight. In here. With the doors shut."

It went.

Not far. Not high. I sat in the single seat with the door sealed, Risa's lightning running along the seam so it locked rigid, and I put my hands flat on the inside of the hull and closed my eyes and did what the old one had been showing me every night.

I didn't climb. I didn't push. I found the fold, the way the egg sat in the world, the way everything sits, leaning very slightly toward the ground under it.

And I asked it to lean a little less.

The egg lifted.

Six inches. Off the hangar floor. Silent. I felt it go. Felt the weight of it, which had been pressing down through the floor into the red glass of the canyon, ease. Not vanish. Just ease. The way a breath eases out.

Six inches.

I held it there for a minute.

Then I let it settle.

When I opened the door, Keir was standing in front of it with his arms still folded and his face perfectly still. Aster's lamps were very bright. Risa was sitting on a crate by the wall, with Dory asleep on her chest, and her eyes were wide.

"Six inches," said Keir.

"Six inches."

"The Meridian's four hundred miles up."

"I know."

Keir looked at me for a long moment.

"Well," he said. "Six inches is further than I've ever seen anything go without an engine." He unfolded his arms. "Do it again tomorrow. Do it every night. By the time they land, I want you lifting it to the roof."

I lifted it to the roof on Day 758.

Thirty feet. Silent. Hanging in the dark of the hangar like a grey moon, with Keir and Aster and Risa underneath and Dory, awake now, looking up at it with her silver-ringed eyes and her mouth open.

Then I brought it down.

Gently. The way you'd put down something that was sleeping.

When I opened the door, Dory was reaching up toward me with both hands.

"Up," she said.

Her third word.

Risa laughed so hard she had to sit down again.

That night, the night before, we sat on the porch.

Not Father's house. Ours. The one we'd built in the spring, with the common room and Sera's work corner and the bird's shelf and the small room that had been empty for so long and had Dory's basket in it now.

Risa in Gareth's chair, with her feet up on the porch rail.

She'd been up and down all day. To the hangar, to the forge, to the courts, to the medical building to see Jessa and Lise. Edda had caught her at noon and said, very firmly, sit down, and Risa had said I'm fine, and Edda had said you've been holding storms for a month and lightning for the shield and you're feeding a baby, sit down, and Risa had sat down.

She hadn't got up since.

Her feet were on the rail. Her head was back. Dory was asleep on her chest, one hand curled in the collar of Risa's shirt.

Sera was on the top step, leaning back against Risa's shins. Luna was beside her, with her notebook open on her knee, not writing in it. Just holding it. Her other hand was on Sera's knee.

I was on the boards by the door.

Nobody said very much.

Liam came at nine.

With a jug.

"No," said Sera, without turning round.

"You haven't even seen it."

"I can smell it."

"That's the point," said Liam. He came up the steps and put the jug on the porch rail beside Risa's feet, and a stack of cups beside it, and stood back. "This is the worst one I've ever made. I've been working on it for a week. I put everything in it. Everything. It's got the green stuff from the party and the red stuff from the spring and something Dov found in the third wave's cargo that the label just says do not." He poured. It was brown. It smelled like a forge fire somebody had put out with vinegar. "It's for luck."

"How is that lucky?" said Luna.

"Because if you can drink this," said Liam, "nothing tomorrow can be worse."

Nobody argued with that.

He handed round the cups. Sera took one and looked at it as if it might bite her. Luna took one and set it down on the step beside her very carefully, the way you'd set down something that might go off. Risa took one, and held it, and didn't drink.

I drank mine.

It was the worst thing I'd ever put in my mouth.

Liam watched me swallow it, and grinned, and sat down on the porch rail beside the jug.

"Lucky," he said.

Sigmund came at ten.

He didn't knock. He didn't say anything. He came up the street from the practice ground, where he'd been sparring with Sesh for the fourth morning running and then holding his lightning in the scorched circle until dark. He came up the porch steps. He looked at all of us.

Then he sat down on the boards. Beside Risa's chair. On the side where her free hand hung down over the arm.

He didn't ask.

Risa didn't say anything either. She reached down without looking, and put her hand on his shoulder, and left it there.

Sigmund didn't move.

After a while, Liam held out a cup.

Sigmund looked at it. Then at Liam. Then he took it and drank the whole thing in one go, and his face did something very complicated, and he put the cup down on the boards and didn't say a word.

"Lucky," said Liam, delighted.

"Shut up, Calder," said Sigmund.

But he didn't move away from his sister's hand.

"Father's on it," Risa said.

Quietly. Into the dark. To nobody in particular.

Nobody answered.

"Tomorrow," Risa said. "On the transport. Coming down onto the apron. Under the shield he can't see." She looked down at Dory, asleep on her chest. "And he's going to walk across our red glass, and up our street, and stand in front of this porch."

"He's not coming to this porch," said Sigmund.

"He's coming to look," said Risa. "That's what the delegation's for. To observe conditions at Primary Base." She turned her head and looked at her brother. "He's going to observe us, Siggy. All of us. Me. You. Her."

Sigmund's jaw moved.

"He wrote by descent," he said. "In the Accord. Before she was born. Before you'd met Dask. He wrote a clause that makes her the Project's." His voice was very flat. "And then he signed first. On the nine."

"I know."

"And tomorrow you're going to stand on that apron and let him look at her."

Risa didn't answer for a long time.

Then she said, "Yes."

Sigmund turned his head.

"Holt's rule," said Risa. "Show them everything. Hide nothing." She looked down at Dory. "The queens will hold the hollow. She'll be in the quiet room, the way she's been every time something came down from the sky. But he'll know she's there. He'll know her name. He'll know she's his granddaughter." Her voice went very low. "And he'll have to stand on our apron and decide what he's looking at."

Sigmund didn't say anything.

But after a long moment, he put his hand up and covered his sister's, on his shoulder. And held it there.

Luna hadn't written anything all night.

That was how I knew. Luna always wrote. At the kitchen table, on the porch, in the map room, at the garden wall. Lists and terms and maps and numbers. Her notebook was always open and her pen was always moving.

Tonight the notebook was open on her knee and the pen was in her hand and she hadn't written a word.

"Luna," said Sera softly.

"I know."

"You're not writing."

"I know." Luna looked down at the page. It was the arrivals list. The one she'd kept since the first wave came down. And at the bottom of the last page, in her small exact hand:

Windsor, Alaric. General. Avalon Command. Departing. One.

Expected back.

"I don't know what to write," Luna said. "Tomorrow. When he comes down the ramp. I've been thinking about it for five months and I don't know." She swallowed. "Arrived isn't right. He's not arriving. He's coming back. And returned sounds like a library book."

Sera turned on the step and looked up at her.

Then she reached up and took the pen out of Luna's hand, very gently, and held it.

"Then don't write anything," she said. "Not tomorrow. Not on the apron. Just stand there and let him come down the ramp and look at you." She put the pen back in Luna's hand and closed Luna's fingers round it. "Write it after. When you know what it was."

Luna looked at her for a long time.

Then she leaned down and kissed Sera's forehead, and closed the notebook, and put it inside her coat.

"After," she said.

Toby came at eleven.

With his fiddle. He didn't play it. He sat on the bottom step with it across his knees and looked up at the sky.

"Tomorrow," he said, "at noon, when they're on the ground. Twenty-three queens."

"Twenty-three queens," said Luna.

"I've been practising," said Toby. "In the listening room. Every night. Not the counter-note. The other one. The one that carries." He turned the fiddle over in his hands. "It's harder. Cancelling's easy. You just play the opposite. Carrying's—" He stopped. "Carrying means you have to hold someone else's song and not change it. Not even a little. Not even to make it better."

"Can you?"

Toby looked up at the sky. At the place where the station would come up over the eastern horizon tomorrow at noon, on its day pass.

"I've been holding Sera's baby's note for a week," he said. "Every time I tune. It's been humming my counter-note back at me, so I hum it back so it knows I heard." He smiled, a little. "If I can hold that without changing it, I can hold twenty-three queens."

Sera turned round on the step and looked at him.

"You've been humming at my baby?"

"Every night," said Toby. "It likes it."

Sera stared at him.

Then she laughed. Wetly. And put her hand on her stomach. Thirteen weeks.

"Of course it does," she said.

Holt didn't come.

I'd thought he might. He came most nights, for a while, before he went to the map room. But not that night.

At midnight, I went to look for him.

He was at Father's house.

On the bench. On the porch. In the dark. With Mr. Grumble grumbling on the roof above him and the field in front of him, its rows ready, the scarecrow with its arms out and its neck bare.

He didn't look up when I came.

"Couldn't sleep," he said.

"Neither could I."

I sat down beside him.

We looked at the scarecrow.

"Hal's on the bench," said Holt after a while. "Outside the guest house. I walked past him on the way here. He didn't sleep either." He was quiet. "He asked me to tell you something."

"What?"

"He said the tender docks at the Sorn ring at a quarter past noon," said Holt. "Station time. Our noon. He said the warden comes down from the Hand, and the old warden goes up, and the ring's open for eleven minutes while they change over." He looked at me. "He said he didn't tell me that."

I didn't say anything.

"Eleven minutes," said Holt. "With twenty-three queens singing and Toby carrying it and the whole of the Hand watching your sisters come down the ramp." He leaned on his stick. "That's not much."

"It's enough."

"It'd better be." He looked at the scarecrow for a long time. "Your father went over the top at noon. At the Varran pass. With the sun behind him. Because he said noon, out loud, first, and the rest of us stood up." He was quiet. "Noon's a good time, Dask. For going."

"Holt."

"Mm."

"Will you stand up?"

Holt turned his head and looked at me.

"I'm old," he said. "My knees are bad. My silver's the old pattern, cut with an axe. I can hear the bone in the station and I can't do a damned thing about it." He was quiet for a moment. "But yes. I'll stand up. Somebody's got to be on the apron for your sisters who knew your father."

He turned back to the scarecrow.

"Go to bed, Dask," he said. "It's a big day."

I didn't go to bed.

I went home and sat on the porch, where Risa was asleep in the chair with Dory and Sigmund was asleep on the boards beside her with his head against the chair leg. Liam had gone. Toby had gone. Sera and Luna were on the top step, Sera's head on Luna's shoulder, both of them asleep, Luna's notebook still open on her knee.

I didn't wake any of them.

I sat on the boards by the door and watched the sky.

At four in the morning, the hollow opened a little. The queens did it. Just enough. Just for a moment. So that Dory, asleep on Risa's chest, could check.

She did.

Me. Risa. Sera. Luna. Sigmund. The queen. Dot.

And then, along the thread she'd found in me the day of the call, out. Further than she'd ever gone. Not to the penthouse.

Up.

To a ship. Coming. Through the dark between the worlds, eleven light-years compressed into something I didn't understand, on its last jump before Avalon.

And in the ship, two small bright sparks of silver. Unfinished. Narrow in places. Very familiar.

Dory found them.

There you are, she said.

And very far away, so faint I almost didn't feel it, one of them, the one that had always been louder, turned.

Toward her.

As if she'd heard.

The transport came at eleven.

I saw it first. Through the mirrors.

I'd built the mirror lattice in the first year, before anything. Lenses and telescopes and front-silvered mirrors along the canyon rim, so I could see the whole valley, because anything I could see I could change. I'd kept adding to it. Wren had a telescope on her roof. Juno had one on the schoolroom.

That morning I stood on the red glass with my eyes on the eastern sky, and the mirrors caught the transport the moment it broke atmosphere.

A spark. High up. Coming down.

Then a shape. Long and white and ordinary. A Project transport. The same kind that had brought the third wave, and the General, five months ago, with the maintenance plate in his breast pocket.

Coming down.

Under the shield.

Through it, actually. The shield let it through. I'd made it that way. Things that came down slowly, on a glide path, with their engines on and their markings showing: the grey let them pass. Things that came down fast and silent and heavy from very high up, it wouldn't.

I watched the transport come through the shield and felt it go. A faint shiver in the grey, a mile across, like a hand passing through a soap bubble without breaking it.

And through the mirrors, I looked inside.

I shouldn't have been able to see that far.

Twenty miles. Fifteen. Ten. Too far for my sight, on its own. But the mirrors brought it closer, and the transport's hull was the grey, so my sight saw clear through it.

So I looked.

The pilot. The co-pilot. Ordinary. Station crew. No discs.

Behind them, the passenger cabin.

Twelve people. In rows.

A woman in the front row with her back very straight and her hands folded in her lap. A spine like a ruler. Hands perfectly still. The way a teacher sits at the front of a room when she wants the room to know she's not going anywhere.

Miss Pell.

Beside her, a girl. Smaller. Thinner. With her silver all jumbled in the place where her words lived, narrow and scarred, and a bag on her lap so full of something square and heavy that it pressed down on her knees.

Hana. With the horse books.

Across the aisle, a man in uniform. Broad. Grey at the temples. With a maintenance plate in his breast pocket, and his hands flat on his knees, and his head turned toward the window.

The General.

Behind him, in the second row, a man I'd met once. Older. Narrow. In a dark coat. Sitting very still, with his hands clasped on the head of a cane he didn't need. His silver was nothing. He wasn't modified. He was just a man.

Senator Friese.

And in the row behind him, by the window, two girls.

One sitting very straight.

Hands folded. Dark hair cut at the jaw. Silver narrow in places, unfinished, the way mine had been before the mountain. But bright. So bright. Pressed up against the inside of her like light against a door.

Genny.

And beside her, not sitting straight at all. Sideways. With her legs tucked under her and her face pressed against the window and both hands flat on the glass. Silver jumbled and wild and narrow and bright, the way it had always been, ever since she was small, turning pebbles into strawberries.

Garnet.

Looking out the window.

Looking down.

At the red glass coming up to meet them. At the city. At the canyon. At the queen, at the garden wall, lifting her great head.

At me.

She couldn't see me. Not from ten miles up. Not through the window. Not without the mirrors.

But her silver turned.

The way it had turned at four in the morning, in the dark between the worlds, when Dory said there you are.

Toward me.

The transport touched down at seven minutes to noon.

On the red-glass apron. Exactly where the General's shuttle had landed five months ago. Where the Overseer's grey shuttle had come down. Where the Kethri's dark green craft still sat, with its ramp closed.

The whole of Scarecrow was there.

Not crowding. Holt's rule. In doorways and on porches and along the edge of the street. The young in a ring behind everyone, the way they'd stood for the wedding. The queen at the garden wall, at her full height.

The Overseer at its window.

The handler in the middle of the street, with ten Kethri three steps behind it. Sesh at the front.

Crane on his bench.

Holt at the edge of the apron. Standing. Without his stick.

Luna beside him. With the arrivals list against her chest.

Sera beside me. Her hand in mine. Risa on my other side, without Dory. Dory was in the quiet room, in the faceted dark, with Dot and Pebble. The hollow was closed tight. Twenty-three queens holding the world still round one small house.

At the far end of the street, in the listening room under the medical building, Toby with his fiddle.

The engines wound down.

The ramp began to lower.

And I stood on the red glass under a shield nobody could see, with seven minutes until noon and eleven minutes until the Sorn ring opened and twenty-three queens waiting to sing, and watched the ramp come down.

And heard, before it touched the glass, before I could see anything inside, before anyone had said a word—

A voice.

Loud. Wild. Exactly the same as it had always been.

"LUCAS!"

Days 757–759. The night before.

Keir and Aster built a ship out of my offcuts from the shield. The size of a cart, a stretched egg, all grey. One seat. A door Risa's lightning seals. Nothing inside to make it go. "You." Aster has been listening to the old one teach me while I sleep: if I can fold a thing to lean toward its floor, I can make it lean toward anything. Up. No engine, no burn, nothing the station's instruments can see.

Day 757: six inches. Keir: "The Meridian's four hundred miles up." Do it every night. Day 758: to the hangar roof, thirty feet, silent, like a grey moon. Dory reached up: "Up." Her third word.

The night before, on our porch. Risa in the chair with her feet on the rail; Edda made her sit and she hadn't got up. Sera against her shins, Luna beside Sera with a hand on her knee.

Liam's worst batch. Brown. A forge fire put out with vinegar. Something labelled only "do not." "If you can drink this, nothing tomorrow can be worse." I drank it. Lucky. Sigmund came at ten without asking and sat by Risa's chair; she put her hand on his shoulder. He drank Liam's in one go. "Shut up, Calder." He didn't move away.

Risa: Father's on it. He'll observe us. All of us. Her. Sigmund: he wrote by descent and signed first on the nine, and you'll let him look at her? Risa: yes. Holt's rule. She'll be in the quiet room, but he'll know her name and that she's his granddaughter, and he'll have to decide what he's looking at. Sigmund covered her hand on his shoulder.

Luna hadn't written a word all night. Arrived isn't right; he's coming back. Returned sounds like a library book. Sera closed Luna's fingers round the pen: don't write anything tomorrow. Let him come down the ramp and look at you. Write it after, when you know what it was. Luna kissed her forehead and closed the notebook. After.

Toby: carrying is harder than cancelling. You have to hold someone else's song and not change it, not even to make it better. He's been humming Sera's baby's note back to it every night so it knows he heard. "It likes it." Sera: "Of course it does." Thirteen weeks.

Holt on Father's bench at midnight. Crane, who didn't sleep either, asked him to say: the tender docks at the Sorn ring at a quarter past noon. The ring is open eleven minutes for the changeover. He didn't tell Holt that. Holt: Father went over the top at noon. "Noon's a good time for going." Will you stand up? "Somebody's got to be on the apron for your sisters who knew your father."

At four in the morning the queens opened the hollow a little. Dory checked, and then went further than she ever has. Up. To a ship on its last jump. Two small bright sparks, unfinished, very familiar. There you are. The louder one turned toward her.

Eleven o'clock, through the mirrors. The shield let the transport through, the way I made it: slow, engines on, markings showing. Like a hand through a soap bubble. I looked inside. Pell, straight-backed, spine like a ruler, hands still, not going anywhere. Hana, words-place scarred, a bag of horse books pressing on her knees. The General, the plate in his pocket, looking out the window. Senator Friese, narrow, dark coat, a cane he doesn't need, not modified at all. And by the window, Genny, straight, bright silver pressing like light against a door. And Garnet, sideways, both hands on the glass, looking down. She couldn't see me. Her silver turned toward me anyway.

Seven minutes to noon. Everyone in their place. Holt standing without his stick. Luna with the arrivals list. Sera's hand, Risa beside me. Dory in the quiet room with Dot and Pebble, twenty-three queens holding the world still. Toby in the listening room.

Seven minutes to noon. Eleven minutes of open ring. Twenty-three queens waiting. The ramp coming down.

"LUCAS!"