Chapter 254 Eleven Minutes

She didn't wait for the ramp to touch the ground.

Nobody could have stopped her. Miss Pell tried. I saw it, through the gap at the top of the ramp as it came down: Pell's hand going out, Pell's mouth opening to say Garnet, wait. And Garnet already past her, already at the top of the ramp, already jumping.

Four feet. Onto the red glass.

She landed badly. She always did. She went down on one knee and came straight back up again and didn't even look at it.

She ran.

Across the apron. Past Holt, standing without his stick. Past Luna with the arrivals list. Past the Kethri, three steps behind their handler, who didn't move. Past everything.

At me.

I didn't move either. I couldn't. I stood on the red glass with Sera's hand in mine and watched my sister run at me across Avalon, and my legs didn't work.

She hit me so hard I went back a step.

Her arms went round my waist. Her face went into my coat. And she held on, the way she'd held on when she was small and something frightened her in the night. Not crying. Garnet never cried when she was holding on. She just held on, as hard as she could, as if I might blow away.

"You're taller," she said, into my coat. "I knew you were taller."

I put my arms round her.

I couldn't say anything. I put my face in her tangled hair and held on.

Genny came down the ramp.

Properly. Walking. With Miss Pell's hand on her shoulder and her own hands at her sides and her chin up and her back very straight, the way she'd sat on the sofa in the penthouse for the call.

She didn't run.

She walked across the apron. Every step. Not slowly. Not fast. At exactly the speed of someone who had decided, a long time ago, that she was not going to run, not in front of all these people, not in front of the Sorn and the Kethri and the delegation and the Senator.

She stopped in front of me.

Garnet was still attached to my waist. Genny looked at her. Then at me.

"Hello, Lucas," she said.

Her voice was perfectly steady.

"Hello, Genny."

She looked at my eyes. At the silver round them. Whole. The way Mother looked every Sunday. Taking inventory.

"You finished it," she said.

"Yes."

"I've seen it on the screen." Genny's chin came up a little further. "Every Sunday since the ice. It's not the same." A pause. "I wanted to see."

"Now you've seen."

"Now I've seen," Genny agreed.

Then her face did the thing it had done on the call. When she'd read YES. I THINK HE DID. in my handwriting on the screen.

It crumpled.

And this time she didn't put it back.

She walked the last step, very straight, and put her arms round me, over Garnet's head, and pressed her face against my shoulder, and cried. Silently. The way Father had cried, the one time I ever saw him do it, in the field, with his back to the house.

"I'm not crying," she said, into my coat.

"I know."

"Windsors don't cry and Dasks don't either."

"I know."

"I'm not."

"I know, Genny," I said. "I know."

I don't know how long we stood there.

Sera says it was about a minute. It felt like a year. It felt like no time at all. The three of us on the red glass, Garnet round my waist and Genny round my neck and my arms round both of them, with the whole of Scarecrow watching and nobody saying a word.

Then Garnet lifted her head.

And looked past me.

At Sera, standing beside me, with tears on her face. At Risa, on my other side. At Luna, by the ramp, with the arrivals list clutched to her chest.

"Which one's Risa?" Garnet said.

Risa made a sound.

"I'm Risa," she said.

Garnet let go of my waist. All at once. She looked at Risa very carefully, up and down, the way she looked at a pebble before she turned it into a strawberry.

"Where's the baby?" she said.

Risa's face did something complicated.

"She's in a special room," she said. "Under the garden. Where it's quiet. She's not allowed out today. Too many people." She knelt down, so she was at Garnet's height. "You'll meet her tonight. I promise."

Garnet considered this.

"Does she know I'm here?"

Risa looked at me.

I thought about four in the morning. The hollow opening, just a little. Dory checking. Up. Out. Further than she'd ever gone. Two small bright sparks in a ship on its last jump.

There you are.

"Yes," I said. "She knows."

Garnet nodded, satisfied, and put her arms round Risa's neck, very suddenly, the way she did everything.

Risa held her.

She didn't say anything. She knelt on the red glass with my sister's arms round her neck, and closed her eyes, and held on.

The General came down the ramp.

Slowly. Last but one. With his hand on the rail and his eyes on the apron. On one person.

Luna didn't move.

She stood at the foot of the ramp with the arrivals list against her chest, exactly where she'd stood five months ago to count him on. Her face was perfectly composed. Her back was very straight.

Sera had told her not to write anything. Let him come down the ramp and look at you.

So she didn't write. She stood there.

And let him look.

The General came down the last step. He stopped in front of her. Very close. The way he'd stood at the foot of the ramp the day he left. He looked at his daughter for a long time.

Then he said, very quietly, "I brought the oranges."

Luna's face broke.

Not crumpled. Broke. All at once. Like ice on a river in spring. The composure went, and the straight back went, and the hand holding the arrivals list went, and the list fell on the red glass, and Luna Windsor stepped forward and put her face against her father's chest and made a sound I'd never heard her make.

He held her.

He held her the way he'd held her at the ramp the day he left, one hand on the back of her head. And this time, he didn't cry.

He smiled.

Over her head, at the rest of us. At Sera and me and Risa and the twins. At Holt, standing without his stick.

Holt nodded.

The General nodded back.

And Nessa, from somewhere in the crowd, shouted, "TWELVE?"

The General laughed. Out loud. With his daughter's face against his chest.

"Twelve!" he called back. "And a lemon!"

Hana came down with Miss Pell.

Slowly. With Pell's hand on her elbow and the heavy bag over her shoulder. She was small. Smaller than I remembered. Thinner. Her hair cut short. Her face still had the look I remembered from the medical wing, the faint stillness on one side where the muscles hadn't quite come back.

She stopped at the bottom of the ramp.

She looked round the apron. At the city. At the red glass. At the queen at the garden wall, at her full height, looking back.

And then at Risa.

Risa was still kneeling, with Garnet's arms round her neck. She looked up and saw Hana.

And let go of Garnet, very gently, and stood up.

They looked at each other across the apron for a long time.

Then Hana said, very carefully, getting every word right:

"I brought the horse books."

Risa crossed the apron in about four steps.

She didn't say anything. She put her arms round Hana, bag and all, and held her, and Hana held her back, and the two of them stood there at the bottom of the ramp holding on, the girl who'd read the horse books and the girl who'd listened, and both of them crying, and neither of them saying a word.

Miss Pell stood beside them with her hands folded and her back very straight.

She looked at me.

She nodded once.

Then she looked past me. Up the street. Toward the schoolroom roof.

Where Juno was standing. Very still. With her head turned, not east, for once, but toward the apron. Toward the woman at the bottom of the ramp.

Miss Pell's hands, folded in front of her, came apart.

Senator Friese came down last.

Slowly. With his cane that he didn't need. In his dark coat. Narrow and grey and perfectly composed. He stopped at the bottom of the ramp and looked round the apron, the way you'd look round a room you'd been told about and expected to be disappointed by.

He looked at the city.

At the queen.

At the Kethri, three steps behind their handler. At the Overseer, at its window.

At his son.

Sigmund was standing at the edge of the apron, a little apart from everyone. His arms folded. His jaw set. The lightning not running on his arms, for once; I'd checked. He was holding it so tightly it had gone completely still.

Friese looked at him.

Neither of them moved.

Then Friese looked at his daughter.

Risa was still holding Hana. She lifted her head from Hana's shoulder and looked back at her father across the red glass.

She didn't let go of Hana.

She didn't step forward.

She just looked at him. With her chin up. With storm-grey eyes. With her daughter in a quiet room under the garden that he'd written into the Accord before she was born.

Friese held her gaze for a long moment.

Then he looked away.

First.

Juno came down off the schoolroom roof.

I saw her go. Down the ladder at the back, too fast, missing the last three rungs. Across the street. Through the crowd, which parted for her without anyone saying a word. Onto the red glass.

She stopped ten feet from Miss Pell.

Pell didn't move. Her hands had come apart, but she didn't move. She stood at the bottom of the ramp, very straight, beside Risa and Hana, and looked at the girl she'd taken in from the school where she taught. The girl she'd hidden for two years and then lost to a transport anyway. The girl who'd flashed a mirror from a hilltop every dawn for eighteen months until someone answered.

Juno looked back.

Neither of them said anything for a long time.

Then Pell said, in her neat careful teacher's voice, very quietly:

"You've grown."

Juno's face did nothing at all.

"You didn't write my name," she said. "On the card. You wrote the girls."

"Someone might have read it."

"I know." Juno's voice shook. "I knew that's why. I knew."

Pell's chin came up. Very slightly.

"I wrote I will not," she said.

"I know," said Juno. "I sent back I will not either."

"I got it," said Pell.

And then Harriet Pell, who had never once in Juno's life said I love you, who had said eat your vegetables and I will not let them and uneventful, crossed the ten feet of red glass in three steps, very straight, and put her arms round her daughter.

She didn't say anything.

She didn't need to.

Juno put her face in Pell's shoulder and held on.

On the far side of the apron, Wren opened her book and wrote something. I found out later what it was. Under Pell, Harriet. Guardian, in her square careful hand: Home. For Juno.

Six minutes to noon.

I knew because Dot told me. Very quietly. From behind me, where she'd rolled up to the edge of the apron, her lamps turned low.

"Six minutes, Operator," she said. "The queens are waiting."

I looked at the twins.

Garnet had let go of Risa and come back to me. She had one hand in mine and was looking round the apron with enormous eyes, at the city and the queen and the young in their ring behind everyone, the way she'd looked at the wasteland the first time Father took her outside the house.

Genny was on my other side. Very straight. Very close. Her shoulder against my arm.

"Come with me," I said. "Both of you. I want to show you something."

We walked to Father's house.

Up the street. Away from the apron. Past the forge and the schoolroom and the last of the third-wave houses. Holt fell in behind us, without his stick, walking slowly. Sera and Luna on either side. Risa stayed with Hana. The General stayed with the delegation; he'd caught my eye as we left, and something in his face said I know.

Nobody stopped us.

Why would they? The asset was taking his sisters home. To a house he'd built for them. It was exactly what anyone would expect him to do. It was exactly what the Hand would expect.

At the edge of the city, where the red glass gave way to scrub, Garnet stopped.

She'd seen it.

She didn't say anything at first.

She stood in the street with her hand in mine and looked at Father's house. Low and wide. Wasteland stone, pitted and grey. The porch on the south side with the bench. Mr. Grumble on the roof.

Grumbling.

Garnet's hand tightened in mine.

Then she let go and ran.

Up the path. Onto the porch. Past the bench. Through the door, which stuck, because I'd made it stick. She shoved it with her shoulder the way she always had, and it gave, and she was inside.

Genny didn't run.

She walked up the path very slowly. She stopped at the bottom of the porch steps. She looked at the bench. At the door. At Mr. Grumble.

Then she walked up the steps and through the door.

I followed them in.

Garnet was at the kitchen window.

Standing on her toes. With one finger on the glass. On the crack. Top corner, diagonal, the length of my hand.

Tracing it.

"It's a river," she said. Not to me. To herself. "It looks like a river on a map."

Genny was at the table.

Standing at the end of it. Looking down at the dip worn into the slab, where Mother always put her cup.

She put her hand in it.

Then she took it out, and turned round, and looked at me. Her face was wet. Her chin was up.

"I'm not crying," she said.

"I know."

"You put the crack in."

"Father always meant to fix it."

"He never fixed it," said Genny. "Every winter. Next week." Her voice broke. "You put the crack in, Lucas."

Then she sat down at Father's table, very suddenly, as if her legs had stopped working, and put her face in her hands.

Garnet came away from the window and climbed onto the bench beside her and put her arms round her.

I stood in the kitchen doorway.

Two minutes to noon.

"Lucas."

Holt. In the doorway behind me. Very quiet.

I turned.

He didn't say anything else. He didn't need to. He looked at me, and then at the back of the house. At the door that led out to the field. And past the field, to the small shed I'd built behind the scarecrow, which wasn't on any plan of Father's house, which Keir and Aster had filled in the dark last night.

With a grey egg the size of a cart.

I looked at my sisters.

Garnet with her arms round Genny. Genny with her face in her hands. At Father's table. In Father's kitchen. Under a shield nobody could see.

"I have to go," I said.

They both looked up.

"Go where?" said Garnet.

I knelt down by the bench, so I was at their height.

"Up," I said. "There's a queen. In the station. In the sky. She's been held for a very long time. Longer than I've been alive. She's been singing, all that time, to anyone who could hear." I swallowed. "And nobody could. Until now."

Genny was looking at me very hard.

"Today," she said. "You're going today. While we're here."

"Because you're here," I said. "Because you're on the ground. Under the queens. Where nobody can put you on a wall." I took her hand. "That was the first line of the plan. Before anything. You and Garnet, on the ground. And then I go."

Genny stared at me.

Then her face changed.

Not crumpling. Something else. Something I'd seen on Father's face, once or twice. When he understood something all at once, and it was bigger than he'd expected, and he was angry about it and proud of it at the same time.

"That's why you asked," she said slowly. "For us to come. That's what the visit was for."

"Partly."

"That's why Luna wrote it." Genny's grip on my hand tightened. "So he can see with his own eyes that they are well. It's a trick."

"It's not a trick," I said. "I did want to see you. More than anything." I held her eyes. "But yes. It was also the plan."

Genny looked at me for a long time.

Then she said, "Go."

Garnet didn't understand.

She looked from Genny to me with her face screwed up. "Go where? You only just got here. We only just got here."

"I'll come back," I said.

"When?"

I looked at Holt in the doorway.

"Before Hana finishes the first horse book," I said. "That's the rule. Risa made it."

Garnet considered this.

"How long's the first horse book?"

"Very short," I said.

Garnet looked at me for a long time. Then she climbed down off the bench and came round the table and put her arms round my neck, very hard, the way she'd hit me on the apron.

"Come back," she said into my ear.

"I will."

"Promise."

"I promise."

That was the fourth promise. My daughter had three. My sister had one.

I meant to keep all of them.

The shed was dark.

Keir was there. And Aster. And Risa.

Risa had come the back way, from the apron, through the scrub behind the city wall. She'd left Hana with Miss Pell and the horse books. She stood beside the grey egg with her hand on its hull and her face set the way it went when she'd decided something.

"The queens are ready," she said. "All twenty-three. Toby's in the listening room. Dot's at the wall with ours." She looked at me. "One minute."

I climbed in.

One seat. The hull curving round me, grey and seamless and cool. No windows. I didn't need them; through the grey I could see the shed, and Keir and Aster, and Risa with her hand on the seam. And under my palms, the weave of it, tight and dense, and the place where it could lean.

Risa put her head in at the door.

She didn't say anything. She leaned in and kissed me. Hard. Quick. Then she pulled back, and looked at me with her storm-grey eyes, and said:

"Before the first horse book."

"Before the first horse book."

She stepped back.

She put her hand on the seam of the door. And ran her lightning along it.

The door sealed. Rigid. Locked.

Dark.

Noon.

I felt it begin.

Not in my ears. There was nothing to hear inside the egg. In my silver. In my bones. In the soles of my feet, through the hull, through the floor of the shed, through the red glass and the rock and the deep.

Our queen.

At the garden wall. At her full height. Lifting her great head to the sky.

Singing.

Five notes. Low, and lower, and a step up, and two steps down.

Here. I'm here.

And then the mountain queen, on her terrace. In the light. With a piece of herself she'd been without for four hundred years. Singing.

And Lantern. And the Hollow. And First Garden. And the Spire, old and dry as wind over stone. And the Bowl Queen in her valley. And the delta queen, with a fragment that was no one's laid among her eggs. And the white mountains, and the jungle, and the Northern Hollow who'd said no and then I am in this.

Twenty-three.

All at once.

The same five notes.

Here. I'm here.

Not to their broods. Not to each other.

Up.

And under it, from the listening room, from the flat south wall that caught everything that came down from the sky and threw it back—

Toby.

Not cancelling. Carrying.

One long low note. Holding twenty-three queens' song the way the bowl had held his own. Steady. Unchanging. Not even to make it better.

Lifting it.

Up through the rock and the sky and the shield nobody could see, toward the station on its noon pass. Toward the spine chamber. Toward the queen in her housings, pinned and tired and tied to six channels that kept six hundred people breathing and one that drove broods across a continent.

Who'd been singing those five notes under the voice, every pass, for eight years. To anyone who could hear.

And for the first time, someone was singing them back.

A quarter past noon.

The tender docked at the Sorn ring.

I felt it. Through Juno, who was standing on the schoolroom roof with her head tipped back, feeling every silver on Avalon and above it. Through Jessa, in the medical building, with her hand on her chest over the path that reached up. Through Dory, in the quiet room, in the faceted dark, who couldn't check past the hollow but could feel twenty-three queens singing all round her and was humming along, very small, with the third note right.

The ring opened.

Eleven minutes.

I put my hands flat on the inside of the hull.

I found the fold. The way the egg sat in the world. Leaning, very slightly, the way everything leans, toward the ground beneath it.

I asked it to lean the other way.

The egg rose.

Silent. Through the roof of the shed, which Keir had built to open. Past the scarecrow with its arms out and its neck bare. Past Father's house, where my sisters were standing on the porch now, I could feel them, both of them, Genny with her hand on the bench and Garnet with her face turned up.

Past the city. Past the queen, singing.

Up.

Into the noon sky. Under the shield, and then through it, the grey letting the grey pass, the way it was meant to.

And up.

And up.

Toward the station. And the Sorn ring. And eleven minutes.

And a queen who had been singing for eight years to anyone who could hear.

Here, I told her. I'm here.

I'm coming.

Day 759. Eleven minutes.

Garnet jumped off the ramp before it touched the ground. Four feet. Landed badly and didn't look. Ran past everyone and hit me so hard I went back a step. "You're taller. I knew you were taller."

Genny walked. Every step at exactly the speed of someone who decided long ago she would not run in front of these people. "Hello, Lucas. You finished it. I've seen it on the screen every Sunday. I wanted to see." Then her face crumpled and she didn't put it back. "I'm not crying. Windsors don't and Dasks don't either." I know, Genny.

Garnet: "Which one's Risa? Where's the baby?" In a quiet room; you'll meet her tonight. "Does she know I'm here?" Yes. Garnet put her arms round Risa's neck.

The General came down last but one. Luna didn't write anything. She stood there and let him look. "I brought the oranges." Her face broke. The list fell on the glass. He didn't cry this time; he smiled at Holt over her head. Nessa: "TWELVE?" "Twelve! And a lemon!"

Hana with Pell's hand on her elbow and the bag on her shoulder. To Risa, getting every word right: "I brought the horse books." Risa crossed in four steps. Neither said a word. Pell looked past me at Juno on the schoolroom roof, and her folded hands came apart.

Juno came down off the schoolroom roof, missing the last three rungs. Pell: "You've grown." "You didn't write my name." "Someone might have read it." "I wrote I will not." "I sent back I will not either." "I got it." Then Harriet Pell, who never once said I love you, crossed the ten feet in three steps and held her daughter.

Senator Friese last. A cane he doesn't need. He looked at the city, the queen, the Kethri, the Overseer. At Sigmund, his lightning held so tight it was still. At Risa, holding Hana, chin up, not stepping forward. He looked away first.

Six minutes to noon. I took the twins to Father's house. The asset taking his sisters home: exactly what the Hand would expect. Garnet ran; the door stuck; she shouldered it the way she always did. At the window, tracing the crack: "It's a river." Genny put her hand in the dip. "You put the crack in. He never fixed it. Next week." She sat down at Father's table and put her face in her hands. Garnet climbed up and held her.

Holt at the door. The shed behind the scarecrow. I told them: a queen in the station, singing for longer than I've been alive to anyone who could hear. I'm going today, because you're on the ground. Genny: that's what the visit was for. It's a trick. It wasn't a trick. I did want to see you. But yes, it was the plan. "Go." Garnet: come back. When? Before Hana finishes the first horse book. "How long's the first horse book?" Very short. "Promise." Fourth promise.

Risa came the back way, kissed me hard and quick, and sealed the door with her lightning. "Before the first horse book."

Noon. Our queen at full height, singing up. Then the mountain queen, Lantern, the Hollow, First Garden, the Spire, the Bowl Queen, the delta, the white mountains, the jungle, the Northern Hollow. Twenty-three, the same five notes, not to their broods, up. Toby in the listening room carrying it, not even to make it better. For the first time, someone singing back.

A quarter past noon, the tender docked. Juno felt it. Jessa felt it. Dory in the quiet room hummed along, third note right.

Eleven minutes.

I asked the egg to lean the other way. Through the shed roof, past the bare-necked scarecrow, past Father's porch where my sisters stood, past the singing queen, through the shield, the grey letting the grey pass.

Up.

Here. I'm coming.