Chapter 266 Collars

Garnet asked again in the morning.

She'd asked the afternoon before, with her hand on the edge of Sesh's collar. Can Lucas take it off? Without hurting her? The queen inside? And then the handler had come out of the guest wing at midnight, and I'd spent the rest of the night on the north shelf of the hollow with a small grey box and an Overseer that had nearly been unmade, and nobody had answered her.

Garnet didn't forget things. Garnet was twelve, the same as Genny, and she'd never forgotten anything in her life.

She found me at the forge at eight, before the dawn count had even properly finished, and stood in the doorway with her drawing board under her arm.

"You didn't say," she said.

"Say what?"

"If you can take it off. Sesh's." She came in and sat down on the bench by the door, which was where everybody sat when they wanted to watch me work and not be in the way. "Without hurting the queen."

I put the hammer down.

I'd been thinking about it all night. In between everything else. On the north shelf, after the handler was in its box, sitting beside the Overseer and not touching it, I'd thought about the collars. Ten of them. Ten slivers of nine dead queens. All of them asleep now, since the queen in the Hand had told them they could stop.

"I think so," I said.

"You think?"

"I've never done it." I sat down on the anvil. "I've read them. I read them the first day the Kethri came down the ramp. I know how they're made. The grey band. The boss at the front. The sliver inside the boss. And the threads." I held up my hand, thumb and finger almost touching. "Fine as a hair. Going from the sliver into the neck. Into the spine. Woven into the Kethri's own silver. The way the filament was woven into Jessa."

"Like a root," said Garnet.

"Like a root," I agreed. "If I just take the collar off, I pull the root out. And it tears whatever it's grown through." I looked at my hands. "With Jessa, I went in from her heart. One place at a time. Closed the filament off where it touched her, and gave her silver back its own way. It took twenty minutes."

"So do that."

"I can do that for Sesh," I said. "That's not the hard part."

Garnet waited.

"The hard part's the sliver," I said. "The youngest queen. The one who sang to the hatchlings. She's still in there. Asleep. If I take the threads out of Sesh, they don't go anywhere. They just stop. And the sliver doesn't have anything to hold on to any more." I paused. "I don't know what happens to her then."

Garnet thought about this.

"Does she need something to hold on to?"

"I think so. Everything with silver does."

"Then give her something," said Garnet. As if it were obvious. As if it were the bread. "Not Sesh. Something else. Something she wants to hold on to."

I looked at her.

"Like what?"

Garnet shrugged.

"Ask her," she said. "That's what Genny says the queen says. Ask it first."

I asked the queen.

At noon, at the garden wall, with Sesh lying beside her the way she'd lain every day since the collars went quiet. With Garnet and Genny on the porch steps and Pell behind them. With Dory on Risa's hip, and Dot at the bottom of the garden, every one of her hands very still.

The youngest queen, said our queen. The one in the tall one's collar.

Yes.

She is asleep.

Yes. I want to take her out. Without hurting her. Without hurting Sesh. I stopped. I don't know where to put her.

The queen was quiet for a long time.

Then she lifted her head off the wall. All the way up. And turned it, very slowly, until her great eye was level with Sesh's collar. With the boss at the front, under the beak, and the small grey sliver inside it.

She looked at it.

I felt her look. Not with her eye. With all of her. The way she'd looked at the Overseer on the floor of the hollow, the first time it came down with the bread. The way the old one had looked at it through her, and known it.

She is very young, said the queen. Younger than Dory. She was a queen only a short time before they cut her. A pause. She does not know she is a sliver. She thinks she is still singing to the hatchlings. She thinks the tall one is one of them.

Sesh's eye swivelled to the queen.

She'd heard. Not the words. Sesh didn't have silver that heard words. But she'd felt the queen look at her collar, and she'd felt something in the look, and she lowered her long neck until her beak was almost touching the stones of the wall.

She can come to me, said the queen.

I went very still.

Not into me, said the queen. She is not mine. But into my brood. Into the hollow. Into a stone in the hollow, where my young sleep. She can sleep there. With them. A pause. And when she wakes, if she wakes, she will wake among hatchlings. Which is what she thinks she is doing.

Can she? Can a sliver live in a stone?

The old one says yes, said our queen. If someone listens to the stone first. If someone asks it to hold her. Her eye came round to me. Not you, Lucas. You change. You do not ask.

I opened my mouth.

Then shut it.

She was right. I did change things. I could read anything and change anything, and I'd learned to listen first, the way she listened, but listening first wasn't the same as asking. When I changed a stone, the stone didn't get a say.

Then who?

The queen's eye moved past me.

To the porch steps.

To Genny.

Genny didn't argue.

That was the strange thing. Genny argued about everything. She'd argued with the tutor in the penthouse about the order of the halogens until he resigned. She'd argued with me about whether Dory was going to be taller than her. She'd argued with Garnet about whether the thread from the Hand had eaten the bread.

She came down the porch steps, and across the garden, and stopped beside me at the wall.

"She wants me to ask a stone," she said.

"Yes."

"To hold a queen."

"Yes."

Genny looked at her hands. Father's hands. The ones Pell said she had. The ones that had made a seven-faced lopsided cup out of a paving stone, sixteen days ago, after eleven minutes of listening.

"I've only done it once," she said.

"Once is more than me," I said. "I've never asked anything."

Genny looked at me for a long moment.

Then she nodded. Once. The way Mother nodded when she'd decided something and wasn't going to discuss it.

"Which stone?"

There, said the queen. And I felt her point, the way she pointed with her attention. Not in the garden. Down. Under it. Through the floor of the garden and the rock below it, into the hollow, to a place on the shelves among her own young where there was a gap. A small round hollow in the wall, the size of a cupped hand, empty.

She made it this morning, said the queen. For the sliver. Before you asked.

"Who did?" said Genny.

The small one in the hollow, said the queen. The one who holds the bread.

The Overseer had made it.

It was on the north shelf when we came down. Not close. It was sitting where it always sat, folded, mirror dark, with the bread in its hand. When we came out of the passage mouth, Genny and Garnet and Sesh and me, with Risa and Dory behind, it didn't move.

But it lifted its other hand.

And pointed. To the shelves on the east wall, where the young slept in their silver wrappings. To a place between two of them where there was a small round hollow in the stone.

I could see into it.

It wasn't the way the queens grew things. It wasn't the way I changed things. It was something in between. The stone had been folded. Not like the grey. Not tight. Just once, very carefully, inward, so that it made a cup. And every face of the cup was turned a little away from every other.

The way the queens grew the walls of the quiet room. So nothing that went in would hear the outside.

"You made that," I said.

"Yes," said the Overseer.

"How?"

The mirror tilted.

"It folded," said the Overseer. "It knows folding. It was made to fold. It was made to hold a door shut." A pause. "It thought: a door that is shut can keep something out. It can also keep something in. Safe." Another pause. "It thought perhaps it could learn to make the second kind."

Nobody said anything.

Then Garnet walked across the floor of the hollow, past all the sleeping young, to the north shelf. To the Overseer. And stopped. Not close.

"That's a good door," she said.

The Overseer's mirror came round to her.

"Yes," it said.

Sesh lay down on the floor of the hollow.

It took her a long time. She was eight feet tall, and her long neck didn't bend easily in the low places, and she'd never been in a hollow before. None of the Kethri had. The queen hadn't let them. Sesh came down the passage with her head bowed and her three-fingered hands touching the walls, and when she came out into the hollow and saw the shelves of young, she stopped and made a sound I'd never heard a Kethri make.

Dot translated it without being asked.

"She says she has not seen young since she was young."

Then she lay down. In front of the shelf with the Overseer's small round hollow in it. And laid her long neck on the floor, with the collar uppermost. And closed her eyes.

I knelt beside her.

Genny knelt beside me. On the other side, Garnet, holding Sesh's three-fingered hand in both of hers, because Garnet said someone ought to.

I went in from Sesh's heart.

The same way I'd gone into Jessa. Into her silver, which was nothing like ours. Feathered, almost. Branching and branching into fine soft filaments that ran out along every bone of her. And all through it, from the neck down, the threads. Fine as a hair. Woven in. Grown in. Like roots through soil. Asleep now, since the queen in the Hand had told them to stop. But still there. Still holding.

I didn't pull them.

I found every place they touched her. One at a time. I closed each one off. Not cutting. Closing. The way you'd close a door very gently in a house where someone is sleeping. And where each one had been, I gave her own silver back its own way, so that it filled in behind the thread as the thread let go.

Twenty minutes.

Thirty.

Forty. There were more threads in Sesh than there had been in Jessa. Much more. She'd worn the collar her whole life. Since she was a hatchling. The threads had grown through her the way ivy grows through a wall that's been standing a hundred years.

At forty-three minutes, the last one let go.

And the sliver in the collar woke.

Not all the way. Not like Dory waking. More like a child stirring in its sleep when someone lifts it out of the bed it's been in all night. A small sound, in the grey. Confused. Reaching for the threads that weren't there any more.

Now, said our queen.

Genny put her hand on the stone.

Not the collar. The stone. The small round hollow the Overseer had folded into the wall, between two sleeping young. She put her palm flat against it, the way the queen had shown her with the paving stone.

And she listened.

I felt her do it. Through Dory's net, which Dory had put round all of us without anyone asking, the moment we came into the hollow. I felt Genny go into the stone the way the queen did. Slowly. Asking. Every grain. Where the water had been. What the stone had been before it was stone. What it was trying to become, very slowly, over a very long time.

And then she asked it.

Not in words. Genny didn't have words for stones. Nobody did. She asked it the way you ask a frightened animal to come to your hand. By holding still. By being somewhere it could see you. By waiting.

Will you hold her?

The stone didn't answer. Stones don't.

But the cup the Overseer had folded, every face turned a little away from every other, warmed. Very slightly. Under Genny's hand.

"Now," said Genny. Out loud. Her voice was shaking. "Lucas. Now."

I unfolded the collar.

The grey round Sesh's neck. All of it. Every fold, at once, the way I'd unfolded the handler's shell. Only gently. So gently. Not like opening a fist. Like opening a hand that had been holding something small for a long time.

The band fell away from Sesh's neck. A flat grey ribbon on the floor of the hollow.

And in the middle of it, where the boss had been, the sliver.

Small. Grey. Smaller than my thumbnail. Lying on the ribbon of unfolded collar, stirring. Reaching.

Genny took her hand off the stone.

She picked up the sliver. Very carefully. With Father's hands. The way she'd picked up the strawberry Garnet made from a pebble, on the first night, as if it might break.

And put it in the cup.

Nothing happened for a long moment.

The sliver lay in the bottom of the Overseer's small round hollow. Grey. Still. Every face of the stone around it turned a little away from every other.

Then the young on either side of it stirred.

Our queen's young. In their silver wrappings. On the shelves on either side of the cup. They didn't wake. They turned. In their sleep. Toward it. The way Dory turned toward her name.

And hummed.

Very low. Very faint. The sound the young made when another of the young was near them in the dark. There you are.

And the sliver hummed back.

Not the voice. Not crying. A small sound. So small I'd never have heard it if I hadn't spent two years listening to queens. The sound a hatchling makes when it hears other hatchlings, and knows it's not alone.

Then it went quiet.

Not asleep the way it had been. Asleep the way the young were asleep. On a shelf. In a hollow. Among its own kind.

Genny sat back on her heels.

She was crying. She didn't say she wasn't.

She thinks she is with the hatchlings, said our queen, very softly. She is right.

Sesh lifted her head.

Slowly. Off the floor of the hollow. Her long neck coming up, bare, where the collar had been. The feathers there were crushed flat and pale and thin, the way grass is pale when a stone's been lying on it.

She put one three-fingered hand up to her neck.

Touched it.

Then she made a sound.

Not a click. Not a whistle. A call. High and clear and long, going up and up, filling the hollow, so loud that the young on their shelves stirred in their sleep and our queen's plates shifted on the floor.

I'd never heard a Kethri call before. None of us had. They clicked, and they whistled, and they made the long falling sound that Dot said meant quiet. They'd never called. Not once, in all the weeks since they came down the ramp three steps behind their handler.

The call went up the passage.

Up into the square.

And from the square, from every corner of Scarecrow, nine voices answered.

They came down the passage one at a time.

The other nine. The queen let them. She hadn't let the Kethri into the hollow before, but she let them now. They came down the long curve of the passage with their necks bowed and their hands on the walls, the way Sesh had, and they came out into the hollow and saw her.

Saw her neck.

Bare.

They stopped. All nine. In a line at the passage mouth, three steps apart. Exactly three. Every one of them.

Then the one at the front stepped forward.

Not three steps. Four.

And then five, and six, and broke the line entirely, and crossed the floor of the hollow to Sesh, and put its long neck against hers, the way I'd seen geese do on the river in the dome when I was small.

Then the others.

All of them. Breaking the line. Crossing the floor. Putting their necks against hers, and against each other's, in a great tangled knot of grey feathers and long beaks and three-fingered hands, in the middle of the queen's hollow, among her sleeping young.

Clicking. Whistling. Calling.

Dot didn't translate. She didn't need to.

It took me four days to do the other nine.

Okafor's order. I'd asked at dawn, through Mother. Can I take the collars off? There are nine more. And Okafor, through Mother, had said: Yes. Today. Before anything else. You don't leave a soldier in irons when you've got the key.

So I did one a day, and then two, and then on the last day, three.

Every time, Genny asked the stone. Every time, the Overseer folded a new cup in the east wall, between our queen's sleeping young, before we'd even asked it to. And every time, when the sliver went into the cup, the young on either side turned toward it in their sleep and hummed, and it hummed back, and went quiet.

Nine slivers of nine dead queens. Sleeping in a row of small round hollows on the east wall of the hollow under Scarecrow. Among hatchlings.

On the fourth day, after the last one, Sesh came to the porch.

She stood at the bottom of the steps. She didn't bow her neck any more. She held it up, bare, with the pale crushed feathers already starting to come back in darker, and looked at me.

And clicked.

"She says," said Dot, "the ridges."

I looked at her back.

At the two ridges below her shoulders. Where the feathers grew differently, thicker, in a pattern like something folded. Flat. Closed. Scarred.

I'd seen them the first day. I'd known what they were.

"She says the Sorn took them when she was a hatchling," said Dot. "All of them. Every Kethri. The day the collars went on. So they could not fly away." A pause. "She says you can change anything. She says she has watched you."

Sesh clicked once more. Short.

"She asks if you can give them back."

I could.

That was the thing about the wings. I didn't have to listen to anything, or ask anything, or be careful about anything sleeping inside. They were just gone. Cut out. The way Rory's paths had been taken out, shoulders to hands. Healed over. Smooth. Like skin over an old burn.

And like Rory's, the body remembered.

I could see it under the scars on Sesh's back. The ghost of what had been there. The way a field remembers a hedge. Bones that wanted to grow. Muscles that knew which way to pull. Feathers that knew what shape to be.

I'd grown Rory's arms back from the shape his children had carried. I grew Sesh's wings from the shape her own body remembered.

It took an afternoon.

I did it on the red glass, outside the city, because Holt said if they worked she'd want room, and if they didn't she'd want privacy, and either way the square was too small. The other nine Kethri stood round the edge of the glass in a ring. Not three steps apart. Close. Necks touching.

I grew the bones first. Out from the ridges, slowly, the way I'd grown Rory's arms, a hand's-breadth at a time. Long and light and hollow, the way bird bones are. Then the muscles over them. Then the skin. Then the feathers. Grey, like the rest of her. But at the tips, as they came in, something else. A colour I'd never seen on a Kethri. Deep copper. Bright. Like the edge of a fire.

When I'd finished, she stood on the red glass with two great folded wings on her back, each one as long as she was tall, and didn't move.

"Try them," I said.

She looked at me.

Then she opened them.

All at once. Out. Wide. Twenty feet from tip to tip, grey and copper and catching the afternoon light. Every one of the nine Kethri round the edge of the glass made the same sound at once, a long rising note like the call she'd made in the hollow, only lower. Softer.

Sesh beat her wings once.

Her feet came off the glass.

Twice.

She was a body's length up.

Three times, four, five, and she was over the canyon rim and climbing, higher and higher, a long grey shape with copper-tipped wings against the red sky, turning in great slow circles over Scarecrow.

And calling.

I watched her for a long time.

Then I turned to the other nine.

"Who's next?" I said.

The Hand spoke on the fifth night.

Through Dory. The way it always spoke now. The thread came down from the palm, a mile out over the plain, every afternoon when Dory went out to the edge of the shadow with Risa and Juno and the Overseer and its bread. And Dory touched it, and the queen at the bottom of the Hand talked to her, long and slow and deep in the old tongue, and Juno told us what she could.

That night, the thread came down without being asked.

Not to the plain. To the porch. All the way across the canyon and up the street, the way it had come on the first day, growing along the glass like frost on a window. It stopped at the bottom of our steps. And lifted. Level with Dory, who was in her basket on the porch, awake, very bright.

Dory reached out and touched it.

And went very still.

Juno was on the schoolroom roof. She came down at a run. Not the way Wren ran, which was rare and frightening. The way Juno ran when she'd felt something with silver in it go wrong, which was always worse.

"She's frightened," said Juno. Before she'd even reached the porch. "The one in the Hand. Lucas. She's frightened."

"Of what?"

Juno stopped at the bottom of the steps. She put her hand on the thread. Very lightly. Her eyes went far away.

"She says she's been watching," said Juno. "Through the thread. Every afternoon. Watching the small one in the hollow fold cups. Watching the girl ask stones. Watching the tall ones' collars come off, and the slivers go to sleep among hatchlings, and the tall one fly." Juno swallowed. "She says she didn't know that could happen. She says nobody's ever taken a collar off before."

"And that frightens her?"

"No," said Juno. "That's not what frightens her." Her face changed. "She says she's not the only thing in the Hand."

I went very still.

"She says there are others," said Juno. "In the fingers. In the holds. Thousands. She can feel them. She's always been able to feel them, but she didn't know what they were. She thought they were part of the Hand. Like the folds." Juno's voice was very low. "Now she's seen the tall ones without collars, and she knows. They're not part of the Hand. They're held. Like the tall ones were. Like she is."

"What are they?"

Juno listened for a long time.

"Lots of things," she said. "Lots of different things. She's trying to show me." She closed her eyes. "Some are big. Bigger than the Teeming. Slow. With plates like stone, and they dig. Some are small. Very small. Hundreds of them together, all thinking at once, like one thing. Some are—" She stopped. "I don't know what some are. I can't see them properly. She says they bend the light." Juno opened her eyes. "And all of them have collars."

Nobody on the porch said anything.

Risa had picked Dory up out of the basket. Dory still had her hand on the thread. Luna had her notebook open on her knee and her pen not moving. Sera had come to the door with her hand on her stomach.

"How many?" said Luna. Very quietly.

Juno asked. Listened.

"She doesn't have a number," said Juno. "She says more than the young in all the hollows on this world." A pause. "She says they're in the fingers. In the dark. Waiting to be put down somewhere and told what to do." Her voice shook. "The way the tall ones were put down here."

"Is that what frightens her?" I said.

"No," said Juno.

She was quiet for a long moment.

"There are Sorn in the Hand," she said. "Not like the small one. Not like the handler you put in a box. Handlers. Lots. Hundreds. In the palm. In the knuckles. She says they've been there the whole time. Since before she came down over the plain." Juno's hand tightened on the thread. "She stopped carrying their voice. Four days ago. In the square. When the small one held up the bread. She stopped, and the voice went quiet, and she thought that was the end of it."

"It wasn't."

"It wasn't," said Juno. "They've been quiet. Waiting. Watching what she does. And tonight—"

She stopped.

Her face had gone white.

"Juno," I said.

"Tonight they started cutting her," said Juno.

I felt it then.

Through the thread. Through Dory. Through the net Dory put round all of us without asking. Faint, and far down, at the bottom of the Hand, past ten thousand folds.

A pull. A tearing. Small. Precise. Like the threads in Sesh's collar, only the other way. Not growing in. Being cut out.

A sliver.

They were cutting a sliver off her.

And then another.

I was on my feet. I didn't remember standing. Luna was on her feet. Sera was in the doorway with her hand flat on the frame and the wood under it starting to smoke.

"Why?" said Risa. Her voice was very level. The voice that meant storms. "Why now?"

Juno listened.

"She says they want a new voice," said Juno. "If she won't carry theirs, they'll make one that will. Out of her. A sliver. Like the collars. Like the seed. Like the band." Her voice cracked. "She says that's what they did on the tall ones' world. When the queens stopped carrying. They cut them until the pieces would."

The Sorn think that is funny.

"How long?" I said.

Juno closed her eyes.

"She doesn't know," she said. "She says they're slow. Careful. They don't want to kill her. They want the pieces." She swallowed. "She says, a few days. Maybe. Before there are enough pieces to make a voice. And then they'll put it in the thousands in the holds. And put them down."

"Down where?"

Juno opened her eyes.

She looked at me.

"Here," she said.

I went to the glass at dawn.

Everyone did. Everyone always did. But that morning, I didn't go down the hello to open doors. I went down it to ask.

Mother. Ask Okafor.

I told her all of it. The holds. The thousands. The handlers in the palm and the knuckles. The cutting.

It took a long time. The hello was wide, still. The Hand was still holding it open from a mile out. She was still holding it, even with them cutting her. I could feel her doing it. Feel the effort. The way you'd feel someone holding a door against a wind.

When I'd finished, Mother was quiet for a moment.

Then she turned to someone beside her.

I waited.

Okafor says, said Mother, that she told you never to fight on the ground they choose.

I know.

She says that's still true.

I closed my eyes.

She says, said Mother, the ground's changed.

I opened them.

She says when she told you to wait, the Hand was the enemy's ground. Their ship. Their queen. Their voice. A pause. It isn't any more. She says the queen in the Hand has been carrying the hello for five days. She's been carrying your words. She's been watching the girl ask stones. She stopped carrying the handlers' voice in the square, in front of everyone, because a baby asked her a question.

Okafor says she's an ally.

And she says you never leave an ally to be cut.

I didn't say anything.

She says: you go up, said Mother. Not alone. Not you and a fiddle and a baby. She says she's watched you for five days through me, and she knows exactly what's in that city, and she knows exactly what every one of them can do. She says she wants a plan by tonight. A real one. With every name on it. Another pause. She says to tell the Colonel he's to write it with Captain Holt. And that he's to bring his hand.

His hand?

She says he'll know, said Mother. And she says one more thing.

What?

Mother's voice changed. Not Okafor's words. Her own. Very quiet. Very sure. The voice that had held three men in the air by their buckles and not hurt them.

She says I'm to come too.

Days 777–781. Collars.

Garnet asked again at the forge: can you take it off without hurting the queen? I can read the collars, the band, the boss, the sliver, the threads into Sesh's spine like roots. I can close the threads from her heart as I did Jessa's. The hard part is the sliver, which won't have anything to hold. Garnet: then give her something she wants to hold. Ask her.

The queen at the wall looked at the collar. The youngest queen was only a queen a short while before they cut her; she thinks she's still singing to hatchlings and that Sesh is one. She can sleep in a stone in the hollow among my young. Not you, Lucas; you change, you don't ask. Genny.

The Overseer had folded a cup in the east wall that morning before anyone asked: a door that is shut can keep something out, or something in, safe; perhaps it could learn the second kind. Garnet: that's a good door. "Yes."

Sesh lay in the hollow and said she hadn't seen young since she was young. Garnet held her hand. I went in from her heart: feathered silver, threads all through it like ivy through an old wall. Forty-three minutes. The sliver woke, reaching. Genny asked the stone, will you hold her, and the cup warmed under her hand. I unfolded the collar gently, like opening a hand that's held something small a long time. Genny picked up the sliver with Father's hands and put it in the cup. The young on either side turned in their sleep and hummed, there you are. It hummed back and slept like the young sleep. She thinks she is with the hatchlings. She is right.

Sesh touched her bare neck and called, high and long, the first Kethri call any of us has heard. Nine voices answered from the city. They came down three steps apart, saw her neck, and broke the line, necks against hers in a knot among the sleeping young.

Okafor: you don't leave a soldier in irons when you've got the key. Nine more in four days. Genny asked every stone. The Overseer folded every cup before we asked. Nine slivers asleep in a row on the east wall among hatchlings.

Then the ridges. The Sorn cut every Kethri's wings the day the collars went on, so they could not fly away. Gone and healed over like Rory's arms, but the body remembers. On the red glass, the nine close round the edge, necks touching. Bones out from the ridges a hand's-breadth at a time, hollow; then muscle, skin, feathers grey with copper tips like the edge of a fire. Twenty feet across. She beat them once and her feet left the glass. Five beats and she was over the rim, circling and calling. Who's next.

Fifth night, the thread came to our steps unasked. Juno ran: she's frightened. She's watched the cups, the stones, the collars, the flying. Nobody has ever taken a collar off before. She's not the only thing in the Hand: thousands in the fingers and holds, which she thought were part of the Hand like the folds, and now knows are held. Big slow stone-plated diggers. Tiny ones in hundreds thinking as one. Some that bend the light. All collared, in the dark, waiting to be put down somewhere and told what to do.

And Sorn: handlers, hundreds, in the palm and knuckles, there the whole time. She stopped carrying their voice four days ago and thought that was the end. Tonight they started cutting her. A sliver, then another. Sera's doorframe smoking. If she won't carry their voice they'll make one from her pieces, as on the tall ones' world. Slow, careful; they don't want her dead, they want the pieces. A few days. Then they'll put the voice in the thousands in the holds and put them down. Here.

Dawn: I asked Okafor. She's still holding the hello open while they cut her, like holding a door against wind. Okafor: never fight on ground they choose; still true; the ground's changed. The queen has carried our words five days and stopped their voice because a baby asked her. She's an ally. You never leave an ally to be cut. Go up. Not alone. A real plan by tonight with every name on it. The Colonel writes it with Captain Holt, and brings his hand.

And Mother, in her own voice, the one that held three men by their buckles: I'm to come too.