Chapter 273 Solid Iron

I held their hands.

That was all Mother had asked. Hold their hands while they do it. So I sat on the floor of the hollow, among the shelves of sleeping young, with Genny on my left and Garnet on my right, and I held their hands.

Genny's was cold. She was frightened and wouldn't say so. Her fingers were very still in mine, the way Father's had been still on the kitchen table when he was thinking about something he didn't want us to see.

Garnet's was hot and sticky. She'd eaten a honey cake on the way down the passage because Pell said she'd need her strength, and she hadn't wiped her hands.

"Will you feel it?" said Garnet. "When they do it? Through my hand?"

"Yes."

"Will it feel like when the old one did you?"

"No," I said. "The old one gave me silver on the ice. In the snow. I was half dead. I don't remember much of it." I squeezed her hand. "This'll be different. You'll remember all of it."

"Good," said Garnet. "I want to remember all of it."

Genny didn't say anything.

But her fingers tightened.

There were three queens.

Our queen, in her body, at her full height at the far end of the hollow. The old one on her thread from the mountain, heavy as stone. And the first queen, from much further away now, a day into the crossing, faint and getting fainter. She'd said she would give her share before she was too far.

She was nearly too far.

I am here, she said. Very slowly. Every word right. I am a long way. But I am here.

And through Dory, on Risa's hip behind me, through the hello that was thinner now with the Hand gone, from a small warm room eleven light-years away: Mother.

I'm here, my darlings.

Genny closed her eyes.

It will not hurt, said the old one. It will be strange. You will feel us. All of us. And then you will feel yourselves, more than you ever have. A pause. Your brother felt it on the ice. He was alone. You are not.

"We know," said Genny. Very steadily. Out loud. "Go on."

I felt it go into them.

Through their hands. Through mine. The way I'd felt Mother come through Dory's net, the way I'd felt the queens sing the youngest back. Silver. Living. A share of three queens, given the way the old one had given hers to me in the snow at Luna's ice outpost, the night I found the grey device on its tripod and cut its battery.

Only this time it wasn't one queen giving to a boy who was half dead.

It was three queens, giving to two girls who'd come down the passage on their own feet and said yes.

I felt it find the framework.

That was the word the old one had used, and it was the right one. Father's paths, and Mother's, running side by side in both of them like a river and the streams beside it. Built. Laid out. Waiting. All the way through. In Genny since she was born. In Garnet since she was born.

Nobody had ever filled them.

The silver filled them.

Genny made a sound.

Not pain. I'd have felt pain. Something else. The sound you make when you've been carrying something heavy a long way and someone takes it off your back all at once.

Her hand in mine went warm.

Then hot.

Then I felt it. Every path in her. Open. Running. Father's, bright and fast, the way they'd run in him when he stood in front of Crane's bodyguard in our doorway when I was six. Mother's, beside them, steady and exact, the way they ran in Mother now.

Both. All the way out. To the ends of everything.

Genny opened her eyes.

Silver round them. Rings. Solid. Bright. The way mine had come in, on the ice. The way Luna's and Sera's and Risa's had come in, the day I finished them.

She looked down at her arms.

Silver markings were running down from her shoulders. Not branches, like Sera's. Not frost, like Luna's. Not curves, like Hana's. Lines. Straight and exact and square at the corners, crossing each other at right angles, the way the lines cross on a page of chemistry. Like a grid. Like a table of elements.

Genny looked at them for a long time.

"Oh," she said.

And then, very quietly, with Father's mouth: "Oh. That's right."

Garnet laughed.

All the way through it. That was the difference. Genny went still and quiet and inward, the way Genny did with everything. Garnet laughed. From the first moment the silver went in, she laughed, and kept laughing, as if someone were tickling her from the inside.

Her hand in mine went hot. Then hotter. Then it was humming.

The silver came up round her eyes, rings like Genny's. Bright.

And then it came up in her hair.

Not a streak. All of it. Garnet's hair, lighter than Genny's and always tangled as if she'd been out in the wind, went silver from the roots out. All at once. The way mine had gone on the ice. Bright and fine and still tangled, as if she'd been out in a wind made of starlight.

The markings on her arms weren't lines.

They were drawings.

I don't know how else to describe it. They ran down from her shoulders the way everyone's did, silver under the skin. But they weren't patterns. They were shapes. Small and quick and slightly wobbly, the way her drawings always were. A queen's eye. A scarecrow. A pebble. A strawberry. A small hill with plates. A Kethri with copper wings. All of it running down her arms in silver, like a page from her drawing board.

Garnet looked at them.

Then she held her arm up, right in front of my face.

"Lucas," she said. "I'm a drawing."

Genny didn't look at her own hair until we came up out of the hollow into the light.

Then she caught sight of herself in the window of the forge, and stopped.

It had gone silver at the front. Just at the front. One streak, from her forehead back, very straight and very bright in the middle of all that dark hair.

The same place as Mother's grey streak.

Genny stood in front of the forge window for a long time.

"Mother has one there," she said.

"I know."

"Hers is grey."

"I know."

Genny put her hand up and touched it. Very carefully. With Father's hand, with its new silver lines running square and exact from the shoulder to the fingertips.

"I don't mind," she said. "I thought I would. I don't."

Mother saw them at the next dawn.

Through the net. Through Dory. Through the hello, which was thinner every morning with the first queen further away, but still open. The spine-queen held it. Our queen and the ring held it. The deep under the canyon pushed it up.

Oh, said Mother.

She didn't say anything else for a long time.

Garnet, she said finally. Your hair.

"It's silver," said Garnet. Out loud. On the red glass. Floating, because Garnet floated everywhere now, two feet up, as easily as walking. "All of it. Like Lucas. And I've got drawings on my arms. I'll show you. When you come."

I'd like that, said Mother. And then: Genny.

"Yes, Mother."

You've got my streak.

Genny's chin came up.

"Yes," she said. "Mine's silver."

So I see. A pause. It suits you.

Genny didn't say anything.

But she stood a little straighter, which I wouldn't have thought was possible.

I learned to feel weight that afternoon.

I hadn't meant to. I was teaching Genny and Garnet to hold things, on the red glass, the way I'd taught them to hold themselves. Not to lift. To hold. A stone. Then two. Then a basket of stones. Then each other.

Garnet was better at it than Genny. That surprised everyone except Garnet.

"It's like drawing," she said, holding Genny six inches off the glass by every thread of her coat, exactly, while Genny stood very still in the air with her arms folded and her face suggesting this was beneath her dignity. "You don't grab the whole thing. You go round the outside first. Then you can see what's in the middle."

"That's what you said about the light-benders," I said.

"It's the same," said Garnet.

And while she was saying it, I felt something.

Not the stones. Not Genny. Something else. Far away. The way you feel a draught from a door left open in another part of the house.

I'd been holding things all afternoon. I'd been holding Garnet while she held Genny, just in case. And with the new paths, the ones the queens had shown me, holding wasn't something I did with my eyes any more. It was something I did with all of me. I could feel the weight of everything I held. Every grain.

And if I stopped holding, and just felt—

I could feel more.

The weight of the glass under my feet. The weight of the city behind me. The canyon. The deep under the canyon, very heavy and very slow. The courts. The hollow. Our queen, along her wall. Pebble, on his step. Every brood in the canyon, every Teeming, every young on every shelf.

Further.

The plain. The Tharn, four hundred and twelve small hills, still deciding whether to go north. The Mirri, moving over them like a cloud.

Further.

The rim. The hills beyond. The forest past Lantern. The river.

The jungle.

And there, in the jungle, east, past the river, past where Sigmund's group had held their line in the first year, something I didn't understand.

A weight.

Small. About the size of a man. Lying very still in the mud at the bottom of a river.

Heavy. Too heavy. Heavier than a man should be. Heavier than a stone that size.

Iron.

I stood on the red glass for a long time without moving.

"Lucas," said Genny, from six inches in the air. "You've gone white."

"There's something in the jungle," I said.

Garnet put Genny down. Gently. Feet first. Exactly. Then she floated over to me.

"What?"

"I don't know." I closed my eyes. Felt for it again. There. Small. Still. Iron. In the shape of a man. Curled. Arms over its head. As if it had been protecting its face from something. "It's iron. It's shaped like a person."

Genny went very still.

"A statue?" she said.

"Statues don't have silver," I said.

Because it did.

Faint. So faint I'd never have felt it without the new paths. Deep inside the iron. Not running. Not moving. Asleep. The way the silver had been asleep in Mother's nerves before the hello. The way the slivers had been asleep in the collars.

Human silver.

Inside a man made of iron, at the bottom of a river in the jungle.

Risa knew.

I hadn't even finished telling it. I'd walked back up the street with Genny and Garnet behind me and found Risa on the porch with Dory and Sera, and started to say there's something in the jungle, and got as far as iron, and Risa's face changed.

"Brock," she said.

I stopped.

"Brock Haddon," said Risa. She'd gone pale. She put Dory down on the porch boards, very carefully, and stood up. "Squad Two. Sigmund's squad. My squad, until they moved me." Her voice was very level. "His callsign was Iron. He could turn himself into it. All of himself."

"I know," I said. "He did it in the locker room. The day his father's letter came."

Risa nodded.

"Sigmund told me," she said. "When he came in with the eastern group. The first night. He told me what happened to everyone in Squad Two." She swallowed. "He didn't tell anyone else. He said he couldn't. He told me because I was his sister, and because I'd been one of them, before Father had me moved."

"What happened to Brock?"

Risa sat down again. Slowly. On the top step.

"It was the first month," she said. "The voice was still on. The broods were still being pushed. Nobody knew about the queens yet. Nobody knew anything." She looked out at the plain. "Squad Two came down in the east. In the jungle. Most of them together. They walked for eleven days trying to find somewhere that wasn't trees. And on the eleventh day they came to a river."

I sat down beside her.

"The Teeming came," said Risa. "Pushed. Hundreds of them. At the river. Sigmund said he'd never seen so many. They had to cross, and the river was deep and fast, and there was only one place shallow enough, and the Teeming were coming down through the trees on both sides." Her voice went flat. Sigmund's voice. The way he said things that mattered. "Brock went iron. In the middle of the ford. And stood there. And let them come at him instead."

Nobody on the porch moved.

"Sigmund said he held for an hour," said Risa. "Iron. In the middle of the river. Every Teeming that came at the ford hit him and couldn't get past. And the rest of them crossed behind him. All of Squad Two. Every one. Sigmund last." She swallowed. "And when Sigmund got to the far bank and turned round, Brock was still in the middle of the ford. Still iron. And the river was rising. It had been raining upstream. And he—"

She stopped.

"He went under," said Risa. "Sigmund said he didn't move. Didn't try to swim. Didn't change back. He just stood there, iron, in the middle of the river, holding the ford. And the water came up over his chest. And his shoulders. And his head."

"And then?"

"And then the Teeming stopped coming," said Risa. "Because they couldn't cross either. Because the river was too high." She looked at me. "Sigmund waited three days on the far bank. Three days. He wouldn't let anyone leave. He sent their strongest swimmer back across on a rope twice to feel for him in the water. They couldn't find him. The river had moved him. Or buried him. Or—"

She didn't finish.

"Sigmund put a cross by his name," she said. "On his own list. He told me he did it on the third night, by himself, and then he didn't sleep for a week. He said Brock was the worst person in Squad Two and the bravest, and he didn't know how both of those could be true at once." Her voice cracked. "He said: I made Fenn leave the squad for four on one. And I kept Brock, because I wanted him to have to look at me. And then he stood in a river for us."

Sera had her hand over her mouth.

"He's been in the river," she said. "A year and a half. In the river."

"Iron," I said. "In the mud. Curled up." I closed my eyes. I could still feel him. Even from the porch. Even sitting down. "His arms over his head."

"Is he alive?"

I didn't answer straight away.

I felt for the silver. Deep inside the iron. Asleep.

"I don't know," I said. "His silver is. I don't know if that means he is."

Dot was at the bottom of the porch steps. I hadn't heard her come. Every one of her hands was very still.

"Operator," she said.

"Yes."

"This unit logged forty beacons on Drop Day," she said. "Thirty-one stopped normally. Haddon, B. was one of the thirty-one." A pause. "This unit was told by Command that a beacon stopping normally meant the cadet had arrived safely and switched it off."

"I know, Dot."

"This unit was three days old." Another pause. "This unit did not ask what normally meant."

"Nobody asked, Dot."

"This unit is asking now," said Dot. "This unit would like to go."

I went that evening.

Not alone. I could have. I could fly faster than anything on Avalon now, and the jungle was two days' walk for Squad Two and less than an hour for me. But I didn't want to go alone.

I took Juno, because Juno could feel silver, and I wanted someone to tell me if the silver inside the iron was more than just silver.

I took Dot, because Dot asked.

And Genny came.

Nobody asked her. She just came. She was standing on the red glass when I came down off the porch, with her coat buttoned to the neck and her hands in her pockets and her new silver streak very bright in the last of the light.

"You'll need someone who listens to stone," she said.

"He's not stone. He's iron."

"Iron's stone," said Genny. "Mostly. Before somebody gets at it." Her chin came up. "And he's been at the bottom of a river for a year and a half. He'll be all mud and silt and rust. You'll want to know what's him and what isn't before you touch it." She looked at me. "You'll change things. I'll ask."

I looked at her for a long time.

Then I held out my hand.

I'd never flown with anyone before.

Not like that. I'd carried Dot in the egg, once, on the night of the station. I'd lifted everything in the hollow an inch off the floor. But I'd never held someone else in the air and gone.

It was easier than I'd thought.

I held them the way I held myself. All three. Genny's hand in mine. Juno beside her, with her eyes shut. Dot, wings folded, held very carefully, the way you'd hold a full cup. And the air round all of us, like a coat.

And up.

Over the canyon. Over the plain. The Tharn and the Mirri a long way down, and then gone. Over the rim. Over the hills. Over the forest past Lantern, dark and wet and endless. Over the river, the first one, where Bryn Tolley's group had gone the wrong way.

East.

Into the jungle.

It got darker. And wetter. And the trees got taller, until they were taller than anything I'd seen on Avalon, and the canopy under us was a solid black sea, and the air was thick and hot and full of the sound of things I didn't have names for.

"North's wrong here," said Juno, very quietly, with her eyes shut. "It moves."

That was what she'd said on her last call-in. Before her base went dark. Before she'd flashed a mirror from a hilltop every dawn for eighteen months until somebody answered.

I didn't say anything.

I just held on to her a little more carefully.

The river was black.

We came down through the canopy and found it. A wide slow river, very dark, very deep, sliding through the jungle between banks of red mud. And in the middle of it, a place where the water ran faster over something shallow underneath.

The ford.

I set us down on the bank. Gently. Feet first.

Then I felt for him.

He was there. In the middle of the ford, where Risa said Sigmund said he'd stood. Not standing any more. Curled. On his side. In the mud at the bottom. Under six feet of black water and a year and a half of silt. Arms over his head.

Iron.

"Haddon, B.," said Dot. Very quietly. "This unit counts him."

Juno had her hand pressed flat against her chest.

"He's there," she said. "Lucas. He's there." Her voice wavered. "Not just silver. Him. Asleep. Very deep. Deeper than anyone I've ever felt. Like he's been asleep so long he forgot there was anything else."

Genny knelt on the bank.

She put her hand flat on the red mud. Listened.

For a long time.

"The river's pressed on him," she said at last. Very quietly. "All this time. A year and a half of water and silt and stones rolling over him. He's rusted. On the outside. Not deep." She frowned. "And there's something wrong with his left arm. At the elbow. Something hit it, after he went under. A log, maybe. It's bent."

"Can he hear us?"

Genny listened again.

"No," she said. "He can't hear anything. He went iron all the way. Not just his skin. His ears. His eyes. His heart." She swallowed. "Lucas. His heart's iron. It's not beating. It hasn't beaten since he went under."

Nobody said anything.

"But his silver's not iron," said Genny. "His silver's still silver. All the way through. Asleep. Holding him." She looked up at me. "I think his silver's been holding him. Like a mould. Like the Overseer's cup. Keeping the shape of him, so that if he ever wanted to come back, he'd still be there to come back to."

I lifted him out of the river.

Gently. The way I'd lifted the Hand. Holding every grain. The water first, out of the way, held back on both sides like a door held open. Then the silt. Then the stones that had rolled against him. Then him.

Up. Out of the mud. Into the air. Into the last of the light coming down through the canopy.

Iron.

A boy made of iron, curled on his side, with his arms over his head and his knees drawn up. Rust on his back and shoulders, red-brown, flaking. The left arm bent wrong at the elbow, the way Genny had said. Mud in every crease of him.

I laid him down on the bank.

On his side. Exactly the way he'd been lying.

Brock Haddon. Squad Two. Callsign Iron. Who'd stood in the middle of a ford for an hour so that his squad could cross. Who'd said I'm sorry in a locker room the day his father's letter came, because he'd realised I'd shut my eyes so I wouldn't kill anyone. Who'd scrubbed the chalk off the mess wall before dawn so nobody would see what someone had written there about me.

Who'd asked Okafor if he could wear sunglasses because he couldn't look me in the eye.

Who'd said Copy, Scarecrow, unprompted, the day Squad Eight first used my name.

I knelt beside him.

I didn't change anything.

Not yet. Genny was right. I'd want to know what was him and what wasn't before I touched it. And I didn't know. I'd never seen anyone who'd gone iron all the way, and stayed iron for a year and a half, at the bottom of a river.

I put my hand on his shoulder. On the rust.

And I reached for the silver. Deep inside. Asleep. Holding the shape of him like a mould.

Not to wake it. Not yet. Just to say something to it. The way Dory said things to the slivers. The way the youngest queen had sung to the hatchlings.

"Brock," I said. Out loud. On the riverbank. In the dark. "It's Lucas. You held the ford. Everyone crossed. Sigmund too." I swallowed. "Everyone's all right. You can stop now."

Nothing happened.

Juno, beside me, had her eyes shut. Dot was very still. Genny had her hand on the iron of his back, listening.

Nothing.

Then Genny drew a sharp breath.

"Something," she said.

I felt it too.

Not a heartbeat. Not anything moving. Deep inside the iron, in the sleeping silver, something turned over. The way a sleeper turns over when someone says their name. Very slow. Very faint.

And then, so faint I'd never have heard it if I hadn't spent two years listening to queens, through the silver, through the iron, through a year and a half at the bottom of a black river in the jungle, a voice.

Not words. Not quite.

But the shape of words. The shape of something said a long time ago, over and over, until it was worn smooth.

Copy, it said.

And then, fainter still:

Scarecrow.

Days 801–802. Iron.

I held their hands on the floor of the hollow, as Mother asked. Genny's cold and frightened and still, like Father's on the kitchen table. Garnet's hot and sticky with honey cake. Will you feel it through my hand? Yes. Will it be like when the old one did you? No. I was half dead on the ice and don't remember much. You'll remember all of it. "Good."

Three queens: ours in her body, the old one heavy as stone, the first queen a day into the crossing, nearly too far: I am a long way but I am here. And Mother through the thin hello: I'm here, my darlings. Your brother was alone on the ice. You are not. Genny: we know. Go on.

A share of three queens' living silver found the framework: Father's paths and Mother's side by side, built and waiting since they were born. The silver filled them. Genny made the sound of a heavy load taken off your back all at once. Rings round her eyes. Markings like lines on a page of chemistry, straight and square, a grid, a table of elements. "Oh. That's right."

Garnet laughed the whole way through, like being tickled from the inside. Her hair went silver all at once, still tangled, like a wind made of starlight. Her markings are drawings, small and wobbly: a queen's eye, a scarecrow, a pebble, a strawberry, a hill with plates, a copper-winged Kethri. "Lucas. I'm a drawing."

Genny saw herself in the forge window: one silver streak at the front, where Mother's grey streak is. "I don't mind. I thought I would. I don't."

Dawn: Mother, through the thinning hello. Garnet floating two feet up: it's silver, and I've got drawings, I'll show you when you come. "You've got my streak." "Mine's silver." "It suits you." Genny stood straighter, which I wouldn't have thought possible.

Teaching them to hold. Garnet holding Genny six inches up by every thread of her coat. "You go round the outside first. Then you can see what's in the middle." And while she said it, I stopped holding and just felt: the glass, the city, the deep, the courts, the Tharn on the plain, the rim, the forest past Lantern, the river, the jungle. East, past where Sigmund's group held their line: a weight the size of a man at the bottom of a river. Too heavy. Iron. Curled, arms over its head. Silver inside it, asleep. Human.

Risa: Brock. Squad Two, callsign Iron. Sigmund told only her, the first night home. First month, voice still on, broods pushed. Eleven days walking to find somewhere that wasn't trees, then a river and hundreds of Teeming down both banks and one shallow ford. Brock went iron in the middle of it and let them come at him. An hour. Every one of Squad Two crossed behind him, Sigmund last. The river rose with rain upstream; he didn't move, didn't swim, didn't change back. Under. Three days on the far bank; their strongest swimmer sent across on a rope twice. Sigmund put a cross by his name on the third night and didn't sleep for a week. The worst person in Squad Two and the bravest. "I made Fenn leave the squad for four on one. And I kept Brock, because I wanted him to have to look at me. And then he stood in a river for us."

Dot: Haddon, B. was one of the thirty-one beacons that stopped normally. Command said normally meant switched off on arrival. She was three days old and didn't ask what normally meant. She's asking now. She'd like to go.

I flew east that evening with Juno, Dot, and Genny: you'll need someone who listens to stone; iron's stone, mostly; you'll change things, I'll ask. I've never flown holding anyone. I held them like I hold myself, the air round us like a coat. Over the plain, the rim, the forest past Lantern, Bryn's river. The jungle, canopy like a black sea. Juno, eyes shut: north's wrong here, it moves. Her last call-in.

The black river, the ford. Six feet of water and a year and a half of silt. Dot: Haddon, B., this unit counts him. Juno: him, not just silver, asleep deeper than anyone she's felt. Genny, hand on the mud: rusted outside, not deep; left elbow bent where a log hit it after he went under. He went iron all the way, ears, eyes, heart; it hasn't beaten since. But his silver's still silver, holding him like a mould, like the Overseer's cup, keeping his shape so there'd be something to come back to.

I held the water back like a door and lifted the silt, the stones, then him. A boy of iron on his side, arms over his head, knees up, rust flaking, mud in every crease. The one who said sorry in the locker room, scrubbed the chalk off the mess wall before dawn, asked Okafor for sunglasses, and said Copy, Scarecrow unprompted the day the name started.

I didn't change anything. Hand on the rust, reaching for the sleeping silver, just to say something to it the way Dory speaks to slivers. Brock, it's Lucas. You held the ford. Everyone crossed. Sigmund too. You can stop now. Nothing. Then Genny's sharp breath. Something turned over like a sleeper hearing his name. And through the silver and the iron and the river, the shape of words worn smooth by saying them over and over: Copy. Scarecrow.