Chapter 298 Hold

Mother taught them on the red glass.

Every morning, after the hello, after Okafor's squads had drilled and stood and fallen back and found each other in the dark by the feel of their silver. When the sun was up over the rim and the Sef spire had sent her beam down onto the sand and the Nivi were ringing faintly on their mountain. Then Mother came out of our garden gate in her plain dark coat, with Father's ring on her hand and Dory on her hip, and handed Dory to whoever was nearest, and walked out onto the glass.

And the squads came to her.

Not because Okafor told them to. Okafor did tell them to, but they'd have come anyway. Everyone on Avalon had heard by then. About the marsh, and the lamps on the dark world, and the forty-one handlers on the Kethri world held in the air in front of Sigmund's fence like dust in a sunbeam. About the twelve at the bottom of the Hand, eleven light-years away, the first time.

About the cups on our kitchen table, rising an inch and hanging there, the night I told them what Article Fourteen was for.

They came to her because they wanted to learn to do that.

She started with bowls.

Of course she did. Three bowls on the red glass in front of each squad. A bag of flour. Eggs from Priya's hens, who had complained about it, Priya said, very loudly, for a week.

"Not strong," said Mother. "Exact."

Most of them couldn't. Most of them didn't have her gift. Rory's squad was fire, and water through stone, and a woman from the lower floors who could hear what metal was thinking. The General's was all cold. Ines Tarrow's was ground.

"It doesn't matter," said Mother, when Rory said so. "I'm not teaching you to lift bowls. I'm teaching you to hold. Whatever you've got. Fire. Cold. Ground." She looked at him. "When you throw your fire, Rory Calder, where does it go?"

"Where I throw it."

"All of it?"

Rory thought about this.

"Most of it," he said.

"And the rest?"

Rory didn't answer.

"The rest burns things you didn't mean to burn," said Mother. "That's what I'm teaching. Not strong. Exact. So that when they come for the children, and you throw your fire, every spark of it goes exactly where you meant it, and not one goes anywhere near a child." She looked round at all of them. "Every grain. Every drop. Every spark. Hold it as if it matters."

She picked up an egg.

"Because it does," she said.

Anja was the one who surprised everyone.

Not Mother. Mother had known. Mother had been watching her since the first morning, when Anja came out onto the glass with Rory the second on her hip and handed him to Maura and went to stand with Liam's squad. Very quiet. Very straight. With her ankle, the one that had been folded wrong under her for a whole winter alone at F-22, set down on the glass as steady as anybody's.

I'd finished her silver a long time ago, on our porch. I'd thought, at the time, that nothing had changed. Her eyes had ringed with silver. Her markings had come up her arms, plain and even and straight, like the grain in a piece of good wood. But she hadn't thrown fire, or made rain, or frozen anything, or heard anything nobody else could hear.

"Maybe it's nothing," she'd said. "Maybe that's what I've got. Nothing."

It wasn't nothing.

Mother found it on the third morning.

She'd given Liam's squad the egg drill. Liam, very red in the face, trying to hold an egg in the air with nothing but heat under it. Anja beside him, watching. Not trying. Just watching, with her arms folded.

"Anja," said Mother. "Pick up the bowl."

Anja looked at her. Then at the bowl. A heavy one. Stone. Priya's, from the kitchen. The one she made bread in.

She bent down and picked it up. One hand.

"Now the other one," said Mother.

Anja picked up the other one. With the other hand.

"Now the anvil," said Mother.

Liam stopped trying to hold the egg. It fell. Nobody noticed.

The anvil was at the edge of the glass, where Sera had left it after the cradle, a long time ago. The forge anvil. Iron. It had taken three men to carry it out of the forge, and Gareth had complained about his back for a week.

Anja looked at it.

Then she looked at Mother. And something happened to her face. Something I'd seen happen to Risa's on the plains world, with her hand flat on the window. Oh.

She went to the anvil.

And picked it up.

Not easily. That was the thing. Not like lifting a bowl. She had to bend her knees, and set her feet, and put both arms round it, and her face went tight with the effort.

But she picked it up.

And held it. Chest high. And stood there with three men's worth of iron in her arms and her eyes very wide.

"Oh," said Anja.

Liam had both hands over his mouth.

"I knew it," said Mother. Very quietly. Not to anyone. "I knew it. The first morning. The way you stood."

Anja put the anvil down. Gently. On the glass. It didn't crack.

"How?" she said. "I've never—Lucas, I've never lifted anything. I couldn't carry the water buckets at F-22, I had to drag them, I had to—" She stopped. Looked at her hands. At her arms, where the silver markings ran up from the wrists, plain and even and straight, like the grain in wood. "It's not strength. Is it. It's not like Rory's fire. It doesn't come out."

"No," I said.

I'd looked at her the night I finished her. I hadn't understood what I was seeing. I looked again now.

Her silver didn't go out. Not like fire, or rain, or ice. It went in. Into her. Into every bone and every muscle and every inch of skin. Woven through all of it, the way Dory's net was woven through her. Only not a net. Grain. Running the length of every bone like the grain in an oak beam. Holding it together. Making it more.

"It's you," I said. "Your silver is you. All of you. It made you more."

Rory tested her.

Not cruelly. Rory didn't do anything cruelly. But he was a soldier, from the northern line, from the first war, and he said that if Anja was going to stand in front of the children when they came, he'd like to know what she could stand in front of.

So he threw fire at her.

Small, first. A spark. It hit her arm and went out.

She didn't flinch.

Bigger. A flame the size of a hand. It hit her shoulder. Her coat smoked.

Her skin didn't.

Rory stopped. He looked at her for a long time. Then he looked at Mother.

"Go on," said Mother. "Exactly. Like I taught you."

So he threw a fire the size of a door. All of it. Exactly where he meant it, and not one spark anywhere else. Straight at Anja, standing on the red glass with her arms folded and her chin up.

It hit her.

She walked through it.

She walked through it. Out the other side. With her coat on fire and her hair smoking and her skin, underneath, under the burning cloth, perfectly unmarked. Not even pink.

She stopped in front of Rory.

She patted out her coat. Very calmly. The way you'd brush crumbs off.

"Well," she said. "That was a good coat."

Rory looked at her.

Then he put his big hand on her head. The way he put it on Liam's, and Sera's, and the baby's.

"Steady," he said. And his voice cracked on it.

"That's why," said Edda, that night.

At our kitchen table, with her green book open. She turned it round and pointed at a line. Calder, Rory (2). Bent Maura's iron spoon at six months. His own fire doesn't mark him.

"I thought it was Liam's," said Edda. "The fire not marking him. I thought it was just a Calder thing. They're all burned somewhere, the Calders, except that one." She tapped the page. "It's not Liam's. It's hers. He's got his father's fire and his mother's grain. Both." She shook her head. "And the spoon. Maura thought she'd left it too near the stove. It wasn't the stove. He was teething on it."

Wren came to the glass on the fourth morning.

With Harriet in a sling and her book under her arm. She didn't go to a squad. She went to Mother.

"I'm not finished," said Wren.

Mother looked at her.

"Lucas asked," said Wren. "A long time ago. When he was finishing everyone. Toby said yes. I said—" She stopped. She looked down at Harriet. "I said not yet. I said I count. That's what I do. I count the living and the dead and the ones who came in and the ones who didn't. And if he opened me up, and I turned out to be something else, something that throws fire or makes rain, I didn't know if I'd still be able to count. I didn't know if I'd still be me." Her voice was very level. "So I said not yet."

"That's allowed," said Mother.

"I know it's allowed," said Wren. "Nobody's ever said it wasn't. Lucas didn't push. Toby didn't. Nobody did." She shifted Harriet in the sling. "But I've been watching you teach them to hold. Every morning. And I can't hold anything. Not like them."

Mother didn't say anything.

"So I'd like to learn something else," said Wren. "If you'll teach me."

"What?"

Wren opened her book. To the back. To the page with the forty, and everyone after. To the page that was nearly full.

"Where they are," she said. "All of them. When it comes. Every child on Avalon. Every squad. Every name on the rolls. I'd like to know where every one of them is. At once. So that if one goes quiet, I'll know." She looked up. "The way Dot does. The way she did, on the hello, counting everyone up the stair."

Mother looked at her for a long time.

"You don't need silver for that," said Mother.

"No," said Wren. "I need practice."

So Wren practised.

Every morning. While the squads held and Mother walked between them saying exact, exact, every grain. Wren stood at the north end of the red glass, facing north, with Harriet in the sling and her book open. And counted.

Not out loud. In her head. Every squad. Every name in every squad. Every child in the shelters, when Pell walked them down the stair and back. Every person in the city north of the Hands, as far as she could hold them. She did it with the rolls. With Dot beside her, saying the names. With Juno, who could feel where everyone was, telling her when she'd got one wrong.

She got fewer wrong every day.

By the end of the month she could close her eyes on the north wall at dawn and say where every squad on Avalon was standing, and who was in it, and who'd come late. Without looking. Without Juno.

"How?" said Okafor, who'd come to watch.

Wren didn't open her eyes.

"I listen," she said. "To Harriet."

Harriet sang every morning at dawn.

She had since the morning she was born, on the north wall, facing north. One note. High and clear. Toby's note, the counter-note, the one he played to carry. Only stronger. Much stronger. So strong that when she sang it, the glass of the window in the Marsh house hummed, and the Karst in their caves under the park all turned toward the sound at once.

And it went everywhere.

Wren had noticed it first. Of course she had. She counted everything. She'd noticed that when Harriet sang at dawn, the note went out across the whole of Scarecrow, and the city, and the park. And came back. Off every wall, every porch, every person. The way Toby's note had come back off the walls of the Karst caves, so that the Karst could see the whole of them in the dark.

Harriet's note came back off people.

And Wren, standing on the north wall with Harriet in the sling, listening, could hear it come back. Not with her ears. With whatever it was in her, unfinished, that had always counted. She could hear the shape of everyone the note touched. Where they were. How many.

She'd been counting by it for months. She hadn't known she was doing it.

"She's not mine," said Wren. "The note. It's Toby's. It's all Toby's. I'm not finished. I haven't got anything to give her." She looked down at her daughter. "But I've got the listening. I've always had the listening. And she gives me something to listen to."

Toby, beside her, put his hand on the back of her neck. The way he had on the porch, a long time ago, the night they told us.

"That's not nothing," he said.

"I know," said Wren. "I counted."

Luna's son came at the end of that month.

Not at dawn. At night. In the middle of a storm. Not one of Risa's. A real one, the first real storm Avalon had had since the summer, rolling in off the plain at dusk with thunder and rain so heavy the gutters I'd made in the new city overflowed and Gareth went out in it in his coat and spent three hours with a spanner unblocking them.

Luna said afterward she'd planned it that way. Nobody believed her. She said that was their problem.

It was in the quiet room.

Edda was there. Sera at her head, the way Luna had been at Sera's. Risa holding her hand. Me at her feet, because Edda said that was where I went, and I didn't argue.

And the cold.

It came out of Luna the way the heat had come out of Sera. She couldn't help it. Not ice. Not a wall. Just cold, pouring off her, the way it had poured off her father in the Nivi hold. The walls of the quiet room went white. Then glittering. Frost ferns grew up them, the way they grow on a window on the coldest night of winter, branching and spreading until the whole room was a forest of white.

Edda's breath smoked. Her pen froze.

Sera put her hand on the wall.

And the heat came out of Sera. Not much. Just enough. Meeting Luna's cold halfway, all round the room, so that the frost stayed but didn't spread, and Edda's pen thawed, and nobody froze.

"Fire and cold," said Sera, through her teeth, holding it. "And somebody to hold on to. That's how it's done."

Risa, holding Luna's hand, didn't say anything. She just held on.

He was born at midnight.

Small. Quiet. With very fine pale hair, almost white, like his grandfather's must have been once. And his eyes, when he opened them, were ringed with silver.

Not rings. Not lattice, like Dory's. Not branches, like Ash's.

Flakes.

Six-sided. Perfect. A ring of them round each eye, very small, very fine, each one exactly like the single perfect six-sided flake that had formed on the porch rail on the night I opened the first brick in the General's hand, when the frost came out of his fingers for the first time in thirty years and ran across Luna's knuckles.

He didn't cry.

He looked round the quiet room. At the frost ferns on every wall. At Edda, with her frozen pen. At Sera, holding the heat. At Risa. At me.

At his mother.

And then he reached out. Not with his hands. With his silver. Out past the walls of the quiet room.

And the frost on the walls changed.

Not melted. Not grew. Changed.

Every frost fern on every wall of the quiet room, all at once, turned to something else. Something clear and hard and very bright. Not ice. Not glass, like Ash's flames.

Silver.

The frost ferns on the walls of the quiet room were silver. Every branch. Every fine spreading fern. A forest of silver, all round the room, from the floor to the ceiling, catching the lamplight and throwing it back.

Edda put her frozen pen down very slowly.

"Of course," she said.

The General came at dawn.

He'd been at the foot of his mountain all night, where he went when he didn't know what to do. Luna had told him to. She said if he came to the quiet room he'd stand outside it very straight all night and make everyone nervous.

He came in very straight.

He stood in the doorway of the quiet room and looked at the walls. At the silver frost ferns, floor to ceiling, catching the dawn through the window. Then at his daughter, in the bed, very tired, with her hair stuck to her forehead.

Then at the baby in her arms.

Luna held him out.

The General didn't move.

"Father," said Luna. "Take him."

He took him.

He held his grandson very carefully. The way you'd hold something that might break. Or that you might.

The baby looked up at him.

At his face, which didn't do anything, because Windsors don't. At the silver rings round his eyes. At the frost that was always very faintly on his collar, now, since the knuckle, since the mountain, since he'd stopped keeping the cold in.

And the baby reached up.

One small hand. Toward the General's face. And touched his cheek.

A flake formed there. On the General's cheek. Six-sided. Perfect. Very small.

Silver.

The General's face didn't do anything.

But his hand, under the baby, tightened. Very slightly. And his eyes went very bright. And he stood in the doorway of the quiet room with the silver flake on his cheek and his grandson in his arms and didn't say anything for a very long time.

"What's his name?" he said at last.

Luna looked at me.

We'd decided. The four of us. At the kitchen table, at night, with her notebook open. She'd drafted it four times. The fourth was the best. It put him first.

"Trevor Alaric Dask," said Luna.

The General didn't move.

Hardly anyone on Avalon called him by his first name. Holt had, once, in his own doorway: Sit down, Alaric. Father had, a long time ago, the night of the Accord: Then bring them home, Alaric. Otherwise he was General to everyone, and sir to the cadets, and Father to his daughter, and on Okafor's rolls Windsor, A., and that was all.

"Alaric," said Luna. Very quietly. Looking at him. "After you. Both his grandfathers. One who fixed cracks, and one who stood very straight for a long time so the cracks wouldn't show." Her voice didn't waver. "He should have both."

The General looked down at the baby in his arms.

His face didn't do anything. Windsors don't.

But the flake on his cheek, the small perfect silver one, very slowly, began to melt. And ran down. Like a tear. Except that it wasn't one, he'd have told you, if you'd asked him.

Nobody asked him.

Mother was in the doorway behind the General.

She'd come with him. Nobody had heard her. She was very quiet, Mother, when she wanted to be.

She went very still.

"Luna," she said.

"I know," said Luna. "I asked Lucas. He said yes." She looked at Mother. "He fixed cracks. Lucas told me. All his life. He found the crack in a thing and went in through it and changed the whole thing from the inside. The field. The filter. You." Her voice was quite steady. "That's what we're doing. With the Sorn. All of it. Going in through the crack."

Mother didn't say anything.

"And he never got to see any of it," said Luna. "So I'd like him to have someone who will."

Mother came across the quiet room. Past the General, very gently. To the side of the bed. And put her hand on the baby's head, in the General's arms. Very still. Perfectly still.

"Trevor," she said. And then, looking up at the General, beside her: "Alaric."

"Dorothy," said the General.

They'd never called each other anything but Mrs. Dask and General. Not once. Not on the hello, not in Okafor's flat, not on the red glass.

The baby looked at her.

And the silver frost on the walls of the quiet room, all of it, every fern, very faintly, rang.

The way the Nivi ring, when the wind comes off the mountain.

The youngest queen called at dawn.

Through Sesh. Through Juno. Through the first queen, and Dory, on the red glass, while the hello went up and the General stood at the edge of it with his grandson in his arms and a silver flake on his cheek that he hadn't brushed off.

My sisters, said the youngest queen. Very small. Very precise. And very fast, which she never was. On the Kethri world. They are calling.

Okafor turned round.

"Calling what?"

A Hand, said the youngest queen. Coming. Toward the forest. A pause. Not old. Not tired. Not asleep.

It is coming to see why the faults are in a line.

Nobody said anything.

Okafor took out her slate. She looked at the blank side, where she'd written The children. Every one.

Then she turned it over. To the side with the numbers. 1 to 8.

"How long?" she said.

Days, said the youngest queen. Not many.

Okafor looked at the General. At the baby in his arms. At Mother, beside him, with her hand on Trevor's head. At Anja, at the edge of the glass, in a new coat, with Rory the second on her hip. At Wren, at the north end, with her eyes shut, counting.

"Right," she said.

She put the slate under her arm.

"Everyone," said Okafor. "Hold."

Days 1532–1584. Hold.

Mother teaches on the glass every morning after the squads drill. They come because everyone's heard: the marsh, the lamps, the forty-one in the air before Sigmund's fence, the twelve at the bottom of the Hand, the cups rising an inch the night I told them about Article Fourteen. Bowls, flour, Priya's eggs (the hens complained a week). Most don't have her gift. It doesn't matter. Not to lift bowls; to hold whatever you've got. Rory, where does your fire go? Where I throw it. All of it? Most. The rest burns what you didn't mean to. So when they come for the children every spark goes exactly where you meant and none near a child. Hold it as if it matters, because it does.

Anja, finished a long time ago on our porch; rings and markings plain and even like the grain in good wood, and no fire or rain or ice: maybe that's what I've got, nothing. Third morning: pick up Priya's stone bread bowl; one hand; the other; now the anvil, three men's worth that gave Gareth a week of his back. Knees bent, feet set, both arms, face tight; she held it chest high. Oh. Mother: I knew it the first morning, the way you stood. I couldn't carry water at F-22; I dragged it. It's not strength that comes out. No. I looked again: her silver goes in, into every bone and muscle and inch of skin, like grain the length of an oak beam. Your silver is you; it made you more.

Rory tested her, a soldier who wants to know what she can stand in front of. A spark: nothing. A hand-sized flame: coat smoked, skin didn't. Go on, exactly. A fire the size of a door. She walked through it, coat burning, skin unmarked, not even pink, and patted it out like crumbs: that was a good coat. His hand on her head: steady. It cracked. Edda: Rory the second's fire not marking him isn't Liam's, it's hers; his father's fire, his mother's grain, both. Maura's iron spoon wasn't left near the stove. He was teething on it.

Wren to Mother, Harriet in the sling: I'm not finished. Lucas asked long ago; Toby said yes; I said not yet. I count; if he opened me and I turned out to be something else I didn't know if I'd still be me. Nobody pushed. But I can't hold anything. Teach me something else: where they all are, every child and squad and name, at once, so if one goes quiet I know, like Dot counting everyone up the stair. You don't need silver for that. No; I need practice. Every morning facing north with her book, Dot saying names, Juno telling her when she's wrong, fewer each day; by the month's end eyes shut she could place every squad, who's in it, who came late. How? I listen to Harriet.

Harriet's dawn note, Toby's counter-note but much stronger, hums the Marsh window and turns every Karst in the caves. It goes everywhere and comes back off people the way Toby's came back off cave walls, and Wren, with whatever unfinished thing in her always counted, hears the shape of everyone it touches. She'd been counting by it for months without knowing. The note's all Toby's; I've nothing to give her; but I've always had the listening, and she gives me something to listen to. Toby's hand on her neck: that's not nothing. I know. I counted.

Luna's son at month's end, at night, in the first real storm since summer; Gareth three hours with a spanner in the gutters; Luna says she planned it. The quiet room: cold poured off her like her father in the Nivi hold, walls white then glittering with frost ferns, Edda's breath smoking and pen frozen. Sera's hand on the wall met it halfway: fire and cold and somebody to hold on to, that's how it's done. Risa held her hand. Midnight: small, quiet, fine hair nearly white, and round each eye a ring of six-sided flakes exactly like the one on the porch rail the night the frost first came out of the General's fingers in thirty years. He didn't cry. He reached out and every frost fern changed, not melted, not grew: to silver, floor to ceiling, throwing back the lamp. Edda put down her frozen pen: of course.

The General came at dawn from the foot of his mountain, where Luna sent him so he wouldn't stand outside all night making everyone nervous. Father, take him. He held him like something that might break, or he might. The baby touched his cheek and a small perfect six-sided flake formed there, silver. His face did nothing; his hand tightened; his eyes went very bright. What's his name? The fourth draft put him first: Trevor Alaric Dask. Hardly anyone uses the General's first name; Holt once in his doorway, Father once long ago; the rolls say Windsor, A. After you; both his grandfathers, one who fixed cracks and one who stood very straight so they wouldn't show. The flake on his cheek melted and ran down like a tear, which it wasn't, he'd say; nobody asked. Mother in the doorway went still. I asked Lucas; he said yes. He fixed cracks all his life, went in through the crack and changed the whole thing from inside: the field, the filter, you. That's what we're doing with the Sorn. He never got to see any of it; I'd like him to have someone who will. Mother's hand on the baby's head in the General's arms: Trevor. Then, to him: Alaric. Dorothy. They'd never called each other anything but Mrs. Dask and General. And every silver fern on the walls rang very faintly, like the Nivi when the wind comes off the mountain.

At dawn, the General at the edge of the glass with his grandson and the flake still on his cheek, the youngest queen, fast as she never is: my sisters on the Kethri world are calling. A Hand, coming toward the forest. Not old, not tired, not asleep. Coming to see why the faults are in a line. Okafor turned the slate from The children. Every one. back to 1 to 8. How long? Days. Not many. She looked at the General and the baby, Mother's hand on him, Anja in a new coat with Rory on her hip, Wren at the north end counting with her eyes shut. Right. Everyone. Hold.