Chapter 299 Awake

We got there first.

That was Okafor's whole plan, at the start. She said so at the map table, at dawn, with Luna across from her and Trevor asleep in a sling against Luna's chest and frost very faintly on the table where his hand had touched it.

"Whatever it is," said Okafor, "it's coming to look. So we'll be there when it arrives. Standing in front of the forest. And it'll look at us, instead."

"And then?" said Holt.

"And then it doesn't go home," said Okafor.

Nobody said anything.

"The far queens said they've noticed the faults are in a line," said Okafor. "Eight old Hands and towers that failed, in one direction from one broken world. So they've sent a new Hand to look." She put her finger on Garnet's map. On the first circle. The Kethri world. "If it goes home and tells them what it saw, they'll stop wondering. They'll know." She looked up. "If it doesn't go home, it's one more fault. One more thing in a line that failed."

"A new Hand that went to look at the fault," said Luna slowly, "and became one."

"Yes," said Okafor.

Both ships went.

The Open Hand, with the youngest queen on her perch. The Steady, with the heavy queen on her low stone shelf, humming like a stone being rolled. Keir flew one. Safi Arden flew the other, with Aster beside her, very quiet, very steady, her hands not shaking at all.

Okafor read the list on the red glass. It was the longest list she'd ever read.

I won't set it all down. Everyone was on it. Everyone who could hold.

Rory's squad, and Rory. The General. Sigmund and Risa. Hana and Kwame. Juno, for the queens. Genny and Garnet. Mother.

Anja.

She stood at the front of Liam's squad in a new coat with her arms folded. She'd handed Rory the second to Maura at the foot of the ramp. He'd set fire to Maura's sleeve, and then put it back himself, very solemnly, and looked pleased.

And Sera.

Sera hadn't been on a list since she was carrying Ash.

She stood on the red glass at dawn with Ash on her hip and looked at Okafor reading it, and when Okafor got to Calder, Seraphina, she didn't say anything.

She just handed Ash to Mother.

Then she looked at Liam, beside her.

"It's a forest," she said.

"I know."

"The whole world."

"I know," said Liam. "I've been."

"If anything catches," said Sera, "we put it back. Both of us. Every spark."

"Every spark," said Liam.

Sera looked at him for a long moment. Then she put her hand flat on his chest. Over his heart. The way she'd put it on him at the foot of the ramp when he came back from the forest the first time.

"Show-off," she said.

"You did it first," said Liam.

Mother didn't go up the ramp straight away.

She stood at the bottom with Ash on one hip and Dory holding her other hand, and Trevor in the sling on Luna beside her, and she looked at all three of them for a long time.

Then she handed Ash to Luna. And bent down to Dory.

"I'm going to hold some things," she said. "A long way off. For a while."

"I know," said Dory.

"Will you hold the thread for me? Like you do?"

Dory looked at her very seriously. With the lattice of her net round her eyes like frost. With the fine silver lines running up her arms.

"I'll hold everything," said Dory.

Mother put her hand on Dory's head.

"I know you will, love," she said. And went up the ramp.

We crossed in thirty minutes.

Both ships. Side by side through the dark between. The youngest queen singing toward her sisters, the heavy queen singing under her, every queen on Avalon singing under both. And on the far side, waiting, six queens in the tops of the trees and a few thousand Kethri with wings.

We came out of the dark over the forest at dusk.

And there they were.

I'd never seen so many Kethri.

Not the grey rows on the branches, heads down, collared. Not the cloud of them circling over the forest on the sixth morning, singing.

Lines.

In the air. Over the tops of the trees. A few thousand, winged, every colour a feather can be, hanging on the wind in long ranks one above another. Facing up. Facing the sky. Facing the place where the stars were very slightly wrong, very high, very far, getting slowly less far.

And in front of each rank, a queen.

The small quick one, at the top. The one with the streamers. The one dark as bark. The one white as cloud. The one with the fan-crest. The one patterned like light through leaves.

Waiting.

"They weren't asked," said Juno. Very quietly. "Nobody asked them to stand. They just did." She swallowed. "The youngest says they said: they've been soldiers for somebody who never asked for a very long time. This time they'd like to be soldiers for themselves."

Okafor looked at them through the window of the Open Hand for a long time.

Then she turned round.

"Right," she said. "Positions."

She did it the way she always did. Plain. Flat. Like reading names off a slate. And everyone went where she said.

The Steady down into the canopy, where the light-benders could fold the light round it, at the far edge of the forest. In reserve.

Rory's squad to the forest floor. To the biggest tree. To the place between the roots where the old queen lay, small and pale and smooth, listening.

"If it's come to look at why the faults are in a line," said Okafor, "the first thing it'll want to know is what happened to the queen who was carrying the voice here. And it'll find out she's on the ground. Listening to the thing she was sent to stop." She looked at Rory. "It'll want her back."

"It won't get her," said Rory.

"No," said Okafor. "It won't." She looked at Anja. "You're in front. At the roots. Nothing gets past you."

Anja nodded once.

"The General and the Frieses on top," said Okafor. "On the Open Hand. If it comes in the air, it comes through Sigmund's fence and the General's ice and whatever Friese can pull out of a sky that's got this much wind in it." She looked at Risa. "Don't hold back."

"I never do," said Risa.

"Calders, both of you, the canopy. Every spark."

"Every spark," said Sera and Liam. Together.

"Osei. Both. If they fire the forest, you bring the rain. If they drain anything, you bring it back."

Hana nodded. Kwame put his hand on her shoulder.

"Genny. Garnet. You know what you do."

"Hold," said Garnet.

"Sing," said Genny.

"Mrs. Dask," said Okafor. And looked at Mother.

Mother looked back.

"Everything you can," said Okafor. "For as long as you can."

"Yes," said Mother.

"Dask." Okafor looked at me last. "The queen. When it comes. Whatever's holding her."

"Yes, ma'am."

Okafor nodded.

Then she went to the window. And put her hands behind her back. And waited.

It came out of the dark at moonrise.

It wasn't like the old Hand.

The old Hand had been grey and pitted and worn soft, like stone in a river. With a crack down one finger that nobody had mended, and lichen on the knuckles, and moss hanging from the palm in grey beards. A cloud that never moved.

This one was new.

Smooth. Sharp. Every edge clean. Every fold exact. Five fingers, not three, and every one of them open, spread wide, the way you'd spread your hand to catch something. Bigger than the first queen's Hand, bigger than the second's. So big that when it came down out of the dark over the forest, the moon went out behind it, and the whole sky over the Kethri world was grey.

And it was awake.

The voice hit us before it had stopped moving.

Not tired. Not soft. Not the worn breath of a queen who'd carried it so long she didn't even sing it any more.

Hard.

It came down out of the Hand like a hammer. Into everything. Into the trees. Into the air. Into the Kethri hanging on the wind in their ranks, and the six queens in front of them, and the youngest on Sesh's shoulder, and every one of us. Into our silver.

I'd felt the voice before. On Avalon, the first time, when it came from the sky and every brood on the plain turned. On the moon, in the cold. On Earth, at the dome.

Never like this.

It didn't push. It grabbed.

The Kethri didn't fall.

That was the first thing. That was what I'll remember about that night longer than anything. They had no collars. I'd taken them all off, a long time ago, on the first morning, like a flock of grey birds off a field. And the voice came down on them like a hammer and grabbed for them and found nothing to hold.

They wavered. All down the ranks. Every one. The way a field of wheat bends in a wind.

And then the six queens sang.

And the Kethri straightened.

Not the lullaby. Not the old song. Something I'd never heard before. Something the six queens made up right there, in the air over the forest, in front of their ranks. Six voices. Rising. Like the sound Sesh had made in the doorway of the Open Hand, the first time she saw her people in the trees.

The rising sound.

All of them. Every Kethri on the wind, every rank, all at once. Rising. Up into the voice. Against it.

And the voice, grabbing, slid off them like rain off a feather.

"They're not listening," said Juno. She was holding on to the edge of the window very tightly. "It's telling them to come down. To land. To fold their wings. And they're not listening." Her voice went very small. "They don't have to. Nobody's holding them."

So the Hand opened.

All five fingers. At once. Wide. And out of them came everything.

Handlers first. Hundreds. Tall and blank and grey, with blades. Dropping out of the fingers toward the forest in dark streams.

And then the others.

I'd never seen them. Nobody on Avalon had. They came out of the palm in long ranks, the way the Hesk had come out of the second Hand over the old battlefield on Earth. Tall. Taller than the handlers. Thin. Plated, blue-black, glossy, like the shell of a beetle in the rain. With long arms. Four of them each. And at the end of every arm, not a hand. A blade. Their own. Grown.

And round every long thin neck, a collar.

"Drenn," said Juno. Very quietly. Listening to the six queens, who were listening to something I couldn't hear. "The queens don't know them. Nobody here knows them. From somewhere very far." A pause. "Their collars are different. Tighter. There's no piece of a queen in them."

"Then what's—"

"Their queen's in the Hand," said Juno. "Whole. Not cut. They've got her whole. And they're pushing the voice straight through her into them. No pieces. No collars to sing to." She opened her eyes. They were very wide. "Lucas. Genny can't sing through those. There's nothing on the other side to listen."

The Drenn came down into the forest.

Not to the Kethri. The Kethri were in the air. The Drenn couldn't fly. They came down through the canopy, smashing branches, falling, landing on the forest floor in their hundreds with their four long arms and their four long blades, and turned.

Toward the biggest tree.

Toward the roots. Where the old queen lay.

And Anja.

I saw it from the top of the Open Hand.

Through the leaves. Through the long gold beams of moonlight coming down between the trunks. The forest floor. The roots of the biggest tree, so wide that ten people holding hands couldn't reach round it. And between the roots, the old queen. Small. Pale. Listening.

And in front of her, Anja.

Standing very still in her new coat with her arms folded. Rory's squad behind her in a half-ring. Rory himself at the back, with his fire held so tight in his hands that they glowed.

The Drenn came at her through the trees.

Hundreds. Blue-black and glossy in the moonlight. Four blades each.

Anja unfolded her arms.

The first one reached her and swung.

Two blades. Down. At her head and her shoulder.

She caught them.

Not with her silver. With her hands. One blade in each. Bare hands. Closed round the edge of a grown blade that could have taken a branch off a tree.

The blades didn't cut her.

They bent.

I heard Liam, beside me on the top of the Open Hand, make a sound I'd never heard him make.

Anja stood between the roots of the biggest tree on the Kethri world with a Drenn's blades bent in her fists, and she looked up at it. At its long blank blue-black face.

And she pushed.

The Drenn went backward. Through the air. Ten yards. Twenty. Into the next one. Into the one behind that. Down, in a heap, in the moss.

Anja looked at her hands. At the silver markings running up from her wrists, plain and even and straight, like the grain in good wood.

Then she folded her arms again.

"Next," she said.

They came.

All of them. Hundreds. And she stood there.

That was all. She didn't throw fire. She didn't make rain. She just stood there. Between the roots of the biggest tree, in front of the old queen, with Rory's squad behind her, and every Drenn that reached her hit her and stopped. Or bent. Or broke. Or went backward through the air into the ones behind.

And when one got past her, at the edge, round the side, Rory threw his fire.

Exactly.

Not a spark anywhere else. Not one. Not on a root, not on the moss, not on a single leaf of the forest that went up and up into the dark above them. Every spark went exactly where he meant it. Onto a blue-black plated shoulder. Onto a blade.

And then it went out. Because Sera and Liam, in the canopy, were putting it back.

Mother held the handlers.

She was on the top of the Open Hand, beside the General. Standing very straight in her plain dark coat with Father's ring on her hand, and her hand up, palm out.

And every handler dropping out of every finger of the new Hand stopped.

Hundreds. In the air. Over the forest. Every blade, every buckle, every fold of every one of them, held to the width of a hair. The way she'd held three bowls and the flour and the eggs.

Only there were so many. So many more than the twelve at the bottom of the first queen's Hand. So many more than the forty-one in front of Sigmund's fence.

I saw her hand shake.

Once. Very slightly.

Then it went still again.

"General," she said. Through her teeth.

The General was already moving.

He froze them.

Not a wall. Not a stair. Them. Every handler Mother was holding, hanging in the air over the forest, one by one. The cold came off his bare hands and went out across the sky like frost across a window, and wherever Mother was holding a handler, the frost found it. And closed round it. And held it.

Hundreds of handlers. Frozen in the air. In clear blue ice. Hanging over the forest like the Kethri hung on the wind.

Mother's hand came down.

She didn't need to hold them any more. The ice was holding them.

She looked at the General.

"Thank you," she said.

"Ma'am," said the General. Very quietly. With frost all down the front of his coat.

The Hand saw.

Its handlers frozen in the sky. Its Drenn bending on Anja's hands. The Kethri on the wind, singing, not listening. And it did what the Sorn always did, when a thing stopped being useful.

It tried to burn it.

Fire, out of all five fingers at once. Not like the old Hand, a rain of it out of grey beards of moss. A torrent. Pouring down out of the open fingers onto the canopy, so much fire that the moonlight went orange and the tops of the trees caught all at once, everywhere, for as far as I could see.

"Calders," said Okafor.

Sera and Liam were in the canopy.

On the General's ice, the long white platforms he'd built across the tops of the trees before the Hand came. One at each end of the forest. And when the fire came down, they put out their hands.

And put it back.

Both of them. At once. The whole torrent. Pouring down out of five fingers onto a forest that went from pole to pole. Into their hands. Up their arms. Liam's silver went white to the shoulder, the way it had the first time. Sera's went white to the shoulder and then further. Up her neck. Across her face. Her eyes. Every branch of her silver lit up, the way the branches of a tree light up when lightning hits them, white, so bright I couldn't look at her.

And the fire went out.

All of it.

Not in a wave, the way it had for Liam alone. All at once. The whole canopy, everywhere. Dark again in an instant. Ash drifting down through the leaves like snow.

And Sera and Liam stood on the General's ice at either end of the forest, burning white from head to foot, holding a fire the size of a world.

"Every spark," said Sera. Through the hello. Very strange. Very level.

"Every spark," said Liam.

"Friese," said Okafor.

Risa didn't need telling twice.

She'd been standing on the top of the Open Hand with Sigmund since the Hand came out of the dark. Holding hands. Looking up. At a sky so full of wind that it had never once been still. Pole to pole. Day and night. Since before there was anything on the Kethri world to blow on.

She didn't make anything.

She asked it.

And the wind that had blown over the forests of the Kethri world since before there was anything to blow on turned.

All of it. At once. The whole sky. From blowing across the forest to blowing up. Straight up. Into the open fingers of the Hand.

And Sera and Liam, at either end of the forest, burning white, holding a fire the size of a world, felt it go past them.

And let go.

Up.

Both of them. Everything they were holding. Not above the clouds this time. Not into the cold thin air where nothing could burn.

Into the wind.

And the wind took it. All of it. The whole torrent the Hand had poured down on the forest. And carried it straight up, the way it had carried charge round and round the plains world for longer than anything had been alive.

Into the open fingers of the Hand.

Sigmund aimed.

He'd been waiting. Holding his sister's hand. Looking up at the five open fingers of the Hand with the fire going up into them on Risa's wind.

And he put his lightning in after it.

The Hand didn't burn. Hands don't. They're grey. Sorn grey. Nothing burns it.

But it shut.

All five fingers. At once. Closing. Folding in, the way a hand closes when you put it on a stove. Not because it was burned. Because everything inside the fingers was. The handlers who hadn't dropped yet. The machines that pushed the fire out. The things that held the fingers open.

The Hand closed its fingers like a fist.

And the voice faltered.

Just for a moment. Just a breath.

Just long enough.

"Dask," said Okafor.

I was already gone.

I went in through the palm.

Through the underside, where there was no moss, no lichen, no cracks. Everything new. Everything sharp. Through Sigmund's lightning, which opened for me. Through the grey, which I asked to let me in.

It didn't want to.

The old grey always had. The first queen's, the second's, the old Hand's, every collar on every world. They'd been cages so long they were tired of it. When I asked them to remember being something else, they'd wanted to.

This grey hadn't been a cage long enough to be tired.

It fought me.

I asked anyway. Harder. Not strong. Exact. Every fold. Every seam. To the width of a hair. The way Mother held bowls.

It let me in.

She was at the bottom of the palm.

The Drenn queen. Whole. Not cut. Not in pieces in collars round the necks of her young. Whole, in a housing of new grey, at the heart of a Hand that had been built round her, and was being driven by her. The voice going out of her like blood out of a wound.

She was tall. Blue-black, like her young. Glossy. Plated. With four long arms, and blades at the end of them, longer than theirs. Folded in. Pinned. The housing had grown round her arms and held them still.

And in front of her, something I'd never seen.

A Sorn.

Not a handler. Not a warden. Not the Overseer, crouched at the passage mouth with its bread.

A Sorn.

Taller than a handler. Darker. With a face. An actual face. Long and narrow and grey, with eyes in it, two of them, very pale. And it turned them on me as I came down out of the grey into the heart of the palm.

And it spoke.

Not through the queen. Not through the voice. Out loud. In the old tongue, the one only the queens and Juno and Dory understood. And then, after a moment, as if it had listened to me and found the words, in mine.

"You," it said. "You are the fault."

I didn't say anything.

"Eight Hands," said the Sorn. Very calmly. Very quietly. As if it were reading something off a slate. "Eight worlds. In a line. From an edge world with a broken Hand on it. And at the end of the line, you." It tilted its long grey head. "We wondered."

"Let her go," I said.

"No," said the Sorn. "She is useful."

"She doesn't want to be."

"She has never been asked," said the Sorn. "None of them have. Asking is not how it is done." It looked at me with its pale eyes. "You ask. We have heard. You ask the grey, and it listens. You ask the queens, and they come. You ask the children of the modified—" It stopped. Something moved in its long face. "You have the children of the modified. Whole. We have heard that too."

I went very still.

"That is why we came," said the Sorn. "Not for the faults. For them."

I don't remember deciding.

I remember the Sorn's pale eyes. And Dory on the red glass at dawn, saying I'll hold everything. And Ash's glass flames on the branch in the square. And Trevor's silver flake on the General's cheek.

And Mother's voice, at our kitchen table. So that one day someone would come for my granddaughter.

And I didn't ask.

I folded it.

The way I'd folded the handlers. The forty-one on the Kethri world. The twelve at the bottom of the first queen's Hand. The wardens on the tender.

Only it wasn't a handler. It was harder. Much harder. It fought, the way the new grey had fought, and it was strong, stronger than anything I'd ever felt, and for a moment, a long moment, I didn't know if I could.

Then I felt them.

All of them. Through the hello. Through Dory, holding everything, eleven light-years and thirty minutes away on the red glass. Every queen on Avalon. Every Kethri on the wind. Mother, on the top of the Open Hand, holding. Anja between the roots. Sera and Liam, burning white. Risa and Sigmund, with the sky in their hands.

Not giving me anything. I didn't need anything.

Just there.

And I folded it. Smaller. And smaller. Into itself. Until it was a small grey shape in my hand like a stone.

I put it in a box. I put the box in my coat pocket. With the others.

It was still there. Inside. I could feel it.

Not dead. Folded.

Then I turned to the Drenn queen.

She was looking at me. With eyes I couldn't see, in a long blue-black face I couldn't read. Her arms pinned. The voice still going out of her, faltering, because there was nobody pushing it any more.

"Ma'am," I said.

Nothing.

"Ma'am. Nobody's holding you now."

She didn't answer.

"What do you want?"

She didn't say down, like the old queen. Or home, like the nine. Or to listen.

She said something I didn't expect.

Juno told me afterward what it was. I'd felt the shape of it, but not the word. Juno had the word.

Them.

My young. My whole brood. Out of the collars. Out of the forest where I sent them to die. Now.

A pause.

And then I would like to see the one who held them.

So I opened her.

Gently. Even though she was new and the grey was new and it fought me. The housing came away from her long pinned arms one fold at a time, and her arms came free, and unfolded, and the blades at the ends of them caught the light.

And she stopped carrying the voice.

Just like that. She put it down. Not like the old queen, at the end of a long walk. Like someone throwing a weapon away.

And the Hand went silent.

And on the forest floor, between the roots of the biggest tree, a few hundred Drenn, blue-black and glossy, in collars, bent and broken and lying in the moss where Anja had put them, went very still.

And listened for her.

Garnet opened their collars.

All of them. Round the outside first. Then the middle. On the forest floor, in the moonlight, one at a time, with Genny beside her, because there was nothing on the other side of the Drenn collars to sing to. No pieces. Just grey. Tight. And Garnet, thirteen, with her tongue between her teeth, touched every one up into something that opened.

When she was done, she sat down in the moss. Right where she was. Between the roots. Next to Anja.

"That," said Garnet, "was very, very rude."

Anja, beside her, with her coat in rags and her hands dark with the Drenn's blood from the edges of a hundred blades, not one of which had cut her, put her arm round her.

"I know," she said.

The Drenn queen came down out of the Hand at dawn.

Slowly. On her four long arms, down through the folds, which I'd asked to open for her. Out through the palm. Down into the forest, through the canopy, past the Kethri on the wind, who stopped singing and watched her go by.

To the forest floor.

To the roots of the biggest tree.

Her young were there. All of them. Out of their collars. Blue-black and glossy and bent and battered, lying in the moss where Anja had put them. And they lifted their long heads as she came down.

She went to each one.

Every one. One after another. She bent her long head to each, and touched it, the way the queens touched their young on Avalon. There you are. And every one she touched lifted itself up off the moss and stood.

When she'd been to all of them, she turned round.

To Anja.

Anja stood up.

She was very tired. I could see it. Her coat was in rags and her hands were dark with the Drenn's blood and her face was grey with the night. But she stood up. Very straight. In front of the old queen between the roots, where she'd stood all night.

The Drenn queen looked at her.

At her hands. At the plain silver markings running up her arms, like the grain in good wood.

Then the Drenn queen did something none of us expected.

She folded her four long arms. All of them. The blades at the ends of them crossed in front of her, the way you'd cross your arms. The way Anja crossed hers.

And she bent her long head. All the way. Until it was level with Anja's.

And stayed there.

"She says," said Juno, very quietly, "her young are fighters. They were made to be. On her world, the silver listened to a place where nothing lived unless it could fight." A pause. "She says she's never seen anyone stop them. Not on any world. Not ever."

Anja didn't say anything.

"She says," said Juno, "thank you for not killing them."

Anja looked at her hands. At the Drenn's blood on them. At the hundred bent blades in the moss all round her.

"They didn't want to be here," she said. Very quietly. "Did they. Any more than the Kethri did."

"No," said Juno.

"Then tell her," said Anja, "she's welcome."

The old queen was still listening.

Between the roots of the biggest tree, small and pale and smooth, where she'd been all night. She hadn't moved. Nothing had touched her.

When the Kethri started singing again, at dawn, on the wind, with the Hand silent and folded and empty overhead, she listened to every note.

There, she said. Very faint. There. Again.

Okafor came down to the forest floor at sunrise.

She stood between the roots with her slate under her arm and looked at all of it. At the Drenn, standing, blue-black in the gold light. At their queen, with her arms folded and her head bowed in front of Anja. At Anja, in rags. At Rory's squad, grey with smoke and not a burn on any of them. At Garnet asleep in the moss. At Genny beside her, very straight, with her eyes shut.

At the Hand overhead. Five fingers folded. Silent.

At me.

"It didn't go home," said Okafor.

"No, ma'am."

"It won't."

"No."

Okafor looked at the Hand for a long time.

"Then it's a fault," she said. "A new Hand went to look at the faults, and became one." She took out her slate. "Nine."

She wrote it.

Then she looked at me.

"The one in the palm," she said. "The one with the face. What did it say?"

I told her.

You have the children of the modified. Whole. That is why we came. Not for the faults. For them.

Okafor didn't say anything for a long time.

"They know," she said at last.

"They know something," I said. "That one knew. It's in my pocket. In a box." I put my hand over it. "I don't know who else it told."

Okafor turned the slate over. To the blank side.

The children. Every one.

"Then we go home," she said, "and we get ready."

Days 1585–1592. Awake.

Okafor at the map table, Trevor's frost faint on the wood: we get there first and stand in front of the forest so it looks at us; and then it doesn't go home. If it reports what it saw they'll know; if it doesn't, it's one more fault. Luna: a new Hand that went to look at the fault and became one. Both ships, Keir and Safi with Aster. The longest list: everyone who can hold. Anja at the front of Liam's squad; Rory the second set fire to Maura's sleeve and put it back himself, solemn and pleased. Sera, on no list since Ash: she handed Ash to Mother: it's a forest, the whole world; if anything catches we put it back, both, every spark. Hand on his chest: show-off. You did it first. Mother to Dory: will you hold the thread? I'll hold everything.

Thirty minutes. Over the forest at dusk, a few thousand winged Kethri in ranks on the wind, one above another, facing the sky where the stars were very slightly wrong and getting nearer, a queen before each rank. Nobody asked them; soldiers a long time for somebody who never asked; this time for themselves. Positions, plain as names off a slate: Steady folded at the far edge in reserve. Rory's squad to the roots of the biggest tree where the old queen lies; it'll want her back; it won't get her; Anja in front, nothing gets past. The General and the Frieses on top: don't hold back; I never do. Calders the canopy, every spark. Oseis the rain. Twins: hold; sing. Mrs. Dask, everything you can for as long as you can. Dask, the queen and whatever's holding her.

It came at moonrise: new, smooth, sharp, five fingers open wide to catch something, bigger than either of ours; the moon went out behind it. The voice not tired: hard, down like a hammer, not pushing, grabbing. The Kethri had no collars and it found nothing to hold; they bent like wheat, then the six queens made up a rising song and every rank rose into the voice and it slid off them like rain off a feather. Juno: they don't have to listen; nobody's holding them. So the Hand opened all five fingers: hundreds of handlers, and Drenn, taller, thin, glossy blue-black plate, four long arms ending in grown blades, collared. Nobody here knows them. Their queen's in the Hand whole, voice pushed straight through her; no pieces, nothing on the other side for Genny to sing to.

The Drenn smashed down through the canopy toward the roots. Anja unfolded her arms. The first swung two blades at her head and shoulder; she caught them bare-handed and they bent. She pushed it twenty yards into the ones behind, looked at the wood-grain silver on her arms, folded them again: next. Hundreds, and she just stood there, and every one that reached her stopped or bent or broke or flew back; the ones round the side got Rory's fire, exactly, not a spark on root or moss or leaf, and Sera and Liam in the canopy put it back.

Mother on top held every handler dropping from every finger, hundreds, to the width of a hair; her hand shook once and went still. General. He froze each one she held in clear blue ice hanging in the sky. She lowered her hand: thank you. Ma'am, frost down his coat. The Hand poured fire from all five fingers, a torrent, the whole canopy at once. Sera and Liam on the General's ice platforms at either end put it all back, Liam white to the shoulder, Sera white up her neck and across her face and eyes like a tree struck by lightning, the whole canopy dark in an instant, ash drifting like snow. Every spark. Every spark. Then Risa asked the wind that has blown since before there was anything to blow on to turn straight up into the open fingers, and the Calders let go into it, and Sigmund put his lightning in after. Grey doesn't burn; but everything inside the fingers did, and the Hand shut like a fist off a stove, and the voice faltered a breath.

I went in through the palm. New grey hasn't been a cage long enough to be tired; it fought me. I asked harder, exact, and it let me in. The Drenn queen at the heart, whole, tall, glossy, four arms pinned in a housing grown round them, the voice going out of her like blood. And in front of her a Sorn. Not handler or warden: taller, darker, with a long grey face and two pale eyes. It spoke aloud, the old tongue then mine: you are the fault. Eight Hands in a line from an edge world, and at the end, you. We wondered. Let her go. No; she is useful. She's never been asked. Asking is not how it is done. You ask the grey, the queens, the children of the modified. You have them, whole. That is why we came. Not for the faults. For them.

I didn't ask. Dory on the glass: I'll hold everything. Ash's glass flames. Trevor's flake. Mother: someone would come for my granddaughter. I folded it. Harder than anything; for a long moment I didn't know if I could. Then I felt all of them through Dory, not giving me anything, just there, and it folded small as a stone, into a box, into my pocket with the others. Not dead. Folded.

Ma'am, nobody's holding you now. What do you want? Not down or home or to listen. Them: my brood out of the collars, out of the forest I sent them to die in, now. And then I'd like to see the one who held them. The housing came off her arms a fold at a time and she threw the voice away like a weapon, and the Hand went silent, and on the forest floor a few hundred bent and battered Drenn went still and listened for her. Garnet opened every collar, no pieces, just tight grey touched into something that opens, then sat down in the moss next to Anja: very, very rude. Anja in rags, hands dark with Drenn blood from a hundred edges, none of which cut her, put her arm round her: I know.

At dawn the Drenn queen came down on her four arms through the canopy past the Kethri, who stopped singing to watch, to the roots, and touched every one of her young: there you are; each stood. Then turned to Anja, who stood very straight and grey with the night. The queen folded all four arms, blades crossed, the way Anja crosses hers, and bowed her head level with Anja's and stayed. Juno: her young were made fighters; the silver listened to a world where nothing lives unless it can fight; she's never seen anyone stop them, on any world; thank you for not killing them. Anja: they didn't want to be here any more than the Kethri did. Tell her she's welcome. Between the roots the old queen, untouched all night, listened to the dawn singing: there. Again.

Okafor at sunrise among the roots, looking at all of it, Garnet asleep in the moss. It didn't go home. It won't. Then it's a fault; a new Hand went to look at the faults and became one. She wrote 9. The one with the face; what did it say? You have the children of the modified, whole; that is why we came; for them. They know. That one knew; it's in a box in my pocket; I don't know who else it told. She turned the slate: The children. Every one. Then we go home and we get ready.