Chapter 349 The Far Queen

She didn't have a name.

Dot tried. For a long time, at the relay in the Meridian's new map room, with Ilka beside her and the spine-queen laid along the floor and the whole of the main ring dark except for the one station. Dot tried to find the word the far queen used for herself.

There wasn't one.

"She says they took it," said Ilka. On the big screen. At four in the morning, in the map room on Avalon, with Okafor and me and Luna and the Overseer and nobody else, because Okafor said she wanted to hear it before anyone else did. "Her name. A long time ago. When they brought her to where she is." Ilka's face was very grey. "She says they take everything that is a queen's own. Her name. Her young. Her world. They leave her the silver. That's all they want."

"Then what do we call her?"

Ilka listened. To the spine-queen. To Dot. To the thread, very far, very thin, coming down from past the middle.

"She says call her what you call the place she's calling from," said Ilka. "She says that's all she is now."

"Far," said Luna. Very quietly. "She's calling from far."

"Then she's the far queen," said Ilka.

The far queen talked for six hours.

Not in words. Dot said there weren't words for most of it. Shapes. Pictures. Feelings, coming down the thread through the spine-queen into the Meridian and through the relay into the map room, so faint that Ilka had to sit with her eyes shut and her hand on the spine-queen's pale bone to catch them, and say them out loud as they came.

I'll write it down the way Ilka said it. As near as I can.

There is a place past the middle.

It is not a world. It was, once. A long time ago. Before the houses. It was a world with a queen on it, and young, and light. The houses took the queen. They took the young. They took the light. And they kept the world.

They hollowed it.

They built inside it. Down. Very far. Further than anything I knew could go. Rooms. Thousands of rooms. And in every room, a queen.

Not in pieces. Whole. They do not break the ones they keep. Broken queens are for tokens. For voices. For making things. Kept queens are for something else.

They are for strength.

Every queen is the strongest thing on her world. That is what we are. The place where the world keeps its strength. The houses do not have that. They have never had it. They have no queens of their own. They have no world of their own. A pause. They have us.

They take our strength. A little at a time. Every day. From every room. Into the walls. Into the hollow world. Into the houses. A pause. That is how the Hands fly. That is how the correctors walk. That is how the black is made. That is how the houses live.

On us.

Nobody in the map room said anything.

The Overseer was standing in the doorway. With the dog. It didn't move.

I did not know, it said. Very quietly. I was made at the middle. I never went past it. I did not know what was there. A pause. I thought the houses were strong.

For as long as any of us remember, said the far queen, through Ilka, we were still. In our rooms. The houses told us: be still. Your young will be safe. Your worlds will be safe. Give us what we take, and be still, and everything you love will be safe.

We believed it.

Then we heard a song.

From very far. From the other side of the middle. Every queen on a world none of us knew, singing one thing. Down every thread. Further than any thread had ever been sung.

Not still.

And in every room, in the hollow world, every queen heard it.

At first we did nothing, said the far queen. We were afraid. We had been still so long we did not know how to be anything else.

Then we heard what the houses did. To the ones who heard. Burning. Everywhere. Worlds that had done nothing. Peoples that had done nothing but listen.

And we understood.

The houses were never going to keep anything safe. Not our young. Not our worlds. Not the ones who heard. A pause. The only thing the houses ever kept was us. Because they needed us. Because without us they are nothing.

So we stopped being still.

Not all at once. Not loudly. We are in rooms. We are held. We cannot leave.

But we can stop giving.

Okafor put her coffee down.

"Stop giving," she said.

Every day the houses take a little, said the far queen. From every room. For as long as any of us remember, we let them. We let it go. We were still, and it went.

Now we hold it.

Every one of us. In every room. We hold what is ours. And the houses reach in to take it, the way they always have.

And it does not come.

"That's why they're afraid," said Luna.

Yes.

"Because their strength is you. And you've stopped letting them have it."

Yes.

"How much have you stopped?"

The far queen was quiet for a long time. So long that Ilka opened her eyes and looked at the spine-queen and then at the screen and then shut her eyes again.

Not enough, said the far queen. We are very many. But we have been still a very long time. Some of us have forgotten how to hold. Some of us are so tired from giving that there is nothing left to hold. A pause. But enough that the houses feel it. Enough that the Hands are slower. Enough that the correctors are fewer than they would have been. Enough that the black takes longer to make.

"Fewer?" said Okafor. Very sharply. "We've had more correctors this year than ever."

You have had more than you have ever had, said the far queen. You have not had as many as the houses wanted to send.

Nobody said anything.

"Then why are you calling us?" said Okafor. "If you're already doing it. If it's working."

The far queen didn't answer for a long time.

When she did, Ilka's voice changed. She stopped saying the words in her own voice and started saying them very flat. Very careful. The way you'd read out a list you didn't want to be reading.

Because the houses have stopped reaching in, said the far queen. Gently. A little at a time. The way they always did.

Because now, when a queen holds, they do not reach in.

They break her.

Nobody moved.

Into pieces, said the far queen. In her room. While she holds. The way they break queens for tokens. For voices. A pause. A broken queen cannot hold. A broken queen is only pieces. And pieces give whatever is taken.

They began eleven days ago. The ones who held hardest first. The loudest. The ones the others could hear, through the walls, holding.

They break one every day.

Every day, in the hollow world, one queen who was holding stops. And the rest of us hear her stop. And some of us—

She didn't finish.

She didn't have to.

"How many?" said Okafor. Very quietly. "In the hollow world. Altogether."

I do not know, said the far queen. I have never seen all the rooms. Nobody has. A pause. More than you have on Avalon. More than every queen you have ever freed. Another pause. Many more.

I thought of Garnet's dots. On the back of the sheet. Thousands of them. Drawn with the point of the pencil, spreading out from the middle until she ran out of paper.

"And you?" said Luna. "Are you holding?"

Yes.

"Are you loud?"

Yes, said the far queen. I am the loudest. I am the one who heard the song first. A pause. I am the one who called.

Luna shut her eyes.

"Then they'll break you," she said.

Yes, said the far queen. Soon. They break the loudest first.

That is why I am calling, she said.

Not to ask you to come. I know you cannot. Not yet. Not past the middle. Not to the hollow world. No one has ever gone there who was not taken.

I am calling to tell you where it is. So that when you can, you will know.

And to tell you that we are not still.

And to ask you to keep singing.

Every night, the song comes down the threads. From Avalon. From the worlds you freed. Every night. We hear it through the walls. A pause. It is how we know to keep holding. When one of us stops. When the houses break the loudest. Another pause. As long as the song comes, we hold.

The thread went very quiet after that.

Ilka opened her eyes. She was crying. She didn't wipe it. She sat at the relay in the Meridian's map room with her hand on the spine-queen's pale bone and her face wet, and looked at us through the screen.

"She's still there," she said. "She's just—resting. It took a lot to say all that. Through the walls. Down the thread." A pause. "She says she'll call again tomorrow night. If she can."

If she can.

Nobody in the map room said anything for a long time.

Then Okafor said, "Wren."

Wren was in the corner. She was always in the corner. With her back to the wall and her eyes shut. She'd come in without anyone hearing at the second hour, and sat down, and listened to all of it.

"Can you hear it?" said Okafor. "The hollow world. The rooms. The queens holding."

Wren didn't open her eyes.

"No," she said. "Too far. Further than I can hear." A pause. "But I heard her. The far one. Coming down the thread." She opened her eyes. "And I heard something else. Eleven days ago. That I didn't understand."

"What?"

"Something stopping," said Wren. "Very far. Past the middle. Every day. Once a day. At the same time." She looked at her hands. "I thought it was a clock."

I went up on Father's roof at dawn.

I didn't listen to Avalon. I didn't listen to the bases, or the Meridian, or the thousand peoples in their caves and skies and oceans and plains, or the task forces out on the threads.

I listened past the middle.

As far as I could.

Further.

I couldn't hear the hollow world. Wren was right. It was too far.

But I could feel the middle. At the end of the ninth line. The voice. Being taught. Every hour. The black going into it, over and over.

And under the black, nine quiet places. Snow. Bell. Red. Wind. Moss. Grass. And three more. Holding.

And beyond the voice, past it, so faint I couldn't be sure, something I'd felt once before. On the night of the fire world. When the scream started.

The houses.

Cold. Certain. Reaching.

Not toward us.

Inward. Toward something past the middle. A great many somethings. Reaching into each one. Taking.

And at one of them, very faint, very far, I felt the reaching stop. And come back. Empty.

And then, a moment later, reach again.

Harder.

I came down off the roof at the hour after dawn.

And Wren was on the porch. Sitting on the top step. With her eyes shut.

She didn't look up when I came down the ladder.

"Twelve," she said.

Genny was at the kitchen table when I came in.

With the brood book. Volume eleven. And the far queen's words, the ones Ilka had said out loud in the map room, written down in her small upright writing, every one, because Okafor had sent them to her at dawn.

She'd read them. I could tell from her face.

"They break her," she said. Without looking up. "In her room. While she holds. Into pieces."

"Yes."

Genny put her pen down.

"Broken isn't dead," she said.

I looked at her.

"Broken isn't dead," said Genny again. Twice. The way she said everything that mattered. "Lucas. I've got four hundred and six trays on the long ward. Four hundred and six queens. Broken. Into pieces. Some of them thirty years ago. Some of them longer." She put her hand flat on the brood book. "Every piece hums. Every one. Every night. I sit with them and they hum. The same note as every other piece of the same queen." Her voice was very steady. "Tally's queen was in eleven pieces. You put her back. She's in the green shallows now with her young round her."

"It took weeks."

"It took weeks for one," said Genny. "With two of us. We know how now." She looked at me. "The houses think broken is the same as gone. It's not. They don't know that. They don't know anything about queens except how to take from them."

She picked her pen up again.

"Thirteen queens," she said. "Or twelve. Or however many. In pieces. In rooms. In the hollow world." She wrote something. "When we go, we bring the pieces home. Every one. In sacks, like Sera did on Earth." She looked up. "And we sing them back. However long it takes."

"That could be a hundred years, Genny."

"Then it's a hundred years," said Genny. "They've waited longer."

That was the day I decided.

I told Okafor at noon.

In the map room. With the door shut. Just her and me. She was standing at the great table with the back of Garnet's sheet turned up, the side with the dots, and she was looking at the dots and not writing anything.

"I'm going to the middle," I said.

Okafor didn't look up.

"No," she said.

"Not past it. To it. To the voice."

"No."

"The voice is at the middle. It's been there for longer than anyone remembers. It's made of pieces of queens the houses broke. It's being taught the black every hour, and nine pieces of it are holding on." I put my hand flat on the sheet. On the space in the middle, where the nine lines stopped. "It knows where the hollow world is. It must. It's been singing for the houses since before anyone remembers. It knows what's past the middle better than anything alive." I looked at her. "And it asked. It came down the thread and asked who it came out of. Mother said you don't leave a child in the dark."

"I know what Mother said."

"Then let me go and find out what it knows. And bring it back."

Okafor looked up.

"How?" she said. "You said it yourself. A year ago. On the night Neve was on the black world. You've never gone further than a mile. Scattered. If you spread yourself along a thread between worlds you don't know if you'd come back together at the other end." Her voice was very flat. "Or how many of you would."

"I know."

"So how?"

I didn't answer at once.

"Dory," I said.

Okafor didn't say anything for a long time.

"She's six," she said.

"She's Holding," I said. "You wrote it on the slate. She's been holding the door open to the voice every afternoon for months. From the long ward. Through the nine trays. Up the thread to the nine quiet places." I looked at my hands. "There's a door, Maris. Already open. From here to the middle. Dory's been keeping it open since the night the grass held."

"And you want to go through it."

"Scattered," I said. "Along the thread. Through the door. Dory holds it. The voice's nine quiet places hold the other end." I swallowed. "If I come apart, they'll hold the shape. The way the queens held Neve's hand."

"And if they can't?"

I didn't answer.

Okafor sat down.

She didn't sit down often. Not in the map room. Not since she became Marshal. She stood. She always stood.

She sat down in the chair at the end of the great table. And put her hands flat on the sheet. On the dots.

"The far queen said they break one a day," she said.

"Twelve so far."

"How many are there?"

"She doesn't know."

Okafor looked at the dots for a long time. She put one finger on one of them. Any one. It didn't matter which. They were all the same size. Garnet had made them all the same size, very carefully, because she said she didn't know which ones were bigger and it wasn't fair to guess.

"Ask your family," she said. "Before I say anything. Every one. Ask them." She looked up. "And if one of them says no, you come back here and tell me, and I'll tell you no too."

I asked them that night.

On the porch. All of them. Not one at a time. Together.

I told them everything. The far queen. The hollow world. The rooms. The strength. The breaking. Twelve. The voice at the middle. The door Dory had been holding open from the long ward for months.

Nobody said anything for a long time when I'd finished.

Then Mother said, from Father's chair: "Dory."

Dory was on the bottom step. With Pebble. With her notebook on her knees.

She'd listened to all of it. She hadn't written anything down.

She looked up at me.

"I can hold it," she said. "The door. I've been holding it every day." A pause. "It's very far. I get tired. I can do an hour."

"How long would you need?" said Luna. To me. Very steadily.

"I don't know," I said. "To get there. To talk to it. To come back." I looked at Dory. "Longer than an hour."

Dory considered this.

"Then somebody holds with me," she said.

Everyone looked at her.

"Like the mountain," said Dory. "For Neve's hands. It wasn't a thing for one. The old queen said." She looked round the porch. At everyone. "I hold the door. Somebody holds me. Somebody holds them." She looked at Efua. On the step below her. With her hand already out, flat, very slightly. "Efua holds the air still. So I can hear." She looked at Kwame, asleep on Hana's shoulder. "Kwame can feel where Papa is. Like Papa feels things. He'll know if Papa's coming apart."

Kwame opened his eyes.

"There," he said.

Nobody said anything.

Then Genny said, from the rail, very quietly: "I'll ask the trays. While he's going. Every one of the nine. Over and over. So they don't forget."

"I'll listen," said Tally. "To the voice. So it knows we're there."

"I'll count him," said Wren. From the corner of the porch. "Every grain of him that goes up the thread. And every grain that comes back. And if they're not the same number—" She stopped. "I'll tell you."

Garnet didn't say anything.

She had her drawing board on her knees. She'd been drawing the whole time. She turned it round.

It was the porch. All of us. In a long line, holding hands. From the bottom step, where Dory sat with her hand flat on the boards, up the steps, along the rail, round Mother's chair, to the door. And through the door. And a long thin line in pencil, going up from the roof. Up the page. Off the top.

"That's you," said Garnet. To me. "At the end of us." She looked at it. "You're not at the end of the rope. You're at the end of us."

Mother didn't say anything.

She sat in Father's chair and looked at me for a very long time.

Then she said, "Will you say it first?"

"Yes."

"Before you go. Every one of us. In order."

"Yes."

"And when you come back?"

"Yes."

Mother nodded. Slowly.

"Then go and tell Maris," she said. "Nobody said no."

The Overseer asked to come.

In the map room. When I came to tell Okafor. It was already there. It stood in the doorway with the dog and didn't come in, the way it never came in now unless someone asked it to.

The voice was made beside me, it said. In the vat next to mine. At the middle. A pause. It may remember me. A little. Something it was made beside.

"You can't scatter," said Okafor. "You can't go up the thread."

No.

"Then you can't come."

The Overseer looked at the floor for a long time.

Then may I sit in the long ward, it said. While he goes. Beside the trays. With the dog. A pause. So that if the voice looks back down the thread, it will see something it was made beside. Sitting on the floor. Not being anything it was made to be.

Okafor looked at it for a long time.

"Yes," she said. "You may."

The dog, at the Overseer's feet, thumped its tail once on the floor.

Okafor said, "Tomorrow night. When the far queen calls. So she knows."

She said, "Not past the middle. To it. Talk to the voice. Find out what it knows. Come home."

She said, "If Wren says the numbers are wrong, you come home. Whatever's happening. Whatever it's telling you. You come home."

She said, "Promise."

I promised.

Tally told the voice in the afternoon.

In the long ward. Sitting in the middle of the nine trays with her blanket round her shoulders and her hand out, flat, up, toward the thread. With Dory beside her, holding the door, the way she did every afternoon now. With Genny writing.

"He's coming," said Tally. "Tomorrow night. Lucas. Up the thread. To you."

The voice didn't answer for a long time.

When it did, it was very faint. Very far. Under the teaching, which was very loud now, Tally said. Louder every day.

Why?

"To ask you where the hollow world is," said Tally. "To ask you what you know." A pause. "And because you asked. Who you came out of. Mother says you don't leave a child in the dark."

The voice was silent for a very long time.

I am not a child, it said. I am older than anything on your world. Older than the old queen. Older than the mountain she lay under.

"I know," said Tally. "So's the far queen. So are all of them. Mother says that doesn't matter." She tucked her blanket tighter. "She says if someone made you and put you in the dark and only ever taught you one thing, then you're a child. However old you are."

The voice didn't say anything.

I will hold the other end, it said at last. In the quiet places. In the snow, and the warm water, and the grass. A pause. They are very small. But I will hold.

"That's all he needs," said Tally.

Tell him the houses will feel him come, said the voice. They feel everything that comes up the ninth line. A pause. Tell him they are teaching me faster now. Since the far queen called. They are afraid.

Tally wrote it down. Every word.

Then she looked at Dory. Holding the door. With her hand flat on the boards and her face going white at the edges.

"Can you do it?" said Tally. "Tomorrow? For longer?"

Dory didn't open her eyes.

"I'm Holding," she said. "Okafor wrote it on the slate."

Ash wanted to hold too.

She came down to the long ward after supper with Sera's apron still on, because she'd been at the forge, and stood in the door with her hinge face. Deciding.

"I can do fire," she said. To me. "And branches. Mama's and yours." She looked at Dory, asleep on a blanket by the trays because the afternoon's holding had worn her out. "I can't do holding."

"Nobody's asking you to."

"I know," said Ash. "That's why I'm offering." She came in and sat down beside Dory's blanket. "If she gets cold. Tomorrow. I'll keep her warm. Mama showed me how to do it without the fire part."

She put her hand on Dory's back. Flat. And very faintly, the air round them both went warm.

Trevor came in behind her. And sat down on Dory's other side. And didn't say anything. And a very thin ring of frost spread out round the three of them on the floor of the long ward. Not cold. Just there. A line round them. The way Luna drew a line on the ice when she meant nobody past here.

Small Sigmund came last. He didn't sit down. He stood in the door, very straight, the way his uncle stood, with a very small spark running round the edge of his ear.

"I'll guard the door," he said.

Nobody told him there was nothing to guard it from.

Luna found me in the forge at dusk.

I'd gone there because it was where I went. Father's forge. The copy. With the fire banked and Ash's bucket upturned in the corner and the old brown dog asleep on a sack of charcoal.

She stood in the door for a long time without saying anything.

Then she came in and sat down on the anvil. Where Sera sat. Where Ash sat, when Ash was explaining something to the dog.

"I'm not going to say no," she said.

"I know."

"I want to," said Luna. "I want to say no more than I've ever wanted anything. I want to go back to the porch and stand up and say no in front of everyone, so you have to come back here and tell Maris, so she tells you no too." She looked at her hands. Cold. Faintly white at the edges. "I won't."

"Why not?"

Luna didn't answer for a long time.

"Because I've been Chief of Staff since the dome," she said at last. "That's what Maris said. Since before I knew what it was. And the first thing you learn, being someone who has to say what everyone decided, is that the right thing and the thing you want are almost never the same." A pause. "And when they're not, you say the right thing. And you go home. And you're cold for a while."

She held out her hand.

There was something in it. Small. Clear. A ring. Ice. So cold it smoked in the warm air of the forge, and didn't melt.

"It won't melt," said Luna. "I asked it not to. It'll stay frozen until I tell it otherwise." She put it in my palm. It burned with cold. "If you come apart on the thread. If Wren's numbers are wrong. If you can't find your way back." Her voice was very steady. "That's the coldest thing on Avalon. And it's mine. You'll feel it. Wherever you are."

I closed my hand round it.

"Come back to the cold," said Luna. "That's all. Come back to the cold."

Sera and Risa came in from their task force at midnight. Between worlds. Two days early. Okafor had called them.

Sera didn't say anything. She came up the porch steps burning, very faintly, at the edges, the way she did when she'd been holding heat for a long time, and put her arms round me and held on, and the heat went into me, all of it, slowly, until she wasn't burning any more and I was.

Then she let go.

"For the way," she said. "It's cold. Between."

Risa stood at the bottom of the steps with her arms folded and her hair on end and a very small cloud over her head.

"If it hurts," she said. "If anything up there hurts you. The voice. The houses. Anything." The cloud went black. "You tell me. Through Dot. Through Wren. Through anything."

"And then what?"

"Then I'll come," said Risa. "As lightning. Down the same thread. I don't care if I come apart either." She unfolded her arms. "Small Sigmund can make thunder in his sleep now. He'll be fine without me for a week."

"Risa—"

"I'm not asking," said Risa. "I'm telling you. That's what a Wing Commander does." She came up the steps and kissed me very hard and went back down. "Go on. Say it. Then go."

The far queen called the next night at the second hour.

Ilka put her through to the map room. And to the long ward. Where Genny had laid the nine trays out in a ring on the floor, and Dory sat in the middle of them with her hand flat on the boards, and Efua sat behind her with her hand out, and Kwame sat on Hana's knee watching me, and Tally sat with her notebook, and Wren sat with her back against the wall and her eyes shut.

And the rest of them, all round the long ward. Holding hands. Mother at the end, in Father's chair, by the door.

I hear you, said the far queen. Through Ilka. Through the relay. Faint. You are all together. I can hear it. Through the walls.

"We're going to the middle," said Okafor. Into the relay. "To the voice. To ask it where you are."

The far queen was silent for a long time.

Thank you, she said. Tell the voice—

She stopped.

Ilka's face, on the screen, went very still.

"She's gone quiet," said Ilka. "She was here. She was talking. And she—"

In the corner, with her eyes shut, Wren said:

"Thirteen."

Nobody moved.

Then Genny, on her knees by the nine trays, with the brood book open on the floor in front of her, said very quietly:

"Broken isn't dead."

Twice.

Nobody answered her. But Tally, beside her, wrote it down. In her small square marks. At the top of a clean page. And under it, very small, a number. 13. And under that, a word I'd never seen her write before.

Yet.

I took Luna's ring out of my pocket.

It was still frozen. It smoked in the warm air of the long ward and burned my palm with cold. I put it on. The fourth finger of my left hand. One of the two that had gone dark, a long time ago, on the fire world, when a corrector walked into me.

Sera's heat was still in me. All of it. Under my skin. Waiting for the cold between.

Risa, by the door, had her arms folded and her hair on end and a very small cloud over her head, black.

Small Sigmund stood beside her. Guarding the door.

Nobody moved.

Then I said it.

Every one. In order. Fast. Mother. Luna. Sera. Risa. Hana. Genny. Garnet. Liam. Anja. Toby. Wren. Tally and Reed and Jory and Moon. Ash. Trevor. Small Sigmund. Efua. Kwame. Dory, last, in the middle of the trays, with her hand on the boards and her face very white.

"Hold," I said.

"I'm holding," said Dory.

I shut my eyes.

And let go.

Days 3291–3302. The Far Queen.

She has no name; they took it; she's the far queen, because that's all she is now. Past the middle there's a hollowed world, rooms down very far, a queen in every one, not broken: kept. The houses have no queens and no world of their own; they live on our strength, taken a little a day. When the queens heard not still they stopped giving, and the houses are afraid. So the houses break whoever holds hardest, one a day, in her room. Twelve. She asked us to keep singing. I asked my family to let me go to the middle along the thread, through the door Dory's held open for months. Dory: somebody holds with me. Efua, Kwame, Genny, Tally, Wren; Garnet drew me at the end of us. Nobody said no. The far queen called again and stopped mid-word. Wren said thirteen. I said it to all of them, and let go.