Chapter 374 The Four

Halloway kept me on the floor of the long ward for six days.

Not because I was hurt. I wasn't hurt. Halloway checked everything she knew how to check, and then Doctor Bell came through the arch with an instrument she'd built that night out of a Hyrrani compass and two of the sun lamps and checked everything Halloway didn't know how to check, and they both said the same thing.

"Nothing's wrong with you," said Halloway.

"Then why can't I get up?"

"Because you went somewhere nobody's ever been," said Halloway, "and you came back, and I don't know what that does to a person. So you're going to lie on this floor until I do."

So I lay on the floor.

With the trays humming round me. With Tally and Moon and Reed asleep against me at night. With Bell's tray at my head, the part of her the houses didn't take, because Genny moved it there. She said Bell would want to be near when someone came back from up the thread.

And everyone came.

That's what I remember most about those six days. Not the tiredness, though I was tired in a way I've never been. Not the dreams, though I dreamed every night of thirty-four towers singing very slowly in the dark. Everyone came. Through the arches. All day. All night. To sit on the floor.

The children came first.

Every morning. Through the courtyard arch from the house on the rise. All eight of them, in a line, with Dory at the front holding Trevor's hand and Ash's, and small Sigmund behind with a cloud over him that rained every time he looked at me, and Efua and Kwame holding hands, and Pip carrying Elin and Goldie in the iron basket.

They sat on the floor round me. And didn't say anything. And then Trevor frosted my hand, very gently, to see if I'd notice. And I noticed. And he laughed. And then everybody was all right again.

The grandparents came at noon.

With lunch. Maura and Rory and Taveth, with bread. The General with fish. Kyria with something from Hyrran in a pot that she wouldn't name and that Halloway said I wasn't allowed to eat and that I ate anyway because Kyria stood over me until I did. Ingrid and Konrad, who sat on the floor at the end of the row of trays and played noughts and crosses in the dust with the Lir children who'd come through the arch from the shallow seas to see the boy who'd been up the thread.

Konrad lost every game. He said he'd never been so pleased to lose anything.

And Mother.

She sat beside me every afternoon. In a chair Rory brought through the arch. Not Father's. Father's stayed at the end of the long table in the house on the rise, because Mother said it belonged there now.

She held my hand. She didn't say anything for most of it.

On the fourth afternoon she said: "You went very far, love."

"Yes."

"Further than your father ever went. Further than anyone."

"I think so."

She was quiet for a long time.

"He went into the dark once," she said. "In the war. On the Varran pass. Into a tunnel that had come down, on his own, to bring out a boy who was trapped at the far end." She held my hand. "He came back with the boy. And he lay on the floor of the barracks for three days and wouldn't talk. And when he finally talked, the first thing he said was: I nearly didn't want to come back."

I didn't say anything.

"And I said to him," said Mother, "what brought you back?"

"What did he say?"

Mother smiled. Very slightly.

"He said: you were holding my hand." She looked at our hands. "So I'm holding yours."

And my wives.

All five. Every night. Taking turns, Risa said, so that I'd never be alone on the floor and none of them would fall asleep at the long table from not sleeping.

Luna came with Elin, and sat with her back against Bell's tray, and the room went a little cooler and very still, and I slept.

Sera came with Goldie, and the room went warm, and I slept.

Risa came with small Sigmund and lay down beside me on the stone and put her chin on my shoulder and said I was an idiot and she'd make it rain in my boots, and then she cried, and then she said if I told anyone she'd cried she'd make it rain in my boots, and then she fell asleep first.

Hana came. With her hand on her middle, where the one bright heart is. And gave the room air. And I slept.

And Andraste.

Andraste didn't take turns.

She came every night. After whoever else had come. And lay down on the stone on my other side. And put her scarred hand flat on my chest, over my heart, the way she had on the salt.

And didn't say anything.

She'd been on that floor for two days and nine hours, with her hands on my face. Kyria told me she'd lost a stone in weight. Halloway told her she was five weeks pregnant with what everyone was now fairly sure was twins and she couldn't go two days without eating. Andraste told Halloway that on Hyrran a First Blade guarding a door doesn't eat until the door is shut.

"Is it shut?" I asked her. On the fifth night.

Andraste thought about it.

"Mostly," she said.

On the fifth night Hana came too. After Andraste. Which wasn't her turn.

She lay down on the stone on my other side, the side Andraste wasn't, with her hand on her middle. And for a while nobody said anything. The trays hummed. Tally talked to the voice in her sleep, very softly, the way she does.

Then Hana said, to Andraste, across me: "Can you feel them yet?"

"Yes," said Andraste. "Since the second day on this floor. While I was holding his face." She was quiet for a moment. "They were very still. The whole time he was gone. Both of them. As if they were listening for him." She moved her hand on my chest. "When he came back on the seven hundred and ninth, they moved. Both. At once."

"Both," said Hana.

"Both," said Andraste. "Dory won't tell me. But I know."

Hana laughed. Very softly. So she wouldn't wake Tally.

"Mine moved too," she said. "When he came back. Just once." She put her hand over mine. "Ruth says they're growing faster than Efua and Kwame did. She says all of his do. She says she's stopped writing down when she thinks they'll come, because she's always wrong."

"On Hyrran," said Andraste, "a First Blade's children come when they are ready to fight."

"That's not how it works."

"On Hyrran it is," said Andraste. And then, after a while, very quietly: "I would like them to come when he is not on a floor."

"So would I," said Hana.

I didn't say anything. I was nearly asleep. But I felt both of them, either side of me, every atom. And three small hearts. One very clear, in the taste of water and air. And two, very loud, very close together, that turned toward me when I listened.

I didn't tell Andraste.

Dory says it's a surprise.

The queens came on the sixth morning. Before Halloway let me up.

Not through the arch. The old queen doesn't fit through an arch. She came up out of the hall under the house on the rise and across the plain to the long ward on foot, very slowly, which she hasn't done in a year, and lay down outside the long ward's open doors in the sun. And the Scarecrow queen beside her. And the heavy queen, and the ash queen, green and gold.

I went to the doors. Halloway let me, as far as the doors.

You went smaller than anyone, said the old queen.

"Yes."

Smaller than a queen goes. Smaller than we knew there was.

"I didn't mean to."

No, said the old queen. You meant to reach thirty-four towers. And to reach thirty-four, you had to be thin enough to be in thirty-four places. And to be that thin, you had to be very small. A pause. We felt you. All of us. In the hall. We felt you go down and down and we sang the young-going-out song as loud as we have ever sung it, and we did not know if it was enough.

"It wasn't the song that brought me back."

No, said the Scarecrow queen. We know. It was the one who guards the door.

I didn't say anything.

We have been talking, said the old queen. All of us. In the hall. While you were on the floor. She lifted her great head. We still do not know what you are becoming. But we know something now that we did not know before.

"What?"

That you cannot become it alone, said the old queen. Nobody could. Not even a queen. Whatever you are going to be, it will take all of them. The five. The children. Your mother. All of them, holding. A pause. That is not a weakness, child. That is how a brood works.

On the sixth day Halloway let me up.

I walked out of the long ward on my own two feet. Through the arch. Into the courtyard of the house on the rise, where the sun was. Where everyone was. Waiting.

Pip had made a cake.

Okafor came through the courtyard arch that evening.

She didn't bring the slate. She didn't bring the black one either. She came through the arch in her coat with her hands in her pockets and stood at the edge of the long porch on the west side and looked out over the seventh lake for a long time.

Then she said: "I'm going to the four."

The four worlds nobody reached.

I'd known she would. She'd said it in the map room, to Konrad, on the third night. There are grandmothers. There always are. And I'd known, lying on the floor of the long ward, that as soon as Halloway let me up, Okafor would go.

"I'm coming," I said.

"No," said Okafor. "You're not."

"You're going to stand in front of four worlds of grandmothers and tell them where their grandchildren went. And that we weren't there." I looked at her. "I'm coming. It was me asking the towers to be slow. It was me who couldn't reach those four."

"It was the houses who took them," said Okafor.

"I know. I'm still coming."

Okafor looked at me for a long time.

"Mrs. Dask," she said. Not looking away from me.

"He's coming," said Mother. From Father's chair. Which somebody had carried out onto the porch. "So am I." She put her cup down. "So is the Mom Squad. All five." She looked at Okafor. "You were going to go on your own, Maris. With Konrad. You were going to go and stand in front of four worlds of grandmothers on your own." She stood up. "Not while I'm alive."

So we went.

The first of the four was called Tiel.

A river world. Long and slow, with great brown rivers going all the way round it, and towns built on the banks, and boats. Ruan took the Meridian there because there was no arch, and it was nine hours up the thread, and nobody on the Meridian said very much the whole way.

We came out of the rope over the largest town on Tiel at dawn.

And it was quiet.

Not like Ammaru. Ammaru was quiet because nobody had sung there for four generations. Tiel was quiet the other way. Because there had been singing, until five days before. And now there wasn't.

The towns on the riverbanks were all still standing. Nobody had touched them. No black. No Hand-light. The boats were tied up at the docks. The doors of the houses were open. There was washing on the lines.

And no children.

None. Not one. Not in the streets. Not on the boats. Not in the doorways. Garnet, at the window of the Meridian, with her drawing board on her knees, didn't draw anything for a long time.

Then she drew the washing on the lines.

Small shirts. Small trousers. Very many. Drying in the morning sun over the brown river. Where nobody was going to come and take them in.

The counting tower was in the middle of the town. On the riverbank. Grey. Very tall.

It was still listening.

I felt it from the Meridian. The made thing at the top. Counting. There was nothing left to count. It was counting anyway.

"Take it down," said Okafor.

I took it down. In one breath. Not asking. I didn't ask that one.

It folded into the river and the brown water went over it and it was gone.

Then the grandmothers came out.

I don't know how else to say it. They came out of the houses. Out of the doorways. Down to the riverbank where the tower had been. Old. All of them old. Too old for the tithe. Too old for the note. The people of Tiel are tall and thin and pale, with long necks and very dark eyes, and every one of them coming down to the riverbank that morning was grey-haired and bent.

Hundreds. Then thousands.

They stood on the bank where the tower had been and looked up at the Meridian. Very still.

Not afraid.

Past being afraid.

Okafor went down first.

Down the Meridian's ramp onto the riverbank. Alone. In her coat. With her hands at her sides. She stopped at the bottom of the ramp and looked at the grandmothers of Tiel for a long time.

Then she did something I'd never seen her do.

She knelt.

On the wet riverbank. In front of them. The Marshal of Avalon. On both knees.

Dot gave her the words. She said them anyway, in our language, first, before Dot put them into the grandmothers. She said she wanted them to hear her voice before they heard the words.

"My name is Maris Okafor," she said. "I'm the Marshal of Avalon. Five days ago the houses took your grandchildren. All of them. We knew it was going to happen. We tried to get here. We didn't." She didn't look away from them. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. We came to fifty-three worlds in time. We didn't come to yours."

The grandmothers of Tiel didn't say anything.

"I'm not here to ask you for anything," said Okafor. "I'm here to tell you where they went. Because you should know. And I'm here to tell you that we're going to go and get them." She swallowed. "And I'm here because I didn't want you to hear it from anyone but me."

For a long time nobody on the riverbank said anything.

Then one of them came forward.

Very old. Older than the others. With a long grey neck and dark eyes and her hands folded very tightly in front of her. She stopped in front of Okafor, kneeling in the mud, and looked down at her.

She said something.

Dot translated it.

You are the one who came to the others. The terraces. The river of glass. The world of grey towers where the women in iron came out of the stone ring.

"Yes," said Okafor.

We heard, said the old woman. The tower told us. It counts everything. It told us the women in iron were coming. It told us there was a boy in the thread asking the towers to be slow. She looked up. At the Meridian. At me, standing at the top of the ramp. Ours didn't listen to him.

"No," said Okafor.

It sang fast. It always sang fast. It was proud of singing fast. The old woman looked at the river, where the tower had been. We knew what was coming. We heard it coming up the stairs. One step at a time. We held them. All of us. All night. She looked down at Okafor. And then it sang fast and they let go of our hands and walked.

Mother came down the ramp then.

And Ingrid and Maura. And Kyria. And Teshka, on her own two feet.

They walked across the riverbank to where the old woman was standing in front of Okafor. And stopped. In a line. Five of them. Old women. Grandmothers.

The old woman of Tiel looked at them.

Then at Mother.

Who are you?

"Mothers," said Mother. "Grandmothers. All of us." She held out her hands. Empty. "We came to stand with you."

The old woman looked at her hands for a long time.

Then she took them.

Her name was Wenna.

She'd had nine grandchildren. All taken. Five days before. She told Mother their names, on the riverbank, one at a time, with Mother holding both her hands. And Mother said each name back. And Genny, who'd come down the ramp behind the Mom Squad with volume fifteen, wrote each one down.

Then the next grandmother came forward. And told Ingrid.

And the next told Maura.

And the next told Kyria.

And the next told Teshka.

It took all day.

Every grandmother on Tiel. Every name. Thousands. Told to five old women on a riverbank, who said each one back. Written down by Genny, who didn't stop once, whose hand went numb at noon so that Callum came down off the Meridian and held the book steady for her with his left hand, the one that closes now, every finger, while she wrote with her right.

Garnet drew the grandmothers.

Not the children. She couldn't draw the children; nobody could see them. She drew the grandmothers telling the names. One at a time. Very carefully. Every face.

Rowan sat beside her on the riverbank and sharpened her pencils. He didn't say anything all day. When she ran out of paper at dusk, he went up the ramp and came back down with the Meridian's whole supply, and put it beside her on the mud, and went on sharpening.

At dusk Wenna said something to Mother.

Dot didn't translate it right away. She asked Mother first if she wanted it translated. Mother said yes.

We have nobody to cook for, said Wenna. Nobody to wash for. Nobody to hold. She looked at the washing on the lines, small shirts, all along the river. We are grandmothers of nobody.

Mother didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she said:

"There are fifteen thousand children on Avalon who came out of a white room and don't have grandmothers."

Wenna looked at her.

"In a town under a garden wall," said Mother. "With windows everywhere. And nothing white." She held Wenna's hands. "They have three hundred grandmothers now. From Avalon. Who go every day. But it isn't enough. It isn't ever enough. There are always more children than grandmothers." She swallowed. "They don't replace yours. Nothing does. But they'd like someone to cook for them. And wash for them. And hold them."

Wenna didn't answer that night.

Nobody on Tiel did. They went back into their houses by the river with the washing still on the lines, and the Meridian stayed over the town, and none of us slept.

In the morning, Wenna came down to the riverbank.

With a bag.

And behind her, four hundred others. With bags.

"Not all of us," she said. Through Dot. "Some will stay. To keep the houses. To keep the washing. For when they come back." She looked at Okafor. "You said you would go and get them."

"Yes."

"Then someone has to be here to take in the washing," said Wenna. "When they come home."

Callum asked Genny on the second night. On Tiel.

Garnet told me. Not Genny. Genny said it was nobody's business and then told Garnet, who drew it, so it was everybody's business by the time we got to the third world.

It was on the riverbank. After the last name. After the grandmothers had gone back into their houses. Genny was sitting on the bank with volume fifteen shut on her knees and her right hand in her lap, very still, because she couldn't feel it any more. And Callum was beside her. Still. With his left hand, the one that closes now, flat on the cover of the book, where he'd been holding it steady all day.

"I've been thinking," he said.

"Don't," said Genny. "Not tonight. I can't write anything else down."

"You don't have to write it down."

Genny looked at him.

"I'd like to court you," said Callum. "Properly. The way they do it on Thirty-three. With Nan's permission. And your mother's. And probably your brother's, though Rowan says he'll stand up when I ask and I won't be able to say anything." He didn't look away. "I've wanted to since the bakery. Since you said Garnet talks too much. I thought it'd be strange to ask. With everything." He looked at the river. At the washing on the lines. "And then today I thought—everything's always going to be happening. There's never going to be a time when it isn't. So I should ask anyway."

Genny didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she took her numb right hand out of her lap. And put it on top of his. On the cover of the book.

"I can't feel that," she said. "My hand's gone to sleep."

"I know."

"I want you to know that it's there anyway," said Genny. "Even if I can't feel it." She looked at him. "Yes."

Mother gave permission on the porch the night we came home from the fourth world. Nan Vey gave it at the same time, from the step below. They didn't look at each other. They'd clearly arranged it.

I gave mine last.

Rowan stood up when Callum asked me. Both of them did. At once. Like cadets.

"Sit down," said Garnet and Genny. Also at once.

They sat down.

I said yes.

Callum laughed last.

We went to the other three.

The same way. The Meridian, because there were no arches. Nine hours. Twelve. Fourteen, for the furthest.

The same quiet. The same washing on the lines. The same counting tower, still counting nothing, which I took down without asking. The same grandmothers, coming out of the houses, too old for the tithe, past being afraid.

And Okafor knelt on every one.

And the Mom Squad came down the ramp on every one.

And on every one, the grandmothers told five old women every name. And Genny wrote them all down.

And on every one, some of them came. With bags.

One thousand six hundred and eleven grandmothers.

From four worlds.

To the town under the garden wall.

I watched them arrive.

On the red glass. Off the Meridian's ramp. Old women with long necks and old women with grey fur and old women with six fingers and old women so small they came up to Pip's shoulder. With bags. With nothing. Some of them still holding the small shirts they'd taken off the lines.

And the town under the garden wall was waiting.

Not the children. The children didn't know yet. The grandmothers of Avalon. The three hundred. Who'd been going to the town every day since Lotte Quint and Marlo and the rota on the bakery wall. Lotte at the front. And Nan Vey. And Abena and Efua Osei. And Marian Haddon with a basket.

Three hundred grandmothers of Avalon at the bottom of the Meridian's ramp.

And one thousand six hundred and eleven coming down it.

Nan Vey went first.

Of course she did. She went up the ramp. Small and square and suspicious. With her iron.

To Wenna. Who was first off. With her bag and a small shirt in her hand.

Nan Vey looked up at her. Wenna's very tall.

"You'll want that ironed," said Nan Vey. And held out her hand for the shirt.

Wenna didn't understand. Dot hadn't given her our language yet; there hadn't been time.

But she looked at the iron. And at Nan Vey's hand. And at the shirt.

And she gave it to her.

Nan Vey ironed it on the red glass. Kneeling. On a Hyrrani shield Kyria lent her for a board. While one thousand six hundred and eleven grandmothers came down the ramp behind Wenna and three hundred grandmothers came up it to meet them.

She ironed it very slowly. Very carefully. Until it was flat and right.

Then she folded it. And gave it back.

"There," she said. "That's one thing right."

Wenna held it.

And then she knelt down on the red glass beside Nan Vey, very slowly, because she's very old, and put her long arms round her.

They walked to the town together.

All of them. Nineteen hundred grandmothers. Down the long road from the red glass, past the house on the rise, past the crooked house where Genny and Garnet sleep now, past the bakery where Taveth was standing in the doorway with flour on his face, to the garden wall.

And through it.

Into the town. With all its windows.

The children were in the square.

Fifteen thousand of them. The ones from the white rooms. Who came out of seven-three-K not knowing their own names, and named themselves one at a time, on the red glass and under the windows and on the porch. Tally. Moon. Reed. Rain, who's on Ammaru now but comes back on Fridays through the arch to see the round window. Fifteen thousand others.

They'd heard.

Tally had told them. Tally hears the voice. And the voice had told Tally, the night before, that grandmothers were coming. From the four.

So they were in the square. Waiting.

I'm not going to write what happened. Not all of it.

I'll write that Wenna walked into the square with her bag and her ironed shirt and stopped. And looked at fifteen thousand children who didn't have grandmothers. And they looked back at her.

And a very small boy near the front, who'd been sung white on seven-three-K and had named himself Button because it was the first word he'd learned that he liked, walked across the square to her. On his own. And looked up at her long grey neck and her dark eyes.

And put out his hand.

The way Rain did. On the first day. On the floor of the small wooden house. Flat.

Wenna looked at it for a long time.

Then she put the ironed shirt in it.

It was much too big for him. He held it anyway. Against his chest. Very tight.

They didn't have enough beds. They never do.

So Lucas Dask built houses all night. In the town under the garden wall. With his hands. The way he always does. With nineteen hundred grandmothers standing beside him telling him where the doors should go.

Miss Pell came and watched. And nodded. And didn't say anything.

Andraste stood at the door of every house I built. With her blade on her back. Guarding it.

She said she'd decided it was hers now. Every door I build. She said it was a lot of doors. She said she didn't mind.

Garnet came to find me at dawn.

I was sitting on the step of the last house. The four hundred and twelfth. Very tired. With Andraste asleep against my shoulder, her blade across her knees, and Button asleep against her, still holding the shirt.

Garnet sat down on the step below me. With her drawing board.

"I've drawn where they went," she said.

She didn't show me straight away.

She sat on the step for a long time with the board face-down on her knees. Looking out over the town. At the windows going gold with morning. At the grandmothers coming out of the new houses one at a time, carefully, into a world they'd never seen, with children holding their hands.

"Ruan followed the carriers," she said. "From the four. On the thread. And Ilka listened." She turned the board over. "And the voice told Tally. Last night. Before the grandmothers came."

She showed me.

A new sheet. Clean. With nothing on it but the four worlds, small, in the bottom corner. And four red lines going up from them. Up the sheet. Toward the top.

And at the top, where the four red lines met, something Garnet had drawn very carefully, with a pencil she'd sharpened many times.

Not a world. Not a station. Not a Hand.

A ring.

Enormous. Grey. Going all the way round a star. A star I'd never seen, on no sheet anyone had ever drawn. A ring of Sorn metal so big that the star was small inside it.

And on the ring, everywhere, towers.

"Ilka says it's where they live," said Garnet. Very quietly. "The houses. Not their worlds. Them." She put her finger on the ring. "The voice says it's where the children go after the sorting. All of them. Every tithe. For longer than the Accord. Longer than anyone." She took her finger away. "And it says that's where they took Bell. And Wind." A pause. "And it says there are other queens there. Pieces of them. In the ring. Thousands. That's what the towers are. That's what the ring is made of."

I didn't say anything.

"The four red lines go there," said Garnet. "And so did the three Hands that got away from Ammaru." She looked at me. "Ilka says it doesn't have a name. Not in the houses' language. It's just home."

I looked at the ring for a long time.

Andraste woke up. Against my shoulder. And looked at the drawing on Garnet's knees.

She didn't say anything either. She just put her hand flat on the paper. Over the ring. Very slowly.

As if she were measuring it.

"On Hyrran," she said, after a long time, "when a First Blade sees the enemy's home for the first time, she says something. A very old thing. The first First Blade said it, a thousand years ago, when she followed the houses up the thread and came back with the first arch."

"What does she say?"

Andraste took her hand off the drawing.

"Now we know the way."

I said it that night.

Not on the porch. In the square of the town under the garden wall. Because that's where everyone was. Nineteen hundred grandmothers. Fifteen thousand children. The Mom Squad, all five. Okafor, sitting on the edge of the fountain with her black slate on her knees, not adding anything up. Just holding it.

In order.

It took until dawn again.

When I got to Wenna, she was asleep on a bench with Button asleep on her lap, holding the shirt.

I said it anyway.

Then I said it to Button.

Then I said it to the shirt. Because Nan Vey ironed it, and it was one thing right, and somebody on Tiel had washed it and hung it on a line by a brown river for someone who was going to come home.

And someone is.

Days 3991–4012. The Four.

Six days on the floor of the long ward; everyone came; Mother: your father said you were holding my hand, so I'm holding yours. Andraste: is the door shut? Mostly. Then the four worlds nobody reached. Tiel, a river world: washing on the lines and no children. Okafor knelt on the riverbank: we didn't come to yours. The Mom Squad came down the ramp and five old women said every name back; Genny wrote them with Callum holding the book. Wenna: grandmothers of nobody. Mother: fifteen thousand children with none. 1,611 came; some stayed to take in the washing. Nan Vey ironed Wenna's shirt on a Hyrrani shield. Button put out his hand. Garnet drew where the four red lines go: a ring round a star, made of queens. Home. Now we know the way.