Chapter 375 Building Each Other

Andraste couldn't get her armour on.

That's how it started. On the ninth morning after the grandmothers came. In the courtyard of the house on the rise, at dawn, with the arch humming and the Vaeli waiting for her on the north field and Saska at the courtyard gate with her training wraps already on.

Andraste stood by the arch with her armour in her hands. The dark iron one. Worked very fine, like the scales of something. That she'd worn on the salt of Caddoc, and on every mountain of Hyrran for twenty-two years, and had never once had trouble getting into.

And it wouldn't close.

I came out of the kitchen with the tea and found her standing there with the clasp at her throat done up and the rest of it open at the side. A hand's width. Her face very still.

"It's shrunk," she said.

"Iron doesn't shrink."

"Hyrrani iron does," said Andraste. "If it wishes to."

I put the tea down. And put my hand flat on the armour. And felt it. Every atom.

It hadn't shrunk.

"It's not the armour," I said.

Andraste looked down at herself.

At her middle. Under the dark cloth. Where, a week ago, you couldn't see anything unless you knew. Where now you could.

Quite a lot.

She'd been carrying for seven weeks.

Seven. Halloway counted. Ruth counted. Doctor Bell measured with an instrument she'd made out of a Hyrrani compass. Seven weeks since the day after the second sun, on the salt of Caddoc.

And she looked, Maura said, standing in the courtyard doorway with flour on her hands, like a woman of five months.

"Five," said Andraste.

"Five," said Maura. "Maybe a bit more. I've seen a few."

Andraste looked at me.

"On Hyrran," she said, "a First Blade carries for nine months. Like everyone. She fights until the seventh. She stands on the ridge for the ninth." She put both hands on her middle. "It has been seven weeks."

"I know."

"Is this normal?"

I thought about it for a long time.

"For mine," I said. "Yes."

She didn't believe me.

She went to Hana. Of course she did. Across the courtyard and into the kitchen, where Hana was sitting by the oven in her chair with her feet up on the General's stool and Efua and Kwame on the floor beside her building something out of bread rolls that Maura had told them twice not to build anything out of.

Andraste stood in front of her.

"How long?" she said. "With yours. The first ones."

Hana looked up.

"Efua and Kwame?" She put her hand on her own middle. Which was only just showing. Not much. "Fourteen weeks. From the first day to the day they came."

"Fourteen."

"Ruth said Dory was faster," said Hana. "Sera's Ash was about the same. Trevor was a little slower, because Luna's cold slows everything down. Small Sigmund came in eleven." She looked at Andraste's middle. Then up at her face. "Did nobody tell you?"

"They told me his children grow fast," said Andraste. "They did not tell me this fast."

"I thought you knew," said Hana. Gently. "You're a First Blade. I thought you knew everything."

"I thought so too," said Andraste.

And sat down. Very suddenly. On the bench. In the bread rolls.

Efua and Kwame looked at the ruins of their building for a long time.

Then Kwame pointed at Andraste's middle.

"There," he said.

"I want to know why," said Andraste.

That night. On the roof. Where she sits after the porch, every night, in the dark, with the stars over the seventh lake. Her knees up. Her hands on her middle.

"Why what?"

"Why they are so fast." She didn't look at me. "On Hyrran, a First Blade knows her own body the way she knows her blade. Every edge. Every weight. Every flaw in the steel." She was quiet for a long time. "I do not know this. I put my hand here and there is something in me building itself faster than anything I have ever seen built, and I do not know how, and I do not know what it is doing, and I cannot ask it." She looked at me then. "I have never not known what was happening inside my own skin."

I didn't say anything for a while.

Then I said, "Ask her."

"Who?"

"The Scarecrow queen."

Andraste looked at me.

"She knows everything about mine," I said. "She knew about Dory before anyone. She knew about Trevor. She's the one who told Hana it was twins, the first time, before Ruth did." I put my hand on Andraste's, on her middle. "She'll know what they're doing."

Andraste was quiet for a long time.

"Will she tell me?"

"She'll tell you," I said. "She likes you. She said so. After the house. She said you built a house and not a garrison."

We went down in the morning.

Into the hall under the house on the rise. Down the wide shallow stairs from the middle of the children's room, past the heap on the big rug where all eight of them were still asleep with Dory in the middle and the young of four broods curled round them.

Into the warm.

I've written about the hall before. I'll write it again, because Andraste had never been down it before. Not since the Hyrrani cut it. She'd built it, and given it, and never once gone down the stairs into it, because on Hyrran, she said, you don't walk into a queen's hall unless you're asked.

The Scarecrow queen asked.

So we went down.

It's very big. Red stone, glowing a little, warm, the way the rock of the rise is warm because the Hyrrani cut it deep, down to where the old queen's hum runs. Water through it, from the seventh lake. The coral queen in the long shallow pool along one wall. The heavy queen at the far end, with the Ground asleep behind her. The ash queen in the grove in the middle, under the shaft of light from the roof, green and gold.

And the old queen. And the others. Every queen on Avalon. With their young.

And the Scarecrow queen. In the grove. Beside the ash queen. Waiting.

Andraste stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

She'd seen queens before. She's First Blade of a world with a free queen; she's stood in the hall under the highest mountain on Hyrran since she was old enough to walk. But she'd never stood in a hall with all of ours at once.

They all looked at her.

Every one.

Andraste didn't move.

Then she knelt. On the warm red stone. At the bottom of the stairs. The way she knelt in front of the four of them in the snow on the ridge.

Get up, said the Scarecrow queen. Come here.

Andraste got up.

She walked across the hall. Barefoot. Very slowly. With her hands on her middle. Through the young, who moved out of her way and then came back behind her, very curious, the way young are about anything new. Past the coral queen in her pool. Past the heavy queen. To the grove.

And stopped in front of the Scarecrow queen.

She's very old, our queen. Older than the old queen, I think, though the old queen is bigger. Small and grey and very still, with her silver like old frost. She's the one who calls me hers. She's the one I'd go to first, about anything.

She looked at Andraste for a long time.

Then she put out one long grey limb. And laid it, very gently, flat, on Andraste's middle.

Andraste didn't move.

I'd never seen her so still. Not on the salt. Not at the door, with her hands on my face for two days and nine hours. She stood in the grove in the warm with her bare feet on the red stone and the Scarecrow queen's limb on her middle and didn't breathe.

The Scarecrow queen listened.

For a long time.

Then she said: Oh.

What? said Andraste. Through Dot. Very quickly. What is it?

The Scarecrow queen didn't answer straight away. She moved her limb. A little. To one side. Then the other. Listening.

Two, she said.

Andraste let out her breath.

I hadn't known she was holding it.

Two, said the Scarecrow queen again. A son. And a daughter.

Andraste didn't say anything.

She stood in the grove with her hands on her middle and the Scarecrow queen's limb beside them and her face very still. And then something happened to her face that I'd never seen happen to it before. Not on the salt. Not on the ridge. Not in the kitchen with the four of them.

It went soft.

All of it. At once. The scar through her lip and the iron-sea eyes and the short black hair and all twenty-two years of being First Blade of a world that had never lost.

Soft.

"A son," she said. In our language. Very quietly. "And a daughter."

Yes.

"Twins."

Yes.

"I asked the sky," said Andraste. To me. Without looking away from the queen. "I asked for two."

"I know."

"I did not ask for a son and a daughter. I did not know you could ask for that." Her voice did something. "I would not have dared."

Then she asked.

The thing she'd come down to ask.

Why are they so fast?

The Scarecrow queen took her limb away.

And lay down. Slowly. In the grove. In the light from the shaft. The way she lies down when she's going to tell me something that will take a long time.

Andraste sat down on the red stone in front of her. Cross-legged. With her hands on her middle. I sat beside her.

Lucas's children are always fast, said the Scarecrow queen. You know this. Hana told you.

"She told me fourteen weeks," said Andraste. "I am at seven. And I look like five months."

Yes, said the Scarecrow queen. Yours are faster than any of his. Faster than Dory. Faster than small Sigmund.

"Why?"

Because there are two of them, said the Scarecrow queen. And because they are his. A pause. And because they have found each other.

I didn't understand. Not at first.

Neither did Andraste.

The Scarecrow queen tried again.

You know what Lucas does, she said. What he can do. He feels every atom. He asks them to be something else. A door. A house. A wall. Sand. He asks, and they listen, and they move.

"Yes," said Andraste.

His children have it. All of them. A little, at first. More as they grow. It comes from the silver in him, through the silver in you. Every one of his children has been born able to ask. A pause. Trevor asks the water in the air to be frost. Goldie asks the air to be warm. Dory asks everything.

"Yes."

But they learn to ask after they are born, said the Scarecrow queen. After. When there is something outside them to ask.

She looked at Andraste's middle.

Yours are asking now.

Andraste went very still.

Asking what?

Each other, said the Scarecrow queen.

I'll write what she said next as close as I can. Because Andraste asked me to. Because she said she wanted it in the notebook in my hand, so that one day when the twins are grown and asking things of the world she can show them how it started.

There are two of them. Very close. Closer than anything. Closer than Genny and Garnet were. Closer than Efua and Kwame.

And each of them can feel the other. Every atom. The way Lucas feels the moon.

And each of them can ask.

So they are asking each other. All the time. Every moment. The son asks the daughter's atoms to be bone, and they listen, and they are bone. The daughter asks the son's atoms to be a heart, and they listen, and it beats.

They are building each other.

Not just themselves. Each other. Faster than either could build alone. Because each one can feel exactly what the other needs and ask for it.

I have never felt this before. Not in any child. Not in any young. Not in any brood on any world.

They are using their father's gift on each other. Before they have eyes. Before they have hands.

They are very fast because there are two of them building, instead of one.

Nobody in the grove said anything for a very long time.

The young had gathered round us. All of them. Curious. Every brood. They lay on the warm red stone in a ring round Andraste and me and the Scarecrow queen and listened, the way young do, without understanding most of it, and understanding the important part.

Then Andraste said: "They are building each other."

Yes.

"With his power."

Yes.

"Before they are born."

Yes.

Andraste looked at her middle for a long time.

Then she looked at me.

I've been looked at by a great many people in a great many ways. By the queens. By Okafor across a long table. By four million people through the high window of the Senate Annex. By Mother, when I was six and about to do something I'd be sorry for.

I'd never been looked at the way Andraste looked at me in the grove.

"Do you know," she said, "what you are?"

"No," I said. "Nobody does. The queens don't."

"I do not mean that," said Andraste. "I do not mean what you are becoming. I mean what you are." She put her scarred hand on my face. "You turned my blades to sand. You made a second sun over Caddoc and sat down afterward and shook. You went up the thread into a made thing and asked thirty-four towers to be slow and came back on the seven hundred and ninth time I said me too." She held my face. "And now you are in me. Not you. What you can do. In two children who do not have eyes yet. Building each other. Because they can."

"Andraste—"

"It is insane," said Andraste.

And laughed.

Like a door falling off its hinges. In the queen's hall. So loud that the young scattered and the coral queen splashed in her pool and the heavy queen at the far end lifted her great head and the Ground behind her woke up.

She laughed for a long time.

When she stopped, she was crying. A little. She wiped her face with the back of her scarred hand and didn't seem to mind.

"On Hyrran," she said, "the First Blade is chosen by fighting. Always. Every generation. The strongest takes it from the one before. In a fight." She looked at her middle. "My mother took it from her mother. I took it from mine. And one day, if I am lucky, I will lose it to one of these two, in a fight, on the ridge, in the snow." She put both hands on her middle. "And I always thought: if I am lucky. Because the First Blade must be the strongest on Hyrran, and there are forty thousand of us, and every one of them is trying."

She looked at me.

"I do not think I need to be lucky," she said. "Not any more."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," said Andraste, "that I chose very well."

She stood up.

In the grove. With her hands on her middle. And turned round. To the whole hall. To every queen on Avalon and every one of their young.

And said something in Hyrrani.

Dot put it into all of us. Through the red stone. Through the hall. Up the stairs, I found out afterward, into the children's room, where Dory was awake by then and listening, and into the kitchen, where Kyria was having breakfast with the General.

The First Blade of Hyrran is secure for a thousand years.

Kyria came down the stairs about a minute later.

Fast. In her old iron. With a piece of the General's toast still in her hand.

"What did you say?" she said. In our language. Very loudly.

Andraste turned round.

"Twins," she said. "A son and a daughter. Building each other. With his power. Before they are born." She looked at her mother. "The queen says she has never felt it in any child on any world."

Kyria stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

She looked at her daughter for a long time. At her middle. At me. At the Scarecrow queen in the grove.

Then she sat down. On the bottom step. Very suddenly.

And put her face in her hands.

And laughed. Exactly the way her daughter laughs. Like a door falling off its hinges.

"She's going to be insufferable," said Risa.

That night. On the porch. The long one, on the west side. With small Sigmund asleep against her and a cloud over both of them, raining very softly on nothing.

"She's already insufferable," said Sera. With Goldie.

"She's going to be more insufferable," said Risa. "The First Blade is secure for a thousand years. She said it to every queen on Avalon. She said it to Kyria. Kyria's been telling the General all evening. The General's started saying it back."

"It's very sweet," said Hana. From her chair by the rail. With her feet up.

"It's very loud," said Risa.

Luna, at the end of the porch, with Elin, didn't say anything. She just looked down the porch at Andraste, sitting on the rail at the far end with her bare feet hanging over the edge, with both hands on her middle, very still, looking out over the seventh lake.

"She's frightened," said Luna. Quietly.

Everyone looked at her.

"Not of the twins," said Luna. "Of how fast." She looked at Elin, frosting her sleeve. "I was. With Trevor. And I'd seen Dory. I knew. And I was still frightened." She looked back at Andraste. "She didn't know. She's been First Blade for twenty-two years and she's never once not known what was happening in her own body. And now she doesn't. And she laughed in the queen's hall because that's what she does when she's frightened." Luna was quiet for a moment. "So did I. With Trevor. I laughed so hard I froze the bathwater."

Nobody said anything for a while.

Then Hana got up.

She went down the porch. Slowly. With her hand on her own middle, where the one bright heart is, growing at the ordinary fast, the Dask fast, that Hana knows.

And sat down on the rail beside Andraste.

Not touching. Just beside.

They sat there for a long time. Looking at the lake.

Then Hana said something. Very quietly. Too quietly for the rest of us to hear.

I asked her afterward what it was.

"I said: you get used to it," said Hana.

In the kitchen. Late. With the tea.

"That's all?"

"That's all," said Hana. "And then she looked at me and said, do you? And I said yes. And she said, how long does it take?" Hana smiled. "And I said: about one baby."

"And then?"

"And then she put her head on my shoulder," said Hana. "And we sat there. And after a while she said, it is very strange to be the one who does not know. And I said, you're not the one who doesn't know. You're the one who's finding out. It's different." Hana put her cup down. "She thought about that for a long time. And then she said, on Hyrran we would call that a fight."

"What did you say?"

"I said, on Avalon we call it Tuesday."

Saska wouldn't fight her.

That was the next morning. On the north field. Andraste came down at dawn in plain dark cloth, because the armour still wouldn't close and she'd refused to let the Hyrrani smiths make it bigger, and stood across from Saska on the wet grass with her hands up.

Saska didn't put hers up.

"No," she said.

"I am First Blade," said Andraste. "I train every morning. I have trained every morning for twenty-two years."

"Not with me," said Saska. "Not now."

"You beat me once. You think you will beat me again."

"I know I'll beat you again," said Saska. "That's not why." She folded her arms. "I can see a heartbeat ahead. I can see where you'll be. Where your hands will be. Where your feet will be." She looked at Andraste's middle. "And now I can see where they'll be. Both of them. They move when you move. A heartbeat before you do. They're already fighting." She shook her head. "I'm not hitting anyone who's already fighting and can't see me."

Andraste looked at her for a long time.

"They move before I do?" she said.

"Every time," said Saska. "The boy first. Then the girl. Then you." She almost smiled. "You're the slowest one in there."

Andraste stood on the north field for a long time after that. With her hands on her middle. With the Vaeli training round her on the wet grass and Saska standing in front of her with her arms folded, not moving.

Then Andraste laughed.

Not the door falling off its hinges. Quieter. The way she laughed on the salt, kneeling in front of me, the first time.

"On Hyrran," she said, "there is a saying. The First Blade is never the fastest thing in the room. It means: there is always someone coming who will be faster. That is how it should be." She took her hands off her middle. "I did not think it would be someone inside me."

"Teshka says the same thing," said Saska. "About me. She says I was faster than her before I could walk."

"Were you?"

"Yes," said Saska.

"Then teach me," said Andraste.

Saska looked at her.

"Not to fight," said Andraste. "To see. The way you see them. A heartbeat ahead." She put her hands back on her middle. "If they are already moving, I want to know where they are going."

So that's what they did.

Every morning after that. On the north field. Not fighting. Sitting. On the wet grass. Cross-legged. Facing each other. Andraste with her hands on her middle and Saska with her eyes half-closed, saying, very quietly, now the boy. Now the girl. Now the boy again. He's reaching for something. She's letting him have it.

And Andraste listening.

Brock sat at the edge of the field and read to them. A book about Earth's whales, because Saska said the twins liked the sound of the long words and moved more when he got to one.

Garnet drew it.

Three on the grass, she wrote under it. Five, really.

Teshka came down to the field on the third morning.

On her own two feet. With Kyria beside her. The two of them have walked together most mornings since Tiel; they don't share a language, not properly, Teshka's Avalon words are still very few and Kyria's Vaeli are fewer, but they walk side by side along the edge of the seventh lake at dawn and argue, Dot says, about everything, in two languages, very happily.

They stood at the edge of the field and watched Saska and Andraste on the grass.

"My granddaughter," said Teshka. In Vaeli. Dot told me afterward. "Teaching your daughter to see."

"My daughter," said Kyria, "learning from your granddaughter." In Hyrrani.

They looked at each other.

"In my day," said Teshka, "a First Blade would never sit on the grass and learn from a guard of the Barrow."

"In my day," said Kyria, "a guard of the Barrow would never sit on the grass and teach a First Blade anything."

They watched for a while longer.

"It's better," said Teshka.

"Yes," said Kyria. "It's much better."

Andraste went down to the hall every morning after that.

Before the field. Before Saska and the grass. Down the wide shallow stairs from the children's room, barefoot, past the heap on the rug, into the warm.

And sat in the grove with the Scarecrow queen.

Just sat. With her hands on her middle. And the queen's limb beside them.

Listening.

She told me, on the roof, on the fourth night, what she heard.

"They talk," she said. "Not words. They do not have words yet. But they talk." She put her hand on her middle. "The queen says the son is louder. She says he asks for things very loudly and very often and the daughter gives him what he asks for and then quietly asks for something back that he does not notice he is giving." She smiled. Crooked. With the scar. "The queen says the daughter is going to be very dangerous."

"Like her mother."

"Like her grandmother," said Andraste. "My mother says the same thing. She says I was loud. She says she was the quiet one who got everything she wanted." She looked out at the lake. "She says the daughter is going to be First Blade."

"And the son?"

Andraste was quiet for a long time.

"The queen says the son is going to be the one who asks," she said. "Like you." She put her hand on mine. "She says he is already asking his sister for things nobody has ever asked for before. Not bone. Not a heart. Something else. She does not know what." A pause. "She says he will be a very strange boy."

"Good," I said.

"Yes," said Andraste. "Good."

Genny wrote them down.

In volume fifteen. In the Brood: Dask section, which she's carried over from fourteen because she said it was the one section that had to be in the newest book, always. Under Elin, and Goldie, and Hana: one.

Andraste: two. A son and a daughter. Building each other. The Scarecrow queen says she has never felt this in any child on any world. The son asks loudly. The daughter asks back quietly. Andraste says the First Blade is secure for a thousand years. Kyria says the same. The General has started saying it at breakfast.

And under that:

Hana says: you get used to it.

And under that, smaller:

Dory says she knew the whole time. She says she didn't tell because it was a surprise. She says it was a very good surprise. She says she's glad there's a boy because there are too many girls. Trevor and small Sigmund and Kwame disagree. Ash says it's about time. Efua says nothing. Efua never says anything. Efua filled every cup at breakfast twice.

Hana went down to the hall once. On the sixth morning. With Andraste.

She sat down in the grove beside her, on the warm red stone, with her own hand on her own middle. And the Scarecrow queen looked at her for a long time.

Would you like to know? said the queen.

Hana thought about it.

"No," she said. "Not this time." She smiled. "I knew with Efua and Kwame. You told me. Before Ruth. And I was glad. But this one—" She looked at her hand. "This one I'd like to find out the ordinary way. When they come. The way Mother found out about Genny and Garnet."

"Your mother didn't find out about Genny and Garnet," I said. "Not till the second one came. She told me. She said the midwife said there's another and she nearly fainted."

"Then that's how I'd like it," said Hana. "Someone saying there's another. Or not." She looked at the queen. "Is that all right?"

Yes, said the Scarecrow queen. It is a good way to find out. A pause. I will tell you one thing. Not what. Only how.

"How?"

Yours is not in a hurry, said the queen. Not like these two. She looked at Andraste's middle. Yours is taking its time. Listening. It likes the sound of water. A pause. It will come when it is ready, and not before, and it will not mind waiting.

Hana laughed. Very softly.

"That's me," she said. "That's exactly me."

Andraste, beside her, put her scarred hand flat on the red stone. Beside Hana's. Not touching. Hand down near, and wait.

"Then yours will be the patient one," she said. "And mine will be the fast ones. And they will grow up together in this house." She looked at Hana. "That is a good balance. On Hyrran we would say the house has a blade and a sheath."

"On Avalon," said Hana, "we'd say it has a porch."

And Okafor.

I'll write this last. Because it was the last thing that week, and because it's the thing that's going to matter.

She came through the courtyard arch on the seventh morning. At breakfast. With the slate.

Not the black one. The long-table one.

She stood at the end of the long table and looked at all of us. At Andraste, with her hands on her middle. At Hana. At the eight children and the grandparents and the young coming up the stairs.

Then at Garnet's sheet. The one of the ring. Which Garnet had pinned up on the kitchen wall beside her drawing of Father, because she said it should be somewhere we'd see it every day.

"I've been to the long table," said Okafor. "With everyone. The Hyrrani. The Vaeli. The queens. Holt. Teshka. Kyria. Konrad." She put the slate down. "We've agreed."

"Agreed what?" said Mother.

Okafor looked at the drawing of the ring for a long time.

"That we're going," she said. "Not now. Not soon. We're not ready. Nobody's ready to go there." She put her hand flat on the table. "But we're going. When we're ready. All of us. Through every arch. On every ship." She looked at me. "For Bell. For Wind. For the four. For every child who ever went up the thread from every tithe world for as long as anyone's been listening."

Nobody at the long table said anything.

"And I need to know," said Okafor, "when."

She looked at Andraste.

At Hana.

Andraste understood first.

She put her hands flat on her middle. And looked at Okafor down the length of the long table. And said:

"Not before they're born."

"No," said Okafor. "Not before."

"I will want to be there," said Andraste. "When we go. With them."

Okafor looked at her for a long time.

"I know," she said. "That's why I'm asking."

So that's when.

Not a date. Okafor doesn't do dates any more; she says the houses have taught her that dates are just the day you find out you were late. But a when.

After the twins. After Hana's. After all three of them are born and held and named.

Then we go to the ring.

I said it that night.

On the long porch. In order. Which takes until midnight now, most nights, and nobody minds.

When I got to Andraste, at the end of the rail, I knelt down. And said it to her. And then, lower, to both of them. The loud one and the quiet one.

And felt them turn toward me.

Both. At once.

And then, very faintly, the son asked for something.

I don't know what. Not bone. Not a heart.

But I felt his sister give it to him.

And I felt, very quietly, a moment later, her ask for something back.

Days 4013–4032. Building Each Other.

Andraste's armour wouldn't close: seven weeks and she looks five months. Hana: fourteen for mine, did nobody tell you? I took her down to the hall, which she'd built and never walked into. The Scarecrow queen put a limb on her middle: two. A son and a daughter. They're asking each other: he asks her atoms to be bone, she asks his to be a heart; building each other with my gift before they have eyes. Andraste laughed till she cried: you are insane; I chose very well; the First Blade is secure for a thousand years. Kyria sat on the bottom step and laughed the same way. Luna: she's frightened of how fast. Hana sat beside her: you get used to it. About one baby. On Avalon we call it Tuesday. Okafor: the ring, when we're ready. After they're born.