Chapter 379 Thirty Days

Okafor gave us thirty days.

I'm going to write them the way they happened. Not in order. Thirty days don't happen in order; they happen all at once, in forty-two places, through every arch on Avalon. But I'll write the ones that mattered. The ones I keep thinking about.

Some of them I didn't understand at the time.

I'm writing those down anyway. Genny says that's what notebooks are for. The things you don't understand yet.

Day one.

The engines.

Kyria had said twenty days. Okafor had said thirty, and twice. So on the first morning Kyria took every walking engine on Hyrran apart.

All of them. Three hundred and forty. On the ridges and in the passes and on the shore of the iron sea. Forty thousand Hyrrani with tools I'd never seen, taking a thousand years of war machines down to the bolts and laying every piece out on the snow in rows.

"Why?" said Doctor Bell. Standing at the arch on the ridge with both pairs of spectacles on, looking down at a mountain covered in pieces.

"Okafor said twice," said Kyria. "So we will build them twice." She picked up a piece of iron the size of my arm and looked at it very closely. "The first time to see what is wrong. The second time to fix it."

Doctor Bell looked at the mountain of pieces for a long time.

Then she took off her coat. And rolled up her sleeves. And went down the ridge into the snow.

She didn't come back through the arch for nine days.

Day two.

Corin learned to crawl.

Through the little arch. The one in the children's room. The one he and Thessaly made on the ridge.

He crawled through it on his own at dawn. Onto the ridge on Hyrran. In the snow. And sat there, very small, five weeks old and looking about eight months, in the snow between where Andraste's feet had been, and looked at the mountains for a long time.

Thessaly came through after him. Not crawling. She went through on her bottom, very fast, pushing with her heels, the way Thessaly does everything. And sat down beside him.

And Elin and Goldie came through after her. Holding hands.

And then Mother, because Mother had woken at the first sound and gone to the cot and found it empty except for a cold wind coming through the little arch from the snow.

She went through on her hands and knees. She said afterward she hadn't been through a door that small since she was a girl in the orphan halls on the forty-first floor, hiding from the matron.

She found the four of them sitting in a row on the ridge in the snow. Not cold. Elin and Goldie had made it April round them. Looking at the mountains.

At three hundred and forty walking engines in pieces on the snow.

"Well," said Mother. Sitting down beside them. "That's a lot of mess."

Corin looked at her.

And then back at the pieces.

Very carefully. One at a time. The way he looks at everything. Working out how they were made.

He looked at them until Andraste came through the big arch at a run and found them all sitting there, and sat down too.

Day three.

The first thing I didn't understand.

It was Konrad.

He'd been in the archive floors. The ones we brought from Earth, all of them, on the last crossing. Rows and rows of Council records under the town, in the cool, where Voss and Selwyn keep them. And he'd been reading the tithe ledgers again. The ones he signed. All thirty years.

He came up to the porch at dusk with a sheet in his hand.

"Lucas," he said. "Can I show you something?"

It was a list. In Konrad's narrow hand. Dates. Numbers.

The tithe. Every one. From the first year of the Accord to the last.

"Every six years," he said. "At first. That's what the Accord said. A number, every six years." He put his finger on the top of the list. "And for the first twelve years, that's what it was. Every six. The same number. Exactly."

He moved his finger down.

"And then here," he said. "Eighteen years ago. It changed. Every four years. And a bigger number." He moved his finger. "And then every three. And then every two. And the number got bigger every time." He looked at me. "I signed every one. I never asked why."

"The houses wanted more."

"Yes," said Konrad. "But why?" He looked at the list. "The houses are patient. That's the whole of them. They farm. They don't take more than the field can give, because they want the field to give again next time." He put the sheet down. "And eighteen years ago they started taking more than the field could give. From Earth. From every tithe world. Faster and faster. As if they'd stopped thinking about next time."

I looked at the list.

"Why would they do that?" I said.

Konrad didn't answer for a long time.

"I don't know," he said. "In thirty years I never once saw them in a hurry." He folded the sheet. "And then they were."

Day five.

Brock asked Saska.

I'll write it because Genny wrote it, and Garnet drew it, and Saska herself told everyone at breakfast the next morning in such detail that Brock went iron to the hairline and stayed that way until noon.

He asked on the north field. At dawn. After she'd bounced off him for the fortieth time and got up laughing. He didn't go iron. He went down on one knee on the wet grass, the way Andraste had said they do it on Hyrran, with his mother's beans in his hand.

"I don't know how they do it on the Barrow," he said.

"On the Barrow we weren't allowed to," said Saska. "The houses decided."

"Then I don't know how," said Brock. "So I'm doing it the Hyrrani way. With beans. Because my mother would want to know." He held out the packet. "Will you?"

Saska looked at him for a long time.

"I knew you were going to ask," she said. "A heartbeat before."

"I know."

"I knew a heartbeat before you even came onto the field this morning." She took the packet. "I've known for a month, really. Every morning. I kept seeing it and you kept not doing it." She looked at the beans. "Teshka said you'd do it when you were ready. She said you're the kind who has to be standing still first."

"Is that a yes?"

"I'm a Vaeli," said Saska. "We don't say yes. We stand where the other one's going to be." She stepped forward. One step. Exactly where Brock was going to stand up. So that when he did, he stood up straight into her.

"There," she said. "That's yes."

Teshka cried at breakfast. In front of everyone. Kyria said it was the first time in eleven generations a Vaeli had cried in front of a First Blade, and that she'd tell everyone on Hyrran.

Teshka said she'd better.

Day seven.

The second thing I didn't understand.

Kyria told it. At the long table. Not because it was important. Because Holt asked her a question about the arches.

"The two hundred and eleven," he said. "The ones the First Blades cut. Following the houses home. You said most of them were dead."

"Yes," said Kyria.

"Dead how?" said Holt. "The black?"

Kyria didn't answer straight away.

"Some," she said. "Some the houses taught empty. You know those. Black. Grey. Like the Orrel city in the fog." She looked at the table. "Some just wrecks. Old wars. The houses fought a great many people before they came to Hyrran."

"And the rest?"

Kyria looked at Andraste. Andraste looked back. Something passed between them that I didn't follow.

"Some of them," said Kyria, "are bare."

"Bare?"

"Rock," said Kyria. "Only rock. No black. No grey. No wrecks. No soil. No water. Nothing growing. Nothing that ever grew." She was quiet for a moment. "As if someone had taken a world and scraped it. Down to the stone. And then gone."

Nobody at the long table said anything.

"We stopped going through those arches," said Kyria. "Three hundred years ago. A First Blade's daughter went through one. With twelve. To look." She looked at the table. "She came back alone. She didn't speak for a year." She folded her scarred hands. "When she did, she only ever said one thing about it."

"What?" said Okafor.

Kyria looked at her.

"It was hungry," she said.

Nobody asked what it was.

I don't know why. I've thought about that since. Forty-two worlds round the long table and nobody asked.

I think we were all thinking about the ring.

Kyria didn't say anything else. Holt went back to his list. Okafor wrote something on the slate.

But afterward, when everyone had gone, I saw her standing at the wall looking at Garnet's big sheet. At the far edge of it. Past the ring. Where the paper ran out.

She stood there for a long time.

Day nine.

Genny and Callum walked down the long road to the third-wave houses. To Nan Vey's. To ask.

Properly. The way they do it on Thirty-three. With a loaf from Rory's bakery and a bunch of Marian Haddon's bean flowers, which Callum said were the only flowers on Avalon that meant anything to anyone.

Nan Vey met them at the door with her iron.

She looked at Genny for a long time. Up and down. The way she looks at a shirt before she irons it.

"You'll want him pressed for the day," she said. Eventually.

"We haven't set a day," said Genny.

"You'll want him pressed for it anyway," said Nan Vey. "He creases." She stepped back from the door. "Come in. I'll put the kettle on. You can tell me how you're going to stop him crying at the altar. His mother cried at hers. It's in the blood."

"I'm not going to cry," said Callum.

"You cried at the long ward," said Genny. "When the rain queen hummed. I wrote it down."

"You promised you wouldn't write that down."

"I wrote down that I wasn't supposed to write it down," said Genny. "And then I wrote it down."

Nan Vey looked at the two of them.

Then she laughed. For the first time, Rowan said afterward, since the iron came off the laundry press on Level Thirty-three.

"She'll do," she said. To Callum. "She'll do very well."

Day eleven.

The third thing.

The Marian sang something.

Dennis heard it first. In her heart, where he sits, with his hands on the controls Keir patched in with Hyrrani iron. At night. While she was hanging over Ammaru beside her sister, the second Hand, which Dennis named the Clare, after his daughter, on the day Okafor gave us thirty days.

He came down through the arch from Ammaru at midnight and found me on the porch.

"She's singing something," he said. "Not the freight song. Something else." He sat down on the step. "Something old. From before. From when she was theirs."

"What does it sound like?"

Dennis thought about it for a long time.

"Like a ship running," he said. "Not from us. She's never been afraid of us. Ruan says she was afraid of not singing, at first, and then she was afraid of nothing at all." He looked at his hands. "This is different. This is old. This is something she learned before anyone asked her anything."

I went up to Ammaru with him.

Through the arch. Into the clearing, in the rain. And up the Marian's ramp, into the dark, to her heart. And put my hand flat on the wall.

And listened.

It was very faint.

Under the freight song, which she sings all the time now, weight on the left, weight on the right. Under that. Very deep. In the part of her the houses built.

Something old. Something every Hand knew.

Not words. Hands don't have words. But I could feel the shape of it, the way you can feel the shape of a tune with your eyes shut.

It went: Further. Further. Further. Don't stop. Don't look back. It's behind.

"What is?" I said. To the Marian. With my hand on her wall. "What's behind?"

She didn't answer.

She didn't know. That was the thing. I could feel it. The song was older than she was. It was something the houses had taught every Hand they ever built, the way they teach the note. Underneath everything. A song for running.

And she didn't know what it was for.

She'd never needed it. The houses had never told her what it meant.

"Has she always had it?" I asked Dennis.

"Ruan says so," said Dennis. "Ruan says every Hand has it. The Steady has it. The Long Legs. All of them. Deep down." He looked at the wall. "Ruan says she never thought about it before. She says it's like the hum in a building. You stop hearing it."

"Why is the Marian singing it now?"

Dennis didn't answer for a long time.

"I don't know," he said. "She started three nights ago. Ruan says the Clare started the same night." He looked at me. "Ruan says she checked the Steady. The Steady's been singing it too. Very quietly. For about a week."

Day twelve.

The Mom Squad trained.

All five. On the north field, at dawn, where Saska and Andraste sit on the grass. Mother and Ingrid and Maura and Kyria and Teshka. Not fighting. Kyria said there wasn't any point teaching any of them to fight now; they'd been fighting longer than she'd been alive, except Maura, who said she'd been fighting bread dough for forty years and that was worse.

They trained at holding.

Mother lifting. Ingrid hushing. Maura warming. Kyria with her blade, catching what fell. Teshka a heartbeat ahead, calling where it would fall before it did. Over and over. On the field. With the Vaeli throwing things at them, sacks of grain and bits of Hyrrani iron and once, at Kyria's insistence, Taveth, who said he didn't mind, and who Mother caught very gently a foot above the grass and set down on his feet.

He said it was the most useful he'd ever been.

Ash came down to the field on the twelfth day and watched for an hour with her arms folded.

Then she went to Okafor.

"They need a better name," he said.

"You named them," said Okafor.

"I know," said Ash. "There's five now. Mom Squad was for three." She thought about it. "They're grandmothers. All of them. Even Maura, now. Goldie." She looked at the field. At Mother lifting and Kyria catching. "They should be the Grandmother Squad."

Okafor considered this.

"Ask them," she said.

Ash asked them.

Mother said no. Ingrid said no. Maura said no. Kyria said no very loudly. Teshka said no in Vaeli.

"Why?" said Ash.

"Because you named us," said Mother. "When you were small. And it was right." She knelt down in front of her on the wet grass. "We're not going to change it just because we got older." She put her hand on his face. "Nobody gets to stop being somebody's mother, love. Not ever."

Ash thought about that for a long time.

"All right," she said. "Mom Squad."

"Mom Squad," said Kyria. In our language. Very carefully. As if it were a rank.

Day fourteen.

The fourth thing.

Garnet went back to the ring.

With Ruan, on the Meridian. With Ilka on the relay. With Rowan sharpening pencils. Closer, this time. Okafor said she wanted every tower drawn before we went, and Garnet said she couldn't draw them all from where she'd been, so Ruan took her closer.

Three days up the thread. Very quiet.

She came back on the seventeenth day with more sheets than the Meridian had paper for; she'd drawn on the backs of Ruan's charts.

And one she didn't put with the others.

She brought it to me on the porch. Late. When everyone had gone to bed except Andraste, on the roof above us.

"I don't know what this is," she said.

It was the ring. From the other side. The side we'd never seen. Garnet had made Ruan take the Meridian round it, very far out, very slow, so she could draw the whole thing.

The near side, the side facing the tithe worlds, was towers. Thousands of them. Every one drawn. Every one with a queen in it, Ilka said, in pieces, singing.

The far side was dark.

Not black. Not the black the houses teach. Just dark. Garnet had drawn the towers there too, but she'd drawn them grey. Not shaded. Grey. The way you draw something that isn't lit.

"They're not singing," said Garnet. "Ilka says. The ones on the far side. Every one. They're there, but they're quiet." She put her finger on the grey towers. "Ilka says it's like a house where half the rooms have had the lamps put out."

"Turned off?"

"Ilka doesn't think so." Garnet took her finger away. "She says they're not quiet the way the voice is quiet. Hiding. Or the way a queen in a tray is quiet. Broken." She looked at the drawing. "She says they're quiet the way an empty room is quiet. Like there's nothing in them any more."

I looked at the grey towers for a long time.

"Ilka thinks the houses moved them," said Garnet. "The queens. From the far side to the near side. To keep the near side singing." She was quiet. "She says the near side's very crowded. She says it sounds like too many people in a room that used to be bigger."

Andraste came down off the roof.

I didn't hear her. Nobody ever hears her. She was just there, at the top of the porch steps, barefoot, looking down at Garnet's drawing over my shoulder.

She looked at the grey towers on the far side for a long time.

"Which way does it face?" she said.

Garnet looked up at her.

"The dark side," said Andraste. "The quiet side. What's out past it?"

"Nothing," said Garnet. "That I know of. Ilka says it's past the edge of anything anyone's drawn. Past the end of the houses' worlds. Out where nobody's been."

Andraste didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she said, very quietly: "On Hyrran, when we build a wall, we put the lamps on the side facing the enemy. So we can see them coming." She looked at the grey towers. "And when a wall is losing, we take the lamps off that side. And put them on the other side. Facing home." She looked at me. "So the people inside can still see each other. Even if they can't see what's coming."

Garnet didn't say anything.

Neither did I.

Andraste went back up to the roof.

Day sixteen.

Corin asked the old queen for something.

In the hall under the house on the rise. He crawled down the stairs from the children's room on his own, at dawn, and across the warm red stone, past the coral queen's pool and the grove and the heavy queen, to the far end where the old queen lies.

And sat in front of her.

And looked at her for a long time. Very carefully. With Father's eyes.

And asked her for something.

The old queen told me about it afterward. She said nobody had ever asked her for anything like that. She said she'd been asked for a great many things in a great many years. To sing. To hold. To heal. To wait. She said a boy had once asked her how he could grow strong enough to stand in front of the correctors, and she'd never forgotten that.

But she'd never been asked what Corin asked.

"What did he ask?" I said.

The old queen was quiet for a long time.

He asked me to stay, she said. As he asks everyone. A pause. But not here. Not on this world. He asked me to stay awake.

I didn't understand.

Queens sleep, said the old queen. A long time. When we are tired. When the young are safe. We go down very deep and we sing very quietly and we let the world go on above us. She lifted her great head. I have been awake since you came. Since the boy who said hello. I have been very tired.

"I know."

I was going to sleep, said the old queen. After the ring. After the children come home. I was going to go down very deep and sleep for a long time. She looked down at Corin, who'd fallen asleep in front of her on the warm stone. And he asked me not to. He asked me to stay awake.

"Why?"

The old queen didn't answer for a very long time.

I do not know, she said. He is very young. He does not know what he asks for. A pause. But I said yes.

Day nineteen.

The fifth thing.

I'll write it last of the five. It was the one that frightened me.

The Scarecrow queen called me down in the night.

Not to the hall. To the field. The scarecrow field, beyond the wheat, where the names are, where the first scarecrow stands with Mother's blue scarf round its neck that Garnet tied there when she was seven. Father's copy. The Scarecrow queen goes there sometimes at night. She says she likes the names.

She was lying at the foot of the scarecrow in the dark.

Listen, she said.

So I listened.

Not with my ears. With everything. Out. Along the silver. The way I listen to the queens on the ninth line and the voice in its quiet places and the tide queen singing everyone home.

Further.

Past the ninth line. Past the Barrow. Past seven-three-K and the sixty-four tithe worlds and the four, and the ring, singing, very crowded. Past the grey towers on the far side.

Out.

Where nobody's been.

Do you hear it? said the Scarecrow queen.

I listened for a long time.

"No," I said. "There's nothing. It's quiet."

Yes, said the Scarecrow queen. That is what I hear.

I didn't understand.

Every world has a queen, she said. Or had one. Or will. Silver goes everywhere, along every line, and where there is silver there are queens, and where there are queens there is singing. Even the broken ones sing. Even the ones in trays. Even the ones in the voice. She lifted her head. Out there, past the ring, there were queens. I remember them. When I was very young, before the houses, I could hear them. Very far. Very faint. Singing.

"And now?"

Now there is nothing, said the Scarecrow queen. Not black. Not empty. Not the quiet of the voice hiding. She was quiet for a long time. It is the quiet of something that was singing and then wasn't. All at once. And then the next one. And then the next.

She put her long grey limb flat on the ground of the scarecrow field. Beside my hand.

It is getting closer, she said. Very slowly. The quiet.

I sat in the scarecrow field for a long time after that.

With the Scarecrow queen. Under Father's scarecrow. With the names round us in the dark.

"What is it?" I said. Eventually.

I do not know, said the Scarecrow queen. I have never heard anything like it. The old queen has not. None of us have. A pause. Only the silence where it has been.

"Is it the houses?"

No, said the Scarecrow queen. The houses make black. The houses make grey. The houses take queens and break them and put them in towers. But the pieces still sing. She lifted her head. This does not leave pieces.

I didn't say anything.

I wanted you to know, said the Scarecrow queen. Before you go to the ring. Because you are going to look the houses in the face. And I think you will see something in it that you have not seen before.

"What?"

The Scarecrow queen looked at me for a long time. In the dark. Under Father's scarecrow, with Mother's blue scarf round its neck.

I think, she said, you will see that they are frightened. And that it is not only of you.

Day twenty-two.

I told Okafor.

All five things. In the map room. Late. With Garnet's drawing of the far side of the ring on the table between us, and Konrad's list, and nothing else.

She listened to all of it. The tithe getting faster. The bare worlds, scraped to the rock. It was hungry. The song every Hand knows, for running. The grey towers on the far side, with the lamps taken off. The Scarecrow queen in the field: the quiet that's getting closer.

She didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she said: "Does it change anything?"

I thought about it.

"No," I said. "The children are still in the ring. Bell and Wind and Snow are still in the ring. The queens in the towers are still in pieces." I looked at the drawing. "We still go."

"Yes," said Okafor. "We still go."

She picked up Garnet's drawing of the far side. And looked at the grey towers. For a long time.

Then she folded it in half. Very carefully. And put it in her inside pocket. With the black slate.

"I'm going to keep this," she said. "I'm not going to put it on the wall." She buttoned her coat. "Not yet."

"Why?"

"Because forty-two worlds are getting ready to go to the ring," said Okafor. "And they need to be thinking about the ring." She looked at me. "And because I don't know what it is, Dask. And neither do you. And neither do the queens." She was quiet. "And I've learned, in this war, that the things nobody knows about are the ones you keep in your pocket until you do."

Day twenty-five.

Dory asked me about the quiet.

I hadn't told her. I hadn't told anyone except Okafor. But Dory holds. Every night, on the porch, with her hand flat on the rail, she holds the house and the town and as much of Avalon as she can reach, and that's further every month. And she'd been holding on the night I sat in the scarecrow field.

She came and sat on my lap on the porch on the twenty-fifth evening. Too big for it. Eight and a half and looking fourteen, with Pebble asleep under the bench. She sat on it anyway, the way she always has.

"Papa," she said. "What's the quiet?"

I looked at her.

"The one the Scarecrow queen heard," said Dory. "In the field. I felt you listening for it." She put her hand flat on the rail. "I listened too. After."

"Did you hear it?"

Dory was quiet for a long time.

"No," she said. "I can't reach that far. Not yet." She leaned against me. "But I heard the queens hearing it. All of them. In the hall. At night. When they think everyone's asleep." She looked out at the seventh lake. "They don't sing about it. They sing round it. Like when someone's sad at the table and nobody says why, and everyone talks about something else very carefully."

I didn't say anything.

"Is it bad?" said Dory.

"I don't know," I said. "Nobody knows."

"Is it the houses?"

"No. The Scarecrow queen says not."

Dory thought about that.

"Then the houses have something they're frightened of too," she said. Slowly. Working it out. "Like we were frightened of them."

"Maybe."

"That's sad," said Dory.

I looked at her.

"Being frightened all the time," said Dory. "And not having anyone to hold you." She put her other hand on mine. "The houses don't have anyone to hold them. Do they. They just have towers."

I didn't know what to say to that.

I still don't.

Day twenty-seven.

Luna and the General walked out onto the plain at dusk.

Just the two of them. With Elin between them, walking, holding a hand each. Out past the wheat to the edge of the seventh lake, where the ice paths start when Luna makes them.

I saw them from the porch. I didn't follow.

Luna told me afterward. In bed. Late.

"He asked me to make a path," she said. "Not to anywhere. Just a path. Over the lake. So he could see how far I can go now." She was quiet. "I went across the whole lake. Both ways. In about a minute. And he stood on the shore and watched me with Elin, and when I came back he didn't say anything for a long time."

"What did he say?"

"He said: your mother would have been terrified." Luna turned over. "And then he said: I'm terrified. And then he said: go anyway." She was very quiet. "He's never said that before. Not once. Not about anything. He's always said be careful or come back or I'll be waiting." She put her cold hand on my chest. "He said go anyway. And then he picked up Elin and went home."

Day twenty-nine.

The engines were ready.

Three hundred and forty. Built twice. Standing on the snow on every ridge of Hyrran, very tall, with the long guns on their backs, the iron worked so fine it looked like water running.

Doctor Bell came back through the arch for the first time in nine days, with grease to the elbows and her coat buttoned wrong and one pair of spectacles broken, and sat down on the porch step, and fell asleep there.

Kyria came through after her and looked at her asleep on the step for a long time.

"She is very good," said Kyria. "With iron." She put a Hyrrani blanket over her. "On Hyrran we would make her a First Blade of the forges."

"Is there such a thing?"

"There is now," said Kyria.

Day thirty.

I said it that night.

On the long porch. In order. To everyone. Which took until dawn, because everyone came. From every world. Through every arch. Forty-two worlds on the grass below the house on the rise, in the dark, in the morning of the day we were going to the ring.

When I got to the end, I didn't stop.

I said it once more. Out. Along the silver. Past the ring. Past the grey towers. Into the quiet the Scarecrow queen had heard, where the queens used to sing.

I don't know why.

I don't know if anything heard it.

But Corin, on Andraste's lap at the end of the porch, opened his eyes.

And looked out past me. Past the seventh lake. Past the sky. In the direction I'd said it.

And didn't ask for anything.

He just looked.

For a very long time.

Days 4128–4157. Thirty Days.

Kyria took three hundred and forty engines apart to build them twice. Corin crawled through the little arch to the ridge; Mother followed on her hands and knees. Konrad's list: every six years for twelve years, then faster, as if they'd stopped thinking about next time. Brock asked Saska with beans; she stepped where he'd stand up. Kyria: some arches go to worlds scraped bare; a First Blade's daughter came back alone and said only: it was hungry. The Marian, the Clare, the Steady: an old song every Hand knows, for running; it's behind. Garnet drew the far side of the ring: the towers dark, the lamps moved to face home. The Mom Squad kept its name. Corin asked the old queen to stay awake. In the scarecrow field the Scarecrow queen: past the ring the queens stopped singing, one after another, and the quiet is coming closer; the houses are frightened, and not only of you. Okafor folded the drawing into her pocket. Not yet.