Chapter 386 Under the Stars

Corin found out first.

I'll write that, because Andraste says it's important, and because she says that on Hyrran the first person to know is the one the child will trust most, and she'd like it written down so nobody can argue about it later.

It was the nineteenth morning after the ribbons. In the children's room in the house on the rise, at dawn, with all of them in the heap in Rory's cot the way they always are. Corin and Thessaly in the middle. Elin and Goldie round them. Abena on the edge, very still, listening. The little arch in the wall beside the cot, quiet.

Andraste came in to get the twins. The way she does every morning. To take them down to the hall under the house, to the grove, to sit with the Scarecrow queen before the field.

Corin was awake.

He's seven months old. He looks about two. He sat up in the heap when his mother came in and looked at her the way he looks at everything. Carefully. With Father's eyes. Working out how she was made.

And then he looked at her middle.

And asked it for something.

Andraste stopped in the doorway.

She told me afterward that she felt it go past her. Not to her. Past her. The way you feel a draught from a door you didn't know was open. Corin reaching out, the way he reaches out to everyone he loves, every atom of him, asking.

Not asking her.

Asking something in her.

And something in her answered.

She didn't move for a long time.

Then she put her hand flat on her middle. And looked at Corin.

Corin looked back. Very satisfied. The way he looked at Konrad after the checkmate.

And Thessaly, beside him in the heap, opened her grey eyes and looked at her mother's hand. And then, very quietly, without anyone noticing, gave her brother something.

And Corin smiled.

Andraste came down to breakfast twenty minutes later.

Without the twins. She'd left them in the heap. She said she'd needed to walk down the stairs on her own, and stand in the kitchen doorway on her own, and look at everyone on her own, before she said anything.

So she stood in the kitchen doorway.

Barefoot. In plain dark cloth. With her hand on her middle and the white ribbon on the hilt of her blade and a very strange expression on her face.

Everyone looked up.

"I am carrying," said Andraste.

The kitchen went very quiet.

Mother put her cup down.

Kyria, at the end of the long table, with a piece of the General's toast halfway to her mouth, stopped.

Hana, by the oven, with Abena on her lap, put her hand over her mouth.

And Risa said: "Again?"

"Again," said Andraste.

She came in. And sat down. In the fifth chair, at the long table, beside Hana. And took a piece of Maura's bread. And looked at me down the length of the table.

"He is very good at making babies," she said.

I'm going to write what happened next exactly as it happened, because Genny wrote it down word for word, and Garnet drew it, and there's no point pretending.

Sera laughed so hard she set the bread basket on fire.

Not much. A corner. Maura put it out with a damp cloth without looking, the way she's put out Sera's corners for thirty years, and didn't stop laughing either.

Luna, at the window, with Elin, went very pink and said, "Andraste," in the voice she uses when she's trying to be shocked and isn't.

Risa put her face in her hands.

Hana, by the oven, said very gently: "That's true, though."

And Mother, at the end of the table, in Father's chair, picked up her cup again. And drank from it. And didn't say anything at all. And her shoulders were shaking.

I didn't say anything either.

I couldn't. I sat at the long table in the kitchen of the house on the rise with my bread halfway to my mouth and everyone I loved laughing at me, and my face did something that Garnet drew and has shown everyone and will not stop showing everyone.

"When?" said Kyria.

Andraste turned to her mother.

"The night of the ribbon," she said. Very matter-of-factly. "On the wind tower. After he lost." She took a bite of bread. "We lay under the stars. Until it was light." She chewed. "I think it was then."

"You said you lay down," said Risa. Through her fingers. "You said you lay down for the first time in your life with nothing to guard."

"I did," said Andraste. "For a while."

Kyria put her toast down.

She looked at her daughter for a long time. And then at me. Down the long table. With an expression I'd seen once before, on the salt plain of Caddoc, when she looked at the second sun and didn't cover her eyes.

"Three," she said. "In a year."

"Two pregnancies," said Andraste. "Three children."

"Three children," said Kyria. "In a year. From a First Blade who was told by every healer on Hyrran that she'd be lucky to carry one." She picked up her toast again. "I told you. On the ridge. When you were seventeen and you took the blade from me." She looked at me. "I said: you'll choose a husband the way you choose a fight. Very carefully. And then all at once."

"You said nothing of the kind," said Andraste.

"I'm saying it now," said Kyria. "It's still true."

The General, beside her, had been very quiet the whole time. He'd been listening the way he listens at the long table in the map room, with his hands folded and his face perfectly straight.

He looked at me now.

"Dask," he said.

"Sir."

"Eleven grandchildren," said the General. Very calmly. "In the house. Mine and everyone else's." He counted on his fingers. "Dory. Trevor. Ash. Small Sigmund. Efua and Kwame. Elin. Goldie. Corin and Thessaly. Abena." He put his hands flat on the table. "Twelve, now."

"Yes, sir."

"I'd like you to know," said the General, "that I have no objection to this whatsoever."

And then he laughed. Out loud. At the long table. Which I don't think anyone in the room had ever heard him do, not like that, not once, not even Luna.

Elin, on Luna's hip, frosted the window so thoroughly that it took Goldie the rest of the morning to warm it back.

Wren counted it that evening.

On the porch. While I went down the rail. She was in her usual place, between Toby and the post, with Harriet against her side and her own hand on her own middle, where the small bright quick thing hums back when Harriet sings.

When I got to Andraste, at the end of the rail, Wren held up her hand.

I stopped.

"One more," said Wren. Very calmly. "Again."

"I know," I said. "She told us. At breakfast."

"I know she told you," said Wren. "I heard. The whole house heard. Kyria's still telling people in the courtyard." She looked at Andraste. "I'm saying it because it's my job. One more. There." She put her hand down. "That's right now."

Andraste looked at Wren for a long time.

"You count everyone," she said.

"Everyone," said Wren.

"Even the ones who aren't born."

"Especially those," said Wren. "They're the easiest to miss."

Andraste didn't say anything for a moment.

Then she said: "On Hyrran, we have someone who does that. On the ridge. At every battle. She stands at the top and counts the living. Before and after." She looked at Wren. "We call her the Last Blade. Because she's the last one off the ridge. She doesn't leave until she's counted everyone home."

Wren thought about that.

"I don't have a blade," she said.

"No," said Andraste. "You have a porch." She leaned back against the post. "It's the same thing."

Kyria told Hyrran at noon.

Through the courtyard arch. Onto the ridge. In her old iron, with her first blade, which she'd taken back from me that morning without a word and then given back again at lunch, also without a word, which Andraste said was the most a First Blade's mother had ever said about anything.

She stood on the highest ridge, where we were married, where Corin and Thessaly were born, beside the little arch between where Andraste's feet had been. With the iron sea below and the wrecks of a thousand years on the mountains.

And said it.

I wasn't there. Saska was. Saska went through with her, because Teshka sent her, because Teshka said a Vaeli should be there when the Hyrrani heard, so that one day the Vaeli could say they'd been.

Saska said Kyria didn't shout. Saska said she spoke very quietly, the way she spoke to Teshka on the litter on Ammaru. And that the queen under the mountain carried it.

To every ridge. Every pass. Every city. Every Hyrrani on the mountains of Hyrran.

The First Blade carries again.

Saska said there was silence for a long time.

And then forty thousand Hyrrani struck their blades on their shields.

Not once. Not twice.

Saska said she stopped counting at sixty.

"Sixty," said Andraste. On the roof. That night. When Saska told her. "That's not a number on Hyrran. That's not anything." She was quiet for a long time. "Once is for a battle. Twice is for a birth." She put her hand on her middle. "There isn't a number for sixty."

"They made one up," said Saska. From the ladder. Where she'd stopped, halfway, the way Vaeli stop at doors until they're asked in. "Kyria said so. She said they'd have to make up a word for it, and she'd let me name it, because I was the one who counted."

"What did you call it?"

Saska thought about it.

"Again," she said.

Andraste looked at her for a long time.

Then she held out her hand. Down the ladder. To where Saska was waiting halfway, the way Vaeli wait at doors.

"Come up," she said.

Saska came up. And sat down on the roof beside her, against the chimney, with Teshka's blade across her knees, the way Andraste sits with hers. And the two of them looked out at the dark for a long time without saying anything. A First Blade and a guard of the Barrow. Who'd both been made into weapons by people who weren't there any more, and had both decided, somewhere along the way, to be something else.

Then Saska went back down the ladder to find Brock.

And Andraste lay down on her back on the roof.

Andraste and I went up to the roof that night.

Where she sits. With her back against the chimney and her blade across her knees, the white ribbon on the hilt. She didn't watch the dark this time. She lay down. On her back. The way she did on the wind tower. With her hand on her middle.

I lay down beside her.

We didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she said: "Was I wrong? To say it at breakfast?"

"No."

"Your mother laughed."

"I know."

"Risa put her face in her hands."

"Risa does that," I said. "It means she's pleased."

Andraste was quiet for a while.

"On Hyrran," she said, "a First Blade doesn't announce. She loses a fight. Everyone sees. Everyone knows." She looked at the stars. "I haven't lost a fight. Saska won't fight me. The Vaeli won't fight me. Nobody on Avalon will fight a First Blade who's carrying." She was quiet. "So I had to say it. Out loud. In a kitchen. With toast." She turned her head and looked at me. "I've never said anything that mattered in a kitchen before."

"It's where we say everything," I said. "Here."

"I know," said Andraste. "I'm learning." She looked back at the stars. "It was very loud."

"It's always loud."

"Yes," said Andraste. "I think I like it."

Then she said the other thing.

The thing she'd been thinking all day. I could feel it on her. Every atom.

"Ilka says it's getting closer," she said. "The breathing. Past the ring."

"Ilka says it's very far."

"Very far is closer than it was." She put her hand flat on her middle. "Corin and Thessaly will be a year old when the weddings are. And this one—" She stopped. "Hyrrani children are born in wars. Every one. For a thousand years. That's what Hyrran is. My mother carried me through the eleventh landing. Her mother carried her through the ninth." She looked at the stars. "I've always known my children would be born in a war."

"Andraste—"

"I'm not afraid of that," she said. "I want you to know. I'm not." She was quiet for a long time. "I'm afraid it won't be the war I know how to fight."

I didn't say anything.

I took her hand. The one on her middle. And put mine over it.

And felt it.

One.

That's the first thing. Not two, this time. One. Very small. Very bright. Very new. Building itself the ordinary way, the Dask way, fast, but on its own, without a brother or a sister to ask for bone.

And it was listening.

Not to me. Not to Andraste. Not to the house on the rise, or the queens in the hall underneath, or Corin and Thessaly asleep in the heap.

Out.

I went very still.

I've felt a great many children before they were born. Every one of mine. Dory singing with the queens. Trevor cold, the way morning is. Elin and Goldie making April. Corin and Thessaly building each other. Abena listening for water.

I'd never felt one listening like that.

It was very small. It couldn't hear anything; it didn't have ears yet, it didn't have anything yet, just the beginning of silver and a heart. But the silver in it, very faint, very new, was turned. The way a plant turns toward a window. The way the Hathri face when they sing to the ground.

Toward the far side.

"What?" said Andraste.

She'd felt me go still. She always does.

I didn't know how to tell her.

So I told her the truth. Which Genny says is always the right thing, even when it's the hardest.

"It's listening," I said. "Out. Past the ring. Where Ilka hears the breathing." I swallowed. "Not to it. I don't think it can hear anything. It's too new. But it's turned that way. The silver. The way the Hathri turn when they sing."

Andraste didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she said: "Is it afraid?"

I listened.

"No," I said. "It's not afraid. It's—" I stopped. Tried again. "It's curious. The way Corin is when he looks at something he doesn't understand. It's listening the way you'd listen at a door when you don't know who's on the other side."

Andraste looked at the stars for a long time.

Then she laughed. Quietly. Not like a door falling off its hinges. Something else. Something I'd only heard once before, on the wind tower, just before she fell asleep.

"Then it's a First Blade," she said.

"How do you know?"

"Because that's what a First Blade does," said Andraste. "When something's coming. She doesn't hide. She doesn't run. She goes to the wall and looks out." She put her hand over mine. On her middle. "This one's already at the wall."

We took it to the Scarecrow queen in the morning.

Down the wide shallow stairs into the hall. Past the heap. Into the warm. To the grove, where she lies in the shaft of light from the roof.

She put her long grey limb on Andraste's middle. And listened. For a long time.

Then she said: Oh.

The way she said it before. The first time. On the twins.

What? said Andraste.

One, said the Scarecrow queen. A daughter.

Andraste let out her breath.

And she is listening, said the Scarecrow queen. Outward. Past the ring. She took her limb away. As the Hathri do. As the Aun did, before their far songs stopped. She looked at Andraste for a long time. I have never felt a child do this. Not in any brood. Not on any world.

"Is it bad?" said Andraste.

The Scarecrow queen was quiet for a very long time.

No, she said at last. I do not think so. I think it is very old. A pause. I think there have always been some who listen that way. The Hathri remember it. The Aun remembered it. The shallow seas put it at the end of every message. She looked at the light coming down through the shaft in the roof. Face the light. Keep your back to the edge.

Some children are born facing the edge, she said. So that someone will.

Andraste didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she knelt down. On the warm red stone. In front of the Scarecrow queen. The way she knelt the first time she came down the stairs.

"Thank you," she said.

For what?

"For telling me the truth," said Andraste. "Nobody on Hyrran ever told my mother what I'd be. They only told her I'd fight." She stood up. "I'd like this one to know what she is before anyone tells her what to do with it."

I told Okafor in the afternoon.

In the map room. With Ilka at the relay and the spine-queen laid along the floor behind her and Garnet's sheet of the ring on the wall, and the folded drawing of the far side, which Okafor still keeps in her inside pocket, with the black slate.

She listened to all of it. Corin. Breakfast. The roof. The Scarecrow queen.

Some children are born facing the edge. So that someone will.

When I'd finished, she didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she took the folded drawing out of her pocket. And unfolded it. And laid it flat on the long table.

The far side of the ring. The grey towers, with the lamps moved to face home.

And beside it, on the table, she put her black slate. And picked up her pencil.

And didn't write anything.

"Ilka," she said.

Ilka turned from the relay.

"The breathing," said Okafor. "Past the ring. Has it changed? This week?"

Ilka was quiet for a long time.

"It's no closer," she said. "Not this week." She hesitated. "But it's not quieter either. And yesterday—" She stopped.

"Yesterday what?"

"Yesterday, for about an hour," said Ilka, "I thought I heard it stop. All of it. All at once." She looked at the relay. "As if something had turned to listen."

Okafor looked at her for a long time.

"What time yesterday?" she said.

Ilka told her.

Okafor looked at me.

It was the time Corin had sat up in the heap in Rory's cot and asked his mother's middle for something.

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

Then Okafor folded the drawing again. Very carefully. And put it back in her pocket. With the black slate.

"Coincidence," she said.

"Yes," said Ilka.

"Probably," said Okafor.

She didn't believe it. Neither did Ilka. Neither did I.

But Okafor said it anyway. And wrote nothing on the slate. And went to the window and looked out at the plain, where Keir had two hundred Hyrrani taking the wheel apart one little painted house at a time, to carry it to the north field for the weddings.

"After the weddings," she said. To the window. Very quietly. "Whatever it is."

Then the wives.

They came to me that evening. On the long porch. In a row. The way they did before the ribbons.

Luna. Sera. Risa. Hana. Andraste at the end, on the rail, with her bare feet hanging over the edge.

I'd been in the map room all afternoon with Okafor, telling her what the Scarecrow queen said. I came up the road and sat down on the top step.

And they were looking at me.

"What?" I said.

"Very good at making babies," said Risa.

"She said it, not me."

"She said it at breakfast," said Risa. "In front of the General. In front of Kyria. The General laughed." She put her chin in her hand. "I've known the General since I was fifteen. I've never once heard him laugh."

"Neither have I," said Luna. Very quietly. With Elin. "Not like that. Not ever." She looked at me. "He was so happy."

"So," said Sera.

"So what?"

"So we've been talking," said Sera. "The four of us. Today. In the kitchen. While you were in the map room." She looked at the others. "Andraste's carrying again. Hana's had Abena. Luna and I had Elin and Goldie together." She looked at Risa. "And Risa's been very patient."

"I have not been patient," said Risa.

"No," said Sera. "You haven't." She smiled. "But you've been waiting."

Risa looked at me.

She didn't say anything. She didn't have to. She had small Sigmund asleep on her lap with a very small cloud over his head, raining very gently on nothing, the way it does when he's dreaming. And she looked at him, and then at me, and then out at the plain, where the lamps were coming on in the trees all the way to the lake.

"Dory needs another sister," she said. Eventually. "Or a brother. Someone with lightning. Small Sigmund's the only one, and he's always on his own in the thunderstorms." She put her hand on his head. "I'd like him to have someone to make rain with."

"Risa—"

"I'm not asking," said Risa. "I'm telling you. That's what a Wing Commander does." She stood up. With small Sigmund. And came over and stood on the step above me.

And kissed me.

"The wheel," she said. "Tomorrow night. The red house. At the top." She went back to her chair. "Bring a ribbon."

Hana laughed. Very softly.

Luna went pink again.

Sera set the corner of the porch rail on fire, very slightly, and put it out herself, and pretended she hadn't.

And Andraste, at the end, on the rail, with her hand on her middle and her feet hanging over the edge, looked at me crooked, with the scar, and said:

"I told you. Very good."

I said it that night.

On the long porch. In order. Down the rail and off the steps and onto the grass.

When I got to Andraste, at the end, I knelt down on the boards. The way I knelt between her and Hana, at the long table, the first time.

And said it to her.

And then, lower, to the one who's listening.

I didn't know if she could hear me. She's very new. She doesn't have ears yet.

But I felt her silver turn.

Just slightly. Just for a moment.

Away from the edge.

Toward me.

And then back.

Andraste felt it too.

She put her scarred hand on the back of my head, the way she does.

"She'll come back to you," she said. "Every time. And then she'll go back to the wall." She looked out at the dark, past the lake, past the mountains, past the sky. "That's what First Blades do."

Dot told Hearth that night. At the hour. Through the relay.

I didn't ask her to. She asked me. On the porch, after I'd said it, with her rivers moving in the colour between blue and gold that she only uses for Hearth.

"Query," she said. Through the rail. "Does the operator wish this unit to inform the other end?"

"About Andraste?"

"About the daughter who is listening," said Dot. "Isolde has asked about every child since the relay resumed. Isolde writes them all down." A pause. "This unit believes Isolde would wish to know this one."

So Dot told them. One line at a time. A drawing Garnet made of the house on the rise, with a small figure on the roof, looking out. And under it, slowly, in the old dictionary: A daughter. Not born yet. Already listening at the edge.

The answer came after a long time. Longer than usual. Dot said the relay was quiet for nearly an hour, and she'd begun to wonder if something had gone wrong.

Then a picture.

One line at a time. A room. Not the laboratory. A house. A desk by a window. A stone on the desk, holding a page open. And beside the desk, standing, looking out of the window into the dark, a figure Garnet said was Dinraal.

And under it, in the old dictionary, very slowly:

Dinraal says: he has stood at the edge too.

Dinraal says: tell her it gets easier when someone stands beside you.

Isolde says: congratulations.

Isolde says: Lucas should rest.

Andraste, on the rail, read it over Dot's shoulder. And laughed. Like a door falling off its hinges.

"They know you," she said. "From the other side of the silver. They already know you."

Mother came to find Andraste on the roof the next morning.

Before dawn. Up the ladder from the children's room. Very slowly, because Mother doesn't like ladders. Andraste reached down and pulled her up the last rung by both hands, the way she did before.

They sat together against the chimney. I wasn't there. Mother told me afterward, on the porch, with her cup.

"I asked her if she was frightened," said Mother. "Of the listening. The edge." She turned her cup. "She said no. She said she was frightened of a different war." She looked out at the plain. "And I told her I was frightened of the war too. The first time. With you."

"With me?"

"Your father and I had you in the middle of one," said Mother. "At the very end of it. With the last of the guns still going in the north, some nights." She was quiet. "I was so frightened, love. That you'd be born into that. That you'd only ever know that." She put her cup down. "And you weren't. You came out quiet. Looking at everything. Working out how it was made." She smiled. "Your father said this one's going to fix something. The first night. Holding you."

"What did Andraste say?"

Mother looked at me for a long time.

"She said: then this one's going to look at something," said Mother. "And tell the rest of us what it is." She picked up her cup again. "I think she's right. I think that's what listening children are for."

The wheel was in pieces.

I'd forgotten. Risa hadn't.

Keir had started moving it the week before. For the weddings. Mother had said one wedding, three couples, the north field at dawn, and Genny and Callum wanted the wheel, and Keir had said he could move it, and Garnet had said he couldn't, and Keir had said he'd been wanting an excuse.

So the wheel was in pieces. Every little painted house taken down and laid out on the grass in rows. The great iron circle unbolted and lying flat. Two hundred Hyrrani round it with Kyria's old tools and Doctor Bell with her spectacles and Keir with his drawings and Aster standing very still in the middle of it all, lights very dim, which Keir says means she's enjoying herself enormously.

And Enna.

Through the relay. Behind Dot's soft door. Every evening, at the hour, Dot carried Keir's drawings across one line at a time, and Enna sent back the same thing.

Show me the load path.

And then, the next evening, after Keir had shown her:

No. Again.

"She's done this eleven times," said Keir. On the porch. With his drawings across his knees. "Eleven. I've moved a wheel the size of a hill and she's sent it back eleven times." He put his head in his hands. "She's the best engineer I've ever met and I've never once seen her face."

"You've seen her face," said Garnet. "In the pictures."

"One line at a time," said Keir. "It doesn't count." He looked at the drawings. "I'd like to see her face when she says no, again. Just once. I want to know what it looks like."

"Furious," said Aster. Very quietly. From the step below. "This unit has reviewed every exchange. This unit believes the expression is furious, and very pleased."

Keir looked at her.

"Both," said Aster. "Like Okafor."

So Risa didn't get the wheel.

She got the little red house.

On the grass, at the north field, where it was waiting with all the others to be put back up. Lying on its side. With its windows on every side and its bench inside for two, and the door open to the sky.

She was waiting in it when I came at dusk. Sitting on the bench, which was sideways, with her back against what had been the floor and her feet up on what had been the wall. With small Sigmund left with Ingrid and Konrad. With a very small cloud over her head.

"It's not at the top," I said.

"I know," said Risa.

"It's on the grass."

"I know," said Risa. "I asked Keir. He said it'd be back up in nine days." She looked at me. "I'm not waiting nine days. I've been waiting since Dory." She held out her hand. "Did you bring a ribbon?"

I'd brought a ribbon.

Pip's stall. Fourth try. Pip said I was getting better and that she didn't like it. Yellow again, because Risa said yellow was hers and she wasn't sharing.

Risa took it.

And didn't put it in her hair, where the other one is. She tied it round my wrist.

"So you'll remember," she said, "that you owe me a ride at the top."

I'm not going to write the rest. Risa says that's for the two of us. She says if I write it down Genny will copy it into the brood book and Garnet will draw it and Kyria will tell the courtyard.

I'll write that the little red house was lying on its side on the north field with the door open to the sky, and that the stars came out over it, and that at some point it started to rain. Very softly. Warm. On the grass all round it, and not inside it at all.

And that in the morning, when Keir came with the Hyrrani to put it back on the wheel, he found the grass round it soaked and the inside perfectly dry, and a small cloud sitting on the roof, very pleased with itself, and refused to ask.

Days 4263–4270. Under the Stars.

Corin found out first: he asked something in his mother, and something answered. Andraste at breakfast: I am carrying. He is very good at making babies. Sera set the bread on fire; Mother's shoulders shook. The night of the ribbon, on the wind tower, under the stars. Kyria: three in a year from a First Blade the healers said would be lucky to carry one. The General counted twelve grandchildren and laughed out loud. One, this time, a daughter, and she's listening outward, past the ring, the way the Hathri face. The Scarecrow queen: some children are born facing the edge, so that someone will. Andraste: she's already at the wall. Dinraal: he has stood at the edge too. The wheel was in pieces, so Risa took the red house on the grass; a ribbon round my wrist for the ride I owe her; it rained round it and not in it.