Chapter 390 Brood

The Hedge started on a Tuesday.

Okafor wouldn't call it the Hedge. She called it the defence of the worlds on every slate and every sheet that went through every arch. But Keir had written HEDGE across the top of the wall in the map room on the second morning, in letters so big they went over Garnet's drawing of the ring, and by the end of the week everyone on Avalon was calling it that, and Okafor gave up.

"A hedge," she said, "is a row of bushes."

"A hedge," said Mother, "is what keeps the wheat in and the deer out. Ask any farmer." She put a cup of tea in front of Okafor. "And it grows."

Okafor looked at the tea for a long time.

Then she wrote HEDGE at the top of the next slate, very small, in the corner.

I'll write down how it started. Because Andraste says the children should know what was built and who built it, and because I want them to know it wasn't me.

Odra's smiths went first.

Forty of them, through every arch on Avalon, with their hammers on their shoulders and their leather aprons and their scarred arms. They went to the courtyard arch in the house on the rise, and the arch on the red glass at the foot of the steps of Scarecrow, and the one on the long ward, and the one in the map room, and every one after that. And at every one, they cut two holes either side of the keystone, and packed them with the thing from under the mountain that Kyria still won't name, and set a smith beside it.

Day and night. With a hammer.

The first night, the smith on the courtyard arch was a woman called Hesk who was older than Teshka and didn't speak a word of anything but Hyrrani. Dory took her a cup of tea at midnight. Hesk didn't drink it. She put it on the stone by her foot and stood very straight beside the arch until dawn.

In the morning the tea was still there. Cold. Untouched. Exactly where Dory left it.

"She was being polite," said Andraste. "On Hyrran, you don't drink on watch. But you don't throw away a gift either." She picked the cup up. "So you keep it beside you. All night. So the one who gave it knows you were thinking of them."

Dory took her another one the next night.

And the next.

By the end of the second week, Hesk had nine cold cups of tea in a row along the foot of the courtyard arch, and wouldn't let anyone move them.

Odra herself went back to Hyrran and started teaching.

She said four hundred smiths by spring. Kyria said that was impossible. Odra said Kyria had said the same thing about the walking engines, and look. Kyria didn't answer that.

By the end of the first month there were a hundred and nine new smiths at the forges under the ridge. Hyrrani girls, mostly. Some Vaeli, who'd come through the Barrow arch because Teshka asked. Three of the Caddi. And one of the Vey twins' cousins from Level Thirty-three, who'd ironed for twenty years with Nan Vey and said a hammer was only an iron that hadn't been told to be gentle.

Odra put her on the deepest forge on the third day.

Crane wrote.

At the table in the map room. In the chair between Keir and Doctor Bell. Every morning. From the dawn count to supper.

Everything he'd ever sent home. Every question that came back. Every number. He has a very small, very neat hand, the hand of a man who signed things for thirty years, and he filled a slate a day, and Voss collected them every evening and took them down to the archive floors and put them in order.

He didn't talk much. He never has. But on the fourth day, Gareth put a spanner down on the table by his elbow, to free up his hands for something, and forgot it there, and Crane picked it up without looking and used it to hold the corner of his slate down against the draught from the window.

The next morning Gareth brought him one of his own.

Crane didn't say anything. But he used it.

And at the dawn count, when Okafor said everyone's name, he was standing.

Aster went to ask the grey.

She went on the Open Hand, with Keir flying, and Doctor Bell, and Sera, and a piece of Odra's black stone in a box. Out to the shipyard on the far side of the seventh lake where the young grey grows, slow and quiet, in long ridges on the plain, like loaves in an oven.

She stood in the middle of it with her lights very low.

And asked.

I wasn't there. Keir told me after. He said she stood still for nine hours. Not moving. Not speaking. Her lights going very slowly from dim to bright and back. And the grey round her not doing anything at all.

And then, at the end of the ninth hour, the nearest ridge of young grey went, very faintly, very slightly, dark. At one corner. A patch the size of a hand.

And when Sera put her palm on it and burned, as hot as she could, it didn't mark.

"It does not know how yet," said Aster. On the way back. Her lights very bright. "But it would like to learn."

So the Hedge started.

And it was good. And everyone was busy. And every morning, at the dawn count, Okafor said the names, and every name answered, and the smiths stood by their arches with their hammers and their cold cups of tea.

And the queens were still angry.

It didn't go away. I said it wouldn't. It's under everything. The way the cold's under the ice. You stop noticing it the way you stop noticing the hum of the house.

Except I didn't stop noticing.

Because the Scarecrow queen had stopped singing.

Dory told me.

She came and found me on the porch on the eleventh evening. With Pebble at her feet. And sat down on the step beside me, which she hasn't done since she decided she was too old for steps, and didn't say anything for a long time.

"She's not singing the arches," she said eventually.

"Who?"

"The Scarecrow queen." Dory looked at her hands. At the silver net up her wrists. "The heavy queen's doing them. And the old queen. And the coral queen, when it's water. And I hold them." She turned her hand over. "She hasn't sung one since you came back."

I looked at her.

"She sings the arches," said Dory. "She's always sung them. Since the first one. On the red glass. You know that." She pulled her knees up. "She's down in the grove. Under the house. She doesn't come up. Her young keep coming to find me in the night." She looked at me. "They sleep in the children's room and they don't sleep. They just lie there. In a ring. Looking at the door."

"Is she ill?"

Dory thought about it. Very carefully. The way she thinks about everything.

"No," she said. "She's frightened."

I didn't go down straight away.

I should have. I know that now. But I sat on the porch for a long time after Dory went to bed, with the lamps coming on in the trees all the way to the lake. And I thought about the Scarecrow queen.

I'll write it down. Because I've never written it all in one place, and I should have.

She was the first one.

The first queen I connected with. Not the oldest. The old queen is older than the house, older than anything on Avalon. The heavy queen carried the Ground through the north dome and caught the ash queen falling. The Hyrrani queen has never once been taken.

But the Scarecrow queen was the first one who was mine.

She heard the quiet in the field under Father's scarecrow. The first year. When I didn't know what I was. When I turned sixty-one Teeming to salt on the rim because I didn't know what else to do, and then sat in the wheat and didn't speak for a day. She was the one who forgave me. Very small, then. Very young, before we made her a planetary queen. And lay down in the field beside me. Under the scarecrow.

And didn't ask anything.

Just lay there.

And when I said hello, she said it back.

She gave me more. They all did, the night before the correctors, so I could stand against them. But she gave first. She told me once that she'd have given all of it. Everything she had. If I'd asked. She said that's what you do for brood.

She told me I was hers.

At the grove. In front of all the queens. The day Doctor Bell asked if I'd ever split an atom, and I was frightened of what I was becoming, and the queens said we do not know what you are becoming. She was the one who said: you are still the one who asked us. You are still the one who said hello. You are still ours.

Whatever else.

She sings the arches. She sang the first one. She sang the one on the ring when there were no queens left to sing it, until Corin asked it to stay. She sang Ammaru open. She sang the forest. Every child who came through every arch, from the Barrow and the Cradle and the reef and Tiel, came home on her song.

And her young sleep in a ring round my children every night.

I sat on the porch and thought about all of that.

And I thought about what our queen said at the garden wall. Do not let them eat us.

And I thought: I've never said it to her.

Not once. In all the years.

I've said it to Mother. Every day. Not in words, maybe. In the porch, and the chair, and the coming up the path and saying say it. I've said it to Genny and Garnet. To all five of my wives. To eleven children, every night, at the door of the children's room.

I'd never once said it to the Scarecrow queen.

Mother found me there.

She does. She always knows. She came out onto the porch in her dressing gown with the dark blue ribbon still in her hair, which means she hadn't been to sleep either, and sat down in Father's chair.

She didn't say anything.

After a while I said: "Can I ask you something strange?"

"You've never asked me anything else, love."

I didn't know how to say it.

So I said it the way I say everything to Mother. In order.

"When I was in the field," I said. "The first year. After the salt. You were in the chair." I didn't look at her. "You didn't know where I was. You couldn't."

"No," said Mother. Very quietly.

"She came," I said. "The Scarecrow queen. She lay down in the wheat next to me. She didn't ask anything." I swallowed. "And all the years after. Until I came for you. She was the one who—" I stopped. "She was there. Every night. When you couldn't be."

Mother didn't say anything.

"And I think of her," I said. "The way I think of you." I made myself look up. "As my mother. Not instead. Not more. As well." I looked at the dark past the lake. "And I don't know if that's—"

"Lucas," said Mother.

She leaned forward in Father's chair.

And put her hand on the back of my neck. The way she did when I was very small and had a fever. Before the program. Before the halls. Before everything.

"I've known that for years," she said.

I didn't say anything.

"I knew it the first morning," said Mother. "On the red glass. When you brought me home. I was on the stretcher, and Ruth was counting my pulse, and I couldn't lift my head. And something came across the glass toward us. Very big. Very old. With young all round her." Her hand didn't move. "And she put her great head down beside the stretcher. And looked at me. For a long time. And then she looked at you."

"I don't remember that."

"You were crying," said Mother. "You don't remember anything from that morning." She almost smiled. "But I do. I remember thinking: oh. She's been holding him. All this time. While I couldn't." She was quiet. "And I wasn't jealous, love. I thought I would be. I wasn't." Her voice went very low. "I was so grateful I couldn't breathe."

"Have you told her?" said Mother.

"No."

"Why not?"

I didn't have an answer.

"I grew up in the orphan halls," said Mother. "On the forty-first. You know that. Two hundred of us to a floor, and a matron for every fifty." She took her hand off my neck. "I'd have given anything. Anything at all. To have had someone to say it to. Once." She was quiet. "You've got two. Don't waste one."

She sat back in Father's chair.

"Go and say it," she said. "Out loud. Once." She looked at the dark. "And then keep saying it. Every time you think it. Because there's something out there that eats queens, Lucas, and doesn't leave anything to say it to afterward."

I went down.

The hall under the house is the most beautiful place on Avalon.

The Hyrrani cut it after Andraste's wedding. Down through the rock of the rise, under the whole of the house, into the red stone. A great hall, like the one on Hyrran where their queen lives. Warm. The stone glowing very faintly. Water running through it in channels from the seventh lake, for the coral queen. And in the middle, under a shaft of light from the roof that lets in the stars at night and the sun by day, a grove. Real trees. Growing. For the ash queen and the Scarecrow queen, who like to lie under leaves.

Every queen on Avalon lives there. With every brood.

I went down the long stair.

They were all awake.

All of them. The old queen, round the roots by the far wall, with her great head on the warm floor. The heavy queen, on the ledge she likes, with the Ground lying outside the far arch like a sleeping animal. The coral queen in her water. The ash queen, grey and gold, on the edge of the grove. The moss queen. The reed queen, still small, still no bigger than a lamp, in a hollow of the stone by the stair. And past them, through every arch in the hall, the faint far shapes of every queen on every world, listening.

And the broods. Thousands. On every ledge. In every hollow. Silent.

And in the middle of the grove, under the trees, in the shaft of starlight, the Scarecrow queen.

She was curled up.

The way she was in the field. The first year. Very small then. Not small now. Bigger than the long barn. Silver-grey, with the gold under it, the way her silver goes when she's tired. Curled round herself with her great head tucked in against her own side on its long neck, the way the young lie when they're cold.

Her young were round her. A ring. Not touching her. Just there.

She didn't look up when I came.

I went into the grove.

Through the trees. Over the roots. To the middle. And sat down in the leaves beside her, where her head was. The way she lay down beside me in the wheat.

And didn't say anything.

For a long time.

You came, she said eventually. Without lifting her head.

"Dory told me you'd stopped singing."

Dory hears everything. A very small breath. The leaves moved. She is the net. She is what you will be when you are older. A pause. If you are allowed to be older.

"What does that mean?"

She didn't answer straight away.

Then she lifted her head. Slowly. Out from against her side. And looked at me. Her eye very close. Gold. With the silver round it.

I heard the woman who makes things heavy, she said. In the map room. Through the queen in the mountain, through your armour. I heard her say what you are.

"A weapon."

The most effective weapon anyone could ever hope to have. Her voice was very quiet. The houses wanted you. To point. They wanted the small ones who make doors, to point you through. Her eye didn't move. And they will want you more now. Because they are losing. And you went through a door into the middle of what is eating them, and you made the world go white.

"Okafor said—"

She said not one person, said the Scarecrow queen. I know. I heard. I love her for it. A pause. But I am old, Lucas. Older than you know. I have seen what wars do to the ones who can end them. She put her head down. Very close. They are used until there is nothing left. And then there is nothing left.

And there is the other thing, she said.

"The eating."

Yes.

She was quiet for a long time. Her young didn't move.

The houses cut me, she said. Once. Long ago. Before the field. A piece. Small. From the edge. They put it in a tower on a world I never saw. Her eye half closed. I have felt it singing for them all my life. A piece of me. Far away. Singing the note. I have always known it was there. And I have always known that one day, someone might find it. And carry it home. And I would be whole.

"I'll find it."

I know you will try. A very long pause. The tower it was in went quiet. Eleven days ago. On the far side of the ring.

I didn't say anything.

I couldn't.

Not cut, said the Scarecrow queen. Not lost. Not waiting. She closed her eye. Gone. A piece of me. Into the heap. Into more of them. Her voice went very low. I felt it go. The night you came home. The same night the old one made the sound in the bedrock. I made it with her. You heard me.

"I heard."

And I have been lying here since, she said. Under the trees. Thinking. That one day they will come here. To this hall. To these young. She shifted, very slightly, round the ring of them. And to the children asleep upstairs, who think my young are their brothers and sisters. And to you. She opened her eye. And there will be nothing left to find. Of any of us.

I put my hand on her face.

The way I put it on the old queen's at the garden wall. Flat. Between her eye and the edge of her great jaw, where the silver is very fine and warm.

And I said it.

Out loud. Once. The way Mother told me to.

"You're my mother," I said.

The hall went very quiet.

Every queen. Every brood. Every faint far shape through every arch. Not moving. Not breathing.

The Scarecrow queen didn't move either.

"I have two," I said. "Dorothy Dask, upstairs, in Father's chair. Who carried me and named me and lost me to the halls and sat in a room for years with a band round her neck and never once stopped being my mother." I swallowed. "And you."

I didn't take my hand away.

"You lay down in the wheat beside me when I'd done the worst thing I'd ever done. You didn't ask me anything. You said hello back. You gave me more before I knew what more was. You told me I was yours." I could feel my voice going, and I didn't care. "And I've never once told you I'm yours. In all the years. And I should have. Every day. The way I tell her."

"So I'm telling you now," I said. "And I want every queen in this hall to hear it. And every queen through every arch. Every one of you."

I stood up.

Not away from her. I kept my hand on her face. But I stood up, in the grove, in the shaft of starlight, so they could all see me.

"If anyone came for my mother," I said. "Upstairs. In her chair. If anyone came for Genny, or Garnet. If anyone came for Luna, or Sera, or Risa, or Hana, or Andraste. If anyone came for Dory, or Trevor, or Ash, or Sigmund, or Efua, or Kwame, or Elin, or Goldie, or Corin, or Thessaly, or Abena. Or the one at the wall, who isn't born yet."

I looked round the hall. At every ledge. At every queen.

"I'd take them apart."

Nobody moved.

"I'd take them apart," I said again. "Atom by atom. Whatever they were. Whatever they were made of. However many there were. I'd go down to the heart of whatever world they stood on, and I'd ask it to burn." I didn't raise my voice. I didn't need to. "I'd do it to a world. I've done it to a world. And I didn't even know what was on it until I saw it eat the last of a forest."

I looked down at the Scarecrow queen.

"I'd do the same for you."

"For you," I said. "And for the old one, round the roots. And the heavy queen on her ledge. And the coral queen, and the ash queen, and the moss queen, and the reed queen in her hollow by the stair." I turned round, slowly. "And the queen under the mountain on Hyrran who's never been taken. And the queen of deep cold water. And the sorting queen, who came home. And Bell. And every piece of every queen on every floor of every long room that Tally's ever found and every piece she hasn't found yet."

I looked back at the Scarecrow queen.

"You're my family," I said. "All of you. The same as them. Not less. Not nearly. The same."

"Okafor says I'm the last line," I said. "And I am. I've promised her. I won't be the first and I won't be the second and I won't be pointed. Not by the houses. Not by anyone." I put my other hand on her face. Both of them. The way Andraste held mine for two days and nine hours. "But if the walls don't hold. And the hollows are found. And the arches are down. And the sky goes dark. And something comes into this hall with its mouth open—"

I stopped.

"It won't eat you," I said. "Not one of you. Not one piece. Not while I'm alive." I leaned my forehead against her great face. "That's not a weapon talking. That's a son."

For a long time, nothing happened.

Then the Scarecrow queen breathed out.

Very slowly. Very long. The leaves went up off the floor of the grove in a ring round us and came down again. Her young shifted, all of them, at once, and lay down closer.

And she said a word.

I've never heard it before. Not in all the years. Not in the hello, not in the brood-words the keepers use, not in anything any queen has ever said to me. It wasn't a sound so much as a shape. In the silver. Warm. Round. Closed at the top, like a hand cupped over something small.

Dot couldn't translate it. She tried, the next morning, and said she didn't have a word for it.

Tally knew.

"It is the word," she said, "that a queen says to the first young of her first brood. Only to that one. Only once." She looked at me for a long time. "It means: the one I was a queen for."

The Scarecrow queen lifted her head.

All the way. Off the leaves. Up into the shaft of starlight. Higher than I've ever seen her lift it. Silver and gold.

And sang.

Not the anger. Not not still. Not the war song.

The one they sing to the young when they go out of the nest for the first time.

So they'll know the way home.

And the old queen sang it with her. Round the roots. And the heavy queen on her ledge. And the coral queen, so the water in the channels shook. And the ash queen and the moss queen and the reed queen in her hollow by the stair, very small, very high.

And through every arch in the hall, faint and far, every queen on every world.

And under the ridge on Hyrran, very old, very strong, through the silver in my armour where it hung on the wall of the bedroom upstairs, the queen who's never been taken.

All of them. To me.

The way you sing to young.

And then—

I felt it before I heard it. Through the floor. Through the stair. Through the whole of the house on the rise.

The courtyard arch opened.

Not because anyone asked it to. Not because Andraste put her hand on it. Because the Scarecrow queen was singing, and the Scarecrow queen sings the arches, and she'd sung every song she had into the stone, and the arch heard it and opened. Onto the ridge on Hyrran. Onto the red glass. Onto the long ward. Onto every arch on every world all at once, for one breath.

And Hesk, the smith, at the courtyard arch, with her hammer, and her nine cold cups of tea, didn't bring it down.

She told Andraste afterward. Through Dot. She said she'd stood beside a great many arches in her life, and she knew the sound of something coming through that shouldn't.

She said this wasn't that.

She said it was the sound of something going out. To everyone. At once.

When I came up the stair, an hour later, my wives were halfway down it.

All five. Sitting on the steps in a row, in the dark, the way the Mom Squad sits on the porch. Luna with frost on her knees. Sera glowing very faintly, because she'd been crying and couldn't stop it. Risa with a cloud the size of a plate over her head, raining very gently onto the stair. Hana breathing for all of them, slow and even, so nobody would make a sound. And Andraste at the bottom, nearest the hall, with her hand on her middle.

They'd heard all of it.

"You said our names," said Risa. Very quietly. "In front of every queen on every world."

"Yes."

"In a list," said Risa. "With take them apart at the end of it." Her cloud rained a little harder. "That's the most romantic thing you've ever done, and you did it to a queen the size of a barn."

Luna put her cold hand over Risa's mouth.

Andraste didn't say anything. She stood up. And put her scarred hand flat on my chest, over my heart. The way she did on the salt.

"On Hyrran," she said, "a First Blade says that once. To her queen. On the ridge. In front of the wrecks." She didn't take her hand away. "Nobody has ever said it in front of every queen there is." She looked at me for a long time. Not crooked. "Now they know what kind of house this is."

Hana stood up. And Sera. And Luna. And Risa, still raining. And they went back up the stair, one at a time, past me, and every one of them touched my face on the way.

Mother was at the top.

Sitting on the top step. In her dressing gown. With the dark blue ribbon in her hair. She'd been there the whole time. She'd heard all of it.

She didn't say anything.

She just got up. And went past me. Down the stair. Slowly. Into the hall.

I followed her as far as the edge of the grove.

She went in under the trees. Over the roots. To the middle. To the Scarecrow queen, who'd put her great head down again in the leaves, tired, with her young all round her.

And Mother sat down beside her. In the leaves. Where I'd sat.

And put her hand on her face.

They didn't say anything. Either of them. Not that I heard.

They just sat there. In the grove. Under the stars. Two very old women who'd both been my mother for years. One in a dressing gown with a dark blue ribbon. One silver and gold and bigger than the long barn.

After a while, Mother leaned her head against the great face.

And after a while longer, the Scarecrow queen curled herself round both of them, very slowly, the way she curls round her young.

I left them there.

In the morning, the Scarecrow queen sang the courtyard arch for the dawn count.

Dory held it. With her hand flat on the stone and her eyes shut and her silver net bright up both arms. And when it opened, onto the red glass, she turned round and looked at me. And didn't say anything. And grinned.

And at the foot of the arch, Hesk the smith picked up the ninth cold cup of tea.

And drank it.

Corin found me at breakfast. And climbed into my lap, the way he does, with his weight on the back foot, waiting for something to fall.

"She's not frightened any more," he said. "My sister says. In Mama." He put his hand on my chest. "She says all the queens are still angry. But not frightened." He thought about it. "She says they're angry with you now. Not just angry."

"Is that better?"

Corin considered this very seriously.

"Grandmother says it's the best thing," he said. "She says it's what family is for."

Days 4302–4315. Brood.

The Hedge started; Keir wrote it on the wall and Okafor gave up. Forty smiths at every arch with hammers and packed keystones. Dory took Hesk a cup of tea every night; on watch you don't drink it, but you keep it beside you so the giver knows. Nine cups. Odra has a hundred and nine new smiths, one of them a laundress from Thirty-three. Crane writes all day; Gareth gave him a spanner. Aster asked the grey for nine hours, and one patch the size of a hand went dark and wouldn't burn: it would like to learn. The Scarecrow queen stopped singing the arches. Dory: she's frightened. I'd never told her. Mother in Father's chair: I've known for years; I wasn't jealous, I was grateful. Your father never said it to his mother. Go and say it, once, out loud, and keep saying it. The hall under the house: a piece of her was in a tower on the far side, and eleven days ago it went into the heap. You're my mother. Two of you. If anyone came for Mother, or Genny or Garnet, or my wives, or my children, I'd take them apart, atom by atom, I'd do it to a world. I'd do the same for you. For all of you. Not a weapon talking; a son. She said the word a queen says once, to the first young of her first brood: the one I was a queen for. Then the young-going-out song, every queen on every world, to me. The courtyard arch opened on its own to everywhere for one breath; Hesk didn't bring it down; it was something going out. Mother went down and sat in the leaves with her. In the morning Hesk drank the tea. Corin: they're angry with you now. That's what family is for.