Chapter 393 Bait

Tally heard them on the twentieth night after Imber.

She came down from the long ward without her notebook. That's how I knew. Tally never goes anywhere without the notebook. She came down the road from the long ward in the dark in her nightgown with her feet bare and her hands over her ears, and stood at the bottom of the porch steps, and didn't say anything for a long time.

"Orrin," she said.

Mother was up before I was. She went down the steps and put her coat round Tally's shoulders and her hand on the back of Tally's neck, the way she does with all of us.

"Tell me, love."

"They are singing," said Tally. Very quietly. "The children. The four hundred thousand. In the voice." She took her hands off her ears. "Not the note. Not the children's song. Their own. The one Orrin sings at night. I have never heard it. I knew it was theirs." She shut her eyes. "They are alive. They are on a world. And a queen in a tower is carrying their song into the voice so everyone can hear it."

"Where?"

Tally opened her eyes.

"Merrow," she said. "It is not on the sheet. It is not on anything. It is a long way out." She looked past me. Past the lake. Past the edge of the sky. "Toward the far yard."

Okafor had the map room lit by midnight.

Everyone. Keir and Bell and Crane at the table. Konrad with his sheet. Kyria with her first blade. Ilka down from the Meridian. Ysolt, because Okafor asked her. The Overseer in the doorway with the dog.

And Andraste. Very big now. The daughter who listens is close. With her hand on Odra's wall over her middle.

Tally told it again. All of it.

Nobody said anything.

"It's a trap," said Crane.

He said it first. Quietly. From the table. Before anyone else could.

"I sent things down the relay for thirty years," he said. "I know what it looks like when someone wants you to hear something." He put his pen down. "The houses don't let things be heard by accident. Not a song. Not four hundred thousand. Not in the voice, where every queen and every Tally on every world can hear it." He looked at Okafor. "They want you to go."

Yes, said the Overseer.

From the doorway. Very still.

The houses do not lose things they want found, it said. They took Orrin outward. Every child. In one night. And now, twenty days later, Orrin is singing. On a world that is on no sheet. With a queen carrying the song. Its pale eyes went to the map. That queen did not choose to carry it. She was told.

"Then why?" said Okafor. "What's it for?"

The Overseer didn't answer straight away.

Ilka did.

"The breathing's turned," she said.

Everyone looked at her.

She was very white. She'd come down off the Meridian in her flight jacket, and she hadn't taken it off.

"I listen past the ring," she said. "Every day. I've told you. I hear breathing. A great many things, breathing at once. I've never been able to tell you where." She swallowed. "Tonight I can tell you which way it's facing." She put her finger on the map. Far out. Past the edge of Garnet's drawing. Past THE HUNGRY. "There. Toward Merrow."

"How do you know?"

"Because the song's going there too," said Ilka. "Out. Not just into the voice, for us. Out. Past the ring. Loud. Warm." She took her finger off the map. "Someone's singing four hundred thousand children's song out into the dark, as loud as a queen can sing it. And the breathing heard. And it's turning round."

It was very quiet in the map room.

"They're calling both of us," said Andraste.

She said it very calmly. The way she says everything on a ridge.

"The song in the voice is for us. So we'll come. Four hundred thousand children." Her hand was flat on her middle. "The song out past the ring is for the Hungry. So they'll come. Four hundred thousand warm things on a world on no sheet." She looked at the map. "They're putting the world-breaker and the thing that's eating them in the same place. At the same time."

"And waiting," said Kyria. Very low.

"And waiting," said Andraste. "To see which of us is left."

"Or neither," said Crane.

Everyone looked at him.

"Think about what they want," he said. "They want the Hungry gone. They can't do it. Their black doesn't work. Their correctors can't walk into them. They can burn a world ahead of them, but that's all." He turned the pen over. "And they want Lucas. They've wanted him since the ring. They offered everything they had for him. And he said no."

He looked at me.

"So they put you on a world full of children, with the Hungry coming down on it," he said. "And they wait for you to do what you did on Vessa's world. Make it white. With the Hungry on it." He was very pale. "If you do, they've lost four hundred thousand children they were going to burn anyway, and the Hungry have lost a swarm. And if you don't—"

"Then the Hungry eat us," said Sera. From the window. Very hot. "And the houses lose the world-breaker they couldn't buy." Her hands were glowing. "And either way they win."

"Yes," said Crane.

Okafor didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she looked at Konrad.

"Orrin," she said.

Konrad took the sheet out of his coat. The one with the line under Orrin. And Not again beside it, very small.

He looked at it for a long time.

"I know it's a trap," he said. "I know." He folded it again. "They're still four hundred thousand children."

"I know they are," said Okafor.

She stood up.

"Here's what we're not going to do," she said. "We're not going to make it white." She looked at me. "We're not going to do the thing they want. Not the first thing. Not the second."

"Then what?" said Kyria.

Okafor looked at the map. At Merrow, a very long way out. At THE HUNGRY, past it.

"We're going to get there first," she said. "Before the Hungry. Before the houses decide which of us they'd rather lose. We're going to get every child of Orrin off that world and onto this one." She put her hand flat on the table. "And then we're going to leave the houses and the Hungry exactly where they wanted us to be."

"Together," said Andraste.

"Together," said Okafor. "On a world on no sheet. With nothing on it to eat but each other."

Nobody said anything.

Then the Overseer, in the doorway, made a sound I'd never heard it make.

It took me a long time to understand it was laughing.

We went at dawn.

Not thin. Okafor said it until everyone was sick of it. Not thin, not one person, not the front.

Everyone.

I went first. Up the thread. Scattered. The long way. Further than I'd ever gone. Further than Imber. Further than the ring. Out past the far towers, where they'd gone dark one at a time from the edge in, and past the place where they'd gone dark all at once.

I felt the breathing.

It was very close now. Not close the way a room is close. Close the way weather is close. When the air goes still and the birds stop and you know.

I didn't stop.

Merrow.

A small world. Brown. Dry. With a thin pale sky and a sun that looked tired. No cities. No towns. No forests. Nothing that had ever been anybody's.

And in the middle of a great flat brown plain, a tower.

Sorn. Tall. Dark. Seamless. With a queen in it, in pieces. I felt her the moment I came back together. Very old. Very tired. Singing a song that wasn't hers so loud she was shaking.

And round the foot of the tower, in rings, a long way out across the plain—

Pens.

I don't have another word. I've thought about it.

Not white rooms, like Seven-three-K. Not sorting halls. Not housings. Pens. Low walls of Sorn iron in rings round the tower, ring after ring, the way you'd pen sheep. Open to the sky.

And in them, the children of Orrin.

All of them. Four hundred thousand. Sitting on the brown ground. Very still. With the tower's song going over them and through them and out into the dark.

And between the rings, every hundred yards, set into the ground, something the houses had made that I'd never seen before. Squat and black and humming. And hot. I could feel them from the hill where I'd come back together. Every one of them pouring warmth up into the thin sky. Not for the children. The children were cold. You could see it. Shaking, some of them, in their thin Orrin clothes.

The heat was going up.

So it could be felt.

From a long way off.

I knelt down and put my hand flat on the brown ground and found Avalon.

The long way. All the way back. The courtyard. The red stone arch. Dory's hand on it. Andraste's beside her. And under them both, Corin's, small and flat, because he'd climbed out of the grandfathers' arms again and nobody had moved him.

"Here," I said. "Cut it here."

I'll write it fast. Because it went fast.

Kyria came. On the Open Hand, with Keir flying. And twelve cutters. And they cut the arch on the hill in less than an hour, and Dory sang it, and it opened.

Onto the red glass. Onto Kwame Osei and his slate, and the General and his watch, and Konrad on his stool. And the shafts going down. All of them. Kwame had dug five more since Imber.

"There's always a bit more," he said.

And then everyone else came through.

The Mom Squad. All five. Mother at the front.

Okafor.

Luna and Sera and Risa and Hana. Sera too, this time, because Okafor said the forge could wait a day and this couldn't.

Brock, iron, with Saska half a step ahead. Callum and Rowan, flying, in two of Risa's wing. Ingrid. Sigmund, with his spark round his ear, because Jessa said if he didn't go she'd go herself.

Forty thousand Hyrrani.

The walking engines.

And two hundred of Odra's smiths, with hammers, who went straight down the hill to the pens and started breaking the walls.

The children didn't move.

That was the worst thing. When the walls came down. Ring after ring. And the way was open. They didn't get up. They sat there on the brown ground with the song going over them. Very still. Looking at nothing.

"It's the tower," said Mother. She'd gone down the hill to the first ring. She was kneeling in front of a boy. Small. Grey round the eyes. "It's in them. The song. It's not the note. It's just—" She put her hand on his face. "It's just very loud. And it's not theirs. And they can't hear anything else."

"Risa," I said.

Risa went up.

Not as lightning. As herself. Straight up the side of the tower to the top, in her flying leathers, with the iron cloud on her shoulder. And put both hands flat on the dark seamless iron.

And hushed it.

I've seen Risa hush a tower before. On the ring. One at a time. Until the queens in pieces stopped singing the note and the children in them could be lifted.

This was different. This queen was singing loud. On purpose. Told to. As loud as anything I'd ever heard. And Risa put her hands on it and hushed it, and the queen fought her. Not because she wanted to. Because she'd been told. Because the houses had put the song in her and sealed it there.

Ingrid went up the tower after her daughter.

Put her hand on Risa's back.

"You throw," she said. "I'll hush."

And the two of them, together, the same storm, put out the song.

It went quiet on Merrow.

All at once. The way the air goes before lightning.

And four hundred thousand children of Orrin looked up.

Then their own song came back.

Not out of the tower. Out of them. Very small at first. A few voices. Then more. Then all of them. In their own language, which nobody on Avalon spoke. The one Orrin sings at night. The one Tally heard in the voice and knew was theirs.

They stood up.

And Mother, at the first ring, held out her hand to the boy with grey round his eyes. And he took it.

"Up the hill," said Mother. "Not running. Walking. Fast. Holding on."

They came up the hill.

Luna made paths. Sera burned the black heat-things out of the ground between the rings, every one of them, one after another, as she went down the plain, so the warmth stopped going up. Hana breathed for everyone. Maura carried. Teshka and Kyria walked the edges, back to back. The Hyrrani made a wall round the whole of it, three deep, facing out, with the walking engines between them.

And the children of Orrin went through the arch.

For four hours.

Then Andraste spoke.

Not on Merrow. On Avalon. Through the arch. Through the silver. Through every one of us at once. Her voice in my head as clear as if she was standing beside me.

She says they're here.

I didn't need to ask who she was.

The sky over Merrow went dark.

Not cloud. Not night. The thin pale sky filled up, from the edge in, from the direction Ilka had pointed on the map, with things falling.

Not ships. Not Hands. I didn't understand what they were at first. Long and pale and ribbed, like seed pods, like the husks of something, the size of the Steady. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Coming down out of the dark past the ring the way seed comes down off a tree in autumn. And as they fell, they split.

And out of them came the Hungry.

Bone-coloured. Winged. Mouths four ways. Claws longer than Andraste's blade. The same as on Vessa's world. Tens of thousands. Coming out of the pods as they fell, wings opening, a cloud so thick it put out the tired sun.

And the sound in my head. The one I heard in the valley.

More.

And under it, the way it was in the valley, when one of them looked up and saw us.

There.

"Faster," said Mother. At the bottom of the hill. Not loud. "Faster now. Faster."

And then the Hands came.

They'd been there the whole time. I'd felt them. High. Very high. Far out past the thin sky of Merrow. Waiting. Twenty of them. Thirty. Folded. Still. The way a cat waits by a hole.

Now they unfolded.

They didn't come down. They didn't come for us. They didn't come for the Hungry.

They just opened their palms. All of them. And waited. With the light ready.

And then the houses spoke.

Not through Tally. Not through the voice. Through me. Through the silver. Straight in, the way the hello goes in. The way the queens talk. I'd never heard them speak to me like that. Not once. In all the years.

World-breaker.

I stood still on the hill with my hand on the arch.

World-breaker, said the houses. Flat. No song. No warmth. Like someone reading a line off a ledger. The fault is here. The hunger is here. You are here.

Make it white.

I didn't answer.

Make it white, said the houses again. As you did on the eaten world. The hunger will be gone. A swarm. A great one. We have never ended one. You can. A pause. And the children of Orrin will be gone with it. As they were always going to be. They are already on the line for lost.

It is a good trade.

Make it white.

I thought about it.

I want to write that down. Because it's true. For one breath, on the hill on Merrow, with my hand on the arch and the sky full of the Hungry coming down, I thought about it.

A swarm. A whole swarm. Gone. Tens of thousands of the things that ate Vessa's twelve and every queen on that world and the towers on the far side of the ring one at a time. Things that would come for the hollows on Avalon one day, and the hall under the house, and the Scarecrow queen.

And all I'd have to do is let go of the arch. And go down. And ask.

And then I felt a hand on my back.

Not Andraste's. She was on Avalon. Holding the other end.

Mother's.

She'd come up the hill. With the last of the first ring. With the boy with grey round his eyes holding her other hand.

She didn't say anything.

She just put her hand flat on my back. Between my shoulders. Where Father used to put his.

"No," I said.

Out loud. To the sky. To the Hands. To the houses, wherever they were, behind their ledger.

"I'm not yours to point."

Then the hunger will eat you, said the houses. Flat. And the children. And the women. And the fault will be corrected.

"No," I said.

And I looked at Okafor.

She was at the foot of the hill. With her hands up. She'd been holding the Hyrrani wall light, all of it, so they could move fast. She looked up at me.

I didn't have to say anything.

She knew. She'd said it in the map room. We're going to leave the houses and the Hungry exactly where they wanted us to be.

Together.

Okafor put her hands up.

Not at the Hungry.

At the Hands.

All of them. Thirty. Waiting high over Merrow with their palms open and their light ready. Far out. Further than she'd ever reached.

She reached.

And made them heavy.

I've seen her put a Hand in the sea. On Imber. One at a time.

I'd never seen her do this.

Thirty Hands. All at once. Out of the high dark over Merrow. Coming down. Not fast. Not slow. Exactly as fast as Okafor wanted them to. With their fingers curling and their palms still open and their light going wild, sideways, everywhere, as they fell.

Into the swarm.

The Hungry didn't care what the Hands were.

That's the thing. They don't care what anything is. They felt something big coming down through them, and it was there, and it was something, and they turned on it.

All of them.

I watched it from the hill. With my hand on the arch. With the children of Orrin going past me on both sides, walking fast, holding on, singing.

The first Hand came down into the cloud of the Hungry and the cloud closed on it. Thousands of them. On the palm. On the fingers. On the dark seamless iron of the wrist. Spitting. Acid. Fire. And the iron ran. The way the hull on Vessa's world ran. Holes. Soft edges. Eaten through.

And the Hand burned them.

It couldn't help it. It was falling and it was being eaten and its palm was open, and the light came out of it the way it came out over Imber. Not a line. A sheet. White, and then yellow, and then the colour with no name. Into the cloud. Into the swarm. And the Hungry it touched went white and then went nothing.

And more came.

And the next Hand came down.

Thirty Hands. Tens of thousands of the Hungry. In the sky over Merrow. Eating each other. Burning each other.

The houses had wanted it.

They got it.

World-breaker, said the houses. In my head. Not flat any more. World-breaker. Stop her.

"No," I said.

"Last ring," said Mother. At the foot of the hill.

The last ring was the furthest out. Nearest the tower. Nearest where the pods were coming down hardest. And some of the Hungry had seen it. Not the Hands. The children. Warm. On the ground.

There.

I'll write who brought them home.

Luna, with a road of ice so wide and so fast that the last ring of children slid up it in one long white rush from the foot of the tower to the top of the hill. Sera, at the bottom of it, burning, all of her, white-gold, a wall of living flame between the road and the sky, with Odra's ring on her finger and the Hungry's fire going into her and coming back out hotter. Risa, off the top of the tower, as lightning, into every one of them that came down too close. Ingrid hushing them as they landed, every spark, so they hung in the air and fell.

Brock, at the top of the road, iron, catching. Saska half a step ahead, pulling. Sigmund on the hill above them with a storm the size of a field over his head and his mother's face. Callum and Rowan in two of the wing, low over the road, side by side, eleven minutes apart, taking the ones who came round Sera's wall.

Maura with two children under each arm. Teshka and Kyria back to back at the foot of the road, with their blades, saying nothing.

Hana breathing for all of them. For every child on the road. For every Hyrrani on the wall. For me.

And Mother at the bottom of the road. Last. With her hands up. Lifting. Every child who fell. Every child who stopped. Every child who sat down on the ice because it was too much and couldn't get up again. Lifting them. Very gently. Up the road. Through the air. Over Sera's fire. Up the hill. Past me.

Through the arch.

"That's the last," said Mother.

We went through.

The Hyrrani first, in their thousands, at a run, with the walking engines folding behind them. The smiths. The wing. Brock, with Saska's hand in his. The Mom Squad. My wives.

Okafor last but one. With her hands still up. Still holding the last of the Hands heavy, high over the tower, so it would come down where she wanted it to. On the tower. On the song. On the queen in pieces singing a thing that wasn't hers.

She didn't want to hit the queen.

I knew that. I felt her not want to.

"Lucas," she said.

I let go of the arch.

And reached.

Not down. Not to the heart of Merrow. I'd promised. I didn't ask anything to burn.

I reached up. Into the tower. Into the dark seamless iron, and the housing, and the pieces. The way I've gone into a hundred towers. And found her. Very old. Very tired. Shaking. Every piece of her.

And took them.

Every piece. Out of the iron. Out of the housing. Into my hands. Into my coat. Into the silver of Odra's armour, where the scarecrow is, in the field. Every grain of her I could find. Warm. Trembling.

And Okafor let go of the last Hand.

And it came down on the empty tower.

I scattered.

And came back together on the red glass on Avalon. On my knees. With Hesk's hammer already swinging over my head.

The arch came in.

Kwame Osei had the count.

He didn't give it to Okafor this time. He came across the red glass with his stick and his hat and gave it to Konrad. On his stool. Because Konrad was the one with the sheet.

Konrad looked at it for a long time.

ORRIN. Through: 398,941.

Not all. Never all. Kwame Osei said the miners from Carver had walked every ring on Merrow before the Hungry came, counting, and there'd been children in the far rings who'd been there longest, nearest the black heat-things, who'd been cold for twenty days in thin clothes. Some of them hadn't been alive when the walls came down. Some of them were lifted up the hill by Mother and through the arch, and didn't wake on the red glass, though Halloway knelt beside every one.

A thousand, near enough. Out of four hundred thousand.

Konrad took the old sheet out of his coat. The one with the line under Orrin. And Not again beside it, very small.

He didn't cross it out.

He wrote under it, in the same neat hand: 398,941. Home.

Then he folded the sheet very carefully and put it back over his heart, and put his face in his hands on his stool on the red glass, and the General stood beside him with one hand on his shoulder and didn't say anything at all.

I went to the long ward.

With my coat full of a queen.

Tally was waiting. On the floor in the middle of the nine trays, where she sleeps. With her notebook open on her knees. To the page called THE FIRST NOTE, with its marks. And the page called EATEN, empty.

And a new page. Blank. Waiting.

I knelt down on the floor beside her and took the pieces out. One at a time. Out of my coat. Out of the silver of Odra's armour, where they'd gone into the field with the scarecrow. Every grain I'd found. And put them on the floor of the long ward in a little heap. Grey. Very old. Shaking.

There weren't many. The houses had cut her very small, a long time ago, to fit her in a tower on a world on no sheet. A double handful. Not more.

Tally put one finger out. Very lightly. Toward the heap. Not touching.

The heap stopped shaking.

And hummed. Very faint. Very low. Not the song she'd been told to sing. Not Orrin's. Something older. Something of her own.

"She remembers," said Tally. "Not much. Dust. A dry wind. Somewhere brown and warm where she was not alone." She looked at me. "She does not know where the rest of her is."

"Can we find it?"

"Somewhere," said Tally. "In other towers. In the backs of other men. In the hearts of correctors." She picked up her pen. "Cut. Not eaten." She wrote at the top of the blank page, very small: MERROW. And under it, one mark. "So she can be found."

The Scarecrow queen came up from the hall under the house that night.

All the way up the long stair. Through the courtyard. Down the road to the long ward. Which she has never done. And put her great head through the double doors, very slowly, with the young behind her.

And looked at the double handful of grey on the floor.

And lay down beside it. As close as she could fit. With her head on the boards.

The way she lay down beside me in the wheat.

Ilka came down off the Meridian at dawn.

"It's quieter," she said. At the porch steps. "The breathing. Out past the ring." She sat down on the bottom step as if her legs had gone. "Not gone. Never gone. But quieter. A lot quieter." She looked at her hands. "Something very big out there just lost something very big. And so did the houses."

"Thirty Hands," said Okafor. From the top of the steps. With a cup of Mother's tea.

"Thirty Hands," said Ilka. "And a swarm."

The Overseer came up the road from the long ward with the dog.

It stood at the bottom of the porch steps. Not on them. It never comes onto the porch. But at the bottom. Looking up at Okafor.

They will write it, it said. In the ledger. Merrow.

"Which line?" said Okafor.

The Overseer was quiet for a long time.

There is no line for it, it said. They have never needed one. Its long grey head tilted. A world where the fault and the hunger were put together, and the hunger ate the houses' own hands, and the fault walked away with everything that was warm. Its pale eyes were very still. I think they will have to make a new line.

"What will they call it?"

The Overseer looked at me. Then at Mother, in Father's chair, with her hand still a little stiff from lifting.

I do not know, it said. I hope it frightens them.

Mother put her tea down.

"You didn't make it white," she said. Very quietly. Not to anyone. To the plain.

"No."

"They asked you to. To your face. In your head." She didn't look at me. "And it would have ended a swarm."

"Yes."

Mother was quiet for a long time.

Then she said: "Your father would have appreciated what Okafor is turning you into very much."

Okafor, at the top of the steps, with her tea, didn't say anything. But I saw her mouth move at one corner, the way it does when she's decided not to let it.

Then she put the cup down on the rail, and the corner of her mouth went flat again.

"Orrin," she said.

I looked at her.

"The children are home," said Okafor. "Their parents aren't." She looked out over the plain, where the children of Orrin were asleep in Kwame Osei's hollows in their thin clothes, under blankets the grandmothers had carried down. "One million six hundred thousand people on Orrin. Every one of them woke up twenty days ago in an empty house." She picked up her slate from the step. "The houses took the children because they were warm. They left the grown-ups because they were nothing." She looked at me. "They'll burn it. The moment they've finished writing Merrow down. Because it's ours now. Because the children are."

"Kyria," I said.

Kyria was on the far end of the porch with Taveth, with her first blade across her knees. She'd been asleep, I thought. She wasn't.

"There's no arch on Orrin," she said. Without opening her eyes. "No First Blade ever went."

"Then someone has to stand there."

Kyria opened her eyes.

"After breakfast," she said. "You've been up the thread twice in a day. Your mother will want you fed." She shut them again. "And you'll take Ysolt. She'll know what to say to a world that woke up with no children."

Mother was already standing up. Going in. To the kitchen.

"Eggs," she said. Over her shoulder. "And then Orrin."

Days 4393–4401. Bait.

Tally heard Orrin singing, on a world on no sheet. Crane: it's a trap. Ilka: the breathing's turned toward it. Andraste: they're calling both of us, and waiting to see which is left. Okafor: we'll leave the houses and the Hungry exactly where they wanted us. Together. The Overseer laughed. Pens round a tower, and black heat-things in the ground pouring warmth into the sky. Risa and Ingrid hushed the tower; the children of Orrin heard their own song again and stood up. Then pods out of the dark, splitting into the Hungry; and thirty Hands waiting high. The houses spoke to me for the first time: world-breaker, make it white; they are already on the line for lost. Mother's hand on my back. No. I'm not yours to point. Okafor made thirty Hands heavy and dropped them into the swarm. They ate each other. Mother lifted the last ring. I took the queen out of the tower in pieces; Hesk brought it down. 398,941 of Orrin home; Konrad wrote it under Not again. Tally's new page: MERROW, one mark; cut, not eaten. The Overseer: they'll need a new line. I hope it frightens them.