Chapter 398 All of It

Spring came to Avalon on a Thursday.

I know because Nan Vey said so. She came up the hill from the town under the garden wall at dawn with her iron in a basket and stood at the bottom of the porch steps and looked at the north field, where the grass had gone green overnight from one end to the other, and said: "Well. That's spring, then. I'd better start."

She meant the shirts.

Okafor gave us one day.

Not three. Not a week. She said so at the dawn count, with the slate, and Konrad's sheet beside it, and FORTY-FOUR chalked on the wall where the number had been coming down a world at a time all winter.

"One day," she said. "Nobody goes up the thread. Nobody cuts an arch. Every smith stays at every door." She looked round the map room. "And if a Hand comes over any world on that sheet while we're on the north field, I'll go myself. On my own. And you'll all stay where you are and finish."

Nobody argued.

"Good," said Okafor. She put the chalk down. "I'll be in the third row. Don't seat me next to the General. He cries."

"I do not," said the General.

"You cried at the Hyrrani wedding," said Okafor. "On the ridge. In front of forty thousand soldiers."

The General didn't say anything to that.

I'll write it all. Because Mother said all of it at the long table, and Kyria wrote it on the slate in Hyrrani, and because there were three weddings in one, and I've never been to one like it, and I don't think anyone has.

The shirts.

On Level Thirty-three, where Rowan and Callum were born, you marry in the laundry. Among the presses. Because it's the only room on the level big enough and warm enough. And everyone who comes brings one thing they've ironed. And gives it to the couple. And by the end, the couple are dressed in everything everyone ironed.

Nan Vey ironed for nine days.

Not for the couples. For the guests. Because she said half the people on Avalon had never ironed anything in their lives, and the other half had ironed for the Program, under orders, and she wasn't having anyone come to her grandsons' wedding with a creased offering.

So she set up on the porch of the house on the rise. With the old iron she brought from Thirty-three, and a board, and a table, and a queue.

The queue went down the steps.

Then down the hill.

Then all the way to the town under the garden wall.

I watched it from the porch. For nine days.

Grandmothers from Earth with handkerchiefs. Hyrrani soldiers with the cloth they wrap their blade-hilts in. Vaeli from the Barrow with grey ribbons, because Teshka had told them a ribbon was something you give. Children from the white rooms with pieces of paper they'd drawn on, because they didn't have anything else, and Nan Vey ironed every one flat and handed it back warm.

People from Thera. From Imber. From Orrin. With scarves and shawls and squares of cloth from worlds that were glass now. That they'd carried through the arch. That were the only thing they had left from home.

Nan Vey ironed every one.

Very carefully. Very slowly. And handed them back. And said, every time, the same thing:

"There. Now it's ready."

Ysolt came on the seventh day.

She stood at the front of the queue in her grey coat. With the ash still on the hem. And held out a square of pale blue cloth. Very old. With a pattern woven into it of waves.

"My mother's," she said. Dot gave it to Nan Vey. "From Imber. It was on her table. I took it off the table the morning we walked to the capital." She held it out. "I would like it to be on someone's wedding."

Nan Vey looked at it for a long time.

Then she ironed it. Slower than anything. And gave it back.

"There," she said. "Now it's ready."

And Ysolt, who'd been through everything, who'd watched her world go glass, who'd knelt on the cobbles of Orrin in front of an old man who wouldn't leave, stood at the top of the porch steps holding a warm square of blue cloth and cried for the first time since Imber.

The morning.

Brock creased.

Nan Vey had said he would. On the porch, the day he asked. You'll want him pressed for it anyway. He creases.

He creased.

He came up the hill at four in the morning in a shirt Marian had made him and Nan Vey had pressed the night before, and by the time he reached the porch steps it looked like he'd slept in it. Because he'd gone iron on the way up. Without meaning to. Twice. Because he was so frightened.

Nan Vey looked at him.

"Take it off," she said.

"Nan—"

"Off," said Nan Vey.

He took it off.

She pressed it again. On the porch. In the dark. With Marian Haddon standing behind her son with her hands over her mouth, trying not to laugh, and Dennis standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets the way Brock does, and Clare saying Brock very quietly every time he started to go iron at the edges.

"Don't go iron," said Nan Vey. Handing it back. Warm. "Not until she's in front of you. Then you can go whatever you like."

Brock put it on.

He didn't go iron again.

Not until she was in front of him.

Genny and Garnet got ready in Mother's room.

I wasn't allowed in. Nobody was, except Mother and the Mom Squad and Luna, who did their hair, and Andraste, who brought them each a blade.

"For the fight," she said. At the door. Holding two short Hyrrani blades, very plain, with ribbons on the hilts. One blue. One green. "My mother insists."

"We're not going to fight anyone," said Genny.

"You're going to fight your husbands," said Andraste. "To the yield. In front of everyone." She held out the blades. "It's very short. And very important. And if you don't, my mother will never forgive any of us."

Garnet took hers.

"Can I draw on it?" she said.

Andraste looked at her for a long time.

"Yes," she said. "I think that would be the most Hyrrani thing anyone's ever done."

Dot came to the porch at the hour.

She always does. To the steps. Where I sit. Her rivers moving slow. But that morning they were moving in the colour between blue and gold, the one she only uses for one thing, and she didn't wait for me to ask.

"They sent something," she said.

"Hearth?"

"At the hour. For the wedding. I told them yesterday." Her rivers moved. "Isolde asked what we do. I said we iron things and give them to each other. She said she didn't know what ironing was." A pause. "So she sent the shape of something instead."

"What shape?"

Dot didn't answer. She turned her rivers to the porch table, where Garnet's drawing board was lying, and something came up out of the light of her, very faint, and lay down on the paper. Line by line. The way the First Weapon's picture came through the relay once, a line at a time.

A drawing.

Not Garnet's. Someone else's hand. Finer. Older. Two hands, one inside the other, held together. And round them, very small, a ring of something that might have been leaves, or might have been flames, or might have been both.

And under it, in letters I didn't know, a word.

"Isolde says it's what they draw," said Dot. "On Hearth. For two people who've decided." Her rivers slowed. "She says it means: held, and holding."

Garnet came out onto the porch in her nightdress with her hair half done and saw it.

She looked at it for a long time.

Then she picked up the board very carefully, as if the lines might come off, and took it inside.

When she came out on the north field at dawn, it was pinned inside her collar. Where nobody could see. Where she could feel it.

The rows.

The north field at dawn.

I've been on the north field at dawn more times than I can count. It's where Saska runs at Brock every morning and bounces off. Where Andraste sits on the grass. Where the Mom Squad trains. Where the wheel turns, with the lamps in the little houses, since Keir moved it there for exactly this.

I'd never seen it like this.

Everyone came.

I mean that. Everyone. Not just the house on the rise and the town under the garden wall. Thera came, all of it, down the long road from the river, in the dark, with lamps. Imber and Orrin and Kessen and Cassel and Tiran. The Hathri, with Holt. The Caddi. The Lir, in the seventh lake, with their heads above the water. The Hyrrani, forty thousand of them, through every arch on Avalon, in iron. The Vaeli from the Barrow. The queens, every one, from the hall under the house. The broods. The children from the white rooms, holding hands in twos.

The field wasn't big enough.

So they stood on the hills round it. And the plain past it. And the roofs of the town. And the edge of the interceptor field, where Risa's wing stood beside their ships in rows, in their flying leathers, very straight.

More people than I've ever seen in one place.

Silent.

Because Teshka had asked.

She'd said it at the long table, the night Mother said all of it. That on the Barrow nobody was allowed to marry. That there was no Vaeli way. That she'd like to invent one. And that she'd like it to involve a great many people standing very still in rows, and then all moving at once, so the children would know they didn't have to stand in rows any more.

So they stood in rows.

All of them. Everyone on the north field and the hills and the plain. In long straight lines. Very still. Facing the middle, where there was nothing yet but grass and a small table with a basket on it. Not speaking. Not moving. In the dawn.

Teshka stood at the front.

In the grey armour that's hers. On her own two feet. With her blade.

She didn't say anything. She just looked at the rows. All of them. Going back over the hills to the edge of the sky. Hundreds of thousands of people standing in lines the way she'd stood her whole life on the Barrow.

Because they'd been asked to.

Not because anyone made them.

Then she raised her blade.

And the rows moved.

All at once.

Every line. Every person. In the same breath. Not into new rows. Not marching. Just moving. Toward the middle. Toward each other. Breaking the lines the way water breaks when you lift a dam. Children running. Old people walking. Hyrrani soldiers in iron and grandmothers from Earth and the Hathri low and grey and the Lir rising in the lake, all of them coming in from the edges at once, until the rows were gone and there was just a crowd. A great warm loud crowd on a green field at dawn, all round the middle, close, with no lines in it anywhere.

And in the middle, where the crowd stopped, the six of them.

Teshka lowered her blade.

She was crying. Very quietly. Standing very straight.

Saska, beside her, in the middle of the crowd, took her grandmother's hand.

"There," said Saska. In Vaeli. Dot gave it to me. "That's how we do it now."

The fight.

Kyria said a Hyrrani wedding requires a fight. To the yield. With the children watching. So they know the people they love can stand up to each other and still be there after.

Mother said a very short one.

Kyria said that was a matter of opinion.

Brock and Saska went first.

Because everybody knew how it would go. They'd done it every morning for a year on the north field. Saska runs at him. Brock goes iron. She bounces off. She gets up laughing. She runs at him again.

They did it now.

In the middle of the crowd. Saska in a dress Marian had made her, grey, Vaeli grey, with a Hyrrani blade in her hand that Andraste had given her. Brock in the shirt Nan Vey had pressed twice.

Saska ran at him.

He didn't go iron.

I saw it. Everyone did.

She came at him a heartbeat ahead, the way she does, already where he'd be. And Brock, who always goes iron, who's gone iron in front of every Hand and every corrector and every one of Saska's mornings for a year, didn't.

He just stood there. In his pressed shirt. With his arms open.

And she ran into him.

And he caught her.

And didn't let go.

Saska looked up at him. Very surprised. From very close.

"You didn't go iron," she said.

"No," said Brock.

"Why not?"

"Nan Vey said not until you were in front of me," said Brock. "And then I could go whatever I liked." He was very red. "I'd like to go this."

Saska dropped her blade.

On the grass. In front of everyone.

"I yield," she said.

Kyria, at the edge of the crowd, made a sound I've never heard a First Blade make. Andraste says it was outrage. Teshka says it was laughing. I think it was both.

Genny and Callum were second.

Genny didn't know how to fight. Everyone said so. Genny asks. Genny writes things down. Genny climbed a tower on the ring with a tray on her back, Kyria said, which meant she fought, but not with blades.

So she didn't fight with a blade.

She stood in the middle of the crowd in front of Callum, with Andraste's blade in one hand and her notebook in the other. And looked at him.

"Callum Vey," she said.

"Yes."

"You heard the rain queen. On the fourth night. When I asked you to listen." She opened the notebook. "You're the only person on Avalon who's ever heard a queen because I asked. Not because she sang to you. Because I asked." She looked at him over the top of it. "Will you listen to me for the rest of your life?"

Callum looked at her.

"Yes," he said.

"Even when I'm wrong?"

"Especially then."

Genny closed the notebook.

"Then I yield," she said. And put the blade down. And then picked it up again, very quickly, and gave it to Callum, because Andraste had told her you have to hand your blade to the one who wins, and she'd written it down.

"That's not a fight," said Kyria. At the edge of the crowd. Very loudly.

"It's a Dask fight," said Mother. Beside her. "We ask."

Garnet and Rowan were last.

Garnet had drawn on her blade.

All night. With the finest pen she had. Every inch of the flat of it, both sides, so small you had to hold it up to the light to see. And when she held it up now, in the middle of the crowd, at dawn, with the sun coming through it, everyone near enough could see.

The north field. From above. The way Rowan showed it to her, the first time he took her up. Every row of the crowd. Every person in it. Every one of the six of them, very small, in the middle.

And above it, very small, two interceptors. Side by side. Eleven minutes apart.

Rowan looked at it for a long time.

"When did you draw that?"

"Last night," said Garnet.

"But it's this," said Rowan. "It's now. It's the field. It's everyone. It's—" He looked up. At the sky. At the rows that weren't rows any more. "How did you know where everyone would be?"

Garnet looked at him.

"I always know where everyone will be," she said. "I draw the map before I go." She held out the blade. Hilt first. "That's what I do."

Rowan took it.

And looked at the drawing on it for a long time.

Then he handed it back.

"I yield," he said.

"You can't yield," said Garnet. "I haven't done anything."

"You drew me the whole of today before it happened," said Rowan. "In the dark. On a blade." He was smiling. "I don't think there's anything left to fight about."

Kyria put her face in her hands.

"Three yields," she said. Through them. In Hyrrani. "Three. Nobody won. Not one blow."

Andraste put her arm round her mother.

"Yes," she said. "That's how you know they'll still be there after."

The ironing.

Then everyone came with what they'd ironed.

All of them. Hundreds of thousands. In the crowd. Coming forward one at a time to the six of them in the middle. And giving them one thing. Warm. Pressed. Ready.

A handkerchief. A grey Vaeli ribbon. A child's drawing, ironed flat. A square of blue cloth with waves woven into it, from a table on a world that was glass.

And the six of them put each one on.

That's the Thirty-three way. You put on everything. Over your shoulders. Round your wrists. Tied in your hair. Tucked into your belt. Pinned to your sleeves. Until by the end you're dressed in the whole of everyone who came.

It took all morning.

By noon you couldn't see Brock's shirt. Or Saska's dress. Or Genny's, or Garnet's. They were standing in the middle of the north field in the spring sun wearing a hundred thousand things that a hundred thousand people had brought them. Ribbons and scarves and drawings and cloth from forty worlds. In every colour there is.

Ysolt's blue square was on Garnet's shoulder.

Nan Vey had put it there herself.

The Overseer came last.

I didn't see it come. Nobody did. It never comes into the middle of anything. It stands in doorways, between in and out, so it can see both ways. And there aren't any doorways on the north field.

So it had stood at the very edge. All morning. Where the field ends and the plain starts. With the dog against its legs. Tall and grey and long-faced. Watching.

And at the very end, when everyone else had given what they'd brought, it walked into the middle.

The crowd let it through. Very quietly. A great many of them had never seen it. Some of them had seen things like it, on their own worlds, in the long grey faces at the sorting, in the teachers in the white rooms. They went very still when it went past. And then, when it had gone past, they looked at each other. And didn't know what to think.

It stopped in front of the six of them.

And held out its long grey hands.

There was a square of cloth in them. Plain. Grey. Very small. The grey of the band that used to sit on Crane's collar.

It had been ironed.

Very badly. The creases were in the wrong places. One corner was scorched.

I asked Nan Vey, said the Overseer. Very quietly. How. On the fourth night. After the queue. Its long fingers didn't move. She showed me. I am not good at it. Things made at the middle are not made to make things ready.

Nobody said anything.

It is from my coat, said the Overseer. The one I wore at the middle. When I sent the reports. When I asked how far and how fast and how much. It held the square out further. I cut it out. I would like it to be ready. For something.

Brock took it.

Very carefully. In his big hands. And looked at it for a long time. At the scorched corner.

Then he tied it round his wrist. Next to Saska's grey Vaeli ribbon. Where everyone could see.

The Overseer bowed its long grey head. The way it does when the children sing.

And went back to the edge of the field. And stood there. With the dog.

Nan Vey, beside the six of them with her iron, watched it go.

"It took him eleven tries," she said. To nobody. "I told him the first one was fine. He said it wasn't ready yet." She sniffed. "Nobody on Thirty-three ever tried that hard."

The words.

Mother had said: no book. Somebody makes up the words. Whoever's there. On the day.

Father married her in a quartermaster's tent behind the lines with a chaplain who'd lost his book. She couldn't remember a single word he said. She said she remembered Father's face the whole time.

So each couple chose someone.

Brock and Saska chose Teshka.

She stood in front of them in her grey armour. And didn't say anything for a long time. Then she said, in Vaeli, so only Saska and Dot understood until Dot gave it to everyone:

"On the Barrow, we stood in rows. For eleven generations. Nobody was allowed to choose anyone." She looked at her granddaughter. "You chose him. Every morning. For a year. You ran at him and bounced off and got up and ran at him again." She looked at Brock. "And you stood still. Every morning. So she'd have something to run at."

She put one hand on each of their heads.

"Keep doing that," she said. "Every morning. Until you're old."

Rowan and Callum chose Nan Vey.

She came forward with her iron. She didn't put it down. She held it in both hands in front of her, still warm, and looked at her grandsons. And at Genny. And at Garnet.

"Your mother died when you were six," she said. "On Thirty-three. A fever. No medics came down that far." She was very steady. "I raised you in the laundry. Between the presses. I taught you to iron before you could read." She looked at the hundred thousand things they were wearing. "I always told you an iron's only for one thing. Making something ready."

She put the iron down. On the grass. Between the four of them.

"You're ready," she said. "All four of you. I've checked."

And Genny and Garnet chose me.

I didn't know they were going to.

Nobody told me. Mother didn't. The Mom Squad didn't. They'd decided it in Mother's room, at four in the morning, with Luna doing their hair, and kept it from me the whole of the morning, through the rows and the fight and the ironing.

And then Genny turned round. In the middle of the north field. Wearing a hundred thousand things. And said, "Lucas."

And Garnet said, "Words."

I didn't have any.

I want to write that down. I've stood in front of Hands. I've said hello to the voice. I've gone down to the heart of a world. I've told every queen there is that I'd take apart anything that came for them.

I stood on the north field in front of my sisters and couldn't think of a single word.

So I said what Father would have said.

I don't know how I knew. I never heard him marry anyone. But Mother had said: she remembered his face the whole time. And I've got his face. Everyone says so. And Corin's got it after me.

So I said it with his face.

"When you were born," I said. To both of them. "Eleven minutes apart. Father held you both at once. One in each arm. He couldn't put either of you down." I could feel my voice going. I let it. "Mother says he stood in the kitchen for an hour like that. Not moving. Because he didn't know which of you to put down first, so he didn't."

Genny was crying. Garnet wasn't. Garnet was looking at me very steadily, the way she does when she's drawing.

"He'd want me to tell you something," I said. "And I don't know what it is. I never asked him. I was too young." I swallowed. "So I'll tell you what I think it is."

I looked at Callum. At Rowan. Twins, eleven minutes apart. From the laundry on Thirty-three. Who wrote COPY SCARECROW in soap on a wall when they were boys, and stood up when I came onto the porch.

"You're marrying the two people who taught me how to be a brother," I said. "Over and over. Every time I forgot." I looked back at my sisters. "Genny asks me things. Garnet draws me. And every time, it's the same thing. Somebody looking at me to find out what I am. Not what I can do."

I put one hand on each of their heads. The way Teshka had.

"Keep asking," I said. To Genny. "Keep drawing," I said. To Garnet. "And when you don't know which one of them to put down first—"

I stopped.

"Don't," I said. "Don't put either of them down. Ever."

Mother was at the edge of the crowd.

In Father's chair. Somebody had carried it down from the porch. She was sitting in it with her hands in her lap and the dark blue ribbon in her hair and Ingrid on one side and Maura on the other.

She was crying.

So was the General. Two seats down from Okafor. Who didn't say anything about it.

After.

The wing flew over at noon.

Risa commanded it from the edge of the interceptor field. With both clouds over her head. Not flying. Standing very straight in her leathers, worn through at both elbows, with her eyes shut, talking.

And Ingrid went up first. As lightning. And then the wing behind her. Forty interceptors. In two long lines. Low over the north field. Over the crowd. Over the six of them in the middle.

And as they went over, two of them broke from the lines. And came down. Low. Very low. Side by side.

Rowan's and Callum's. Empty. Flown from the ground. By Risa. Through the silver. With her eyes shut.

They went over the six of them so low the ribbons lifted.

And then up. Straight up. Side by side. Into the spring sky.

Eleven minutes apart.

Marian Haddon fed everyone.

Not alone. With Maura and Abena Osei and every grandmother who could carry a pot. But it was Marian's beans. The ones Brock planted in a crack in the tower window on Dane's world, out in the sea, and in the wall of the Vaeli hall on the Barrow, and the ones Isolde grew on Hearth from nothing but the shape Dot sent. Marian had been growing them all winter in every window of the third-wave houses. She said a wedding needed beans the way a field needs rain.

There were enough for everyone. I don't know how. Maura said it was the cake that ran out first, the one from the old floors that nobody on Avalon had made since the domes closed. Nobody minded.

Brock took a handful of the beans at the end. Raw. From the bottom of his mother's basket.

And knelt down. In the middle of the north field. Wearing everything. And pushed them into the grass. One at a time. Where the rows had been.

Saska knelt down beside him and helped.

Nobody asked what he was doing. Everyone on the north field knew.

His mother would want to know.

Genny and Callum went on the wheel.

All the way to the top. In the red house. The one Risa sat in on the grass when it was in pieces, and it rained round her and not in her. And they stopped at the top, and sat there, wearing everything, while the whole of Avalon looked up at them.

Garnet and Rowan went to the edge of the interceptor field. And sat on the grass. And Garnet took out her drawing board.

And drew the wheel. From below. With Genny and Callum at the top.

And then, very small, at the bottom of the page, two people on the grass at the edge of a field. Drawing.

Brock and Saska went nowhere.

They stood in the middle of the north field. Where the rows had been. With everyone round them. And Saska ran at him.

He went iron.

She bounced off.

She got up laughing.

She ran at him again.

Elin and Goldie made it April.

The whole of the north field. On their own. Without anyone asking. Holding hands at the edge of the crowd with their other hands flat on the grass, and the air went soft and warm and smelled of rain, and blossom came out on the Kethri trees at the edge of the field all at once, white and pink, and drifted down over everyone.

Vessa, on Andraste's chest, watched it come down. Facing in, for once.

And Risa's little cloud, over her mother's head, rained. Very gently. Warm. Silver. Over the whole of the middle of the field.

Over all six of them.

I said it that night.

On the long porch. In order. Down the rail and off the steps and onto the grass, where there were more people than there have ever been.

I said it to everyone.

And when I got to the end, Wren, at the rail, with her hand on her middle, said, very quietly: "Everyone."

"Everyone?"

"Everyone," said Wren. "I counted. All of them. Every one." She was smiling. "Nobody missed."

Mother was still on the porch when everyone had gone in.

In Father's chair. Which they'd carried back up the hill. With the dark blue ribbon, and a grey Vaeli ribbon beside it now, that Teshka had tied there at the end of the day without saying anything.

I sat on the step below her.

"You said it with his face," she said.

"I didn't know what else to do."

"No," said Mother. "Nor did he. In the tent. With the chaplain who'd lost his book." She looked out at the north field. At the wheel, turning in the dark, with the lamps in the little houses. "I said I couldn't remember a word. I've never told anyone why."

I waited.

"Because he didn't say any," said Mother. "Not one. The chaplain made his up, and then he turned to Trevor and said and you? And Trevor opened his mouth, and nothing came out. Nothing at all. He just stood there in the tent in his muddy coat looking at me. For a long time." She smiled. "And the chaplain said well, I think that'll do, and it did."

She put her hand on the back of my neck.

"You had words," she said. "He'd have been so jealous."

Days 4502–4504. All of It.

Spring came on a Thursday. Okafor gave us one day. Nan Vey ironed for nine days, everything everyone brought; Ysolt brought her mother's tablecloth from Imber and cried. Brock creased. The rows on the north field, everyone still, then Teshka raised her blade and everyone moved at once. Three fights: Brock didn't go iron, and Saska yielded; Genny asked, and yielded; Garnet drew the whole day on her blade, and Rowan yielded. Kyria: three yields, nobody won. Dressed in everything. Hearth sent a drawing of held hands: held, and holding. The Overseer ironed a square of its old coat, badly, eleven tries; Brock wore it. Teshka: keep doing that until you're old. Nan Vey: you're ready; I've checked. My sisters chose me for the words; I said them with Father's face: don't put either of them down. Risa flew two empty interceptors from the ground. Elin and Goldie made it April. Wren counted everyone. Mother: in the tent Father didn't say a word.