Chapter 402 The Watch

We didn't go home that night.

Nobody said we wouldn't. Nobody decided. We just didn't. The arch on the north field stayed open behind us, with Hesk beside it on the Avalon side and a cup of tea at her foot, and Dory sitting on the stone holding it, and Corin asleep against her with his hand still flat on it. And on our side, the green world. The threads in the sky. The three moons, so close you could see their mountains.

And the ground, warm, under all of us.

Rhiannon made supper.

Of course she did. She'd brought the basket. She found a flat stone by a stream at the edge of the clearing and set it up as a hearth, and Mother came and stood beside her, and between them, without a word of each other's language, they fed everyone. Hearth's dark bread and Maura's buns from her eleven pockets and something Rhiannon made from roots she found in the grass that the eldest queen told her, very gently, through the ground, were good to eat.

Rhiannon looked at the ground for a long time when that happened.

Then she said something to it. In her own language. Very firmly.

Dot translated it. "She says thank you. And she asks whether the eldest has eaten."

The eldest queen was quiet for a moment.

Then she laughed again. The way she had in the afternoon. Up out of the whole world at once.

No, she said. Not for a very long time.

Rhiannon put a piece of bread on the grass.

I sat with Dinraal at the edge of the clearing, after.

Where the trees stopped and the land went down to a long slow river under the moons. With the First Weapon between us, and the threads above us going up into the dark, so many and so bright that the night wasn't really dark at all.

Neither of us said anything for a long time.

"Bahamut," said Dinraal eventually. Very quietly. Through Dot. "My father. He heard her."

I looked at him.

"I didn't know," said Dinraal. "Not until today. I've read everything I found about him. Every line they didn't rub out. And there's one thing he said, over and over. To anyone who'd listen. In the last years." He looked at his wrists. "He said the silver was singing. He said it all the time. They wrote him down as unfit. They took him off the line for it." He was quiet. "I thought it was the war. I thought it broke him."

"It didn't."

"No," said Dinraal. "He was the only one listening."

The First Weapon put his chin on Dinraal's knee.

Dinraal put his hand on it.

"She's tired," he said. After a while. "She said so. She's fought them alone for longer than there have been stars to name it by." He looked up at the threads. "She shouldn't have to any more."

"No."

"So we sit down tomorrow," said Dinraal. "All of us. Hearth and Scarecrow and her. And we decide what happens next." He turned his head and looked at me. "Not one person."

"Not one person," I said.

So in the morning we sat down.

Not at a table. There wasn't one. In the clearing. On the warm ground. In a circle.

Everyone.

Okafor, with her slate. Dinraal, with the First Weapon. Tiamat, very straight, who'd sent for six of her people through the arch in the night and had them standing behind her with instruments, measuring the threads. Kyria and Andraste. Keir and Enna, side by side, with drawings on the grass between them. Aster, very still, lights very bright. Doctor Bell, with both pairs of spectacles. Ilka. Asha and Eve. Crane, with his spanner. Aramaeis, beside his sister.

And Konrad. With the old tithe sheet. Because Okafor had sent for him at dawn, and he'd come through the arch on the north field with his coat buttoned wrong, and when Okafor asked why, he said: "Because if you're going to sign something, I'd like to read it first."

And the Overseer.

It came through the arch last. With the dog. And stopped in the arch. On the line between Avalon and the green world. Half on one and half on the other.

Where it could see both ways.

Nobody asked it to come in. Nobody needed to. It was exactly where it should be.

And the queens. All of them. With their heads on the ground in a great ring round the circle. And under all of us, through the ground, warm, listening:

The eldest.

"I'll say what I think," said Okafor. "And then I'd like everyone to tell me I'm wrong."

She stood up. In the middle of the circle. With the slate.

"She's the source," said Okafor. "Every queen. Every seed. Every sliver of silver in anyone." She looked round the circle. At me. At Dinraal. At the queens. "If they find her, there's nothing left. Not here. Not on Avalon. Not on Hearth. Nowhere."

Nobody said anything.

"So she has to be protected," said Okafor. "Whatever it takes. Whatever it costs."

She wrote it on the slate. AT ALL COST.

And then she stopped.

And looked at what she'd written for a long time.

"No," said the eldest queen.

Everyone went very still.

Not at all cost, said the eldest queen. Up through the ground. Very quietly. I have watched my children pay all cost for a very long time. Cut. Sung through. Put in towers. Eaten. A pause. I did not call you here to pay more.

Okafor didn't say anything.

If the price of me is my children, said the eldest queen, then I am not worth it.

Mother laughed.

Very quietly. From the edge of the circle. Where she was sitting on the warm ground beside Rhiannon with a cup of tea.

Everyone looked at her.

"Sorry," said Mother. "It's just. That's exactly what mothers say." She put her cup down. "Every one of us. Every time. Don't do anything for me. I'm not worth it. Look after yourselves." She looked at the ground. "I said it to Lucas for years. From a chair. In a room I couldn't leave. Don't come for me. It isn't worth it." She smiled. "He came anyway."

She looked across the circle at Okafor.

"You don't listen to mothers when they say that," said Mother. "You never have. You just do it better."

Okafor looked at the slate for a long time.

Then she rubbed out AT ALL COST.

And wrote, underneath, in her small square letters:

At all cost. But not her children's.

She looked at it.

"That's harder," she said.

"Yes," said Mother. "That's the point."

"Then how?" said Tiamat.

She'd been silent the whole time. Standing. With her people behind her and her hands behind her back. Looking at the threads.

"How do you protect something the size of a world," she said. Through Dot. Very precise. "That they can taste. That they've been following for millions of years. Without spending the children."

Nobody answered for a moment.

Then Crane spoke.

"Take up the road," he said.

Everyone looked at him.

He was sitting on the warm ground beside Aramaeis. With his spanner on his knee. With the pale band of skin at his throat. He didn't look up.

"She said it yesterday," said Crane. "The towers. Ten thousand pieces of one queen on ten thousand worlds. The houses thought they were using them." He turned the spanner over. "They were laying a road. And the Hungry are walking it."

"Yes," said Okafor.

"Then you don't build a wall at the end of the road," said Crane. "You take the road up."

He looked up. At Okafor. At Konrad, with his sheet.

"Every piece of queen in every tower," said Crane. "In every housing. In every corrector. In the back of every man who was ever sorted." He was very pale. "Every one you take out and carry home is a step they can't take. Every one you put on the floor of a long ward beside the rest of her is a stone out of the road." He put the spanner down. "Bring them all home. And there's nothing left for the Hungry to follow."

The circle was very quiet.

Konrad unfolded the sheet.

The old tithe sheet. With the worlds on it. Imber and Orrin and Tiran, with Home beside them. And forty-four with nothing yet.

He looked at it for a long time.

"I've only ever counted the children," he said. Very quietly. "On this. For thirty years. And since the long table, the worlds." He put his finger on the first name. "I never once counted the towers."

He took his pen out.

And beside every world on the sheet, very small, in his neat hand, he started writing a second number.

"The pieces sing," said Tally.

She'd been sitting at the edge of the circle with her notebook. With THE FIRST NOTE open on her knees. She stood up.

"Every one," she said. "In every tower. I hear them. Through the voice. I have heard them since before I had a name." She held up the notebook. "I can count them. Every tower. Every world. Every piece." She looked at the ground. At the eldest. "And she can hear them too. She said so. She feels every one."

Yes, said the eldest queen.

"Then we can find every one," said Tally. "Together. She hears them. I count them. Mr. Friese writes them down." She looked at Okafor. "And then we go and get them."

Okafor wrote it on the slate.

ONE. TAKE UP THE ROAD.

"And the ones who are already close," said Dinraal.

Everyone looked at him.

"The road's long," he said. "Taking it up takes time. Years." He looked up at the threads. "And they've been walking it for millions. Some of them are already near." He looked at Vessa. On Andraste's chest. Facing out, even now. "She hears them breathing."

Andraste didn't say anything. She put her hand on Vessa's back.

"So someone has to watch," said Dinraal. "Here. All the time. At the end of the road."

"An orbital station," said Tiamat.

She stepped forward. Into the middle of the circle. Beside Okafor.

"Hearth's stations are held together with silver that holds its own shape," she said. "Because Lucas showed Dinraal on the eighth day. We have nine. Round Hearth. I built them." She looked up at the threads. "I can build one here. Bigger than any of them." She pointed. Up. At the three moons. "There. Between the world and the moons. Anchored on her threads. Holding itself."

On my threads? said the eldest queen.

"If you allow it," said Tiamat. And then, after a moment, in our language, very carefully, because she'd been learning: "If you would like."

The eldest queen was quiet for a long time.

No one has ever asked me that, she said.

"Then yes?"

Yes.

Keir had already started drawing.

On the grass. With Enna's pen, because his had run out. Very fast. A ring. Round the world. Silver lace, the way Dinraal's bridge was, but wide, very wide, a great slow wheel in the sky between the world and the moons. With the young grey grown over it in Odra's black stone, so the Hungry's acid would run off it. And over that, the second skin Enna had shown him on the bridge. Silver that holds its own shape. So if the first skin's eaten, the second's still there.

"Two kinds of ship," said Keir. Not looking up. "The way she said. The Hungry would have to eat through two kinds to get to anyone."

Enna moved one of his lines.

Keir didn't argue.

"And a name," said Tiamat. "Every station needs a name."

Andraste looked down at Vessa.

"The Wall," she said.

Nobody argued with that either.

Okafor wrote it.

TWO. THE WALL.

"Listening," said Ilka.

She'd been very quiet. She's always quiet, since she started listening past the ring every day. She stood up now.

"I hear breathing," she said. "Every morning. I've told you. And I can't tell you where." She looked at the threads. "I can tell you which way it's facing, sometimes. When it turns." She swallowed. "But one person on one ship with an ear to the dark isn't enough."

"No," said Dinraal.

He held up his wrists.

And the silver came off them. The way it did on the plain past the canyon. A strand. Thin. Bright. Down. Into the warm ground of the eldest's world.

"It listens," he said. "You saw. On the plain. Not to me. To everything. Heat. Footsteps. Heartbeats." The strand went deeper. "Asha says we found it after the eighth day. That it was never armour. Armour was only the first thing it was asked to be."

He looked up at Ilka.

"Put it on every world at the edge," he said. "Every moon. Every rock. A strand of Hearth's silver in the ground. Listening. All tied together." He looked up at the threads in the sky. "All tied to her."

Then I would hear what they hear, said the eldest queen. Very slowly.

"Yes."

All of it. Everywhere they are.

"Yes."

The eldest queen was quiet for a very long time.

I have been listening alone, she said, for longer than you have a word for.

Ilka sat down.

Very suddenly. On the warm ground. With her hands over her face.

I don't think she'd known, until then, how tired she was too.

Okafor wrote it.

THREE. EARS. EVERYWHERE.

And under it, very small: And the one at the wall. But not on duty.

Andraste saw it. And laughed. Very quietly. And put her hand on Okafor's arm.

"And if they come," said Kyria.

Everyone looked at her.

She'd been sitting with her first blade across her knees and Teshka beside her, not saying anything, the whole morning. She stood up now. In her mended iron.

"Ears hear them coming," she said. "The Wall holds them off. The road comes up behind them, so no more follow." She looked round the circle. "But if they come anyway. If the ears hear them close. Here." She put her hand flat on the warm ground. "Then someone has to get here faster than they can eat a moon."

Nobody said anything.

"Arches," said Kyria.

She looked at the arch on the north field. Still open, behind us. With the Overseer standing in it, half on one world and half on the other, and the dog against its legs.

"My cutters will cut arches," said Kyria. "Here. Permanent. To Avalon. To Hyrran. To Hearth." She looked at Dinraal. "To every world on Konrad's sheet that's come home. To every one of the forty-one." She looked at the queens. "And the queens will sing them. All of them. All the time. So they never close."

"And a smith at every one," said Andraste.

"And a smith at every one," said Kyria. "With a hammer. And the thing from under the mountain in every keystone." She looked at me. "So if something comes through that isn't us—"

"Bring it down," I said.

"Bring it down."

"And someone on the other side of every one," said the General.

Everyone turned round.

He'd come through the arch in the night. Nobody had seen him. He was standing at the edge of the clearing in his old uniform with every medal, very straight, with his hands behind his back. The way he stands on the north field at dawn with his watch.

"Ready," said the General. "All the time. The way the children are for the hollows." He took his watch out. "Four minutes. From the north field to here. Every soldier. Every pilot. Every Hyrrani. Every one of Odra's smiths." He looked at Okafor. "I'll run the drills."

Okafor looked at him for a long time.

"You're very old," she said.

"So are you," said the General. "And you're about to build a wall in the sky."

Okafor wrote it.

FOUR. FOUR MINUTES.

She looked at it.

"That's the hollows," she said. "That's the same number."

"Yes," said the General. "I thought it would be easy to remember."

Then Okafor looked at me.

I knew what she was going to write. Everyone did. FIVE. The way it was in the map room, the day after Vessa's world. FIVE IS NOT LUCAS.

She didn't write it.

She held out the chalk.

To the ground.

"Five," she said. To the eldest queen. "You've fought them for millions of years. Alone. And you're still here." She held the chalk out toward the warm grass. "So you know something we don't."

The eldest queen was quiet for a long time.

I sing, she said.

Not to my children, said the eldest queen. To them. To the hungry. A pause. Not my song. A false one. A song that tastes like me. From somewhere I am not.

I have been singing them the wrong way for longer than there have been stars to name it by. A thousand false roads. A thousand worlds that taste like me and are not. They follow. And they find nothing. And they turn round. And I sing them another.

That is how I am still here.

Nobody said anything for a very long time.

Then Okafor said, very quietly: "Merrow."

Yes, said the eldest queen. The houses did what I have always done. They sang the hungry to a place. And put something there for them. A pause. But they put my children there. And you.

I have only ever sung them to empty places.

"And if we put something there for them," said Okafor. Very slowly. "Not children. Not queens." She looked at me. Then at Dinraal. Then up at the threads. "Something that fights back."

The eldest queen didn't answer.

But the ground under all of us went warm.

Okafor wrote it.

FIVE. SHE SINGS THEM WRONG. WE'RE WAITING WHERE THEY ARRIVE.

And under it, very small, the thing she always writes:

Not one person.

Konrad read it.

All of it. The whole slate. Okafor held it out to him at the end, and he took it, and read every line. Slowly. The way he read every sheet for thirty years before he signed it. ONE. TAKE UP THE ROAD. TWO. THE WALL. THREE. EARS. EVERYWHERE. FOUR. FOUR MINUTES. FIVE. SHE SINGS THEM WRONG.

And at the top: At all cost. But not her children's.

Then he handed it back.

"I'll sign that," he said.

"What do we call it?" said Dinraal.

Everyone looked at each other.

"Not an accord," said Konrad. At once. Very quietly. "Please. Not an accord."

"Not a treaty," said Crane. "Treaties have clauses."

"Not a pact," said Aramaeis. Through Dot. "Armies make pacts."

Mother put her cup down.

"It's a watch," she said.

Everyone looked at her.

"On the northern front," said Mother. "When the line was thin. You took a watch. At night. And you stood there in the cold so the others could sleep." She looked at the ground. At the eldest. "And when your watch was over, you woke the next one. And they stood there. And you slept." She picked up her cup again. "Nobody stands all night. That's the whole point of a watch."

She looked at the ground for a long time.

"You've stood all night for millions of years, love," she said. "It's someone else's turn."

The eldest queen didn't say anything.

But every thread in the sky lit. All at once. From the ground up into the dark and out across it to the three moons and the next world and the next.

And the queens round the circle, all of them, lifted their heads off the warm ground.

And sang.

The young-going-out song.

So they'll know the way home.

Okafor wrote it at the top of the slate. Over everything else. In her small square letters.

THE WATCH.

And the first name under it, in her own hand: Maris Okafor.

Then she held out the chalk.

Dinraal wrote his. In his own script. Then Tiamat. Then Kyria, in Hyrrani. Then Konrad, very carefully, having read it all again first.

Then me.

Then every one of them. Every person in the circle. Mother and Rhiannon and Crane and Aramaeis and the General and Tally and Ilka and Andraste. Keir and Enna, side by side.

And at the bottom, when there was no room left, the Overseer came out of the arch. For the first time. Off the line between the two worlds. Onto the green ground.

And took the chalk. In its long grey fingers. And wrote one mark.

Not a word. A mark. A small one. The shape Tally's notebook uses for a piece of queen that's been found.

Then it went back to the arch. And stood in it again. Half on one world and half on the other.

Where it could see both ways.

The Wall started that afternoon.

Tiamat didn't wait. She said a station that's still on paper is a station that hasn't been eaten yet, and she'd rather have one that had.

So she went up.

Not in a ship. Along a thread.

I watched it from the clearing. Everyone did.

Tiamat stood at the foot of the nearest thread. The one that came down out of the sky into a stand of trees at the edge of the clearing and went into the ground there, bright as a wire in the sun. She put one hand flat on it.

And asked the eldest queen.

Yes, said the ground. Before she'd finished.

Then Dinraal put his wrists against the thread, either side of her hand. And the silver came off his bracelets. Up. Along the thread. Not round it. Beside it. A second strand, his, very thin, climbing the eldest's thread like a bean climbing a pole.

Up. Into the sky. Out of sight.

It took him the whole afternoon.

He didn't let go once. He stood at the foot of the thread with his wrists against it and his eyes shut and the First Weapon pressed against his legs, and his strand went up and up beside the eldest's, toward the moons. Asha stood beside him with an instrument, reading out numbers nobody else understood. Isolde stood behind him with her hand on his back.

And at the top, a very long way up, where the thread passes between the world and the nearest moon, his strand stopped.

And held.

On its own. The way the bridge held. Because I showed him one small path on the eighth day.

He let go.

He sat down on the grass very suddenly and Rhiannon put a piece of bread in his hand without saying anything.

"That's the first one," said Tiamat. Looking up. Through Dot. "An anchor. Now we can climb it." She turned round. "Keir. Enna. I want the grey up that by morning."

"It doesn't climb," said Keir.

"Then teach it," said Tiamat.

Aster's lights came up. Very bright.

"This unit would like to be the one who asks," she said.

The General ran the first drill at dusk.

He didn't tell anyone. That's how the General runs drills. He stood on the north field on Avalon, on the other side of the arch, with his watch, and Okafor's slate, and a bell from Meg's bakery that Rory had lent him.

And rang it.

Six minutes, the first time.

From the bell on the north field to the last Hyrrani through the arch onto the green world, in iron, with blades. Forty of Risa's wing behind them, in their leathers, running. Odra's smiths, with hammers. The Mom Squad, all five, because nobody had told them they weren't part of the drill and nobody was going to.

Risa at the arch. With both clouds. Commanding. Not going up.

Ingrid first through. As lightning.

The General looked at his watch.

"Six," he said. "Too long."

Four and a half, the second time.

Four, the third.

"Four," said the General. Putting his watch away. "Again tomorrow. And the day after. Until it's three." He looked at the arch. At the Overseer standing in it, half on one world and half on the other, with the dog. "And then we'll see about two."

Ilka put the first ear on the nearest moon that night.

Not herself. She couldn't. Dinraal's strand went up the eldest's thread to the station anchor, but the station anchor's a long way from the moon.

So she asked Hana.

Hana breathed for her.

Up the thread. All the way. Ilka in a suit Keir made in an hour out of a piece of grey, with Hana's air in it, going round the way it goes round in the hollows, and Isolde's silver leaves growing over the outside of it so it would hold its shape if the grey didn't. And Risa's little cloud, which isn't supposed to leave Risa, following a long way up the thread behind her in a thin white ribbon, flickering, until Risa called it back.

Ilka went up the eldest's thread. Hand over hand. Along Dinraal's strand. To the anchor. And then on, along the eldest's thread alone, to where it touches the moon.

And knelt down on the moon.

And put a strand of Hearth's silver into the ground. One Asha had given her. Very thin. Very bright.

I felt it go in.

So did the eldest queen.

Oh, she said.

Through the ground. Through the clearing. Into all of us.

Oh. I can hear.

"What?" said Okafor. Very quietly. "What can you hear?"

The eldest queen was quiet for a long time.

Footsteps, she said. On the moon. Small ones. Something lives there that I did not know about. It has six legs and it eats the moss on the rocks, and it is very frightened of Ilka. A pause. And past it. Past the moon. Very far. In the dark.

Nobody said anything.

Breathing, said the eldest queen. The same as the one at the wall hears. A long pause. I have never heard it before. I have only ever felt them when they ate one of my children.

I can hear them coming now.

Ilka came back down the thread at dawn.

Very slowly. Very tired. With Hana breathing for her the whole way. She came down onto the grass in the clearing and took off Keir's suit and sat down in the leaves Isolde had grown on it.

And laughed.

"I listened," she said. "From the moon. For an hour. Before I came down." She looked at her hands. "And for the first time since I started, I wasn't the only one listening."

I went to the clearing alone, the last night.

Before we went home through the arch. When everyone was asleep on the warm ground, in heaps, the way my children sleep. Hearth and Scarecrow together. The First Weapon across Dinraal's feet. The queens in their great ring with their heads down.

I lay down on the grass.

Flat. On my back. With my hands on the ground. The way I lay in the wheat under Father's scarecrow, the first year, when the Scarecrow queen came and lay down beside me and didn't ask anything.

And looked up at the threads.

Lucas who asks, said the eldest queen.

"Yes."

Isolde asked me something today. While you were watching the thread. A pause. She asked what this world is called.

"What did you say?"

I said it has never been called anything. My children called it home before they had words. And then they went away, to other worlds, and grew to fit them, and forgot. The ground was very warm. She said every world should have a name. So that the children can find it again.

"Did she give it one?"

She asked me first. The eldest queen almost laughed. Like you. You all ask first. A pause. I said I would like her to choose.

"What did she choose?"

Root, said the eldest queen.

I lay on the grass for a long time.

"It's a good name," I said.

Yes, said the eldest queen. The silver grows out of it. The way a tree grows out of a root. The threads above me shimmered. And a root is the part you do not see. That holds everything up. In the dark. Where it is quiet.

A long pause.

And nobody stands all night, she said. Your mother said.

"No."

Then I would like to sleep now, said the eldest queen. Just a little. The ground under my hands went very slowly cooler. For the first time in a very long time.

Will someone watch?

I didn't answer.

I didn't need to. Behind me, at the edge of the clearing, Kyria was standing. In her mended iron. With her first blade. Facing out. And beside her, Teshka. And beside them, very small, very straight, Mother.

And in the arch, the Overseer. With the dog.

And up the thread, a very long way up, at the anchor, a light. Tiamat's. She'd gone back up at midnight. She said a station needs someone on it from the first night.

"Yes," I said. "Someone's watching."

The ground under my hands went quiet.

Not cold. Not empty. Quiet. The way the house goes quiet at night when our queen stops humming under it and the floors are still warm.

The eldest queen was asleep.

For the first time in millions of years.

In the morning, when we went to the arch to go home, I looked up the thread one last time.

The young grey had climbed it.

Not far. A hundred yards, maybe. Up Dinraal's strand, from the stand of trees at the edge of the clearing, very slowly, in the night, without anyone touching it. Dark, with the faint blue sheen of Odra's stone at its edges. Feeling its way up the silver the way a vine feels its way up a wall.

Aster was standing at the foot of it with her lights very low.

"It asked," she said. Before I could say anything. "In the night. While everyone slept. It asked this unit if it was allowed."

"What did you tell it?"

Aster's lights came up. Just a little.

"This unit said: ask her," said Aster. "And it did. And she said yes. In her sleep."

Days 4513–4515. The Watch.

We didn't go home. Rhiannon put bread on the grass for the eldest. Dinraal: Bahamut said the silver was singing; they wrote him down as unfit; he was the only one listening. The circle in the clearing. Okafor: at all cost. The eldest: not my children's. Mother: that's what mothers say; you don't listen, you do it better. One: Crane: take up the road; every piece of queen brought home is a stone out of it; Konrad counted the towers for the first time; Tally will count them with her. Two: the Wall, Tiamat's station on the eldest's threads, grey and black stone and a second silver skin; Andraste named it. Three: Hearth's listening silver on every rock at the edge, tied to her; she's listened alone long enough. Four: Kyria's arches, permanent, sung open, a smith at every one; the General: four minutes. Five: she's been singing them false roads for millions of years; we'll be waiting where they arrive. Konrad read it all and signed. Mother named it: the Watch. Nobody stands all night. The Overseer wrote one mark. Dinraal climbed a strand up her thread to the first anchor of the Wall. The General's first drill: six minutes, then four. Ilka put the first ear on the moon; the eldest heard breathing coming, for the first time not by being eaten. Isolde named the world Root. Someone watched, and the eldest slept.