Chapter 427 Collars

Okafor put a collar on the long table.

That was how she told us. No speech. She came into the map room at dusk on the twenty-third day after the gardener went to New Hearth, with the chalk in one pocket and something wrapped in a cloth in the other, and sat down at the end of the table and unwrapped it and put it down in the middle of everything.

Black. Close. A small dark stone set in the front.

Nobody moved.

Crane's hand went to his throat. To the pale line. He didn't seem to know it had.

"It's empty," said Okafor.

She turned it over so we could see the stone. Dull. No light in it. No piece of queen.

"Teel made it," she said. "With Ossel, and Odra, and forty smiths from Kiln. Out of iron off the Kiln carts that came down the mountain on the grey ones." She put her finger on the stone. "Crane drew it. Every part. From memory."

Crane didn't say anything.

"Kiln has been making the houses' iron for longer than anyone can say," said Okafor. "Hulls. Rails. Housings." She looked at the collar. "Collars. They know exactly how the houses make them. They've been made to."

"Why," said Mother. From the end of the table. Very quietly.

Okafor didn't look away from her.

"Because we can't go in at the hall," she said. "Lucas brought a thousand feet of ice down on the far end of it, and the room isn't under the hall anyway. It's under the building. The only way down to it is through the building." She put her hand flat on the table beside the collar. "And the only things that go into the building are the stock. In lines. On the spokes."

Nobody said anything.

"In collars," said Okafor.

Mother looked at the collar for a long time.

Then she looked at me.

I'll say the plan once. The way Okafor wrote it on the slate, under The room. Before any more stop. and Kiln.

Walk in with the lines. Down to the room. Open the boxes. Come out the long way.

It took her three hours to explain the rest of it, and Holt and Crane and the Overseer an hour more to argue it, and Asha the whole night afterward to say why it couldn't possibly work. By dawn Asha had stopped saying that.

The lines go into the building at the top. Through doors in the roof, Tavvan said, in the crevasse, the first night. The stock walk up the spokes and climb the outside of the building on ramps and go in at the top. And inside, the building is the making.

Under the making, the long cold place. Under that, the room.

Ione knew the way down from the room. Not up. She'd only ever been carried one way, between the box and the bow of a ship. But a way down is a way up, Holt said, if you turn round.

And Tavvan knew the way in. Because he'd watched the lines go up the ramps for forty years from the sweepers' pens, and he knew how they walked, and how the grey ones on the ramps watched them, and what the grey ones looked for.

"Collars," said Tavvan. Through Dot. "And the walk. And the breath."

"The breath?" said Okafor.

Tavvan looked at her for a long time.

"Stock breathe tired," he said.

Halloway said no.

She said it at once and very loudly, which she never does, and then took her spectacles off and put them on the table and said it again quietly, which was worse.

"Not Lucas," she said. "He brought one back and nearly died. He walks into that building, with the note coming out of every wall and every grey one on One looking for him, he won't come out."

"He has to," said Okafor. "Nobody else can open the boxes."

"Then the boxes come to him," said Halloway.

"They're bolted into a room under a building on a world forty miles from where we can make a frame," said Okafor. "They don't come to anyone."

Halloway looked at me.

I didn't say anything. I didn't need to. She'd known me since the Program floors.

She put her spectacles back on.

"Then Hana goes," she said. "And if his nose so much as twitches, she brings him out. I don't care what's in the boxes."

Hana, at the end of the table, didn't say anything either. She'd been planning to go since the moment the collar touched the wood.

Nine went.

I'll name them, because Okafor did, at the dawn count, standing on Konrad's stool, which Konrad let her do for the first time ever.

Holt. Because first in.

Crane. Because he drew the collar and knows every door.

Tavvan. Because he knows the walk.

Ossel. Teel. Because they asked, and because Kiln is how the collars got made and they said Kiln walks in with them.

Andraste. Because a First Blade goes where her blade goes.

Dinraal. Because somebody has to carry her blade, and make the frame.

Hana. Because Halloway.

Lucas.

Andraste's blade was the problem.

Holdfast hums when grey ones are near. Loud. That's what Vessa taught it. On Kiln the grey ones within a mile turned toward the sound like flowers toward a window. Walk into the building on One with Holdfast, and every grey one in the making would know where she was before she'd climbed the ramp.

"Then leave it," said Okafor.

Andraste looked at her.

She didn't say anything. She just looked. The way Kyria looks at someone who's said something very stupid at the long table. The way Odra looks at a bad weld.

Okafor didn't say it again.

Dinraal solved it.

He held out his silver hand. And Andraste, after a long moment, put Holdfast in it.

And his silver went round it.

Not armour. Not a sheath. Into it, very fine, the way it went into the walls of Ithel's room, the way it went into the ship on the slip at Halcro. All through the blade, round the small door in the middle of it that doesn't shut, round the light. Until Holdfast was inside Dinraal's silver the way a seed is inside its fruit.

It hummed.

We could all hear it. Very faint. Muffled. Like the queens under the garden heard through a floor.

"It'll still hear them," said Dinraal. In our language. "It'll still tell her where." He folded his silver arm across his chest with Holdfast inside it. "It just won't tell them."

Andraste put her hand flat on his arm. Over the blade. For a long time.

"If you drop it," she said, "I'll know."

"I won't drop it," said Dinraal.

Ione wanted to go.

She said so at breakfast. Very calmly. The way she says everything. She said she was the only one who'd been in the room and the only one who knew the way down from it and the only one who could hear the boxes, and so obviously she should go.

Ingrid put her bread down.

Nobody said anything.

Then Mother, at the end of the table, said: "No, love."

Ione looked at her.

"You're seven," said Mother. "And you were in a box."

"That's why," said Ione.

"That's why not," said Mother.

Ione didn't argue.

She went very quiet, the way she goes. She ate her bread. She went out to the porch with Konrad and sat beside him on the bench and didn't say anything for most of the morning.

And at noon she came to the map room. On her own. And stood in the doorway, beside the Overseer and its dog, the way Ithel stood the night he held his hand up under the silver point.

"I can stay here," she said. To Okafor. "And still go."

Okafor looked at her.

"When I sleep," said Ione, "I can hear the room. Through the door the four made. And they can hear me." She touched her throat. "If I'm asleep when Lucas goes down, I'll hear him get there. And I can tell Dot which way. And Dot can tell him."

Nobody said anything.

"That's not a key," said Ione. Very calmly. Before anyone could. "Nobody's asking me. I'm telling."

She looked at Mother, at the end of the long table.

"And I'll be in my bed," said Ione. "With the lamp on. At the top of the stairs. With Ingrid in the chair."

Mother didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she said: "And Konrad on the step."

"And Konrad on the step," said Ione.

"And out?" said Holt. At the long table. The last night. "You said come out the long way. From under a building, with two hundred children."

"Dinraal makes a frame in the room," said Okafor. "The way he did in the hall. Kyria cuts toward it from the courtyard. The queens sing it." She put the chalk down. "Straight from the room to the red glass. Nobody walks back out through the building."

"And if the frame won't hold? Under all that black?"

Okafor didn't answer at once.

"Then the four would know," said Ione.

From the doorway. In her nightdress. Where she'd been standing for some time, it turned out, beside the dog.

Everyone looked at her.

"They'd know if the frame fell," said Ione. "Through me. They'd wake up." She looked at Mother. "I'm not asking them. I'm saying they'd know."

Mother looked at her for a long time.

"Then if they wake up," said Mother, "somebody tells Okafor. And Okafor does something else." She stood. "And nobody asks them for anything. Bed."

Ione went to bed.

I went to the children's room after.

To the heap. To the middle of it, where the four sleep with Ithel among them now. And sat down on the rug and put my hand out over them, not touching, and felt for it.

The thread. Out of the children's room. The long way. Thinner than anything. Toward something cold and long and very far down.

It was still there. Every night since Ione screamed. Not open. Not anything you could put a hand through.

I didn't say anything to them. They're a year old. Mother's right.

But I sat there until very late with my hand out, and before I went up, I put it down. Just once. Flat. On Corin's back, where his fist was closed. On Thessaly's hair. On Elin's cold cheek and Goldie's warm hand.

I'll check them, I said. Not out loud. The ones you hear. I'll go and check them for you.

Corin's fist opened.

In his sleep. All the way. The first time I've ever seen it open.

Ione was in her bed when we went. At dawn. With the lamp on, at the top of the stairs. With Ingrid in the chair by the window, and Konrad on the step outside the door in his coat, with the sheets on his knee and his pen in his hand.

She wasn't asleep yet.

"I'll sleep when you get there," she said. To me. From the bed. "It's a long way. I'll know."

I didn't ask how.

Konrad looked up from the step as I went past.

He didn't say anything. He turned the first sheet over in his hands. To the back. To the bottom. To And the room, underlined twice, and the column under it, 212, 212, 212, every morning.

And showed me.

Then he put it back on his knee. And uncapped the pen.

And waited.

Andraste gave Vessa to Dory on the red glass.

She's done it before. For Hyrran, for Kiln. Dory's carried her through every arch since. But this time Andraste didn't hand her over and turn away. She knelt down on the red glass in her old iron, without her blade, because Dinraal had it, and held Vessa up in front of her face.

Vessa looked at her.

She's very small still. She doesn't do much. She sleeps and wakes and looks at things and turns, once in a while, toward something nobody else can hear.

She turned then. Not toward anything. Toward Dinraal's folded silver arm, where Holdfast was humming inside it, faint as a floor away.

And frowned.

"I know," said Andraste. "You taught it. It's still listening. It just can't shout." She put her forehead against her daughter's. "Neither can I, where I'm going. I have to breathe tired."

Vessa looked at her.

"I'll be very bad at it," said Andraste. "Hana's going to do it for me."

Then she gave her to Dory.

And Dory, who has carried a First Blade's daughter through more doors than most soldiers, held her against her chest with one hand and put the other out, flat, and checked Andraste. On the arm. Once.

There you are.

Andraste stood up very fast and went to the courtyard arch without looking back.

Risa was at the arch on the interceptor field.

Not flying. The wing was on the field, all forty, in their line. She was standing in front of Dory's arch with her hands at her sides and Kesh in the basket at her feet. Waiting for me to come past.

"I'll hold the end," she said.

"I know."

"Not like Isca," said Risa. "Not like One. I'm not going to stand here for two days with my hands out wondering." She looked at the basket. "This time I'm going to know. Ione's going to tell Dot, and Dot's going to tell me. Every step."

"Every step," I said.

"And when you get to the room," said Risa, "and Dinraal makes the frame, and Kyria's cutters start, I'm going to be the first thing on the other side of it." She folded her arms. "Not Maura. Not Halloway. Me."

"Maura's going to be very upset."

"Maura can be second," said Risa.

Kesh, in the basket, was frowning at the courtyard arch. At the place where we were all going to go through.

Her cloud was grey. Small. Turning.

Risa looked down at her.

"She doesn't like it," said Risa. "She doesn't like doors she can't see the other side of."

"You said that before."

"It's still true," said Risa. She bent down and put her hand on Kesh's head. Under the cloud. The way Ingrid does, and Ione. "Two hundred and twelve," she said to her daughter. Very quietly. "Your aunt counts them every morning. Your father's going to go and get them. That's all."

Kesh frowned up at her.

And then at me.

And the cloud, very slowly, stopped turning.

Not white. Not still. But waiting.

We put the collars on in the crevasse.

I'm going to skip the long way. I've written it. It was the same as the first time and it was different, because there were nine of us instead of two, and Dinraal's silver remembered all of us, every one, all the way, the way it remembered me. This is Holt. This is a man who closed the ramps once. This is Tavvan. This is the halfway place where he rests. This is Hana, breathing.

We came back together in the crevasse forty miles from the building, on the ice where Tavvan once sat down to rest at the start of the sweepers' tunnel. Grey sky very high above. The front not moving in it any more. Pulled back. Every grey ship in a ring round the building, Asha said, very far off.

It was very cold.

Dinraal made the frame first. Before anything else. A thin silver arch up the blue-black walls, the way he made it the first time, holding its own shape. Not open. Waiting. So that whatever happened, there'd be a door to come back to.

Then Teel took the collars out of her bag.

Nine of them. Black. Close. Empty stones.

She'd made them all. With Ossel at the bellows and Odra watching every stroke and Crane standing at the end of the anvil with his old drawings, saying thinner there and the clasp goes the other way and, once, very quietly, that's exactly right, that's how they feel.

She handed them out.

Holt took his and looked at it for a long time and didn't say anything. Crane didn't take his. He held out his hand and then didn't close it. Teel put the collar in his palm, and he stood there with it in the cold, looking at it.

Then he put it on.

I didn't see his face. He turned away to do it, toward the ice wall. I saw his shoulders. And Holt's hand going onto one of them, and staying there.

When he turned back round, his face had stopped moving. The way it was on the apron, a long time ago, coming down the ramp in front of the Overseer.

Then it started again. Slowly. Like a clock someone's wound.

"It's not mine," said Crane. "It's empty." He put his fingers on the stone at his throat. "It's just iron. Kiln iron. That a girl made who was grey a month ago." He breathed out. "It's just iron."

"Yes," said Holt.

"I'm going to say that," said Crane. "All the way in. In my head. It's just iron."

"Say it out loud if you need to," said Holt. "Nobody listens to stock."

Then mine.

Teel held it out. And I took it. And it was very light, lighter than the ones I've turned to sand on a thousand throats. And I put it round my neck, and closed the clasp the way Crane showed us, the other way.

And felt every atom of it.

And didn't ask anything.

It was the hardest thing I've ever done. Not turning it to sand. Every atom of it was right there, under my fingers, at my throat. Iron. Kiln iron. Saying, very quietly, the way all iron says it: I'm here, I'll hold, I'll be whatever you want me to be.

And I left it.

Hana was watching me. She didn't say anything. She put her own collar on without looking at it, the way she'd put on a scarf.

And took my hand.

Tavvan taught us the walk.

In the crevasse, on the ice. For an hour. Very patiently. He's had forty years of watching it.

Heads down. Not all the way. Enough that you're looking at the heels of whoever is in front of you. Shoulders forward. Arms not swinging, because swinging is a thing you do when you're going somewhere you want to go. Feet flat, because on the spokes the ice is worn smooth by a million feet and if you lift them you'll slip, and the grey ones notice who slips.

And the breath.

"Stock breathe tired," said Tavvan. Again. "Always. Even when they've slept. The note does it." He put his long hand on his own chest. "Slow. Shallow. Out longer than in. As if every breath is one you're not sure you'll be allowed."

We tried.

Holt did it at once. He didn't need teaching. Tavvan looked at him for a long time and then nodded, very slowly, and didn't say anything, and Holt didn't either.

Andraste couldn't.

She tried for half the hour. First Blades don't breathe tired; Kyria says they're taught not to before they can walk. Her shoulders kept coming up. Her head kept lifting. She'd get it for three breaths and then her body would remember what it was.

In the end Hana went and stood in front of her. Very close. And put both hands flat on Andraste's chest, over the iron. And breathed. Slowly. Out longer than in.

And Andraste's breath matched it.

"I'll do it for you," said Hana. Very quietly. "All the way in. Just let me."

Andraste looked down at her for a long time.

Then she closed her eyes. And let her.

We walked out of the crevasse at dusk. Onto the plain.

Nine of us in collars, with our heads down, breathing tired.

Toward the nearest spoke.

The spokes are wider than they look from forty miles off.

A road of light. Laid on the ice. A hundred feet across, maybe more, going in a straight line from the edge of the world to the foot of the building, and glowing very faintly from underneath, grey-white, the way the hall was lit. Worn smooth down the middle. Tavvan was right about lifting your feet.

And on it, the line.

I'd seen them from the top of the crevasse. Shapes, moving very slowly. All kinds.

Up close it was different.

Tall people, taller than the grey ones, with thin grey-blue limbs and faces like masks, walking with their eyes shut. Small ones, furred, the height of my waist, in tight groups, holding on to each other's fur. Something with six legs and a long low back, very slow, with three small ones riding on top of it, hanging on. Winged ones, their wings bound flat down their backs with grey cord. A woman of a people I don't have a name for, with skin like dark water and a child walking beside her holding her hand, both of them in collars.

All of them walking the same way. Heads down. Breathing tired.

And none of them looking at us.

That was the worst of it, and the thing that let us in. Nine strangers stepped onto the spoke out of the dusk and into the line, and not one of the stock around us turned a head. They'd stopped turning heads a long time ago.

We walked for nine hours.

I'll write a few things. Not all of it.

The six-legged one in front of us stumbled, near the third hour. One of its small riders slipped off the long low back and fell onto the spoke and didn't get up, and the six-legged one stopped and turned its head, very slowly, down toward it.

A grey one came.

Out of the dusk. From the side of the spoke, where they stand, every hundred yards, very still, watching. It came across the line toward the six-legged one and the small one on the ice.

I felt Holt go very still, beside me. I felt Andraste's breath change under Hana's hands. I felt Dinraal's arm, with Holdfast inside it, humming.

And Tavvan stepped out of the line.

He didn't hurry. He bent down beside the small one on the ice. The way he bent down in the hall, beside every child. And picked it up. In his long hands. And put it back on the six-legged one's back, between the other two, and put their small hands on its fur so they'd hold on.

And stepped back into the line. Head down. Breathing tired.

The grey one stopped.

It stood at the edge of the line for a long time. Looking at the six-legged one. At the three small riders, all holding on now. At Tavvan, back in the line, head down.

Then it went back to the side of the spoke.

"Sweepers do that," said Tavvan. Afterward. Through Dot, very quietly, at the foot of the building. "On One. When one falls. They let sweepers pick them up. It's quicker than stopping the line." He looked at his hands. "I've done it ten thousand times. I never knew why they let me."

The child of the woman with dark-water skin was walking just ahead of Hana.

Small. Ithel's size. With a collar that was too big for her, that Teel saw and went very still at, because a Kiln smith knows when a collar's been made for someone else and put on whoever was nearest. She was walking with her head down the way they all do, holding her mother's hand.

And she was breathing wrong.

Not tired. Worse. Short, and short, and catching, the way children breathe at the end of crying when they've cried so long they've forgotten what it was about.

Hana heard it.

She was walking backward still, in front of Andraste, with both hands on Andraste's chest. Breathing for her. And I saw her hear it. Saw her eyes go past Andraste's shoulder to the child.

She didn't take her hands off Andraste.

She just breathed wider.

I don't know how else to say it. Hana breathes for people. On the long ward, she breathes for the whole of it at night, a hundred beds, without anyone noticing. On Isca she breathed for the fifth terrace in the smoke for hours.

On the spoke she breathed for Andraste, slow and tired and out longer than in, so a First Blade could walk into a building without the grey ones seeing what she was.

And for the child in front of her. At the same time. Slow. Even. Out longer than in.

Until the child stopped catching.

The child's mother felt it.

She didn't turn her head. She didn't stop. But her hand, the one holding the child's, tightened. And her own breath, which had been tired, perfectly tired, the way stock breathe, the way Tavvan taught us, changed.

Just for one breath.

In. Deep. The way you breathe when something you've been carrying for a long time is, for one moment, carried by someone else.

Then tired again.

Hana didn't stop. Not for the rest of the spoke. Not on the ramp. She breathed for both of them, Andraste behind her and the child in front, all the way.

Halloway asked her afterward how she'd done it. Two people, walking, in a collar, under the note, for six hours.

"I didn't do two," said Hana. "I did three. I did Lucas as well." She looked at me. "He was holding his breath every time a grey one looked at him. He didn't notice."

Ossel's breath caught near the sixth hour.

On the eleventh. The way it does. Every eleventh breath, since the forge gate on Hyrran, since Tavvan said his name. In the line on One, walking toward the building where it had been taken away from him once.

It caught. And didn't start again.

Teel was beside him. She didn't look at him. Her head stayed down. But her hand came up, the right one, closed round a hammer that wasn't there.

And came down. Against her own thigh. Very softly.

Three short. One long.

And Ossel's breath started again.

And the building got bigger.

I'm not going to describe it. I described it once, from forty miles off, and that was enough, and it's worse up close. It goes up and up into the grey with no top to it, black, and the ice bends under it, and it hums. The hum gets into your teeth. Into your collar, through the iron, into your throat.

The note.

Not from a piece of queen. From the building itself. From everywhere. As if every wall of it were made of the note.

Crane was saying it. Under his breath. All the way up the last mile of the spoke. I could hear him, in the line in front of me, his head down, his breath tired.

It's just iron. It's just iron. It's just iron.

Near the end, the spokes meet.

All of them. From every direction. Coming in across the ice toward the foot of the building like the spokes of a wheel toward the hub, and where they meet, the lines meet too. Thousands of lines. Millions of stock. All walking into one place, heads down, breathing tired, and merging, without anyone telling them to, into one line at the foot of the first ramp.

I lost sight of the woman with dark-water skin there. In the merging. One moment she was in front of Hana with her child's hand in hers, and the next there were a hundred others between us, tall ones and small ones and ones with bound wings, and she was gone.

Hana didn't stop breathing for the child.

She told me afterward she couldn't see her any more and did it anyway. All the way up the ramp. Wide, the way she does it on the long ward at night, for everyone in reach, not knowing which of them needs it.

"Somebody in that line was," said Hana. "So I did it for all of them."

I don't know how many people walked up the first ramp on One that night breathing a little easier than they had for years, and never knew why.

Hana doesn't either.

She says that's the point. She says nobody ever knew she was doing it on the long ward either, and that's how you can tell it's working.

The ramps start where the spoke ends.

They go up the outside of the building. Long. Very wide. Switchbacking. Black. With the line going up them very slowly, one ramp to the next, higher and higher, toward the doors in the roof that you can't see from the bottom because the roof is in the grey.

And at the foot of the first ramp, standing on either side, two grey ones. Not watching the line. Watching each one in it.

As they passed.

The line went past them one at a time.

The woman with dark-water skin and her child. The small furred ones holding each other. The six-legged one with its riders. Each one walked between the two grey ones at the foot of the ramp, and the grey ones looked at them, and they went up.

Then Holt.

He walked between them with his head down and his breath tired and his collar on, sixty-one, a captain, and the grey ones looked at him the way they'd looked at all the others.

And he went up.

Then Crane.

It's just iron.

Up.

Then Tavvan. Then Ossel and Teel, together, with Teel's hand against her thigh. Then Dinraal, with his silver arm folded across his chest and Holdfast humming inside it so faintly only Andraste and I could hear. Then Andraste, with Hana in front of her, walking backward, very slowly, with both hands on her chest, breathing for her.

The grey ones looked at Hana walking backward.

And then at Andraste's breath, which was tired, perfectly tired, out longer than in.

And let them up.

Then me.

I walked between them.

Head down. Shoulders forward. Feet flat. Breath out longer than in. With the collar on my throat, Kiln iron that a girl made who was grey a month ago, saying I'll hold.

The grey one on the left looked at me.

The way it looked at the others. Down. Then up. At the collar. At the breath. At the walk.

And then it didn't look away.

I kept walking.

Head down. One step. Two. Onto the ramp.

It was still looking.

I could feel it. On the back of my neck. On the collar. Very still. Very patient. The way they wait on walls.

Three steps. Four.

And then, behind me, very quietly, in a voice that wasn't its own, that came out of a grey mouth at the foot of a ramp on One in the cold:

"World-breaker."

Days 4802–4834. Collars.

Okafor put a collar on the long table. Teel made it; Crane drew it from memory. The only way to the room is through the building, and the only things that go into the building are stock. Walk in with the lines. Halloway: then Hana goes. Nine went. Dinraal's silver went into Holdfast so it would hear them and not tell them. Ione: I can stay here and still go; I'll be in my bed with the lamp on. Mother: and Konrad on the step. In the crevasse, Crane put his on facing the ice: it's just iron. I didn't turn mine to sand; the hardest thing I've ever done. Tavvan taught the walk; stock breathe tired. Hana breathed for Andraste. Nine hours up the spoke. Tavvan picked up a fallen child and the grey one let him. Teel struck three short and one long against her thigh. Everyone went up the ramp. The grey one at the foot of it kept looking at me. World-breaker.