Chapter 436 The First Cup

Dory found them on a wet morning, which seems right now.

She'd taken the second one out on the net every day since the walker. Every morning, on the red glass, beside Mother. She'd watch him take the cup and hold it until it was cold and pour it out, slowly, all of it, onto the ground. And then she'd carry the shape of that out on the net, through the whole billion, and past the edge of Avalon, as far as it would go, looking for anyone else who stood like that. Who poured like that.

Fifty-one mornings.

On the fifty-second, at breakfast, she put her cup down so hard it cracked.

"Sorry," she said to Mother.

Mother looked at the crack. Then at Dory.

"Where?" said Mother.

Dory didn't know where. That was the first thing.

"Far," she said. "Past the Watch. Past Ostry. Further than I've ever had the net." She had her hand flat on the table, the way she does when she's holding something very thin. "There's someone. Pouring. Right now. It's morning there too. They've got a cup, and they're holding it, and they're tipping it out onto the ground." She shut her eyes. "Very slowly. All of it. For somebody who isn't there."

"One person?"

"Lots," said Dory. "Hundreds. All over. All doing it at once." She opened her eyes. "It's what they do in the mornings. All of them. The first cup."

Ithel knew.

He came down in his nightshirt, though it was morning, because Dinraal had brought him over on the first train for breakfast and he'd fallen asleep on the porch couch. He stood at the end of the long table and listened to Dory, very seriously.

Then he held out his hand. Palm up.

Dory looked at it. And put her hand in it. And let him feel what she was feeling, through the net, the way she let Inga once.

Ithel stood very still.

"Wet," he said. "Reeds. Higher than me. Grey-green. It rains every afternoon." He opened his eyes. "They pour."

"You've been there?"

"In the box," said Ithel. "Once. They took me to open the tower." He looked at the floor. "I don't know what they call it. The ledger called it eleven hundred and four."

Okafor was in the doorway by then. She'd heard the cup crack from the map room.

"Eleven hundred and four," she said. "Of Ithel's points."

"Yes."

"Is it still in a line?"

Dory didn't answer straight away. She shut her eyes again. I could feel the net go out from her, very thin, very far.

"No," she said.

Then, quieter:

"There aren't any lines."

I want to write what we thought, before we went. So it's clear we didn't know.

We thought the Sorn had pulled back the ships. That's what Ilka heard and Tiamat saw. The ships, the Hands, the Ashen. In, toward the middle. We thought the worlds were still under the towers, still in their lines, just with nobody watching them from orbit for a while.

Ithel had said the lines were still there. Two months ago.

Okafor went to the map room and looked at eleven hundred and four for a long time. Then she went to the next one. And the next.

"Ithel," she said. At bedtime. When he came in to stand under the points the way he does. "The lines. Are they still there?"

Ithel put his hand out under eleven hundred and four. Then under the one next to it.

He went very quiet.

He went along the whole row. Then the next. Okafor stood behind him and didn't say anything.

"The worlds are there," said Ithel, in the end. Very small. "The towers are there. The people are there."

"And the lines?"

Ithel looked up at her.

"The lines are all old," he said.

We went on the third day.

Not many of us. Okafor said so. This is a look, not a fight. She'd said that before, the day before the sealed arch on Hyrran, and she said it again on the red glass, with the chalk in her hand, to the people she'd chosen.

Dory, because only Dory could find it.

Risa, because she's at Dory's back. That's the rule.

Mother, with the teapot. Because Dory asked her. Because, Dory said, if they were going to a world where people poured out the first cup for someone who wasn't there, she wanted somebody with her who knew what to do with a cup.

Andraste, with Holdfast. Varra and twenty Kasrai. Halloway.

Tavvan, because he'd sat beside the second one on the red glass every day for months and knew his breathing now the way he knows every child he ever swept round.

Me. Under the arch, holding the ground.

And Holt.

Okafor hadn't chosen Holt.

He was standing on the red glass when we got there, in his coat, with the stick he doesn't need, and his old cap, and the look on his face he gets.

"No," said Okafor.

"Maris," said Holt.

"It's a look."

"I know what it is," said Holt. "I was there when you said it before the sealed arch, and I was there when it wasn't a look by the second hour." He leaned on the stick he doesn't need. "I closed the ramps. I'm never going to be anywhere but first again. I told you that on One."

Okafor looked at him for a while.

"You're sixty-one, Ezra."

"Yes," said Holt. "And there's a world on the other side of that arch where all the lines are old." He looked at her. "Somebody old should go first."

Okafor didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she stepped back.

Kyria cut to the net, the way she did on Ostry. Dory stood in front of the arch on the red glass with her arm out and her net up it, bright, and shut her eyes, and reached. Further than she'd ever reached. Halloway had her hand on Dory's wrist and was counting under her breath before the arch had even started to open.

It took a long time.

Then it opened.

On the other side: rain. And reeds.

Holt went through first.

He went through slowly, with his stick, and stood in the rain on the other side and looked round. Then he turned back to the arch and nodded once, the way he used to on the wall at Scarecrow, years ago, when the first wave was coming in.

Then the rest of us.

Sedge.

That's what they call it. We didn't know that yet. Eleven hundred and four, the ledger said. Sedge, the old woman said, later. A wet world. Grey-green. Reeds higher than Andraste, in every direction, with water between them, and paths of planks laid over the water, and the rain coming down very steady and very soft, the way it does in Suri's valley.

And the tower.

You could see it over the reeds. Sorn. Black. Tall. The same as every tower on every tithe world. We'd come through on a plank path not far from it.

Holt stood looking at it with the rain running off his cap.

"No ships," he said.

There weren't. Nothing over the tower. Nothing in the sky. Nothing in orbit, Risa said; she went up to look, very high, very fast, and came down shaking the water off. Nothing in the reeds.

"Nobody at the tower either," said Andraste. She had Holdfast half out. It wasn't humming. "No grey ones. Not near."

Varra said something.

"She says," said Dot. "Smoke."

Not fire. Cooking. From the other side of the reeds, past the tower. A lot of small fires. A town.

We walked toward it on the planks. Holt in front. Nobody stopped us.

They were in the square.

Not a square, really. A wide platform of planks, built out over the water, with houses round it on stilts. Reed houses. Woven. Very neat. And on the platform, round small fires under little roofs, in the rain, with their cups—

The old.

Only the old.

I want to write it the way it was. Not more.

Hundreds of them. Slender, grey-green like the reeds, with long hands and very large, very quiet eyes. Sitting round the fires in twos and threes, in the morning, with cups. And every one of them old. White round the eyes. Bent. Slow. A few very old indeed, wrapped in woven blankets, being held up by the ones who were only old.

No children.

No one young at all.

They saw us.

Holt first, coming out of the reeds onto the planks with his stick. Then the Kasrai. Then Andraste with Holdfast. Then me.

They didn't run. They didn't get up.

They looked at us. Very calmly. The way you look at weather.

And then an old woman near the front, very bent, wrapped in a blanket, with a cup in her hands, said something.

"She says," said Dot. "You're too late."

Holt stopped.

"She says the Sorn came," said Dot. "Forty days ago. In the big ships. All of them at once. Not for the tithe. Not the way they used to come, a few at a time, for the lines." A pause. "She says they took everyone."

"Everyone?" said Holt.

"Everyone under fifty," said Dot. "Of their years. She says it's about the same as ours." A pause. "Every child. Every mother. Every father. Every one in the lines, and every one not in the lines. They put collars on all of them on the platform and walked them to the tower. And then up. Into the ships."

Dory had stopped walking.

"She says they left the old," said Dot. "Because the old take too long to make into anything. She says the grey ones said so. In the houses' voice. On the platform." Dot's voice went very small. "She says they said: not worth the time."

Nobody said anything.

The rain came down on the planks.

Mother walked past me.

Past Holt. Past the Kasrai. Out across the platform in the rain with the teapot, to the old woman in the blanket at the front.

And sat down beside her.

On the wet planks. Not asking. The way she sat down beside the grey ones on the red glass the first morning, and every morning after.

She took the lid off the teapot. And poured. Into the old woman's cup, which was empty.

The old woman looked at the cup.

Then at Mother.

Then she lifted the cup, very slowly, in both hands. And tipped it.

Onto the planks. Between them. All of it. Slowly. The tea ran across the wood and down between the boards into the water.

She held the empty cup out.

Mother filled it again.

This time the old woman drank.

"She says," said Dot. Very quietly. "The first cup is for whoever isn't at the fire. She says that's every one of them, now." A pause. "She says thank you for the second."

Her name is Abbe.

She's the oldest on the platform. She was the oldest on Sedge before the Sorn came forty days ago, and she still is, because nobody younger than fifty is left to be anything. She sat with Mother in the rain for most of the morning, and told her.

I'll put it short.

The Sorn had come to Sedge for the tithe for longer than anyone remembered. A few at a time. The lines. Children taken from the lines into the tower, and into ships, and gone. Every family on Sedge had lost someone. Every family poured the first cup.

And then forty days ago they came in every ship at once. With grey ones. More grey ones than anyone on Sedge had ever seen. And they took everyone.

Not to the tower. Up. Into the ships. And the ships went.

"Where?" said Holt.

Abbe looked at him for a long time.

"She says she asked," said Dot. "The grey one at the front. She asked it where her granddaughters were going." A pause. "She says it said: in."

In.

Dory sat down on the planks. Just where she was.

Risa sat down with her. Didn't say anything. Put her hand on Dory's back.

I knew what Dory was doing. I could feel the net go. Not out across Sedge. Up. Off the world. Out, in every direction, the way she'd reached for the four hundred calls. Looking for the ones who'd been taken. For anyone who poured.

She sat there with her eyes shut a long time.

Then she opened them.

"I can't find them," she said.

"They've got collars on," said Halloway. Very quietly. Her hand on Dory's wrist. "The collars stop the silver."

"I know," said Dory. "It's not that." She swallowed. "It's the direction. In. Toward the middle." She looked at me. "The net goes out. All the way out. Further every week. But it won't go in."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," said Dory. "It's like trying to hear through a door. I get to the door. I can't get past it."

She looked at her hands.

"There's something there," she said. "Very big. Bigger than the Hungry. And it's very quiet."

The houses.

I didn't say it. Nobody did. But every one of us on the platform thought it. I felt them think it.

The houses' voice. That came into the long table on the day Abena was nine days old and said the terms. That speaks through grey ones. That stopped speaking to the Overseer two months ago.

The middle.

Then Tavvan said, "Ask her about the forty years."

He'd been standing at the edge of the platform the whole time. In Holt's old coat, which Holt gave him on One and he's never given back. Looking at the old ones round the fires.

"The second one," said Tavvan. "On the red glass. Ferrin named him forty years ago. In the hall." He looked at Abbe. "He'd have been very small. Ferrin would have known which world he came from. I don't. But he pours."

Mother said it to Abbe.

And then Mother said the word. Ferrin's word. The one she's said every morning to the second one, on the red glass, for months.

Abbe didn't know it.

It wasn't an Ennet word. That's what they call themselves, Dot said. The Ennet. It was a sweeper's word, from a hall on a world Abbe had never seen.

But she turned round. Very slowly, in her blanket. And said something, very sharply, to the fires behind her.

An old man stood up.

Slowly. With a stick, like Holt's. Very bent. Grey-green going white. He came across the wet planks to where Abbe and Mother were sitting, and stood there, and looked at Mother, and at the teapot, and at Tavvan.

Abbe said something to him.

"She's telling him," said Dot. "About the one on the red glass. Who takes the cup. Who holds it till it's cold." A pause. "Who pours it out."

The old man didn't say anything for a while.

Then he held out his hand. To Tavvan. Palm down. Long fingers.

Tavvan looked at it.

Then he put his own hand under it. Palm up. The way the sweepers did in the hall, he told me afterward, when one of them came on shift and needed to know who'd been breathing how.

And breathed.

Not loudly. Just slowly, very carefully, in front of the old man. In a rhythm. The second one's rhythm. The one Tavvan had learned on the red glass, sitting beside him all those months, the way he learned every child's in the hall.

The old man's hand closed round Tavvan's.

Very hard.

"He says," said Dot.

And stopped. And started again.

"He says that's his son."

His name is Aske.

The old man. Not the son. The son was taken out of the lines on Sedge when he was four, and went into a ship, and into the hall on One, where Ferrin swept round him and gave him a word because nobody else had. Aske had poured the first cup for him every morning for forty years.

He'd poured it that morning. Before we came. Dory had felt him do it.

He came back with us.

Not just him.

I'll write it the way Holt said it, on the platform, in the rain, to Okafor, through the arch. Because Holt said it and I want it in his words.

"Maris," said Holt. "There's four thousand of them. Every one over fifty. No one to bring them water when they can't walk to the edge any more. No one to carry the blankets. No one to mend the planks." He looked round at the fires. "The Sorn left them to die because it'd take too long to make them into anything."

Okafor didn't say anything on the other side.

"I'm sixty-one," said Holt. "I think it'd take a long time to make me into anything too." He leaned on the stick he doesn't need. "I'd like to bring them home. All of them. First in. Last out."

"Yes," said Okafor.

Holt didn't wait for the arch.

While Okafor was still talking to Kyria on the other side about how many arches, he put his stick against a post and went to the nearest fire, where an old man was trying to lift a water jar off the edge of the platform and couldn't. Holt lifted it for him. Then the next one. Then he found where the planks had rotted at the far end of the platform, where nobody young had been to mend them for forty days, and asked Abbe through Dot where they kept the new ones.

She told him. He went and got them.

He was fixing planks in the rain when the first arch opened. Andraste told him to stop. He said he'd stop when the planks were done, because the Kasrai were going to be carrying people across them, and you don't carry people across a rotten board.

Abbe watched him from her fire. She said something to Mother.

"She says," said Dot, "he's old."

"He's sixty-one," said Mother.

"She says that's young," said Dot. "She says she's ninety-four. She says he works like someone who's late for something."

Mother looked at Holt for a while. On his knees on the wet planks, with a hammer Odra made him, and his cap pushed back.

"He is," said Mother. "He's been late for something for fifty years. He keeps trying to get there early instead."

Abbe thought about that.

Then she got up. Slowly. In her blanket. And walked across the platform to where Holt was kneeling, and stood over him in the rain until he looked up.

She held out a cup. Empty.

Holt looked at it. He'd seen Mother's. He knew.

He took it. And held it. And tipped it. Nothing came out; it was already empty. He did it anyway, very carefully, over the new plank.

Abbe nodded. And went back to her fire.

Holt didn't say anything about it afterward. I asked Mother who he'd poured it for. Mother said she didn't know, and she wasn't going to ask, and neither was I.

It took all day. They're slow. The planks are wet. Some of them couldn't walk at all, and the Kasrai carried them, very carefully, the way Varra said they carry the old off a wall. Mother walked beside every one of them that would let her and held the cup. Abbe came last, on Holt's arm.

Holt came after her.

Then me.

On the red glass, at dusk, the second one was standing where he always stands.

He'd been there all day. Swaying, the way he does. With Ossel's mother on her stool beside him, because Mother was away.

He saw the arch open. He saw the Kasrai come through with the old ones in their arms. Slender. Grey-green. Going white.

He stopped swaying.

Aske walked out to him.

Across the red glass. Slowly, with his stick. In the cold, after the rain on Sedge. He stopped in front of his son, who is forty-four, and taller than him by a long way, and grey all over, and doesn't know his own name.

Aske had a cup.

Mother had given it to him on the platform. One of hers. He'd held it all the way across.

He held it out.

Mother poured.

And Aske did the thing. In front of his son. Lifted the cup in both hands, very slowly. And tipped it. Onto the red glass between them. All of it.

For whoever isn't at the fire.

Then he held out the empty cup.

The second one looked at it.

He looked at it for a long time. And then he reached out, very slowly, and took it.

Mother poured again.

And the second one lifted it in both hands.

And didn't pour it out.

He held it. Out. Toward his father. The way Abbe held it out to Mother.

Thank you for the second.

Halloway looked at me.

I put my hand on his back.

I don't know how long. Not long. His father had done it. His father, and every first cup for forty years, and every morning on Sedge when the whole platform poured at once. All I did was help his heart find the pouring and remember where it came from.

The grey went off him.

He's tall. Taller than any of the Ennet. Tavvan says the making does that, and it doesn't undo. But he's grey-green now, like the reeds, going white round the eyes, though he's only forty-four. With long hands. And very large, very quiet eyes.

He looked down at his father.

He said something. Very hoarse.

Dot didn't translate it. She didn't need to.

They sat down on the red glass together. In the dusk. Aske and his son, and Mother, and the teapot. And nobody poured anything out. They just drank.

Ossel's mother went and got another stool.

It was for Tavvan. He didn't sit on it. He stood at the edge of the glass in Holt's coat and watched the two of them for a while, and then he turned round and looked at the third one, still swaying, a little way off, alone now.

He went and stood beside him instead.

"Twenty years," Tavvan said, to nobody. "Ferrin named you twenty years ago. In her hall. I never swept round you." He was quiet. "I'm sorry I don't know which way you're walking."

The third one swayed. Very small.

Tavvan stayed beside him till it was dark.

His name is Wend.

I mean his Ennet name. Aske gave it to him on the red glass, the second night, because the one his mother gave him when he was born was lost with her, years ago, in the lines. Wend. It's a kind of reed. The kind that bends all the way to the water in a storm and comes back up.

Ferrin's word, he keeps too. Everyone keeps Ferrin's words.

The Ennet went to the rain valley.

Nobody decided it. Suri decided it. She came down from the valley on the first train the morning after, with her mother, because she'd heard there was a people on the red glass who'd come from somewhere it rained every afternoon, and she wanted to see.

She walked up to Abbe in the long ward, where Halloway had put the oldest, and held out her wrist.

The water on it went off, very slowly, across the air. Onto Abbe's.

Abbe looked at it for a long time. Then she laughed. A small dry laugh, like reeds. The first anyone had heard from the Ennet.

Suri's people made room at the bottom end of the valley, where it opens toward the sea and the rain is softest. I went up with Hana and made the ground there wet and low, with channels for water, the way Sedge is. Risa came and stood at the mouth of the valley and asked the sea for a little more.

I couldn't grow reeds. Nobody could. But Genny asked the gardener's queen on Bahamut's roof, and the last gardener beside her, and the last gardener sent a cutting of something down with Mother on the train. It was green and very small and smelled of rain. The Ennet planted it at the edge of the first channel.

It's knee-high now. Abbe says it isn't a reed. Abbe says it'll do.

Every morning, on the planks Holt laid over the first channel, four thousand old Ennet pour out the first cup. All at once. And then drink the second.

Suri's people stand on the slope above them and watch, with the water on their wrists. They don't pour anything. They pass it, to the thirstiest. But they stand very still while the Ennet pour, every morning, as if it were theirs too.

So that's two of the three.

The third still sways on the red glass. Very small. As if he doesn't know what he's walking toward. Mother still says his word every morning. Dory still listens.

Dory tried to go in that night.

I didn't know. She didn't tell anyone. She lay down on the outside of the heap with her hand out and Pebble across her feet, and when the house was asleep she put the net out. Not out. In. Toward the middle. Toward the door she'd felt on Sedge, that she couldn't get past.

Trevor woke. Of course he did. He came and got me on the porch.

She was lying very still with her eyes open and her net so bright up both arms it lit the children's room. Not checking. Pushing. Like someone leaning on a door with their whole weight.

I knelt down beside her. I didn't touch her.

"Dory."

She didn't answer.

"Dory. There you are."

That's her word. Not mine. I've never said it to her. I said it.

She blinked.

The net went down her arms, slowly, and out.

She looked at me. She was very white.

"It's not a door," she said. "I thought it was a door. It isn't." She swallowed. "It's someone's hand. Over the middle. Holding it shut."

"Whose?"

"I don't know," said Dory. "It's very old. It's older than the Sorn." She was quiet. "It knew I was pushing. It didn't push back. It just—held."

She didn't say anything else. She turned over and put her arm round Trevor, who'd lain down beside her without asking, and closed her eyes.

I sat on the floor of the children's room until morning.

I didn't tell her not to do it again. She's twelve and a half and my equal. I told her I'd like to be there next time. She said yes.

But that isn't why I'm writing tonight.

Okafor went back to the map room after the arch closed and stood under Ithel's points.

Ithel was there. In his nightshirt. He'd heard. Everyone hears everything.

"All of them," said Okafor. Not a question.

Ithel put his hand out under one point. Then another.

"All the lines are old," he said. "Every world. Every one I've been to." He looked up at her. "Not just Sedge. Not just a few." His voice went very small. "Two thousand eight hundred and six."

Okafor stood very still.

I came in behind her. So did Dory, and Risa. Konrad came in from the step. Tiamat's voice came in through the silver from New Hearth, very level, because Dinraal had told her.

"Every stock world," said Okafor. "Every one of them. Everyone under fifty."

Nobody said anything.

"That's not a tithe," said Konrad. Very quietly.

He had the sheet. He looked down at it. At Avalon across the top, and Home, and All.

"It's the whole stock," said Konrad. "At once." He looked up. "They're not taking a tenth any more. They're taking all of it. Into the middle. Into the making."

The Ashen showed the Sorn how to make stock into Sorn that can fight the Hungry. Almost even.

Two thousand, eight hundred and six worlds.

Everyone under fifty.

"How many?" said Okafor.

Nobody answered. Not even Wren. Wren wasn't there. And I don't think even Wren could have counted it.

But Ithel could guess. He's stood under those points every night for a year. He knows how big every world was when he went to it, in his box, to open the tower.

He said a number.

I won't write it.

Okafor went to the slate.

She stood in front of it with the chalk for a long time. Under WHERE?

Then she rubbed out WHERE?

She'd got the answer.

And wrote, under it, very small, the word Abbe said on the platform. That the grey one said to her. That nobody in the room could stop thinking about.

IN.

The Overseer was in the doorway.

He'd come in behind Konrad without anyone noticing, with the dog. He stood there looking at the slate. At IN.

Okafor turned round.

"You know," she said. Not angry. Okafor's never angry with him. "Don't you. Where the middle is."

The Overseer looked at the dog.

"I know there is one," he said. "Every Sorn knows that. The way you know there's a sun." He scratched the dog's ear. "I've never been. Nobody I knew had ever been. The houses live there. That's all anyone was told. The ships go out from it, and the stock goes in to it, and the voice comes out of it, and nobody who goes in to it as stock ever comes out as anything but grey."

"And the Sorn? Your people?"

"We go out," said the Overseer. "We're born out. We serve out. We die out." He was quiet. "I asked once. When I was young. On my first front. What was in the middle." He looked at the slate. "The officer said: the reason."

Nobody said anything.

"I thought he meant the houses," said the Overseer. "I've thought so all my life." He looked at Dory. "But the child says there's a hand over it. Older than us."

"Yes," said Dory.

The Overseer looked at her for a while.

"Then I don't think the houses are the reason," he said. "I think the houses are what it's holding."

Nobody slept much that night.

Okafor sat in the map room in the chair with the chalk in her hand. Tiamat stayed on the silver from New Hearth, very quiet, measuring something. Kyria went home through the arch to Hyrran and stood on the ridge, Andraste says, all night, looking at the sky in the direction Ithel pointed.

Varra tied no knots. There was nothing to tie them for yet.

Mother poured the tea that night on the porch.

She poured the first cup out. On the boards. Slowly, all of it.

Nobody asked her what for. We knew.

Then she poured the second. And gave it to me.

Days 5327–5384. The First Cup.

Dory found someone pouring, far past Ostry; she cracked a cup. Ithel: wet, reeds, they pour; eleven hundred and four; I opened their tower in the box. The lines are all old. Holt went first: somebody old should. Sedge: rain and reeds and a black tower, no ships. On the platform only the old, the Ennet, four thousand, every one over fifty. Abbe: you're too late. The Sorn came forty days ago in every ship and took everyone younger: not worth the time, the old. Where? In. Dory's net goes out but won't go in; there's something very big and very quiet. Mother sat and poured; Abbe poured the first cup out and drank the second. Tavvan breathed the second one's rhythm into Aske's hand: that's his son. Holt: first in, last out. On the red glass the son took the cup and didn't pour it; he held it out. His name is Wend, a reed that bends and comes back up. Two of three. The Ennet went to the rain valley; Suri gave Abbe her water. Dory pushed the net in: it isn't a door, it's someone's hand, very old, holding it shut. Ithel: two thousand eight hundred and six. Konrad: it's the whole stock, into the making. Okafor rubbed out WHERE? and wrote IN. The Overseer: I think the houses are what it's holding.