Chapter 439 Unfinished

Ithel had been counting.

Nobody asked him to. He just did. Every morning since Sedge, at breakfast, with a spoon in his hand, very quietly, under his breath. Konrad noticed first. Konrad notices anyone counting.

"What's the number?" said Konrad, one morning in the spring.

"Two hundred," said Ithel. "Since they took them. Abbe said forty days before we came. So two hundred, today." He put the spoon down. "In the ledger. For children. That's how long the making takes. Children take longest. That's why they go in last."

The kitchen went quiet.

Nothing came out that day. Or the next. Tiamat watched the dark place past the edge of everything with every station she has, and Ilka listened, and nothing came.

A hundred days went past. Ithel kept counting. Okafor stopped holding her breath at breakfast. The grandmothers kept fetching. Saska's middle got round enough that Brock started walking half a step behind her everywhere, as if that would help, and she started stepping out of his way before he got there, just to annoy him.

Then, on the two hundred and eighty-fourth morning, Ithel didn't say the number.

He put the spoon down and looked at Dinraal.

"Something's coming out," said Ithel.

Ilka came down off the Meridian that afternoon. She didn't stand in the doorway. She came straight in.

"Ships," said Ilka. "Out of the middle. Coming out."

Tiamat put it on the wall in the map room, through the silver, from her stations.

I'll put it the way it looked. A dark place on Garnet's map, past the edge of everything we know, where Ithel's points all lean toward without touching. And out of it, along every one of the lines Ithel's points lean on, small grey marks. Moving outward.

Hundreds. Then more.

"Grey ships," said Tiamat. "The same as before. Not Hands. Not Ashen." A pause. "Full."

"Of what?"

Tiamat didn't answer.

She didn't have to.

They didn't come toward us.

That was the thing nobody expected. Okafor had the Standing on the north field within the hour. Risa had the wing up. Kyria had every cutter on Hyrran at the forges. The Hedge went quiet on every world, the way it does, every grandmother and child going down into the hollows, every smith at every arch with a hammer.

And the grey ships went past.

All of them. Out, along Ithel's lines, past the edge of the Watch. Toward the dark where the body of the Hungry had gone after Caddoc. Where the four hundred calls had been.

Toward the Hungry.

"They're going to fight it," said Okafor.

At the long table that night, with everyone there. She'd been standing at the wall all day watching the grey marks go out. Her voice was very tired.

"That's what they made them for," said Konrad. "The Ashen showed them how. Stock into Sorn that can fight the Hungry. Almost even." He had the sheet. He didn't look at it. "They've made a whole army of almost even. And they're sending it at the thing that's been eating them."

"Good," said Andraste. Flatly.

Nobody else said anything.

"It's not good," said Mother. From the stove. Without turning round. "Those are Abbe's granddaughters. In those ships."

We watched it for nine days.

I'll put down what Tiamat saw, because nobody had ever seen it before.

The grey ships reached the body of the Hungry past the edge of the Watch on the second day. Not a few. All of them. They went into it the way the Hungry go into a world, without stopping, without caring what happened to them, and the new ones came out of the ships into the swarm and fought.

They didn't win. Tiamat says nobody could win against the body. But they didn't lose either. For the first time in a thousand years of her watching, something stood in front of the Hungry and the Hungry didn't simply eat it. They pushed it back. A little. Out past the four hundred calls. Away from Caddoc. Away from the Hedge.

The Ashen showed them how. Almost even.

And they died.

That was the part Dory felt.

Not on the wall. On the net. Every evening at the long table, with her hand flat on the wood.

"They're dying," she said. On the fifth evening. Very quietly. "Lots of them. All the time."

"Grey ones," said Andraste.

"No," said Dory. "That's the thing. When they die, the grey goes off." She swallowed. "Right at the end. I can feel it. The voice lets go of them. And for a moment, just before—"

She stopped.

"They're people," said Dory. "For a moment. At the end. They remember who they were. And then they're gone."

Nobody said anything.

Mother came round the table and put her hand on Dory's hair, and kept it there.

Abbe came up from the rain valley on the seventh day.

On the train. On her own. Ninety-five now, and her eyes clear, walking without a stick. She came into the kitchen and sat down at the long table across from Dory without asking, the way Mother sits down beside people.

"She says," said Dot. "Her granddaughters."

Dory looked at her.

"Two," said Dot. "Sisters. Twenty-two and nineteen. Taken off the platform on Sedge with everyone. She says she'd like to know." A pause. "She says if they're in the ships. If they're fighting. If they're—"

Abbe didn't let Dot finish. She said something short.

"She says if they've died yet," said Dot.

Dory looked at her for a long time.

"I can't tell," she said. "Not from here. There are too many, and they're all under the voice, and the voice is very loud." Her hand was flat on the table. "I'm sorry."

Abbe nodded. As if she'd expected it.

Then she held out her cup. Empty. To Mother.

Mother poured.

Abbe got up, and walked out onto the porch, and poured it out on the boards. Slowly. All of it.

Then she came back in and held out the cup again, and Mother poured the second, and Abbe drank it at the long table, and didn't say anything else, and caught the evening train home.

Tiamat's ears could hear the edges. Ilka's could hear further. And Dory could feel it. She sat at the long table every evening with her hand flat on the wood and the net up her arm, very faint, reaching out past the Watch, toward where the grey ships had gone.

She couldn't go in. The hand's still over the middle. But the ships weren't in the middle any more. They were out. Where the net could reach.

On the third evening she took her hand off the table very suddenly.

"They're people," said Dory.

I looked at her.

"The new ones," said Dory. She was white. "Right underneath. Not deep, like Ossel was. Not like the ones on the spokes on One. Just under." She swallowed. "They're grey all over and they're fighting and the houses are in them, the voice, telling them where to go. But underneath, they're all still there. Nearly at the top."

"How?" said Halloway.

Dory shook her head.

"Because they were too fast," said Ithel.

Everyone looked at him.

He was in the map room doorway in his nightshirt again. He'd come down. He does.

"Two hundred days," said Ithel. "For children. That's in the ledger. For the old way." He looked at the floor. "When they take a tenth, they've got time. Two hundred days for every child. All the way down. Until there's nobody left underneath." He looked up. "But they took everyone. Two thousand eight hundred and six worlds. All at once. If they'd done it the old way it would have taken longer than the Hungry would wait." He swallowed. "So they did a bit of everyone. Not all of anyone."

Konrad put the sheet down.

"They didn't finish," said Konrad. Very quietly.

"No," said Ithel. "They didn't finish."

Halloway was the one who said it out loud. Because Halloway says things out loud.

"Then they can be turned back," she said. "Easily. Like Teel. Like the walker. Not like Ossel." She looked at me. "If their own people find them. And do the thing their people do."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"Their own people," said Okafor, "are all in the ships."

"No," said Mother.

She turned round from the stove.

"Not all," said Mother. "The old ones aren't in the ships. The Sorn left them behind. Not worth the time." She put the pot down. "Fourteen million of them are on Avalon. On the end-room steps. Pouring the first cup."

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Okafor went to the slate.

She didn't write anything. She stood in front of it with the chalk, looking at what was there. At IN, and GRANDMOTHERS FETCH GRANDMOTHERS, and Dory: the net. When she says. And Dory's line under it, in her own hand. And STANDING, and Sixteen.

"Not yet," said Okafor. To nobody. "Not yet."

She put the chalk down without writing anything at all.

We kept fetching.

That's the other thing. The grey ships had gone out past the Watch to fight the Hungry, and the Sorn hadn't come near us, and there were still old ones dying on two thousand, eight hundred and six worlds, and Mother said she wasn't stopping because of ships she couldn't see.

So the grandmothers kept going through.

Three hundred and sixty worlds. Three hundred and seventy. Fifteen million. Sixteen.

Then, on the nine hundredth arch, which was the three hundred and eighty-first world, the Sorn came back to one of them.

I was there. I'll write it the way it went.

It was a world of terraced hills. Green. Very old. Farms cut into the hillsides in steps, all the way up, the way Isca's Hill is, but bigger, and with nobody on the farms now. The young had been taken off every terrace. The old had stayed on the top ones, in the stone houses, with the doors open, because Dory said they kept the doors open on that world when someone was missing so they'd know the way back.

Ithel called it the steps. The ledger called it three hundred and eighty-one. The people there call themselves the Marrah.

It was the nine hundredth arch. Konrad had it on the sheet, Ingrid had it on hers. Wren said it at the dawn count, the way she says the number, and then said give or take, and then said nine hundred again, because she wanted to.

Mother went through first, that morning. With Abbe, who's gone through almost every arch since Sedge and says she isn't stopping either. And Eska. And Ingrid, because it was Ingrid's turn. And Holt, who Crane had moved out on the board at dawn and would move back at noon.

Then me. Then Dory, holding the arch. Then forty of the Standing, Kasrai, with Varra.

The Marrah were on the top terraces when we came. Eleven thousand. Very old, very slow, small and brown and soft-voiced, with long grey hair worn loose, every one of them, because Eska says on that world you only tie your hair up when you're going to work, and there was no work any more.

They saw Mother coming up the terraces with the teapot and came out of their open doors to meet her.

We'd done this nine hundred times. It's always the same.

Holt went along the terrace knocking on every open door, very politely, to see if there was anyone inside who couldn't walk out. There were thirty. He carried two himself, which Crane wasn't going to hear about.

Eska made her sound. Where are you, where are you. The Marrah heard it from the terraces below and came up, very slowly, on the old stone steps, the ones who'd gone down to sit on the empty farms where their grandchildren had worked. Mother sits down. Somebody old sits down beside her. And then everyone does.

Mother was sitting on the top terrace with an old woman called Tey, pouring, when the sky went dark.

Not the black. Not the Hungry.

Grey ships.

Three of them. Coming down out of the sky over the terraced hills, very fast, very low, out of nowhere. Tiamat hadn't seen them. Ilka hadn't. They'd come round the dark side of the world, from the direction of the Watch's edge, where they'd been fighting the body for nine days.

Coming back.

They landed in the valley below the terraces. All three. And the ramps came down.

And the new ones walked out.

I'd seen grey ones before. On One. On Hyrran. On the spokes. Tall, identical, the same all over, walking in step.

These weren't the same.

They were grey. They were tall. They walked in step. But Dory was right: they were nearly at the top. You could see it, if you knew how to look. Every one walked a little differently. Leaned a little differently. Held its hands a little differently, the way you hold your hands when you were someone, very recently, and have been told you aren't.

Hundreds. Coming up the terraces from the valley.

Toward the old.

The houses' voice came out of every one of them at once.

I've heard it before. On One. In the cave on Hyrran. At the foot of the first ramp. I hope I never hear it again and I know I will.

World-breaker.

All of them. At once. In one voice that wasn't any of theirs.

The stock is ours.

All of it.

Then they started up the terraces.

And Varra's Kasrai went down to meet them.

I'm not going to write all of it. It was very fast and very bad.

The Kasrai held the third terrace from the top. Forty of them, in a line, with Varra in front. Holdfast wasn't there; Andraste was on Hyrran. I went into the ground under the terraces and tried to hold them, the way I held the roof on Caddoc, and the new ones came up over the terraces anyway, because there were hundreds and I was one, and the ground on that world is very old and doesn't like being asked.

They fought like the Hungry fights. Without stopping. Without caring what happened to them. The way the houses tell them to.

Ingrid hushed them. The whole slope. Everything went still.

Then she lit them.

And they got up.

That's the thing about grey ones. I'd forgotten. Holdfast cuts them so they stay down. Nothing else does, much.

They got up. And kept coming.

They reached the top terrace.

Not all of them. The Kasrai held most. But some got past, round the ends of the line, up the steps at the side, the way water gets round a stone.

And the old Marrah were on the top terrace. Eleven thousand of them, round Mother, round Abbe and Eska and Tey. In front of their open doors.

The houses' voice said something.

I didn't hear what. I felt it. Every new one on the terrace turned at once toward the old.

They killed nine before anyone could stop them.

I want to write that. The Sorn are what they are. The houses made those grey ones out of the grandchildren of the people on that terrace, two hundred days ago, and sent them back to the world they were taken from, and the first thing they did when they got there was kill nine old people in front of their open doors.

Nine. Before Mother got her hands up.

It would have been more.

Holt was at the far end of the top terrace when they came over the edge. In the doorway of the last house. With the thirty who couldn't walk behind him, inside, on the floor, where he'd carried them to wait for the Kasrai to bring litters.

He didn't have the stick. He'd stopped bringing it. He had a spade, an old one, from beside the door, because it was the nearest thing.

Three of the new ones came along the terrace toward that door.

Holt stood in it.

He's sixty-one. He's not a fighter; he never was. He's a captain. He held the gate on Hyrran with Brock and Saska, but he had Brock and Saska. He stood in the door of a stone house on a world of terraces with a spade and thirty old people behind him who couldn't stand, and three grey ones coming, and nobody else.

He didn't move.

I heard him. Through the ground. His heart was very steady.

"First in," said Holt. To the grey ones. Quite conversationally. "Last out. You'll have to come through me, lads. And I'm told I'm going to be sixty-one for a while."

The first of them reached him.

And stopped.

Not because of Holt. Because behind Holt, on the floor of the house, one of the thirty, an old man with no legs that worked, had started to sing. Very low. Very cracked. A Marrah song, Dot says, that they sing on the terraces when the work's done and it's time to come up. All thirty of them took it up. On the floor. In the dark of the house. Behind Holt's back.

The grey one stood in front of Holt with its hands half up. Listening. Swaying, very slightly.

It didn't come through.

That was when Mother lifted the terrace. The house went up with the rest, with Holt in the door and the thirty singing behind him. And the grey one fell away below them, still listening, with its hands half up.

Holt told me afterward he'd thought for a moment the whole world had dropped out from under him, and then realised it hadn't, it had gone up, and he was standing in a doorway in the sky.

"I've had worse days," said Holt.

Crane put him back on the board at four minutes past noon. He says the four minutes were the longest of his life.

Then Mother lifted the top terrace.

All of it. The whole step of hill, with the old Marrah on it, and the houses, and the open doors. Straight up. Into the air. Out of reach. A field of stone the size of a town, hanging over the terraced hills, with eleven thousand old people on it holding onto each other and Abbe and Eska and Tey holding onto Mother.

The new ones on the terrace fell off it.

Mother held it there.

She's not young. Even if she feels younger than she is. She held it anyway.

That's when Tey got off it.

I didn't see her go. Nobody did. Mother had both hands up and her eyes shut, holding a whole terrace in the sky. Dory had the arch. I was in the ground.

Tey just walked to the edge of the lifted terrace, where the stone was broken off and the sky went down to the valley, and sat down on the edge. With her legs over. And looked down.

At the grey ones on the terrace below. Who'd fallen. Who were getting up.

And she said something.

Not loudly. Dot gave it to me afterward. She said Tey said it the way you say something across a field to someone working at the far end of it, at dusk, to call them in.

A name.

One of the grey ones on the terrace below stopped getting up.

He was on his hands and knees on the stone. Grey all over. Tall. The houses' voice was in him; I could feel it, telling him to stand, to climb, to finish.

He stayed where he was.

And lifted his head.

And looked up at the old woman sitting on the edge of the floating terrace, a long way above him, with her long grey hair loose.

Tey said it again.

The same name. Across the field. At dusk.

And she put her hand up to her own hair. And took a piece of it, at the side, and began to twist it. Slowly. Round her finger. Into a knot. The way, Dot told me afterward, the Marrah tie up their hair when they're going to work in the morning. The way a grandmother on that world ties up a grandchild's hair before they go down to the terraces.

The grey one on his hands and knees put his hand up to his own head.

He had no hair. The making took it.

He put his hand up anyway. To the side. Where it would have been.

And twisted.

"Lucas," said Halloway.

She was beside Dory at the arch. She'd seen.

I couldn't reach him. I was holding the ground under three terraces and the Kasrai were still fighting on the slope and Ingrid was in the air.

Dory reached him.

She didn't let go of the arch. She handed it to the smith on the other side, the way she did on Caddoc, and scattered. Across the terraces. And came back together beside him on the stone, on her knees, with her hand flat on his back the way she's seen me do it.

And asked.

The way I ask. The way she asks the ground, now, with me.

I felt it go. From under three terraces of old stone, very far down.

Dory asked his heart to find the knot. And his heart did.

It was so easy. Easier than any of them. Because he was right there. Just under. Not finished.

The grey went off him on the stone of the third terrace like rain off a roof.

He's nineteen. Small, brown, soft-voiced, like his grandmother. He'll have hair again, Halloway says; it grows. He knelt on the stone with his hand still up at the side of his head where the knot would have been, and looked up at the old woman on the edge of the floating terrace, and said a word.

Dot says it's the one Marrah children say in the morning when their grandmother's done their hair. It means ready.

The houses' voice stopped.

All at once. On every grey one on the slope.

They stood very still. Every one. On every terrace. The Kasrai stopped with their blades up.

Then the voice came back. Out of all of them. Very low.

Stock, said the voice. Return.

They went.

All of them. Back down the terraces. Fast. In step. Into the three grey ships in the valley, and up the ramps, and the ramps closed.

The ships went up.

They didn't look back. Grey ones don't.

But Dory says one of them, at the top of the ramp of the last ship, before it closed, put its hand up to the side of its head.

Mother put the terrace down.

Very slowly. Back where it had been. Not a stone out of place. Then she sat down on it, with the old Marrah all round her, and didn't get up for a long time.

Abbe poured. Out of Mother's own pot. Into Mother's own cup. And held it out. The second cup. Not the first.

Mother drank it.

We brought them all home that day. Ten thousand, nine hundred and ninety-one. And Tey's grandson.

And nine we didn't. We brought them too. The Marrah wanted them buried on Avalon, near their families, not on the terraces where nobody young would ever come to tend them. Kwame Osei dug for them at the end of the street in the city where the Marrah went. Very slowly and very well.

Varra lost six. She tied the knots on the red glass that night, in front of the arch, with her teeth.

Ingrid didn't come down off the arch for a long time.

She stood at the top of it on the red glass after everyone was through, in the dusk, with her hands at her sides. Konrad came down the hill without stopping at the bend and stood at the bottom and looked up at her.

"They got up," said Ingrid. Not to him. "I lit them and they got up."

"I heard."

"I've lit everything I ever lit and it stayed down," said Ingrid. "Three hundred handlers at the ford. Every one." She looked at her hands. "And they got up. And walked past me. And nine people—"

She stopped.

Konrad didn't say anything. He held up his hand. Not to help her down. Just held it up, open, at the bottom of the arch, the way he did at the Kesh ford with the slate in the other hand, a very long time ago, before any of the rest of it.

Ingrid looked at it.

Then she came down.

"Tey called him in," said Konrad, when she was beside him. "With her hair. You didn't need to light that one." He took her hand. "You held the slope long enough for her to get to the edge."

Ingrid didn't say anything.

But she counted the ten thousand, nine hundred and ninety-one out loud, walking up the hill. All of it. Before the nine.

Tey's grandson didn't let go of her hand all the way through the arch. Not on the red glass. Not on the train to the city where the Marrah were going. Not at the end room Kwame and I made them, on a slope, in steps, with the doors open.

He sat on the step outside it with her that evening. Her hands in his hair, where there wasn't any yet. Twisting nothing into a knot, very slowly, over and over.

Ready.

Okafor was waiting at the bottom of the arch when we came through.

She'd heard all of it. From Dory, on the net. From Dot. From Ingrid's voice through the silver, very level, the way Ingrid sounds when she's been in the air too long.

She didn't say anything about the nine.

She looked at Tey's grandson. Nineteen, small, brown, with no hair yet, holding his grandmother's hand on the red glass. Looking up at the sky.

"Just under," said Okafor.

"Just under," said Dory.

Okafor went up the hill. To the kitchen. To the slate.

She didn't stand in front of it this time. She picked up the chalk and wrote.

Under IN. Under GRANDMOTHERS FETCH GRANDMOTHERS.

In capitals.

GRANDMOTHERS CALL THEM HOME.

Then she turned round and looked at Mother, who'd come in behind her with the teapot. Very tired. Very straight.

"Dot," said Okafor. "How many of the fourteen million know a name?"

Mother put the teapot down.

"All of them," said Mother.

They came to the long table the next morning.

Not Okafor's people. Not the Standing. The old.

Word had gone round Avalon overnight, the way word goes: by train, by end-room step, by the queens singing under everything, by fourteen million old people who'd been sitting on steps in forty cities waiting for something to be for. A grandmother on a world of terraces called her grandson in at dusk and he put his hand up to where his hair had been.

By dawn there was a line at the bottom of the hill.

Not for the Standing. Their line was on the north field, where it always is.

This one went up the road from the red glass to the house on the rise. Old. All of them. From the moss world and the desert and the fort hills and Sedge. Ennet and Marrah and walkers and sea people and furred ones and tall ones from the river towers, and the old Caddi, and Ouse with her grandson beside her. Walking sticks and blankets and cups.

Merrit was at the front of it. She'd come down every stair of the Hill and got on the first train.

She knocked on the kitchen door.

Mother opened it.

"She says," said Dot, "they've each come to give a name."

Konrad took them.

He set up at the long table with a fresh sheet and his good pen and sat there all day. Ingrid beside him with another sheet, because one wasn't going to be enough. Then Genny, with her notebook. Then Garnet with her board. By noon Callum and Rowan were bringing more sheets up from the map room by the armful.

One name each. From every old person in the line. The name of a child or a grandchild taken in. And under it, the thing their people do. The knot. The pouring. The leaning toward a river. The sound across water. The step with the catch in the hind left.

By dusk the line still went to the red glass.

"How many?" said Okafor. At the end of the day. Standing over Konrad's shoulder.

Konrad didn't look up.

"Forty-one thousand names," he said. "Today." He moved his pen to the next line. "There are fourteen million in the end rooms, Maris. And they've all got one."

I sat on the porch that night with Dory.

She'd done it. Not me. She'd turned one back on her own, on the stone, with her hand on his back, the way I do, and it had been the easiest one of all.

She didn't say anything for a long time.

"They're going to send more," she said.

"Yes."

"Hundreds of ships," said Dory. "Thousands. Full. Every one of them just under." She looked at her hands. "And every one of them belongs to someone on an end-room step."

"Yes."

"The houses know now," said Dory. "That we can. That it's easy." She looked out at the dark. "They said return. They took them back so they wouldn't hear any more names."

I didn't say anything.

"They'll finish them," said Dory. "Won't they. Now they know. They'll take them back in and finish them, so there's nobody underneath."

I didn't know.

I still don't. Konrad says if the houses could finish them fast they'd have done it the first time. Halloway says the making takes as long as it takes, and the houses are in a hurry because the Hungry are eating them. Okafor says it doesn't matter. Okafor says whatever they do, we'll be there.

But Dory's right. They know.

Mother came out at midnight and sat on the step.

She said the names. The way she has every night since I was small. Father's first, always. Then everyone's. All the ones she's ever said, and all the new ones, and Ferrin's.

And at the end, after Ferrin, she said nine more.

The nine on the top terrace. The Marrah. Tey told her their names on the red glass. Mother said all nine. One at a time.

Then she poured the first cup out on the boards.

And then she said one more name. Very quietly.

Not one of ours. Not one of the nine.

Tey's grandson's. The one Tey called across the field at dusk.

"So the houses know," said Mother, "that somebody's saying it."

Days 5572–5668. Unfinished.

Ithel counted two hundred days and nothing came; on the two hundred and eighty-fourth, something did. Grey ships out of the middle, full, going past us toward the body of the Hungry. Konrad: an army of almost even. Mother: those are Abbe's granddaughters. They push the body back, and when they die the grey goes off at the very end. Dory: they're people, just under. Ithel: they took everyone at once; they had to be fast; they didn't finish. Halloway: then they can be turned back. Mother: the old aren't in the ships; fourteen million are on Avalon. Okafor: not yet. We kept fetching. The three hundred and eighty-first world, the Marrah, terraces and open doors: three grey ships came back. World-breaker. The stock is ours. They got up after Ingrid lit them. They killed nine before Mother lifted the whole top terrace into the sky; Holt held a door with a spade while thirty who couldn't walk sang behind him. Tey sat on the edge and called her grandson in at dusk and knotted her hair; he put his hand to his head where his hair would have been. Dory asked his heart. Nineteen. Ready. The houses: stock, return. Okafor: GRANDMOTHERS CALL THEM HOME. How many know a name? All of them. By morning the old were in a line up the hill; Konrad took forty-one thousand names in a day. Dory: they know now. Mother said the nine, and then his name, so the houses know somebody's saying it.