Chapter 445 Sister

People started calling Ister our sister in the spring.

I don't know who said it first. Wren says it was a woman on the north field, in the Standing's line, who looked up at the lamp in the east one morning before the dawn count and said there's our sister, then, the way you'd say it about someone coming up the road. And the man next to her said it to the next, and by the end of the week the trains were saying it.

By the summer nobody called it anything else.

It's true, more or less. That's the thing.

There are arches between us now. Not one; nine. Kyria's cutters cut them all in the first year, from the red glass and the town and every big city on the train lines to the gold-lit squares of Ister. You can step from the furred ones' hill to the deepest city in a breath. Aldri children go to Miss Pell's school in the mornings and home to Ister for supper. Our old ones go to Ister to see the sky lit gold and come back saying they've never seen anything like it, and then go again the next week.

The Aldri trade us everything. We trade them what we've got, which isn't much in the way of machines and turns out to be a great deal of everything else. Odra's iron. Hyrrani blades. Bread from the Kiln ovens. Tea. Seeds. Rhiannon's recipes, which Isolde says is the most dangerous export in the history of either world.

And the queens.

The queens sing to Ister now. All of them. Our queen at the garden wall started it, the first week, very softly, and then the others, and then the eldest from Root. Halvane says his people sleep differently. He says they didn't know a world could be sung to. He says the oldest Aldri cried for three days when they understood what the singing was for.

It's for them. That's what it's for.

There was a night in the summer that Wren calls the lamp night, though it doesn't have a proper name yet.

Halvane's idea. He asked Okafor, and Okafor asked Mother, and Mother said why not.

At dusk, on Ister, the Aldri turned their sky off.

All of it. The gold. Every tower. For the first time in a thousand years, Halvane says. So the whole world went dark, and everyone on it went outside and looked up, and for the first time in their lives saw Avalon in their sky. A small bright point, blue-green, very far off.

And on Avalon, at the same moment, every city on the train lines turned on every light the Aldri ever gave us. All of it. Every street. Every end room. Every lamp on every step. The whole of the dark side of the world lit up at once, so that from Ister, Halvane said, it looked like someone had struck a match.

They looked at each other. The two worlds. Across the dark.

Then the Aldri turned their sky back on, very slowly, and our lights went down, and on both worlds a great many people went home and couldn't sleep.

Ilas, Tiri's great-grandmother, who's a hundred and ninety and had never in her life seen the sky over Ister dark, said afterward that she'd thought for a moment the lamp had gone out again. And then she'd seen ours.

"She says," said Dot, "she's never been on the other side of a lamp before."

So, sister. Everyone says it now. The lamp in the east, every night. Our sister.

Halvane says it on the radio, the old band, after Wren's number, every morning. Very quietly. In our language.

And from Ister: good morning.

Root was Tiamat's idea.

She raised it at the long table, in the early summer, with Halvane standing at the end of it. She raised it the way she raises everything, very level, as if she were reading out a measurement.

"The engine," said Tiamat. "Under the deepest city. It moved Ister seven times."

"Yes," said Halvane.

"It could move another world."

Halvane looked at her for a long time.

"It could," he said. "If the world allowed it."

"Root," said Tiamat.

Nobody said anything.

Root's where the eldest is. The first queen. Her silver runs all the way through it, and through its moons, and through the worlds round it. Everything we have, every queen, every one of us with silver in us, came from her singing, a very long time ago. And the Hungry have been looking for her for longer than there have been days. That's why the Watch is there. That's why Tiamat's ears are pushed into the rock of every moon and stone in Root's sky.

"If the body ever finds her," said Tiamat, "the Watch holds as long as it can. And then it doesn't." She looked at Halvane. "I would like her to be able to leave. If it comes to that. Not because I think it will. In case."

"Just in case," said Halvane.

"Just in case," said Tiamat.

So we asked her.

I went. With Dory, and Tiamat, and Halvane, and Genny, because Genny listens to the queens the way nobody else on Avalon does. Through the arch on the north field. Onto the green ground under the threads in the sky.

The eldest was singing. The low new song. The one she's sung toward the middle since Dory asked her about the hand.

She stopped when Halvane came through.

I'd wondered what she'd make of him. The Aldri have no silver. They never had any. They built everything they are with their hands and their machines, for longer than the Sorn have been the Sorn, and none of it ever answered her.

You, said the eldest. Through the ground. Very slowly. I have heard of you. My children sing to your world now.

Halvane didn't answer straight away. He can't hear her, not properly. Genny gave it to him. And he stood on the green ground of Root in his robe, very tall, very old, and then did something I've never seen an Aldri do.

He knelt.

You are not my child, said the eldest.

"No," said Halvane, when Genny told him.

But you have been sung to now, said the eldest. For a year. By my children. A pause. So you are something.

Halvane didn't say anything. His shimmer had gone very bright.

Tiamat asked her. Very formally. The way she asks the stations.

The eldest was quiet for a long time.

I have never left, she said. I was here when I woke. I have been here since. The threads trembled. I do not know what it would be, to be somewhere else.

"You wouldn't have to," said Tiamat. "Unless you chose."

And if I chose?

Halvane said it. Through Genny. Very carefully.

"Then you would close your eyes here," he said, "and open them somewhere safe. With your moons. With your children's ears still in the rock. And everything that is you, still you." He was quiet. "It's what we did. Seven times. We're still ourselves."

The eldest didn't answer for a long time.

Then she said: Yes. In case.

And then, very quietly, to Dory, not to any of us:

You did well to stop knocking, child. It noticed you.

Dory went very still.

It notices very little, said the eldest. It noticed you. That is why I sang toward it. So that it would notice me instead.

Dory didn't say anything about it on the way home. On the red glass, after, she sat down on Mother's step, which Mother let her do, and stayed there a long time with her hands round a cup.

Mother didn't ask.

Dory told her anyway. Late, when the porch was empty.

"She's been singing toward it for me," said Dory. "Since Sedge. So it would look at her, and not at me." She turned the cup round in her hands. "The eldest. The first one. She put herself between it and me, and never said."

Mother didn't say anything for a while.

"That's what grandmothers do, love," she said. "You'd be surprised how often."

"She's not my grandmother."

"She's everyone's grandmother," said Mother. "She said so. All of you with silver in you. Her children." She put her hand on Dory's hair. "That makes her yours. Same as Abena's yours, and Kyria. Same as I'm Tiri's, near enough, the way she sits on my step."

Dory thought about it.

"Then I'll sing back," she said.

"Not toward it," said Mother. Very sharp.

"No," said Dory. "Toward her. So she knows somebody's singing back."

She does. Every night. After the names. Very quietly, on the step, with her hand flat on the boards. Genny says she can hear it going out through the ground to Root, very small, very far, and that the eldest sings a little louder every time it gets there.

The Aldri built the engine into Root over the summer.

Not under a city. Root has no cities. Under the green ground, very deep, where the eldest's silver is thickest, the way her roots go. Halvane's engineers went down with Genny and asked the eldest every morning before they did anything, and every evening Genny asked her if it hurt, and every evening the eldest said no.

And her moons. All of them. And the worlds round her that her silver runs through. A small engine in each. Linked. So that if she ever chose, all of it would go together.

Tiamat stood on the plateau over the deepest one on the last day of the summer, with Halvane beside her, and didn't say anything for a long time.

"It's done," said Halvane.

"I hope we never use it," said Tiamat.

"So do I," said Halvane. "That's what it's for."

Corin and Tiri were on the porch most of that summer, the two of them, the same as every summer since the bird.

I'll write it short. It was the same. It was good.

Tiri broke the bird, twice more, and Corin mended it, twice more, and still didn't ask why. They went to Hyrran every week and Tiri watched him from her rock on the ridge and Kyria let her. They sat on the rail at dusk and watched the lights come on, two notes all the way down our street now, and further, because Corin had gone down the hill one afternoon and taught three more streets.

And every night after the names, Tiri went home through the arch to Ister, walking backward, waving.

And every morning she came back.

Halvane noticed. Everyone had. But Halvane noticed it the way the Aldri notice things, with his little silver box in his head, writing it down.

He came up the hill at the end of the summer and stood at the bottom of the porch steps.

Mother was on her step. With Oona. With the teapot.

"Dorothy," said Halvane.

He's never called her that. Nobody calls her that. Okafor calls her Dot, and the children call her Gran, and everyone else calls her Mother, because I do.

Mother looked at him.

"I would like to ask you something," said Halvane. "And then your son."

He asked about the house.

The house on the rise. Our house. The one the Hyrrani built when Andraste came, with room for everyone: the family, the children, the grandparents, the broods and their queens. The one with the long porch and the long table and the heap in the children's room.

"Tiri comes through the arch every morning," said Halvane. "And goes home every night. Her mother is on the station half the year. Her grandmother is very old and doesn't like the arch." He folded his long hands. "I would like to ask if my people might build a wing. Onto your house. For Tiri, and her mother, and her grandmother. So they could live here."

Mother didn't say anything.

"Not a palace," said Halvane. "Not anything grand. A wing. Rooms. With a door into the courtyard and a door into your kitchen." He was quiet. "It would be the first time any of my people have lived on another world. In eleven thousand years."

I came out onto the porch then. I'd heard. Everyone hears everything.

Halvane looked at me.

"It's a great deal to ask," he said. "I know. It isn't only a house. Everyone on both worlds will know what it means." He looked at the lamp, very low in the east. "An Aldri family, under the Scarecrow's roof. They'll say the sister has moved in."

"Yes," I said.

"Is that a yes," said Halvane, "or a yes, they'll say it?"

I looked at Mother.

Mother poured a cup. And held it out to Halvane, down the steps.

He took it. He poured it out on the boards, slowly, for his nine thousand; he always does. Then she poured the second.

"It's a yes," said Mother. "Tell them to build it next to the kitchen. Her grandmother'll want to be near the stove. They always do."

Then Halvane said the other thing.

I'm going to write it the way it happened. Because it matters, and because Mother would want it down right.

He didn't sit. He stood at the bottom of the steps with the second cup in his long hands and his shimmer very low and steady, which Dot says means an Aldri is being as serious as an Aldri can be.

"On Ister," said Halvane, "when two peoples make a treaty that is meant to last, they seal it with the children."

Mother's hand stopped on the teapot.

"Not now," said Halvane, quickly. "Not for many years. A promise. Between the families. That when the children are grown, if they wish it, they will marry. And the two peoples will be one family, for as long as the children's children live." He looked at me. "It's the oldest custom we have. Older than the engine. We haven't had anyone to make a treaty with in eleven thousand years."

He looked toward the courtyard. Where Corin was doing his forms in the dusk, with Tiri on the step watching, humming.

"I would like to propose it," said Halvane. "For Tiri. And your son."

Nobody said anything.

Mother put the teapot down. Very carefully. On the boards. The way she puts it down when she's going to say something that matters.

I didn't say anything. I looked at her.

"No," said Mother.

Not unkindly. She never is. She said it the way she said it to Okafor once, about Holt going first, and the way she said it to me when I was small and wanted to go out past the ring road at night.

"Not now," said Mother. "Not like that."

Halvane didn't move.

"She's nine," said Mother. "He's six. They're children." She looked toward the courtyard. "They're friends. The best friends either of them has. That's what they are, and that's what they should be let be, for as long as it lasts."

"It's only a promise," said Halvane. Gently. "Only between the families."

"Then it's a promise about them that they didn't make," said Mother. "And I won't have that."

She looked up at him.

"I've seen what happens when people decide what children are for," said Mother. "Before the children are old enough to say. My son was in a Project. There's a room under a building on One with two hundred and thirteen boxes in it. I'm not saying that's what you mean. I know it isn't." She was quiet. "But I'm not deciding anything for my grandson that he can decide for himself. Not anything that big. Not even if it's kind."

Halvane looked at her for a long time.

Then he looked at me.

I could have said yes. I want to write that down. It's my son. It's a treaty with a world that can move worlds and shoot a hole through the Hungry the size of a planet. Okafor would have said yes. Konrad would have, probably, once, when he still signed things at tables.

I looked at Mother.

"She's right," I said. "Wait. Until they're older. Until they can say."

Halvane didn't say anything for a while.

Then he bowed. Not a kneel. Just his long body bending at the middle, very slowly, the way the tall ones by the river bend toward the water.

"On Ister," he said, "we have never once in eleven thousand years asked the children." He straightened. "Perhaps that's why we built so many machines. We were always deciding things for people before they could say."

He looked at Mother.

"Wait, then," said Halvane. "I'm very old. I can wait."

"Good," said Mother.

That's when Corin came round the corner of the porch.

He'd heard.

Of course he had. He was in the courtyard, at the bottom of the steps, a few yards away, doing his forms, and Tiri was on the courtyard step with her bird, and Halvane isn't quiet when he's being formal, and everyone hears everything in that house.

He came round the corner of the porch with his practice sword in his hand. Very serious. Very red. Six years old, looking ten, with his hand on the back of his neck the way he does when he's thinking.

He stopped at the bottom of the steps beside Halvane, who's four times his height.

He looked up at Mother. Then at me. Then at Halvane.

And said, quite loudly:

"I'm going to marry Tiri. When I'm grown up."

Nobody said anything.

Halvane looked down at him. Very far down.

Mother didn't move.

Tiri, round the corner on the courtyard step, made a sound like a bird that's been surprised. Her shimmer went so bright I could see it lighting the courtyard wall from the porch.

"Are you, love?" said Mother. In the end. Very quietly.

"Yes," said Corin. He hadn't stopped being red. "When I'm grown up. Not now." He looked at Halvane. "I heard. About the treaty. You don't need one." He frowned. "I'll just ask her. When I'm big. Like Dad asked Mum. And Mum and Mum and Mum and Mum."

I think that was the moment Halvane decided to love my son. I'm fairly sure. His face did something I'd never seen an Aldri face do.

He laughed.

Out loud. On the porch steps. A very tall, very old man in a robe, who learned our language from a number on the radio, laughing so hard he had to put his hand on the rail.

Mother didn't laugh. She was smiling, though. The way she smiles at the names.

"Then you'll ask her," said Mother. "When you're grown. And she'll say what she wants to say. And nobody else gets a word in."

"Yes," said Corin.

"Not your father. Not her great-grandfather. Not me."

Corin thought about it.

"You can have a word, Gran," he said. "If you want."

"I don't," said Mother. "That's the point." She held out her arm. "Come here."

He came up the steps and climbed into her lap, sword and all, too big for it, and went still.

Tiri didn't come round the corner.

She stayed on the courtyard step for a long time. Shimmering. Andraste told me afterward; she'd seen it from the roof. She said Tiri sat on the step with the bird on her knee and her face in her hands and shimmered so brightly that half the courtyard was lit.

She said after a while Tiri stopped shimmering quite so much.

And then hummed.

Two notes.

Kyria tied a knot in the ribbon that night.

Mother watched her take it out of the string drawer. She didn't say anything.

"It's not a year," said Mother, when Kyria had tied it.

"No," said Kyria. She put the ribbon back in the drawer. "It's for him saying it himself." She closed the drawer. "On Hyrran that's the one that counts."

They started building the wing in the autumn.

Aldri builders, and Hyrrani, and me, and Dory. Halvane wanted to do it with machines. Mother said the house on the rise has never had a machine put a wall in it and isn't starting now. So the Aldri brought their light and their water and their warm, and the Hyrrani brought stone and timber, and Dory and I asked the ground.

Rory built the doors. Of course he did. One into the courtyard. One into the kitchen. He made them so they shut properly without anyone having to lean on them, because Tiri's great-grandmother is very old and very thin and Rory says an old person shouldn't ever have to lean on a door.

Kwame Osei dug the floors warm.

Tiri's family moved in at the first frost.

Aune, in her flight robe, carrying very little, because the Aldri don't keep much. Tiri, with her bird. And the great-grandmother, who's called Ilas, who's a hundred and ninety in their years and very small for an Aldri and very bent, with the lamp Corin mended in her hands.

She walked into the kitchen through Rory's door and stopped.

At the stove. Where Mother was.

The two of them looked at each other. Ilas, a hundred and ninety, from a world that's moved seven times. Mother, from a dome on Earth, who's never moved anywhere she didn't choose to.

Then Ilas put the lamp on the kitchen windowsill, beside the jar of the moss woman's soil, where it's been ever since.

And Mother poured her a cup.

That night, after the names, Tiri didn't go to the arch.

She didn't know what to do. Mother saw it. Every night for a year and a half she'd gone down the hill to the red glass after goodnight, love and walked backward through the arch to Ister, waving. Now she stood at the top of the porch steps in her nightclothes with her bird and looked down the hill at the arch, lit, a long way off, and then at Rory's new door into the kitchen, three steps behind her.

Corin was in Mother's lap. He looked at Tiri for a while.

Then he said, "You can still wave. From the door."

Tiri looked at him.

She went to Rory's door. And opened it. And stood in it, half in the warm of the new wing and half on the porch.

And walked backward through it. Waving.

Corin waved back from Mother's lap until the door shut.

She's done it every night since. Three steps, backward, waving, through a door that shuts properly without anyone having to lean on it.

Oona decided about Tiri on the second morning.

She was on her step with her teapot when Tiri came out of Rory's kitchen door instead of up the hill from the arch, in her nightclothes, with her bird. Oona looked at her for a long time.

Tiri sat down on the step below. The way she always has.

Oona looked at the step. Then at Tiri. Then she moved up. Not much. Half a step. So there was room on the top step, at the left end, against the post, for someone thin.

Tiri didn't move.

"Love," said Oona. Patting the step.

Tiri came up.

They sit there together now. Two on the top step, one very small and pale gold with her hair standing up, one very tall and thin and shimmering. And Kesh below them. And Mother in the chair, and Corin in her lap.

Ingrid says it looks like the start of a whole new row of grandmothers.

Ilas sits on the bench by the kitchen door in the sun, with a cup, beside Abbe when Abbe comes up from the rain valley, and the two of them, who between them are two hundred and eighty-five years old, watch the step and say nothing at all for whole afternoons.

The numbers kept going up. I'll put them here, because it's a notebook and that's what it's for.

Ilka hears three thousand calls a week. Then four. The Aldri ships reach most of them now. The Standing goes through in the suits and holds whatever needs holding, and Holt goes first, and Crane moves him out on the board and moves him back. We're still late for some. Fewer. Each year, fewer.

I'll write one from the autumn. So it's down.

A world of ice. Not like One; white, with blue in it, and very bright, and great low cities carved into the glaciers. Three hundred thousand people in the cities and the Hungry coming down off the poles from both ends at once, a pincer, very slowly, the way they do on a cold world because the cold makes them slow.

Ilka heard them nine days before. Nine days. A year ago we'd have heard them on the last morning, or not at all.

So the Aldri ships went, and the Standing in the suits, and Holt first, and Dory on the net from the red glass. And they brought them out. All the cities. One at a time, from the poles inward, ahead of the pincer, for nine days.

And on the ninth day, the last city, in the middle of the world, where the two arms met.

The Standing held the walls. The Aldri fighters held the sky. And the last of them went through the arch on the morning of the tenth day with the Hungry on the glacier a mile away, and the last of the Standing through after them, and Varra last of all, walking backward through the arch with her blade out.

Two hundred and ninety-nine thousand, eight hundred and six, Wren said. Of three hundred thousand.

A hundred and ninety-four were in a town on the north glacier that nobody knew was there. Not on any map. Not calling. They'd kept very quiet for a very long time, for the Sorn, and they kept quiet for the Hungry too, and nobody heard them until the arm had gone over.

Dory found them afterward. On the net. She says she knew from the shape of the quiet.

She told Ingrid, and Ingrid wrote them on the sheet. A hundred and ninety-four. In a space at the bottom, with a line round it.

We were nine days early for everyone but them.

Wren said it at the dawn count on the first morning of the winter.

"One billion, two hundred and forty million," said Wren. "Give or take."

A pause.

"Every one of them has a door."

So I build.

With Dory, every day. The new cities in the south past the Tallis coast are nearly done; there are nine of them. Then three more in the west, past New Hearth, on the far side of the mountains, where Enna wants a new line. And the end rooms, always. Every street.

Halvane's people go with us. They don't touch the bones. They watch. They write it down. And then, when the bones are up, they make them better.

And Okafor plans.

She's always planning. But this winter the map room wall's covered in new things, in Keir's chalk and Tiamat's silver and Halvane's light, all over each other.

The Aldri stations, three of them now in Avalon's sky, and three more coming. A ring of the Kasrai's walls round every city, low, that nothing gets across, with hollows under them. Fighters at every base. The walking engines on Hyrran's ridges. Hearth's nine stations. Ister in the east with its guns and its engine. Root with its engine, just in case.

And under it all, on the slate in the kitchen, in Okafor's hand:

IN.

Don't.

More.

And under those, new, small:

Ready.

I sat in on the planning in the winter. All of it. Okafor asked me to. She said it was time I knew what the map room wall was for, instead of just making the ground under it.

It took nine evenings. Okafor at the head of the long table with the chalk. Tiamat and Halvane on either side, standing. Kyria and Andraste. Varra. The General, in his old uniform. Holt, and Crane with his board. Aurelius, who said very little and listened to everything. Risa for the wing. Dory, because Okafor said the net was part of the wall now whether anyone liked it or not.

And the grandmothers. Mother and Ingrid and Maura and Abena, at the far end of the table, with the teapot. Okafor didn't ask them to come. They came. Nobody's ever asked the grandmothers to leave a table on Avalon. Nobody's going to start.

They planned for everything. The Sorn coming back out of the middle with whatever they've made. The body of the Hungry coming back for Ister, or for us, or for Root. The Ashen, who haven't been seen in a year and a half.

Six more Aldri stations, so there are nine round Avalon, like Hearth's. Nine more round Ister. Three round Root, as well as Tiamat's ears.

The Kasrai walls round every city. Hollows under every wall, deeper than any we've dug; Kwame's already started. Fighters at every base, and on Hyrran, and Caddoc, and every Hedge world.

The walking engines on every ridge on Hyrran, and forty more, new, built three short and one long, for Avalon.

And the arches. Every arch on every Hedge world with a smith beside it day and night, and a grandmother, and a cup of tea.

"That last one isn't strategy," said the General, at the end of the ninth evening. Very stiffly.

"It is now," said Mother. From the far end of the table.

The General looked at her for a long time. Then he wrote it down.

"It's still quiet," she said. Not to anyone. To the slate. "The Sorn. The middle. Since the machines stopped writing." She put the chalk down. "Halvane's ears can't hear anything near the middle at all now. Not a ship. Not a voice."

"Is that bad?" said Corin. From Mother's lap.

Okafor looked at him.

"I don't know, love," said Okafor.

She's never called anyone love. Mother looked at her very hard.

Okafor went pink, and went back to the map room.

Mother didn't say anything about it. Not that night. But in the morning, when Okafor came in for tea, there was a cup already poured at her place at the long table, and the chalk laid beside it, and on the slate, under Ready, in Mother's hand, very small:

Love.

Okafor looked at it for a long time.

She didn't rub it out.

Days 6341–6601. Sister.

They call Ister our sister now: nine arches, Aldri children at Miss Pell's, Rhiannon's recipes the most dangerous export in history. The queens sing to Ister; the oldest Aldri cried for three days. Halvane on the old band after Wren's number: and from Ister, good morning. Tiamat asked for an engine under Root, just in case. Halvane knelt to the eldest. She said yes, in case, and told Dory: it noticed you; that's why I sang toward it. Engines under Root and every moon and world her silver runs through. Halvane asked to build a wing onto the house on the rise for Tiri and Aune and Ilas; Mother said yes, by the kitchen. Then he proposed a betrothal to seal the treaty. Mother: no, not now, not like that; I won't have a promise about them that they didn't make. I listened to my mother. Halvane: perhaps that's why we built so many machines. Corin came round the porch, very red: I'm going to marry Tiri when I'm grown up; you don't need a treaty; I'll just ask her. Halvane laughed. Mother: and she'll say what she wants, and nobody else gets a word in. Tiri shimmered on the courtyard step and hummed. Oona moved up half a step and made room for her. Kyria tied a knot for him saying it himself. Rory's doors, Kwame's floors; Ilas put the lamp on the sill. The lamp night: Ister turned its sky off and saw us. The ice world: nine days early for everyone but a hundred and ninety-four. Dory sings back to the eldest every night. One billion, two hundred and forty million. Nine stations each round Avalon and Ister, three round Root, walls and hollows; a grandmother at every arch: it is now. Okafor: Ready. Okafor called Corin love.