Chapter 447 Someone Else Asking

I felt it before anyone told me.

That's the first thing I want to write. Before Ilka came down off the Meridian. Before Tiamat's voice came through the silver. Before Dory sat up.

It was an ordinary morning. I want that down too.

Wren had said the number at the dawn count. One billion, three hundred and two million, give or take. Konrad had written it, with Ingrid's silver-grey ribbon on the wrist of the hand that held the sheet still, because she's taken to sitting on the step beside him in the mornings now and he doesn't seem to mind. Oona had poured. Corin had done his forms and Tiri had hummed. Kesh had promised the sky.

Halvane had said and from Ister, good morning on the old band.

And Dory and I had taken the first train south.

I was on the plain south of the Tallis coast at dawn, with my hand on the ground, building. Dory beside me, with hers. Halvane's people at the edge of the ground with their little silver boxes. The bones of the tenth southern city coming up out of the plain, a street at a time, the way they do.

And something, very far off, asked.

Not the way I ask.

I don't know how to write it. When I ask the ground, I'm not telling it anything. I'm asking it if it would like to be something else, and waiting, and if it says yes, it is. That's all it's ever been. Mother says that's the only reason I've never broken anything I didn't mean to.

This wasn't that.

Somewhere very far away, past the edge of the Watch, past anywhere I'd ever been, something put its hand on the atoms of something very big and told them.

And they did it.

I took my hand off the ground.

Dory had already taken hers off. She was sitting back on her heels on the plain, very white, looking east.

"Dad," she said.

"I know."

"Someone else is asking," said Dory.

She swallowed.

"No," she said. "Not asking."

Halvane's people saw our faces. The oldest of them came across the bare ground of the new city with her silver box, and stopped, and looked at us.

"What is it?" she said.

I didn't answer straight away. I couldn't.

"Somebody else can do what we do," I said.

Ilka came down off the Meridian an hour later.

She didn't stand in the doorway. She came straight into the kitchen, where Okafor was already at the slate, and Tiamat's voice was already coming through the silver from New Hearth, and Halvane was already standing at the end of the long table, because the Aldri ears had heard it too.

"Tiel," said Ilka.

Tiel.

Where the grandmothers stayed with the washing, a long time ago, when the Sorn had the world. Where they'd dug under the river with spoons, for forty years, and never told anyone, in case it was taken away. Where Okafor knelt once, a long time ago, in front of someone small, the way she's knelt in front of Dory since.

It's in the Hedge. It has been since the start. A smith at every arch, and a grandmother, and a cup of tea. Hollows under the river, made bigger. A long slow river world with a town on every bend and washing on every line.

And a moon.

"It's coming apart," said Ilka.

Tiamat put it on the wall.

Tiel, and its moon. Small and grey and close, the way some moons are, close enough that on Tiel you can see the craters on it with your eyes. And something on the moon. Very small. Standing on it.

And the moon was breaking.

Not shattering. Not exploding. Coming apart. Slowly. Along lines. As if someone had told every part of it to let go of every other part, and it was doing it, one piece at a time. The pieces drifting. Turning. Some of them already falling, very slowly, toward Tiel.

"Who's on it?" said Okafor.

Nobody answered.

Dory had her hand flat on the long table. The net was out. Very far. To Tiel. To the moon.

"Somebody small," said Dory.

We went.

I'll write Tiel first. Because it went the way the Hedge is meant to go, and I want that written as much as the rest.

The arches opened at every bend of the river at once. Nine of them. With Odra's smiths at every one, with hammers, the way they've stood since the first week of the Hedge. And beside every smith, a grandmother, from Avalon, through the arch from the other side, with a cup of tea. Mother's plan. It is now, she said to the General at the long table. It was.

The grandmothers of Tiel didn't want to go.

They never do. They'd stayed with the washing when the Sorn had the world, and dug under the river with spoons, and they weren't leaving their lines for a moon. Wenna went through to talk to them. Wenna, who found them the first time. She stood on the riverbank in the first town with the moon coming apart over her head, very slowly, in pieces, and said to the oldest of them that the washing would still be there.

The oldest of them looked up at the moon.

"She says," said Dot, "the washing will be wet."

"Then we'll come back and hang it out again," said Wenna.

The old woman thought about it. Then she picked up her basket, and took the washing off the line, all of it, very slowly, and folded it, while the moon came down in pieces over her head and the Aldri stations broke them into dust.

And then she went through the arch.

Every grandmother on Tiel took her washing in that morning. Every line. Every town. Wren says it added nineteen minutes to the whole of Tiel's evacuation, and nobody would have had it any other way.

The Standing held the riverbanks in the suits, with the wall planted along every bend, in case anything came down that wasn't moon. Nothing did. Not then.

Not everyone. Okafor wouldn't. She sent the Hedge first: every arch on Tiel opened, every smith with a hammer, every grandmother walking the people down into the hollows under the river and through the arches to Avalon and Hyrran and Ister. The Standing through behind them, in the suits, to hold the riverbanks. The Aldri stations, three of them, round from Ister's side of the sun to Tiel's sky, to break whatever fell.

And then us.

Me. Dory. Risa at Dory's back, the way she always is. Andraste with Holdfast. Halvane, who said he wanted to see. And Mother.

I asked her not to come.

She came.

We went up in an Aldri ship. Not through an arch; you can't cut an arch to a moon that's coming apart. Fast. Out of Tiel's sky, through the falling pieces, to what was left of the moon.

It was mostly gone.

Half of it was still there. Grey and cratered and old. The rest was round it, in pieces, turning very slowly in the dark, some as big as cities, some as small as houses, some drifting down toward Tiel, with the Aldri stations' white light reaching out and breaking them into dust before they got there.

And in the middle of the half that was left, standing on the grey ground, with no air, with nothing round it at all—

A child.

I'll write her as she was. Not as I felt about her.

She was small. Smaller than Oona. Grey all over, the way grey ones are, but not the same grey: lighter. Silver, almost. Smooth. No hair. A collar at her throat, very thin, very close, black, Sorn. Her eyes were open and there was nothing in them.

She was standing on the moon with her hand out.

Flat. Palm down. Over the grey ground.

And where her hand was, the moon came apart.

I felt her do it. From the ship. Every atom.

She didn't ask. She didn't wait. She didn't know there was anything to wait for. Something put her hand there, and something told her what to tell the moon, and she told it, and the moon did it, because it didn't know how not to.

And under all of it, very far down, under the grey and the collar and the telling—

Somebody.

Dory felt it too. She was beside me at the ship's window with her hand flat on the glass.

"She's screaming," said Dory.

The houses' voice came out of her.

Out of the child. On the moon. With no air. It came anyway, through the silver, through the ship, into all of us at once.

World-breaker.

A pause.

We have one now.

Then she turned her head.

Toward the ship. Toward us. With nothing in her eyes.

And put her other hand out.

The Aldri ship's hull started to come apart.

Not breaking. Letting go. The way the moon was. Every piece of it, very slowly, deciding it didn't need to be part of anything any more. I felt the outer skin go first, on the side toward her. Then the next. The lights flickered.

Halvane's pilot said something very fast in Aldri.

I put my hand on the wall.

And asked.

Everything I had. Every atom of the ship, all at once. Stay. You're a ship. You're holding people. Stay.

It stayed.

Barely. The skin on her side went on peeling, slowly, piece by piece, out into the dark, and I asked it back, piece by piece, as fast as she told it to go. Her telling and my asking, on the same atoms, at the same time, pulling.

My nose started bleeding.

Hana wasn't there. She was on Tiel, breathing for the people in the hollows. Mother was. Mother put her hand on the back of my neck.

Andraste was at the other window with Holdfast.

It was humming. Louder than I've ever heard it. Not toward the ship that was coming apart. Toward the child. The way it hums toward grey ones, but louder, much louder, as if it didn't know what she was and was trying very hard to tell.

Andraste had her hand on the hilt.

She didn't draw.

"She's a child," said Andraste. Very quietly. To Holdfast. Not to us. "Be quiet."

Holdfast didn't stop humming. But Andraste didn't draw it. She stood at the window with her hand on the hilt and the white ribbon round her wrist and watched a child the size of Vessa take a ship apart with her hand.

Kyria says afterward that's the bravest thing she's ever heard of a First Blade doing.

Dory went out.

I didn't see her go. Nobody did. She scattered. Through the hull, through the ship's wall where I was holding it, out into the dark with no air, the way I can, the way I taught her, all of her into pieces and across the gap and back together on the grey ground of the moon.

In front of the child.

Risa screamed. I've never heard Risa scream like that. Not at the twelfth hill. Not ever.

Mother didn't scream. Mother put both hands on the window of the ship, flat, and lifted.

Not the ship. Not the moon. Dory. A finger's width off the grey ground. So the ground couldn't be told to swallow her. So nothing under her feet could let go.

She held her there.

Dory didn't do anything to the child.

I want that written down. Plainly. Everyone on the ship saw it and everyone's said it since and I want it in my own hand.

She could have. On Caddoc she turned a mile of the Hungry to salt in a breath. She could have put her hand out and asked every atom of that small grey thing on the moon to be something else, and it would have.

She didn't.

She knelt down. On nothing, a finger's width over the grey ground, held up by her grandmother through a ship's window. In front of the child. So they were the same height.

And looked at her.

The child looked back. With nothing in her eyes. With her hand still out toward the ship.

And the voice came out of her again. Very even.

World-breaker. Step away.

Dory didn't step away.

She looked at the child for a long time. Not at her face. At her hand. The one that wasn't out. The one at her side.

It was moving.

Very small. At her side. The fingers. Moving against each other, very slightly, over and over. The way your fingers move when you're twisting something.

When you're twisting your hair.

Into a knot.

Dory went very still.

She knew. She'd watched Tey do it on the edge of a lifted terrace. She'd watched Tey's grandson put his hand up to where his hair would have been.

The child's hand moved again. Twisting nothing. At her side. Where nobody was meant to see.

"She's Marrah," said Dory.

Through the silver. Very quietly. To all of us. To Okafor at the long table and Tiamat and Halvane and Mother with her hands on the window.

"She's Marrah," said Dory. "From the terraces. They took her off the steps with everyone else." Her voice didn't break. She doesn't let it now. "She's just under. Like the others. Only further. They put more in her. They put silver in her and they finished it and they told her what to do with it."

She looked at the child's hand. Twisting.

"But she's still doing it," said Dory. "Under all of it. She's still getting ready for work."

Then the voice said: Return.

The child turned away.

All at once. Very smooth. Her hand came down from the ship. The hull stopped letting go. I nearly fell.

She walked away across the grey ground of the half-moon. Into the dark. Toward a grey ship I hadn't seen, sitting behind the moon's edge, very low, with its ramp down.

Dory didn't follow. Mother was holding her. Mother wouldn't have let her.

The child walked up the ramp.

At the top, she stopped.

She didn't turn round. Grey ones don't.

But her hand went up. To the side of her head. Where her hair would have been.

And twisted.

The ramp closed. The ship went.

Not out. In. Toward the middle. Very fast. Gone.

Risa had Dory by the arm before the ship's inner door had finished opening. She didn't say anything. She held on. All the way down to Tiel, all the way through the arch, all the way across the red glass and up the hill. She didn't let go once.

At the top of the porch steps, she stopped. And turned Dory round by the shoulders. And looked at her.

"You went out," said Risa. "Into nothing. With no air. In front of that."

"Gran was holding me."

"I know Gran was holding you." Risa's voice was very level. The way Ingrid's goes before the lightning. "I'm at your back. That's the rule. You went somewhere I couldn't follow."

Dory looked at her.

"She was smaller than Kesh, Mum," said Dory.

Risa didn't say anything for a long time.

Then she pulled Dory in. Hard. Dory's taller than her now. Risa held on anyway, with her face in Dory's shoulder, on the top step, in front of everyone.

"Next time," said Risa. Muffled. "Tell me first. I'll come out too."

"You can't scatter."

"I'll come as lightning," said Risa. "I'll think of something."

Tiel lost its moon.

Most of it. The Aldri stations broke everything that fell, all day and all night, into dust that lit up Tiel's sky for nine nights after like the end of a festival. Nothing big reached the ground. Halvane says nothing has ever been done with those guns that mattered more.

Some small things did. On the far side of the world from the arches. Before the stations had come round.

Two towns on a river bend. The washing still out.

Wren counted.

"Six hundred and forty," said Wren. "Of Tiel's whole world. On the far bend." A pause. "Everyone else is home."

Six hundred and forty.

Okafor went to Tiel the next morning and knelt on the riverbank by the washing. She didn't say anything. She stayed there a long time.

The grandmothers of Tiel brought her tea.

Halvane's engineer had read it. All of it. On her little silver box, through the ship's window, while it was happening.

She put it on the long table that night. In light. Over the wood. Lines and lines.

"The collar," said Halvane. Standing at the end of the table, very tall, very grey. His shimmer was almost gone. "It isn't to stop her silver. The way the old collars were. It's the other way." He touched one of the lines. "It's to make her silver do what it's told. Whatever it's told. By whoever holds the other end."

"The houses," said Okafor.

"Yes."

"So she's not doing it," said Okafor. "They are. Through her."

Halvane didn't answer straight away.

"She's doing it," he said. "They're telling her to. She can't not." He looked at me. "Your son mends a bird by asking every part of it if it would like to be whole. That child broke a moon by being told to tell every part of it to let go. It's the same gift." His voice went very low. "It's the same gift. Used by someone who's never been asked anything."

The Overseer was in the doorway. With the dog. He hadn't said anything all evening.

He said something now.

"They tried it with me," said the Overseer. "Not the silver. The collar. A long time ago. Before I was sent to your Earth." He looked down at the dog. "They wanted to know if a Sorn could be made to do anything, all the way down, with the right collar. It didn't work on me. I wasn't anything worth making." He was quiet. "It worked on her."

I didn't sleep that night.

Neither did Dory. Neither did anyone. The whole house was on the porch, or in the kitchen, or in the map room with Tiamat and Halvane, round the wall, looking at the place where the grey ship went in.

I sat on the porch steps with my nose still bleeding, very slowly, into Hana's scarf. Hana had come back from Tiel and seen my face and not said anything.

Dory sat beside me.

"She's younger than Oona," said Dory.

"I know."

"She's younger than Oona and they did that to her," said Dory. "They put silver in her and finished it and taught her to tell instead of ask. And then they sent her to break a moon over a world full of grandmothers."

She didn't cry. She was past it.

"Dad," she said. "She did it to the ship. She did what I do. What you do. And I could feel how much it hurt her."

"I know."

"Every atom she told," said Dory. "It hurt her. Like it hurts you when your nose bleeds. Only nobody was looking at her face." Her hands were shaking. "Nobody was looking at her face, Dad."

Corin came out onto the porch before Mother did. In his nightshirt. Tiri behind him, with her bird, shimmering very dim.

They'd heard. Everyone hears everything.

Corin stood in front of me on the step with his hand on the back of his neck. A long time. The way he does before he mends something.

"She tells things," said Corin.

"Yes."

"Instead of asking."

"Yes."

Corin frowned.

"Has anyone ever asked her anything?" he said.

I didn't answer. I didn't know how.

"Because if nobody's ever asked her," said Corin, "she wouldn't know you could." He looked at Dory. "You have to show people. Gran showed me. With the bird." He looked at Tiri. "I showed Tiri. With the lamp."

Tiri nodded. Very slowly.

"Someone should show her," said Corin.

He went back inside. Tiri went with him. Through Rory's door, backward, waving, the way she does.

Dory watched them go.

"He's seven," she said.

"I know."

"He's right," said Dory.

Mother came out at midnight.

She didn't sit on her step. She sat on the one below Dory's. The way she did once before.

She didn't say the names straight away. She sat there for a long time with the teapot in her lap.

Then she said: "Tey."

Dory looked at her.

"Tey's on the Marrah city, in the end room on the slope," said Mother. "With her grandson. And ten thousand nine hundred and ninety others from the terraces." She looked up at Dory. "Somebody there knows that child."

Dory didn't say anything.

"You said," said Mother, "she's still getting ready for work. Under all of it." She poured a cup. "Somebody taught her that. Somebody tied up her hair for her, every morning, on the terraces, before she went down to work. Somebody on that slope knows which child it was."

She held out the cup.

"Grandmothers call them home," said Mother. "Okafor wrote it. That's not just for the unfinished ones."

Dory took the cup.

She didn't drink it. She held it. Until it was cold.

Then she got up. And went down the porch steps, past Rory's door into the Aldri wing, where a light was still on because Tiri can't sleep either. And down the hill toward the red glass. Toward the first train.

Mother didn't stop her.

"Where's she going?" said Hana.

"The Marrah," said Mother. "To ask."

Dory told me the rest when she came back. Three days later. I'll write it the way she told it.

She got to the Marrah city on the first train. The one on the slope, in steps, with the doors open. Kwame's warm floors, Rory's doors. Ten thousand nine hundred and ninety old Marrah, and Tey, and Tey's grandson, who has hair now, short and brown, tied up in the morning.

Tey was on her step. With a cup. At dawn.

She saw Dory come up the steps of the slope and put her cup down.

She didn't say anything. She'd heard. Everyone had heard. A Marrah child on a moon over Tiel.

Dory sat down on the step below her. The way Mother does.

"Smaller than Oona," said Dory. "Six. Maybe seven. They took her hair. She twists her fingers at her side." She put her hand at her own side and showed it. Twisting nothing. "Like that. When nobody's looking."

Tey watched her hand for a long time.

Then she got up. Very slowly. And went down the slope, step by step, past the open doors. Dory followed.

She stopped at an end room near the bottom.

There was an old woman on the step. Very small, even for the Marrah. Very bent. With her long grey hair loose, the way the Marrah wear it when there's no work. She was sitting with her hands in her lap, twisting nothing, at her side.

Dory stopped.

The old woman looked up at her.

Tey said something. In Marrah. Very quietly.

The old woman didn't answer. She looked at Dory for a long time.

Then she put her hand to the side of her own head. And took a piece of her own grey hair. And twisted it. Into a knot. Slowly. The way you'd do it for someone small, sitting on the step in front of you, before they went down to the terraces.

And said a name.

Dot gave it to Dory. As near as she could.

Lio.

"She says," said Dot. "Her granddaughter. Six. The smallest on the top terrace. They took her off the steps with everyone else." A pause. "She says Lio could never do her own knot. She says she was always trying. At her side. With her fingers. Practising, so she could do it herself one day."

Dory sat down on the step in front of her.

She didn't say anything for a long time.

"She's still practising," said Dory.

The old woman's name is Sefa.

She came back on the train with Dory. Up the hill. Onto the porch. Mother poured her a cup, and she poured the first one out on the boards, the Marrah way, which isn't quite the Ennet way but close, and then she drank the second.

She's on Mother's porch every morning now. On the bench by the kitchen door, beside Ilas and Abbe. With her hair loose.

Twisting a knot at her side. Over and over. Practising.

Konrad wrote her on the sheet that night. Not the front. Not the back. Not Came home old, or Called home.

A new sheet. He took it out of the map room cupboard and smoothed it flat on the long table and sat looking at it for a long time with his pen.

Then he wrote at the top, very small:

Still out.

And under it, one line:

Lio. Marrah. Six. Sefa's. Can't do her own knot yet.

Ingrid, beside him, with her silver-grey ribbon on her wrist, put her hand over his on the pen. And under it, in her own hand, very upright, the way she was taught before the war:

Practising.

They planned it on the fourth night. When Dory and Sefa were home.

Not a big plan. Okafor said it couldn't be. The ship went in. Toward the middle. Where the hand is, and the houses, and whatever's under them. Nothing of ours can follow it there. Halvane's ears can't hear past the edge. Dory promised not to knock.

"So we wait," said Okafor. At the head of the long table. With the chalk. "They'll send her out again. They made her for something. They didn't make her to break one moon." She looked down the table. "Next time, we're ready."

"Ready how?" said Andraste. "She took apart an Aldri ship with one hand. Holdfast didn't know what she was."

"Not ready to fight her," said Okafor.

She looked at Sefa, on the bench by the kitchen door, twisting her hair at her side.

"Ready to call her."

So that's the plan.

Every Aldri station, every ear on the Meridian, every one of Tiamat's, every one of Ilka's, listening for a grey ship coming out of the middle with something in it that asks atoms the wrong way. Every time. However far.

And when it comes, Sefa goes.

Not alone. Holt first, of course. Then the Standing in the suits, to hold whatever needs holding. Then Mother, to hold Sefa up off whatever ground the child tries to make let go. Then Tey, because Tey says a Marrah grandmother doesn't call a child in from the terraces on her own; there's always another on the next step, calling too.

And Dory. To ask.

"It might not work," said Halvane. Very quietly. At the end of the table. "She's not unfinished, the way the others were. They put more in her. Much more. The collar is very deep."

"I know," said Okafor.

"Then why?"

Okafor looked at him for a long time.

"Because she's still practising her knot," said Okafor. "Under all of it. After everything they did. She's still trying to get ready for work." She put the chalk down. "That's somebody, Halvane. That's somebody nobody's finished. And somebody's grandmother is sitting on my bench."

Halvane didn't say anything else.

Hana sat with me on the porch after. With her scarf. My nose had stopped bleeding the second day; she still looked at my face every hour.

"You held a ship together," said Hana. "Against her. Atom by atom."

"Yes."

"How did it feel?"

I thought about it.

"Like holding a door shut," I said. "Against someone small on the other side. Pushing because they've been told to. Not because they want to come in." I looked at my hands. "I didn't want to win. I just didn't want everyone on the ship to die."

Hana didn't say anything.

She put her hand on my back. And breathed for me, a little. The way she does. Until my hands stopped shaking.

Tiri asked her great-grandfather something at breakfast on the fifth morning. Halvane had come through the arch to see Ilas, the way he does now, most mornings, and was standing at the end of the long table with a cup Mother gave him.

"When she's home," said Tiri. "The girl. Lio."

Halvane looked down at her.

"Can she come to Miss Pell's," said Tiri. "To the circle. Under the tree." Her shimmer was very steady. "I'll sit next to her. That's the first lesson. Corin showed me."

Halvane didn't say anything for a while.

"When she's home," he said. "Yes."

He didn't say if. I noticed. So did Mother.

Corin, beside Tiri, didn't say anything at all. He was looking at his hands. Weight on one leg, even sitting. Thinking.

Then he got up and went to Rory's workshop, and came back an hour later with something very small in his palm. A comb. Wood. Rough. Not very good; he's seven. With a hole in the end for a cord.

He gave it to Sefa, on the bench.

Sefa looked at it for a long time.

Then she put it in her lap, very carefully, with both hands over it. And went on twisting her hair at her side.

She keeps it there. Every morning. On the bench, in her lap, under both hands, while she practises. Abbe asked her once, through Dot, what it was for.

"She says," said Dot, "for the morning she gets to do it properly."

Okafor had written it on the slate the dawn after Tiel. I've left it till last, because it's the first thing I see every morning now when I come down.

Under Ready. Under Love, which is still there in Mother's hand, which Okafor still hasn't rubbed out.

Three words. Very small. As if writing them smaller would make them less true.

They have one.

And under that, after a while, in a different hand. Dory's. She must have written it on her way out, in the dark, before the train.

She has a grandmother.

Days 6610–6702. Someone Else Asking.

On the plain south of the Tallis coast, building, I felt something very far off put its hand on the atoms of something very big and tell them. Dory: someone else is asking; no, not asking. Tiel's moon coming apart along lines. A child standing on it, smaller than Oona, silver-grey, a thin black collar, nothing in her eyes. The voice: World-breaker. We have one now. She told the Aldri ship to let go and I asked it to stay, piece by piece, nose bleeding, Mother's hand on my neck. Dory scattered out onto the moon; Risa screamed; Mother lifted her a finger's width through the window. Dory did nothing to the child. She knelt. The child's other hand was twisting nothing at her side: getting ready for work. She's Marrah. They finished her and taught her to tell. Every atom she told hurt her and nobody was looking at her face. Return. At the top of the ramp, her hand went to her hair. In, toward the middle. Tiel lost its moon; the stations broke what fell; six hundred and forty on the far bend. Okafor knelt on the riverbank. Mother: Tey. Somebody on that slope knows which child it was. Grandmothers call them home; that's not just for the unfinished ones. Dory took the first train. Andraste told Holdfast to be quiet. Halvane: the same gift, used by someone who's never been asked anything. Okafor's plan: we wait, and when she comes out we call her; Sefa, with Tey on the next step. Tey took Dory down the slope to Sefa, who knotted her own hair and said Lio: she could never do her own knot; she was always practising. They have one. She has a grandmother.