Chapter 453 To Her

I’d always thought, when the queens moved, it would be loud.

It wasn’t. It was the quietest thing I’ve ever heard.

Mother and I were halfway down the hill when it started. On the steep bit by Miss Pell’s tree, where the path turns and you can see the whole town below and the red glass at the bottom of it.

The ground under the path lifted. A finger’s width. The way the porch does at the turn.

Then it settled again. And I felt her go by underneath us. The Scarecrow queen. Not up out of the garden. Down. Under the path, under the town, under the street where Pip’s stall is, going down the hill ahead of us the way water goes, all of her and all her young behind her in a long line, so close under my feet that I could have counted them.

I didn’t. I’m not Wren.

“There she goes,” said Mother.

She didn’t stop walking. Neither did I. Her hand was on my arm and the small iron teapot was in her other hand and the town was waking up below us, doors opening, people coming out onto steps in their nightclothes and standing very still.

Because they could feel it too. Everyone on Avalon could.

I’ll write what I know, and what I was told after. I wasn’t everywhere. Dory was. She says she’ll tell it better one day. She says she’s not ready.

Under the house on the rise, in the hall, every queen on every ledge stood up at once, the moment Tiamat said it.

Trevor told me. He was awake. He says he’d been awake since the stars started going; he says he could feel them go, a little, at the back of his eyes, the way you feel a door open somewhere in a house.

He says the red stone went brighter. And the humming stopped.

Then the heavy queen came down off her ledge.

She’s enormous. I’ve written that before. I don’t think I’ve ever written it well enough. She came down off her ledge onto the floor of the hall, very slowly, among the blankets, among hundreds of children, and not one of them was touched. Not a hand. Not a foot. She put her great feet down between them the way Mother puts cups down on the long table when it’s full, one at a time, where there’s room.

The children woke up. Most of them. They didn’t cry. Trevor says nobody cried. They sat up on their blankets and watched her go.

She stopped at the bottom of the long stair. Where the General was. And small Sigmund beside him, awake now, on his feet.

The General didn’t move. He stood very straight, with his hands behind his back, in his old uniform with every medal, and looked up at her.

The heavy queen lowered her head. All the way. Until her eyes were level with his.

Trevor heard what she said. Everyone in the hall did.

Keep them, said the heavy queen.

“Ma’am,” said the General.

Then she turned. Not up the stair; she’d never have fitted. Into the wall. The red stone opened for her, the way it opens for the queens, and she went into it, and her brood went after her, off every ledge on the east side, hundreds of them, quick and dark and very quiet, and the stone closed behind the last.

The coral queen went next. Out of her water. Trevor says the water in her pool stood up in a wave after her, as if it wanted to follow, and then fell back. The ash queen, grey and gold. The moss queen, with the reed queen riding on her back, because the reed queen’s still small and can’t go fast through stone. Our queen from the roots, the oldest one under the house, who’s never left it since before Father built it. She went last, Trevor says. Slowly. She stopped at the heap.

She put her head down over it. Over Kesh and Lio and Oona’s empty place and Bahamut with his silver hair and Ithel holding his hand.

And hummed. Once. The note she hums at night through the floor of my room, the one I’ve heard every night since I was born.

Then she went into the stone too.

The ledges were empty.

Trevor says that was the worst part. Not the queens going. The ledges, after. All that red stone, all round the hall, with nothing on it. He says he’d never once seen the hall without them, and he hadn’t known how much of the warm was theirs till it went.

Kwame Osei stood up, in the middle of the floor.

“Right,” said Kwame Osei. In his building voice. “Blankets together. Everyone in close. Closer than that. We’ll make our own warm.”

And old Efua said, from her chair by the stair, very loud, “And if anything comes down those stairs, I’ll shout at it.”

And the children laughed. Trevor says they did. In the hall under the house, with the ledges empty and the stars going out over Avalon, hundreds of children laughed at old Efua.

Abena got up out of the heap then. Hana’s girl. And went up the long stair, past the General, past small Sigmund, to the long ward, because that’s where she’d been told to go when it came, and she’d been told by her mother, and you don’t argue with Hana.

Small Sigmund held the door for her.

At the bottom of the hill, the red glass was full of queens.

Not on it. Under it. You could feel them gathering under the arches the way you feel weather gathering under a hill. Nan Vey stood at the arch to Root with her iron in her hand and her feet planted, and the glass under her feet hummed so hard her iron rattled on its plate.

She didn’t move. Neither did the smith beside her, one of Teel’s family, with his hammer.

The arch opened.

Not because anyone opened it. It was already open; Kyria’s cutters had cut them all to stay. But it went wider. The edges of it went back, the way a door goes back when someone very big leans on it from the other side. And the Scarecrow queen came up out of the red glass in front of it.

Up through the glass. It didn’t break. It went soft round her and closed behind her, the way the stone does in the hall.

She stood in front of the arch, in the grey light, enormous, with her young coming up out of the glass round her feet, and turned her head.

To Mother.

Mother stopped. At the edge of the glass. With her hand on my arm.

The queen didn’t say anything. Not to me. Whatever she said, she said to Mother, under the words, the way grandmothers talk.

Mother nodded.

“Go on,” said Mother. “Go to her. We’re right behind you.”

The Scarecrow queen went through the arch.

Nan Vey watched her go. And her young after her. Hundreds. Quick and dark, over the glass and into the arch and through.

When the last one had gone through, Nan Vey looked down at her iron. And then at Mother.

“Well,” said Nan Vey. “I didn’t press anything for them.”

“They’d only have creased it,” said Mother.

They came through every arch on Avalon.

Wren counted. On the step, with Konrad, with the sheet. She counted every queen that came up out of every city and went through every arch to Root. She’s told me the number. I’m not going to write it. It was more than I knew there were, and I’ve lived on top of them my whole life.

They came up out of the rain valley, past Abbe, who poured out a cup on the ground in front of her arch as each one went by. One cup for each. She’d brought a very big pot. She’d known.

They came up out of the forest city past Eska, and out of the coast past Ouse, who made the rising sound, the one her people make across water, and the queens going past her answered it. Out of the Marrah city past Tey. Out of the Hill past Merrit, who’s a hundred and five and was sitting on a stool and stood up for every one.

They came through Rory’s door in the courtyard of the house on the rise, the small ones. Ilas held it open. She’s a hundred and ninety and very bent and she held it open with both hands the whole time.

And the Ground went up off the north field.

She’d been waiting there since the twenty-second day, with her ramp down, on the grass where the wedding was, beside Brock’s beans. The heavy queen came up out of the field under her and went up the ramp into her heart, and her brood after her, and the ramp closed, and the Ground lifted. Slowly. The width of a hand. Then up, enormous and dark, with her name in gold on her side and the heavy queen humming so low in her that every window in the north town rattled.

The Harness went up after her. And the Long Legs. Every ship with a queen in her heart.

The ones who could walk, walked. The ones who couldn’t be carried and couldn’t walk, stayed, and sang.

The old one stayed. Of course. She’s Avalon. She’s under everything. She can’t go anywhere; she is the anywhere. But I felt her as we went through, at the very bottom of everything, under the red glass and the town and the sea. Singing the way. The way every queen who can’t move sings the way for the ones who can.

Isca’s queen stayed too. In her hill. Merrit says she sang louder than the rest of them put together, for someone who started out the size of a plum.

Mother and I went through last. After the last queen.

Nan Vey straightened my collar on the way past. She does that. She’s done it since I was eight.

“Pressed,” she said.

“Thank you, Nan.”

“Bring her back,” said Nan Vey. Not looking at me. Looking at Mother.

Root’s plains, at dawn, were full of queens.

I don’t know how to write it. I’ll try.

The plains go out from the foot of the eldest’s plateau for miles. Green. Very green, the way Root is, a green that looks like it’s been raining all night and the sun’s just come out on it. The threads come down out of the sky all over them, from the three moons, silver lines from the ground to the sky, shining.

The Standing was on them. In their lines. Nine hundred thousand split in three, and a third of that here, in the suits, grey-silver, with the wall in the ground in front of them. Varra at the front. The walking engines behind them like hills that breathe.

And through the lines, between them, round them, coming out of every arch at once, the queens.

They didn’t run. They walked. All of them. Toward the plateau. Through the Standing, who stepped aside. Varra’s Kasrai, who never step aside for anything, stepped aside. Varra herself, at the very front, with her rope round her waist, turned sideways to let the Scarecrow queen by, and put her hand on her chest, and held it out.

The Scarecrow queen bowed her head to her. Going past.

They went to the foot of the plateau. All of them. And stopped. And spread out. Round it. A ring.

Not one queen deep. Many. The big ones at the front, at the foot of the plateau, facing out. The smaller ones behind them. The broods everywhere, in among them, on them, round their feet, and spreading out across the plains among the Standing’s lines.

It took an hour. Maybe more. The sky was going out over us the whole time. Star by star. I kept looking up, and every time there was less of it.

Mother and I went up the plateau path. Past Kyria and Teshka and the Hyrrani at the foot. Kyria nodded. Teshka didn’t; she was looking at the sky. Up the green slope, where the threads come down thickest, to the top.

Where everyone was.

My wives. Luna, very still. Sera, warm, in her flight jacket. Risa behind Dory, with her hand on Dory’s shoulder. Hana, who looked at my face and then at Dory’s and then at mine again. Andraste with Holdfast across her back, and the one white ribbon on the hilt moving very slightly in the wind off the plains.

Dinraal and Isolde. Dinraal in his armour with the First Weapon at his heel. Isolde with her leaves.

The Mom Squad. Maura. Teshka’s place, empty, because she was at the foot. Rhiannon. Cleopatra. Asha. Eve.

And Dory.

Dory was standing at the very edge of the plateau. At the top of everything. With Dusk off, and her black eyes open, looking at nothing. Holding the net.

Holding all of it.

I felt it as soon as I came up the last of the slope. The way you feel the warm when you come in from the cold. Every ship. Every station. Every company and engine and arch. Every grandmother, every smith. The children in the hall. The General on the stair. Oona on the porch. Ingrid in the sky over Avalon. Halvane on Ister. Okafor at the long table, with her hands flat on the wood.

Every queen.

All of them. In the net. Knowing where every other one was.

And under all of it, under Dory’s feet, holding her: the eldest.

The eldest didn’t say anything for a long time.

The queens stood round her plateau. All of them. Not singing. Waiting.

Then I felt the ground under my feet go very slightly soft. Not the way it does when a queen’s passing. Different. The way a person goes soft when they’ve been holding something a long time and someone takes it off them.

You came, said the eldest.

To all of them. Out loud. Everyone on the plains heard it. Everyone on Avalon, I think. Mother says Oona heard it on the porch.

You came, she said again. All of you.

And the Scarecrow queen, at the front of the ring, at the very foot of the plateau, put her head down on the green ground.

You sang to us, she said. When none of us could hear. Every one. Every night.

I did not think you would come, said the eldest. I sang so that you would live. Not so that you would come.

We know, said the Scarecrow queen. That is why.

The plateau shook.

Very gently. Under all of us. Not the way it shakes when something hits it. The way a person’s shoulders shake.

Mother put the small iron teapot down on the grass. And knelt. Her knees; she doesn’t, much. And put both her hands flat on the ground.

She didn’t say anything.

She didn’t need to. I’ve seen her do it on the porch with every one of us, every time we’ve come home broken. Hands flat. Holding still. Until whatever it is passes.

After a while, the plateau stopped shaking.

Thank you, said the eldest. Very quietly. To Mother. Dorothy.

Mother stood up. Brushed her knees.

“Right,” said Mother. “Now. Where’s my pot.”

Risa had it. Wrapped in its cloth. Mother took it, and looked at it, and looked at the chip in the spout, and put it down on the grass beside Oona’s small one, very carefully, the two of them side by side.

“For after,” said Mother.

Tiamat, from the ninth station. Over the silver. Very level.

“Edge of the Watch,” she said. “All of it. Coming in.”

I’ll write what it looked like. Because someone should, and because I’ll never see anything like it again, and I don’t want to.

It came over the edge of the sky.

From the far side of Root. From past the moons. From the place where the stars had been going out all night. The dark came first, a dark that wasn’t sky, that had no stars in it and no light behind it, spreading. Then the dark had an edge. Then the edge moved.

It was the Hungry. All of them. Every swarm and every arm and every new one they’d made, the plated ones, the many-mouthed ones the size of walking engines and bigger, the fliers and the diggers and the ones with no shape at all. Not as a swarm. As a body. Grown together. Every one touching every other, so that it moved the way one thing moves, so that it was one thing, as wide as the sky from one side to the other.

It didn’t make a sound. Not from that far.

Then it did.

I’ve heard a swarm. On Caddoc. On the birthing world. A swarm sounds like a storm with teeth in it.

This sounded like breathing.

One breath. In. The whole of it. The whole sky drawing breath at once.

And every one of the threads that come down out of Root’s sky to Root’s ground, from the three moons, went taut, and hummed.

Dory spoke. Out loud. Into the net. To everyone.

“Root,” said Dory. “Most of it. Here.” Her voice was very steady. She sounded like her mother calling the lightning. “One arm to Avalon. North side. Coming round the sun the long way. Two hours.” A breath. “One arm to Ister. Smaller. One hour. The rest is coming here. To her.”

“How long,” said Okafor. From the long table. Through the net. I could feel her hands on the wood.

Dory looked up.

“Now,” said Dory.

The stations fired.

Twenty-seven of them. Every Aldri station round every world that could see it, all at once. Halvane’s people had said they could reach any world within an hour. They didn’t need an hour.

Thin white light. Twenty-seven lines, from all round the sky, to the edge of the dark.

Where they went in, there were holes. Clean ones. Holes you could have put a world through. I watched one of them go in near the edge of the body, and come out the far side, and the dark round it peel back and fall away in pieces as big as cities.

Then the holes closed.

Not all the way. Not straight away. But the body moved in round them, the way water moves in round your hand when you take it out of a bucket. Filled them. Kept coming.

The stations fired again.

Aune went in with her four thousand.

I saw them go. From the plateau. A shimmer of silver across the sky over Root, so fast that they were there and then they were somewhere else, at the edge of the dark, going along it the way Aldri fighters go, stopping and starting and never where anything is when it gets there. Risa’s wing on their left. Callum’s patrol wasn’t with them; Callum was over the long ward on Avalon, where Mother put him.

Risa watched them go. With her hand on Dory’s shoulder.

She didn’t call the lightning yet. Not yet.

“Not yet,” she said. To nobody. To herself. “Not till it’s over the plains. Not with them under it.”

The Meridian fired. The Ground, high over the plateau now, turned her side to the dark, and the heavy queen in her heart did whatever the heavy queen does, and a whole part of the dark went heavy, all at once, the way Okafor makes things heavy, and fell out of the sky toward Root’s far moon like a stone.

Hearth’s ships fired. Every one. Every Hearth ship that came through the arch with two faces.

And it kept coming.

It reached the edge of Root’s sky in under an hour.

I watched it come down over the far green. Over the edge of the plains. Where Holt was.

I couldn’t see Holt from the plateau. He was too far. But I could feel him on the net. At the very front. At the very edge of the green. With the Overseer beside him, in Holt’s cap, and the dog sitting between them, very straight, the way the General sits.

Dory said it, for everyone. Very quietly.

“He’s taking his cap off.”

And the Overseer, beside him, took Holt’s cap off too. And held it in both hands. In front of his chest.

And the dark came down on them.

I’ll write what Crane told me, because he had it on the board.

The body came down on the far edge of the plains like a wave comes down on a beach. Not all at once. In a long line, very fast, from one end of the horizon to the other. The new ones first. The plated ones. Dropping out of it onto the green, hundreds of them, as big as walking engines, bigger, and the fliers coming down off its underside in sheets, and the diggers going straight into the ground.

Into Root’s ground.

That was the first mistake it made.

The ground opened.

All of it. Under the diggers. Under the far edge of the plains, for miles, where they’d gone in. The green just opened, very quietly, the way the red stone opens for a queen, and the diggers went down into it. And it closed.

And didn’t open again.

That was the eldest. The ground was the eldest. She’d been the ground under every world in the Hedge for longer than there have been days, and nothing had ever dug into her that she hadn’t let.

And round her, at the foot of her plateau, every queen who’d come put her head down to the ground at once, and sang.

I’ve heard the queens sing. All my life. I’ve heard them sing a world ready for Ister to jump into. I’ve heard them sing a garden into New Hearth. I’ve heard them sing Isca’s arch open with a lid of Ashen on it.

I’d never heard them sing together for their mother.

It went down. Not out. Down into the ground, into the eldest, all of it, every queen at once, the way rain goes down into a field. And the eldest took it.

And every one of the threads in Root’s sky lit up.

White. From the ground to the moons. All of them at once, the whole sky of Root strung with white, shining so bright you couldn’t look straight at it. And where the dark had come down over the far plains, where the threads came down through it, the dark let go.

Not all of it. Not most. But along every thread, for a long way, the Hungry that were touching it came apart. Into light. Into nothing. Into the green ground, which took them.

Holt was still standing.

Crane had it on the board. Holt, at the very front, very small. Still there. The Standing behind him had closed up round him and the Overseer like a fist round a stone. Varra’s Kasrai had gone forward past him, and the Kasrai never go past anyone, but Varra said afterward that he’d told them to, and she’d decided that once, just once, she’d do as she was told.

The Overseer was still holding the cap.

Then the new ones reached the line.

I’ll write the next part short. Because it was long.

The plains below the plateau went into the fight the way a field goes into a storm. All of it at once. The Standing’s lines held. The wall held, the Aldri wall, in the ground in front of every company, and the new ones came against it and stopped against it and stood there, many-mouthed, plated, battering, and the Standing put everything into them they had. The weapons that kill almost anything killed them. Slowly. One at a time. Too slowly.

The walking engines walked. Odra’s people on top of them, Ossel and Teel and the Kiln smiths in their legs, and Tavvan, I found out after, sitting on the knee of the biggest one with his eyes shut, listening to the breathing. The engines walked into the new ones the way Mother walks into a crowd: as if she’s going to get where she’s going whether or not anyone moves.

The broods went out among the lines. Quick and dark, in among the Standing’s feet, and where a flier came down on a company, the queens’ young went up the flier before it landed and it didn’t get up again.

And the queens held the ground. All of them. With their heads down. Singing.

I don’t think the Hungry had ever fought on ground that didn’t want them.

Mother lifted.

She stood at the edge of the plateau beside Dory with her hands out, palms down, the way she does at the turn. And wherever a thing fell, she caught it. A flier, coming down out of the dark onto the Hyrrani at the foot of the plateau: she caught it in the air, and held it, and turned it over, and put it down on top of three more. A plated one, as big as a house, that broke through the wall on the east side and went over the first line of the Standing: Mother lifted it. All of it. Off the ground. Off the line. Up, very slowly, with all its legs going, a hundred feet into the air over the plains.

And then dropped it. On the next one.

She didn’t say anything. She just moved her hands. Like she does when she’s moving the porch.

Maura glassed what Mother dropped. Eve’s spheres went out after it. Cleopatra’s field went out over the Hyrrani at the foot of the plateau like a roof. Asha. Rhiannon, who doesn’t fight, standing with her hands on the grass beside Mother’s two teapots, giving the ground everything she had, the way she gives a garden.

Dory never moved. Not once. All day.

She stood at the edge of the plateau and held the net. And said where things were. Over and over. Out loud. To everyone.

“East wall, third company. Four coming. Varra, two of yours are nearest.”

“Ister, the arm’s in. Halvane, south squares.”

“Avalon. Ingrid. North. It’s coming round the sun. It’ll be over you in an hour.”

Every time she said it, someone went. Not whoever was strongest. Whoever was nearest. And nobody was on their own. Not one ship. Not one wall. Not once, all day.

Her nose started bleeding in the second hour. Risa wiped it. With her sleeve. Without saying anything. And put her hand back on Dory’s shoulder.

Hana watched Dory’s face. All day.

And us.

What goes where the wall breaks.

It broke on the south side first. In the second hour.

Dory said it. Very fast. “South. Two hundred. The unfinished. They’re through the wall. Dad.”

We went.

I’ll say what I found when I got there. Because I wasn’t in time.

The three hundred unfinished in their borrowed suits had held the south end of the line. Next to the walking engines. Where Varra put them, because she said a wall doesn’t ask who’s standing on it, and she meant it, and she put them on a part of the wall that mattered.

Three of the new ones had come down on them at once. Out of the dark. Not over the wall. Through it. The plated ones are heavier than anything the Aldri built the wall to stop, and three at once was more than it could take.

The unfinished didn’t run. Crane says they never once stepped back. They don’t have a word for wall in any language they remember. They stood there anyway.

By the time we got there, forty of them were gone.

I’m not going to write how we killed the three. Andraste knows. Luna. Sera. Risa, who’d come down off the plateau for it, the one time all day she let go of Dory’s shoulder, and put Hana’s hand there instead.

I’ll say Andraste climbed the first one the way she climbed the one on the birthing world, and drove Holdfast down through its plates, and the plates went through Corin’s door and came out somewhere else.

I’ll say I didn’t ask the second one anything.

That’s all.

The unfinished who were left stood on the south end of the line, in their borrowed suits, and looked at us.

One of them came forward. Very tall. From the making. The way they all are. He put his hand on his chest. And held it out.

To me.

I didn’t know what to do. I put my hand on my chest. And held it out back.

He nodded. And went back to the line.

The wall closed in front of him. Ossel and Teel were already there, with the Kiln smiths, hammering it back into the ground. Three short. One long.

Forty.

I said it on the plateau that night. I’ll say it here.

Forty of the three hundred. They were taken from their own people when they were children and made into something that was nearly Sorn and wasn’t quite, and they came to Avalon, and stood on our north field for a year, and nobody came to call them home. And they walked to Varra and put their hands on their chests and held them out, and she gave them suits, and put them on a part of the wall that mattered.

Crane has forty markers out.

He’s not putting them back.

The arm reached Avalon in the third hour.

I wasn’t there. I’ll write what Ingrid said, because she said it to me after on the porch, very quietly, with her ribbon round her wrist.

It came round the sun the long way. The way Dory said. Over the north side. Down toward the hollows where the children were.

And Ingrid was there.

Not in time. Before.

She was over the hollows before it came over the edge of the sky. She’d been there since Tiamat said it’s here. All morning. In the air over the town and the house on the rise and the hall under it, with nothing happening, holding still. And when the arm came over the north edge of Avalon’s sky, she was the first thing it met.

She hushed it.

All of it. Not people, this time. Not a breath at a time. The whole arm. Everything in front of her went still. The way the old queen she got it from does, before she strikes, so that she strikes only what she means to.

Then she struck.

She says she doesn’t remember much after that. She says Callum came up from over the long ward with Rowan calling the turns, and the Avalon third of the Standing fired from every city on the north side, and the Aldri stations round Avalon fired, and the north towns put the wall up.

But she says the arm never got lower than the clouds.

“It never got lower than the clouds,” she said. On the porch. Again. Like she was checking.

“No,” I said.

She turned the ribbon on her wrist.

“I was there,” said Ingrid. “This time. I was there.”

Konrad, on the step, with the sheet, wrote one line all day that wasn’t a number.

She was there.

The arm at Ister was smaller. Halvane said afterward it was the first time in eleven thousand years his people had fought something without moving the world away from it first.

They didn’t move it. The engine under the deepest city stayed quiet all day.

They lost a station.

The fourth round Ister. On the far side, where the arm came in. Three thousand Aldri, at the guns. It fired forty times before it went dark. Dory felt it go. She said its name into the net, the way Halvane had taught it to her, and then she said the next thing she had to say, and the next, because the net doesn’t stop.

Halvane says he’ll say the names. All three thousand. He’s started already.

I’m not going to pretend it was a good day.

It wasn’t. It was a very bad day, with less bad in it than there should have been.

By the sixth hour, the body had stopped coming down.

Not stopped. Not pulled back. Just stopped. Hanging over the far edge of the plains, dark, with the white threads going up through it and the holes the stations had made still closing, slowly, all over it. Breathing.

The new ones on the ground were gone. All of them. The plains were white along the far edge where the threads came down, and black in the middle, and green under the plateau where the queens were. Still green. Not one thing had touched the ground round the eldest all day.

Not one.

The Sorn came at dusk.

Not in. Not down. They came to the edge.

Dory said it first. Very tired. “Grey ships. Behind it. The far side. Finished.” A breath. “A lot.”

I looked up.

You could just see them. Past the body. Past the edge of the dark. A line of grey, very small, very far, where the dark ended and the stars began again. Ships. Grey ones. Not swaying. Not moving at all. Sitting there, at the edge of the sky, on the far side of the body, in a line.

Watching.

The Overseer came up the plateau path at dusk.

With the dog. With Holt’s cap in his hands, still. Holt behind him, walking slowly, very straight, with Varra on one side of him and Kyria on the other, neither of them touching him, both of them very close.

Holt was grey. Not the grey of the making. The grey of a man who’s sixty-seven and stood at the front of everything all day with his hands behind his back.

He was alive.

Okafor felt it. Through the net. I felt her feel it, at the long table, on Avalon. She didn’t say anything. She just put her head down, once, on her hands on the wood.

The Overseer stood at the top of the plateau and looked at the grey ships.

“They’re waiting,” he said.

“For what?” said Andraste.

He scratched the dog’s ear.

“For her to be tired,” said the Overseer. “For all of you to be tired. The body was never meant to win. It was meant to make you spend everything.” He looked at the line of grey. “The houses don’t fight. They wait for whatever’s left. They’ve always waited.”

Nobody said anything.

“How long?” said Dinraal. In the end.

“As long as it takes,” said the Overseer. “That’s the only thing they’ve ever had more of than anyone.”

He turned Holt’s cap round in his hands.

“But they’ve never waited for anyone with a teapot,” said the Overseer. “So I don’t know.”

The sun went down over Root’s plains.

The light went red, and then grey, and then the threads were the only light, white, from the ground to the moons, going up through the dark over the far plains like the bars of a gate.

Mother turned round.

Not to the body. Not to the grey ships. West. Away from all of it. To where Avalon was in Root’s sky, a small, bright, blue-white star, very low, just going down.

She stood very still.

I didn’t understand at first what she was doing. Then I did.

It was the turn.

Dory’s eyes were shut. She’d shut them in the fifth hour; Hana said she should, and for once Dory listened. Her face was white and there was blood dried on her lip and on Risa’s sleeve. She hadn’t let go of the net once all day.

She didn’t open her eyes. But she said it. Very quietly. Not into the net. Just to her grandmother.

“Gran,” said Dory. “The porch.”

Mother closed her eyes.

I felt it. Through Dory. Through the net. On Avalon, at the top of the hill, at the turn, a small girl in a coat with her hands flat on the boards.

Lifting.

A finger’s width. The whole porch. On her own. With the town below her dark and the hall under her full of children and the ledges empty and Ingrid over her head in the sky, very high, very still. With the sky to the north still full of the smoke of what didn’t get lower than the clouds.

Oona held it up.

For as long as it takes the sun to go. Which is a long time, when you’re eight.

She held it up the whole time.

“There she is,” said Mother.

She didn’t open her eyes until the porch went down. Then she did. And they were wet. And she didn’t wipe them.

“Right,” said Mother. “That’s home where it should be. Now.”

She turned round.

“Someone should pour.”

She knelt by the two teapots on the grass. Her knees. She picked up her own, the big one, with the chip in the spout. It was still warm. I don’t know how. Sera says she kept her hand on it, a bit, all day, between fires; she says she didn’t think about it, it was just there.

Mother poured the first cup.

And poured it out. On the green ground of the plateau. Slowly. All of it.

For the eldest.

The plateau went very quiet.

The queens round the foot of it, all of them, stopped singing. For the first time since the dark came down.

No one, said the eldest. Very slowly. No one has ever poured for me.

“Well,” said Mother. “Someone has now.”

She poured the second cup. And held it out.

To Dory.

Dory opened her eyes. Black. Tired. She took the cup in both hands, the way she did when she was small and the cup was big. And drank it.

Then Mother poured for everyone.

All the way round. Every one of us on the plateau. My wives. Dinraal and Isolde. The Mom Squad. Holt, who sat down on the grass to drink it, for the first time all day, and the Overseer beside him, who held it as if he wasn’t sure what you did with it. The dog had some in the saucer.

Kyria came up the path from the foot of the plateau, and Teshka, and Varra, with eleven new knots in her rope. They had a cup.

Mother ran out. Risa went down to the arch at the foot of the plateau with the pot and came back with it full. I don’t know who filled it. Abbe, I think. Abbe always knows.

It took a long time. Nobody spoke.

The last cup was Mother’s.

She didn’t drink it. Not straight away. She sat on the grass at the edge of the plateau beside Dory, with her knees up, the way she sits on the step on Avalon, and held it, and looked out over the plains. At the white threads. At the dark beyond them, breathing. At the line of grey past that.

At the queens. All of them. All round her.

The Scarecrow queen had come up the slope. Not all the way. Just to the edge of the top, where Mother was sitting. And put her head down on the grass beside her.

Mother put her hand on it.

“You’re a long way from the garden wall,” said Mother.

So are you, said the queen.

“Hm,” said Mother.

She drank her tea.

I went and sat beside her. Later. When the others were asleep. On the grass on the plateau, all of them, with Hana’s breath going very slowly over all of them and Sera’s warm in the ground and Luna sitting up at the edge, watching the dark, because she doesn’t sleep the first night of anything.

Dory had gone to sleep sitting up against Risa. Risa hadn’t. Risa never does.

The net was still there. Smaller. Very quiet. Dory held it in her sleep. She’d said she would.

“It’ll come again tomorrow,” I said.

“Yes,” said Mother.

“And the grey ones.”

“Yes.”

I didn’t say anything for a while.

“We lost three thousand on Ister,” I said. “And forty of the unfinished. And Crane says eleven hundred of the Standing and forty-one of the Kasrai and two hundred and twelve Hyrrani and eighteen of Aune’s fighters and one of Risa’s wing.”

“I know,” said Mother. “I’ll say them.”

“It’s a lot of names.”

“It’s always a lot of names,” said Mother. “That’s why you start early.”

She looked out at the white threads.

“But none of them were children,” said Mother. Very quietly. “And none of them were on their own. And the queens came to their mother. And Oona held the porch up.” She turned her cup round in her hands. “Your father used to say: a bad day you can count the good bits in is a day you can get up from.”

“Did he?”

“No,” said Mother. “I just made it up. But he would have.”

I laughed. On the plateau of the first queen there ever was, in the dark, with the body of the Hungry breathing over the far plains and the houses’ grey ships waiting past it. I laughed out loud.

Under us, very slightly, the ground laughed too.

Genny didn’t have the baby.

Garnet said so, through the net, very late. Not yet. She says she’s waiting for everyone to get home first. She says it’s rude to start without them.

Mother smiled.

“That’s mine,” said Mother.

Days 7042–7043. To Her.

The queens didn’t make a sound when they moved. The Scarecrow queen went down the hill under us; Mother: there she goes. In the hall the heavy queen stepped between the children without touching one and told the General: keep them. Ma’am. The ledges empty; Kwame Osei: we’ll make our own warm; old Efua: I’ll shout at it; the children laughed. Abena went up to the long ward; small Sigmund held the door. The Scarecrow queen came up through the red glass and looked at Mother: go to her, we’re right behind you. Nan Vey: I didn’t press anything for them. Wren counted every queen through every arch; I won’t write the number. Abbe poured a cup for each. Ilas held Rory’s door with both hands. The Ground went up off the north field with the heavy queen in her heart. The old one stayed and sang the way; so did Isca’s. Varra stepped aside. The ring round the plateau. The eldest: you came. The Scarecrow queen: you sang to us; that is why. Mother knelt, hands flat, till it passed: thank you, Dorothy. Tiamat: edge of the Watch. It breathed in, and the threads went taut. Dory: one arm to Avalon, one to Ister, the rest to her. Now. Twenty-seven stations fired and the holes closed. Holt and the Overseer took the cap off. The diggers went into Root’s ground and it closed: its first mistake. The queens sang down into their mother and every thread lit white and the dark let go along them. Mother lifted and dropped; Maura glassed it. Dory held the net all day; Risa wiped her nose with her sleeve. The south wall broke and we weren’t in time: forty of the unfinished; one held his hand out to me. Ingrid was there before; it never got lower than the clouds; Konrad wrote: she was there. Ister lost its fourth station, three thousand; Halvane is saying the names. Not one thing touched the ground round the eldest. At dusk the grey ships, at the edge, waiting; the Overseer: for her to be tired; they’ve never waited for anyone with a teapot. At the turn Mother looked west: Gran, the porch. Oona held it up the whole time. There she is. Mother poured the first cup out for the eldest: no one has ever poured for me. Well. Someone has now. The second to Dory, then everyone. Eleven hundred of the Standing, forty-one Kasrai, two hundred and twelve Hyrrani, eighteen fighters, one of Risa’s wing. None of them children; none alone. The ground laughed. Genny: it’s rude to start without them.