Chapter 461 The Collective

We found out what the Reach was from a woman with white ears.

Her name is Oss. She’s the oldest of Ysse’s people, the one who knelt on the grass on Ithre and put her hands flat on it when she felt her queen singing under her. The one who poured the first cup out on the red glass without being told.

She lives in the forest city now. In a house Dory built with a very deep cellar, because her people like to sleep underground. She comes up to the red glass for the count every morning with the rest of the Ithre folk and listens to Ysse hum.

On the morning after Halvane’s list, she came up the hill instead.

She stood at the bottom of the porch steps with her great ears folded back, the way they fold when her people are afraid, and asked to speak to whoever was in charge.

Mother sent for Okafor.

“You asked who the Reach is,” said Oss. At the long table. Through Dot, whose fifth colour ran very bright along her edges as she turned the words. “On the silver. Everyone on Avalon heard you ask. Nobody knew.” She turned her cup round in her small brown hands. “We know.”

Okafor put her hands flat on the table.

“Tell me,” she said.

I’ll write it the way Oss told it. Then the way Halvane found it, after. Because they were the same, and that was the worst of it.

“The Assize is a court,” said Oss. “Very old. Older than my people’s songs. It sits on a world nobody has seen and judges everything that happens in the Bright Reach.”

“And the Reach?”

“The Reach is everything the Collective can see,” said Oss. “Every world they have a name for. Every star they have counted.” Her ears went flatter. “The Collective is the worlds. All of them, together. Millions of them. They say it is a family. They say anyone may join.”

“And if you don’t want to?”

Oss didn’t answer that.

“Ithre was a member,” she said instead. “For six hundred years. We sent our tithe. We obeyed the Assize. We had a seat in the far hall, at the very end, behind a thousand others, and once every hundred years someone from Ithre was allowed to stand up and speak.” She put her cup down. “Then the Refined came. With a seal from the Collective. Very old, very bright. It said they could go where they liked and do as they liked, and nobody in the Reach could stop them.”

“And the Assize?”

“We went to the Assize,” said Oss. “The year they came. My mother went. She stood up in the far hall at the very end, behind a thousand others, and said: they are cutting our queen.”

The kitchen was very quiet.

“The Assize said the Refined had a seal,” said Oss. “It said there was nothing to judge.”

Halvane went looking after that.

He came back on the fifth day with what he’d found. Not much. The Aldri ears had never listened that far, or that way. But once Oss told him what to listen for, the old bands the Collective used, the shape of their calls, he found it. Very far. Further than the six. Further than the dark place the star-eater came from.

A web.

That’s how Tiamat drew it on her wall. Lines of calls, from world to world to world, more of them than anyone could count, all going in toward a centre and out again. Like a spider’s web with the light behind it.

“Millions of worlds,” said Halvane. Very quietly. In the map room. “Oss was right. Millions.” He turned to Tiamat’s wall. “Trillions of people on them. All speaking to each other. All speaking the same way. All going in toward the same place.”

“The centre,” said Okafor.

“The Collective,” said Halvane. “Whatever sits there. Whoever.”

He was quiet for a long time.

“We’ve been at the edge of it the whole time,” said Halvane. “Eleven thousand years. Running from the Sorn and the Ashen and the Hungry. And all that time, on the other side of the dark, there was this. And it never once came to help.”

The Refined were theirs.

Oss had said it, and Halvane found it, and then Tiamat found it again, in the calls. Not citizens in good standing. Not a family business, the way the tall one said. A tool. Sanctioned. With a seal.

The Collective sends the Refined where it doesn’t want to be seen to go. To take what it doesn’t want to be seen to take. Queens. Worlds. People. To end what it doesn’t want to be seen to end.

“Black work,” said Okafor. She’d been in the program. She knew the words for it. “Murder. Taking people. Making examples.” She looked at the web on Tiamat’s wall. “Every government that’s big enough has something like it. Somewhere. In a drawer.”

“And I killed forty of them,” I said.

“Yes,” said Okafor. “And now they want you in the drawer instead.”

The white ship came back on the eighth day.

It sat at the edge of the Watch, where it had sat before, long and plain and still. And this time it didn’t call out to the world.

It called to me.

“Lucas Dask,” said the voice. The same woman’s voice. Very clear. Very formal. “The Prime of the Collective will speak with you. In person. Aboard this vessel. You may bring whom you wish.”

A pause.

“This is not a summons,” said the voice. “It is a courtesy. The Prime does not extend it often.”

“It’s a trap,” said Andraste.

“Probably,” I said.

“You’re going.”

“Yes.”

Andraste looked at me for a long time. Then she took Holdfast off its hook by the kitchen door.

“Then I’m coming,” she said.

We went. Me. Dory. Halvane, because Oss said the Collective respects age and the Aldri are very old. Okafor, because she’d been in rooms like this before, with Command, and knew how to sit in them. Andraste, with Holdfast, because there was no stopping her.

Mother stayed. She said someone had to have the pot ready.

Dory took us. Up the thread to the white ship. One breath.

The inside was white too.

Very white. Very clean. Very empty. Like the halls on Ithre, before the racks. Long corridors with nothing in them, and light coming from nowhere, and floors you could see your face in.

There was a room at the end.

He was sitting in it.

I’ll describe him once.

He was a man. Or something shaped like a man; I couldn’t tell what people he came from, and I can usually tell. Tall, not as tall as the Aldri. Broad. Old, the way the Aldri are old: you could see it in the eyes and nowhere else. Dark hair going silver at the edges. A plain grey coat with no marks on it at all, which was how you knew he was the most important person anyone in that ship had ever seen.

He was sitting in a chair by a window. The window looked out on Avalon. Very small, very blue, from the edge of the Watch.

He didn’t get up.

“Lucas Dask,” he said. In our language. No silver turning it. He’d learned it. “And your daughter. The other one with the eyes.” He looked at Dory. For a long time. “You’ll forgive me. The reports didn’t do you justice.”

Dory didn’t say anything.

“I’m Ormund Vael,” he said. “I’m the Prime. Sit down.”

There were chairs. We didn’t sit in them.

He didn’t seem to mind.

There was someone else in the room. I hadn’t seen him at first; he was standing behind the Prime’s chair, in the corner, against the white. Younger. Much younger. Perhaps twenty-five, the way humans count it. Tall, dark, very handsome, the way the Refined were handsome. Like a knife.

He was looking at Dory too.

“My son,” said the Prime. Without turning round. “Corvan.”

Corvan inclined his head. To Dory. Only to Dory.

Dory looked through him as if he were the wall.

“I’ll be brief,” said the Prime. “I know you’re busy. Stars going out. Very tiresome.” He folded his hands. “You killed forty of my people on Ithre.”

“Yes.”

“They were valuable to me.”

“They were drinking a queen,” I said. “They had hundreds more hung up on frames.”

“Yes,” said the Prime. “That’s what made them valuable.”

I didn’t say anything.

Andraste, behind me, moved her thumb on Holdfast’s hilt. Very slightly.

The Prime noticed. He looked at her hand on the hilt. At the blade. At the one white ribbon.

He smiled.

“Don’t,” he said. Pleasantly. “It wouldn’t matter. Not to me. Not to the Collective. I’m one man in a chair.” He turned his hand over. “Kill me, and there are a thousand others who’d sit in it by morning. The Collective doesn’t end with me, Lucas. It doesn’t end with anyone. That’s what it’s for.”

Then he told us what he wanted.

I’ll write it exactly. Okafor asked me to. She said if I didn’t write it exactly, people later would think I’d made it worse than it was.

I haven’t.

“The charges can go away,” said the Prime. “The Assize is mine; it does what the Collective needs. Forty Refined. Murder. Very serious. Very easy to forget.” He looked at the window. At Avalon. “In return for a gift. As is customary.”

“What gift?”

“My son would like a wife,” said the Prime.

He didn’t look at Dory when he said it. He didn’t need to. Corvan was.

“She’d want for nothing,” said the Prime. “She’d sit at the centre of everything. She’d be the most important woman in the Reach after my own. And her eyes would be where they belong. Where they can do some good.”

Dory still didn’t say anything.

I felt the net go very still round her. Like the air before Risa’s storms.

“And for me,” said the Prime.

He took something out of his coat. A small flat thing, like a glass. He turned it over and laid it on the arm of his chair, and light came up out of it.

Faces.

Three of them. In the air over the chair.

Rhiannon. In her winged dress, with her crown lit, on the plateau on Root, behind Aurelius’s shield.

Isolde. With her leaves. Writing in her notebook in the air over the plains.

And Aune. In her fighter’s seat, with her flight robe open at the neck and her long grey hair loose, coming down on the coral reef on the east plain with her arm hurt.

“The reports said there were two women on your worlds who were the most beautiful in the Reach,” said the Prime. “The reports were wrong. There are three.” He looked at the faces for a long time. “I’d like them. As my companions. At the centre. You understand.”

“No,” said Okafor. Very quietly. “Tell him what you mean.”

The Prime looked at her. As if he’d only just noticed she was in the room.

“Concubines,” said the Prime. “If you need a word.”

The room was very quiet.

“Rhiannon is married,” said Halvane. In the end. Very steady. “To Aurelius. Isolde is married. To Dinraal. They have children.”

“I’m aware,” said the Prime. “It doesn’t matter at the centre.”

“And Aune,” said Halvane.

“Is not married,” said the Prime. “Which makes her the simplest of the three.” He turned the light off. The faces went. “A gift, Lucas. Four people. A wife for my son and three for me, and you go home and fight your stars, and the Assize forgets Ithre ever happened.”

“No,” I said.

He didn’t look surprised. He’d known I would. I think he’d wanted to hear me say it.

“I thought not,” said the Prime. “So I’ll say the other thing.” He leaned forward in his chair. “I’ve read every report there is on you. The Refined sent them, before you killed them. The Assize sent them. My own people sent them. I know what you are. I know what she is.” He looked at Dory. “I know you took eleven pieces out of something as big as a star, and it didn’t notice.”

He sat back.

“The Collective is like that,” said the Prime. “You’re very strong. Stronger than anything I’ve ever seen. I’ll grant you that. One man.” He spread his hands. “But there are trillions of us. On millions of worlds. And we have been here longer than your queens have had names for.”

He looked out of the window at Avalon.

“You can take pieces out of us,” said the Prime. “As many as you like. We won’t notice.” He smiled. “The Collective is inevitable, Lucas. Everyone who’s ever said no to it has found that out. In the end.”

Dory spoke.

For the first time since we’d come into the room. Very quietly. Not to the Prime.

To Corvan.

“You want me for my eyes,” said Dory.

Corvan opened his mouth.

“Don’t,” said Dory. “I can see you. All the way down. You don’t even like me.” She tilted her head. “You want me because he told you to. And because you think if you had me, he’d look at you the way he looks at me.”

Corvan shut his mouth.

The Prime laughed. Once. Delighted.

“Oh,” he said. “She’s wasted on you, Lucas.”

Dory took us home.

She didn’t say goodbye. She didn’t say anything. She just took my hand, and Andraste’s, and Okafor’s, and Halvane’s, and the white room was gone, and we were on the red glass, at noon, with Mother standing at the arch with the pot.

Mother looked at our faces.

“Inside,” said Mother.

I’ll write what happened in the kitchen. Because it matters.

Everyone came. Of course they did. Dinraal and Isolde. Aurelius and Rhiannon. My wives. Okafor told it once, very exactly, standing by the slate, the way she’d want it written. All of it. The Prime. The son. The faces.

When she got to the faces, Dinraal stood up.

Isolde put her hand on his arm. He sat down again. But his armour had come up over his hands without him asking it to, silver to the wrists, and it didn’t go back down for an hour.

Aurelius didn’t move at all. He sat at the long table with his armoured arm flat on the wood and his face very calm. Rhiannon was beside him with her hand on his back.

“Well,” said Rhiannon. In the end. Very lightly. “I’ve been called a great many things. I don’t think I’ve ever been called a gift.”

“You won’t be,” said Aurelius. Very gently. The way he says everything. And the long table creaked under his hand.

Aune wasn’t there.

I didn’t notice at first. Then Tiri came in from the courtyard, very pale, with her message-bird in her hands, and said: “Mum’s on the porch. She won’t come in.”

I went out.

Aune was sitting on the top step. On the left end, where Oona sits. Folded up, the way the Aldri fold, very tall, with her knees up and her arms round them and her long grey hair down her back. In her flight robe.

She’d heard. Through the door. All of it.

“He’s right,” said Aune. Before I’d sat down. “I’m not married.”

“Aune—”

“He’s right,” she said again. Very calmly. Like a pilot reading a number. “Rhiannon has Aurelius. Isolde has Dinraal. They have children and houses and people who’ll stand between them and anything. If he wants them, he has to break something to get them. A marriage. A family. That’s a war.” She looked down at the town. “I’m just a pilot. With a daughter. Nobody’s wife. If I go, he doesn’t have to break anything.”

“You’re not going.”

“If I go,” said Aune, “maybe he’ll let the other two be. Maybe that’s enough of a gift. Maybe the charges go away and you can fight your stars.” She turned her head and looked at me. Her eyes were very bright, the way Aldri eyes go. “Tiri would be safe. Here. With you. With Corin and the ribbon and the grandmothers.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Someone old has to walk out first,” said Aune. “So everyone knows it’s all right. Isn’t that what your mother says?”

Mother was in the doorway.

I don’t know how long she’d been there. She came out onto the porch and stood behind Aune for a long time without saying anything.

Then she sat down. On the step. Beside her. Her knees; she doesn’t, much.

“That’s for grandmothers,” said Mother. “Walking out first. You’re not a grandmother yet.”

“Dot—”

“And it’s for walking out toward something,” said Mother. “Home. A cup. Someone who’s waiting.” She put her hand on Aune’s knee. “Not away from it. Not into a white room with a man who calls people gifts.”

Aune put her face down on her knees.

Halvane came out.

He stood at the top of the steps behind them for a long time. Very tall. With his long hands folded.

Then he cleared his throat. The way the Aldri do. Which they almost never do.

“There is another way,” said Halvane.

Everyone looked at him.

“The Prime said she is the simplest of the three,” said Halvane. “Because she is not married. Because there is no house round her. Nothing to break.” He looked at Aune. Then at me. “Then we give her a house.”

I didn’t understand. Then I did.

So did Aune. She lifted her head off her knees.

“Grandfather,” said Aune. Very carefully. “No.”

“I am very old,” said Halvane. “And very annoying. And I’m going to say it anyway, because if I don’t, you’ll walk into a white room to save us, and I’ll have to watch.” He turned to me. “Lucas. You should know something. You don’t, because nobody on Ister would ever tell you to your face.”

“What?”

“You are very famous on Ister,” said Halvane.

I looked at him.

“The man who asks stars to be steps,” said Halvane. “Who scattered up a thread in a breath to a world nobody had a name for. Who took the silver out of forty Refined like breath on a cold morning. Who held my daughter’s daughter’s daughter’s bird in his hand and told her it would fly again.” A pause. “They tell stories about you in the deepest city. To children. At bedtime.” Another pause. “My great-great-grandchildren have drawings of you on their walls.”

“Grandfather,” said Aune again. Her skin had gone the colour of the inside of a shell. The way Aldri skin goes when they’re caught out.

“And my granddaughter,” said Halvane, very calmly, not looking at her at all, “has been sweet on you since she came down through the arch the first time to fetch her daughter. In her flight robe. With half the Standing on the north field forgetting what it was doing.”

Aune put her face back down on her knees.

“Everyone on Ister knows,” said Halvane. “Her squadron knows. Ilas knows. Ilas has known for years. She’s been waiting for one of you to notice.” He looked at me. “You didn’t. You never do. Your mother says so.”

“I do say so,” said Mother.

“I would gladly see her wed to you,” said Halvane. “If she wants it. If you want it. If your wives want it.” He unfolded his long hands. “And then she’s not unmarried. And then she’s not simple. And then, if the Prime wants her, he has to break the house of Lucas Dask to get her.”

He looked out at the town. All the way down to the red glass.

“And I’d like to watch him try,” said Halvane.

Aune didn’t lift her head.

“Not like that,” she said. Into her knees. Very muffled. “Not to save me. I don’t want to be married to save me.”

“No,” said Mother. “Quite right.”

“If I’m going to be married,” said Aune, “I want it to be because—”

She stopped.

Nobody said anything.

“Because I’d have said yes anyway,” said Aune. Very quietly. “Before any of this. If anyone had ever asked.”

Ilas was on the bench by the kitchen door. Where she always is, in the evenings, with Abbe and Sefa. She’d heard all of it. The three of them always hear everything.

She waited until Halvane came back inside. Then she put her hand out, very slowly, and caught his sleeve.

“Four years,” said Ilas. In Aldri. Dot turned it for me afterward, because I asked. “I’ve been waiting four years for someone in this family to say it out loud.”

“You could have said it,” said Halvane.

“I’m a hundred and ninety-four,” said Ilas. “I’m allowed to watch.” She let go of his sleeve. “It’s the most entertaining thing that’s happened to me in a century.”

Abbe, beside her, poured her a cup without being asked.

Sefa twisted a knot into her own hair. Very slowly. A new one. Lio told me afterward it’s the one the Marrah tie when someone in the family is going to be married. Sefa hadn’t tied it in fifty years.

Tiri found her mother in the wing. Later. After dark. I wasn’t there; Tiri told Corin, and Corin told me, because Corin tells me things now, the way Dory used to.

She said she went in and sat on the end of her mother’s bed and didn’t say anything for a long time. Then she said: you were going to go.

Aune said: yes.

Tiri said: without telling me.

Aune said: I was going to tell you in the morning.

Tiri said: that’s not telling me. That’s leaving a note.

Then she put her head on her mother’s shoulder, Corin said, the way she puts it on his when she’s tired. And said: you’re allowed to want things for yourself, Mum. Grandad Halvane says so. Gran Dot says so. And then, very quietly: I say so.

Aune didn’t say anything. She held her.

I went up on the roof that night.

All six of us. The way we have since the first night on Avalon. Risa called a small storm out at sea, for the light. Sera had the slates warm. Luna had the drinks cold. Hana breathed. Andraste sat with Holdfast across her knees and didn’t sharpen it.

I told them. What Halvane said. What Aune said.

Nobody said anything for a while.

“Well,” said Sera. In the end. “Took you long enough.”

I looked at her.

“She’s been looking at you for four years,” said Sera. “Everyone’s noticed. Pip noticed. Maura noticed. My mother noticed before I did, and my mother doesn’t notice anything that isn’t on fire.”

“I didn’t.”

“No,” said Luna. “You never do.”

“Your mother says so,” said Hana.

“Do you mind?” I said.

I meant it. I asked each of them. One at a time. Not because Halvane asked, or because the Prime did. Because they’re my wives, and it’s their house too, and their roof, and their bed.

Risa laughed. At the sky. At the storm.

“Mind?” said Risa. “Lucas. Have you looked at her?”

“Yes.”

“No, I mean, have you looked at her?” said Risa. “The way she comes down through the arch? The way she stands? She lands a fighter like she’s putting down a cup.” Risa lay back on the slates and put her hands behind her head. “I’ve wanted to ask her to fly the wing with me for three years. Every time she looks at me I forget how weather works.”

“She’s beautiful,” said Hana. Very simply. The way she says everything true. “She breathes very slowly. I noticed that the first time. People who breathe slowly are very good at staying.”

She turned her head on the slates and looked at me.

“I’d like her here,” said Hana. “In the house. With us. All of her.”

Luna didn’t answer straight away. She doesn’t, with big things.

“She sat with me,” said Luna. In the end. “On the north field. The night before the queens went. When I couldn’t sleep. She didn’t say anything. She just sat on the fence beside me in the dark until it was morning.” Luna turned her cold cup round in her hands. “Nobody’s ever just sat with me before. Except you.”

She looked at me.

“Yes,” said Luna.

Andraste looked at Holdfast across her knees for a long time.

“The Prime looked at her face,” said Andraste. “In the air. Over his chair. Like it was something on a shelf.”

“Yes.”

“I’d like,” said Andraste, very carefully, “to be one of the people standing between her and that. For the rest of my life.” She put her hand flat on the blade. “And I’d like her to know I’d be standing there because I wanted to. Not because of any of this.” She looked up. “She’s very beautiful, Lucas. I’m Hyrrani. We’re not blind. I noticed her the first day. I just didn’t say.”

Sera rolled over on the warm slates and propped her chin on her hands.

“So that’s all of us,” said Sera. “Five yeses.” She grinned. The Calder grin. “She’s gorgeous, love. We’d all have her. In the house. On the roof.” A pause. “Anywhere.”

Luna threw an ice cube at her. Sera caught it and it melted in her hand.

Risa laughed so hard the storm out at sea lit up all along its edge.

Hana didn’t say anything. She just smiled at the stars, very slowly, the way she does when she’s happy, and breathed for all of us without meaning to.

I didn’t say anything for a long time either.

Then I said: “I’ll ask her.”

“Properly,” said Andraste.

“Properly.”

“Not because of the Prime,” said Luna.

“Not because of anything.”

“Because you want to,” said Hana.

I thought about it. About Aune coming down through the arch in her flight robe. About her sitting on the bench by the kitchen door folded up like a heron. About her coming down on the coral reef with her arm hurt and asking someone to tell Tiri she was cross with her fighter for not keeping still.

“Yes,” I said. “Because I want to.”

Corin asked the next morning. At breakfast. Very seriously. With his spoon in the air.

“If Dad marries Tiri’s mum,” said Corin, “does that make Tiri my sister?”

Everyone at the long table went very still.

Halvane put his cup down. Carefully.

“Among the Aldri,” said Halvane, “a child belongs to her mother’s house. Always. Tiri is of Aune’s house, and Ilas’s, and mine. Nothing changes that.” He looked at Corin. “And you are of your mother’s house. And hers. Hyrran’s.”

“So she’s not my sister.”

“No,” said Kyria. From the end of the table. She’d come through the arch from Hyrran at dawn the moment she heard. “Hyrran counts the same. By the mother. Always has.” She pointed down the table at the grey ribbon on Tiri’s wrist. “The grandmothers tied ten knots. The ribbon doesn’t care who anyone else marries.”

Corin thought about it.

“Good,” said Corin. And went back to his porridge.

Tiri, beside him, very red, the colour of Ister’s sky, didn’t say anything at all. But she hummed. Two notes.

I asked Aune that evening.

At the turn. On the porch. With Mother lifting it a finger’s width and Oona lifting the step, and the town lit up below us all the way down to the red glass.

I’m not going to write what I said. Some things go in the notebook and some things don’t, and Mother says I’m allowed to keep a few.

I’ll write what Aune said.

She looked at me for a long time. Her eyes were very bright. Her skin had gone the colour of the inside of a shell, all the way up her long neck.

“I’d have said yes,” said Aune. “Before any of it. Before Ithre. Before the white ship. If you’d ever once noticed.”

“I know.”

“Your mother says you never do.”

“She’s right.”

“Yes,” said Aune.

That was all.

Mother put the porch down.

Oona didn’t. She held the step up for a long time after, very carefully, with her hands flat on the boards, as if she thought someone might need somewhere to stand.

Okafor sent one line to the white ship that night. Through the silver. To the edge of the Watch. I asked her to. She wrote it on the slate first, so everyone could see what it said before it went.

Aune of Ister is the wife of Lucas Dask. The answer is still no. If you want any of them, come and break the house.

She sent it.

The white ship didn’t answer.

But Tiamat says, a moment later, it sent something out. Very long. Very fast. Into the dark. Toward the centre of the web.

Days 8762–8791. The Collective.

Oss of Ithre, with her ears folded back: we know. The Assize is a court older than her people’s songs; the Reach is everything the Collective can see; the Collective is millions of worlds, trillions of people, and calls itself a family. Ithre sat at the far end for six hundred years. The Refined came with a seal; her mother told the Assize they were cutting our queen; the Assize said there was nothing to judge. Halvane found the web on Tiamat’s wall; eleven thousand years at the edge of it and it never came to help. The Refined were theirs: black work, in a drawer; now they want you in the drawer. The white ship came back: a courtesy. Dory took us up the thread. A white room; Ormund Vael, the Prime, in a plain grey coat, by a window full of Avalon; his son Corvan, handsome like a knife, looking only at Dory. They were drinking a queen. That’s what made them valuable. Kill me and a thousand would sit in this chair by morning. The charges forgotten for a gift: a wife for his son; and three faces in the air, Rhiannon, Isolde, Aune: concubines, if you need a word. No. You’re very strong, one man; we are trillions; you can take pieces out of us and we won’t notice; the Collective is inevitable. Dory to Corvan: you don’t even like me; you want him to look at you the way he looks at me. She’s wasted on you. Dinraal’s silver came up over his hands for an hour. Rhiannon: I’ve never been called a gift. Aurelius: you won’t be. Aune on the step: I’m not married; if I go he doesn’t have to break anything. Mother: walking out first is for grandmothers, and toward something, not away. Halvane: then we give her a house; you’re famous on Ister; they tell stories about you at bedtime; she’s been sweet on you since the first arch; Ilas has known for years; I’d like to watch him try. Aune: not to save me; because I’d have said yes anyway. Ilas: four years waiting; the most entertaining thing in a century; Sefa tied the marrying knot. Tiri: that’s not telling me, that’s leaving a note; you’re allowed to want things; I say so. The roof: Sera, took you long enough; Risa, have you looked at her; Hana, people who breathe slowly are good at staying; Luna, she sat with me till morning; Andraste, I’m Hyrrani, we’re not blind; Sera, we’d all have her, anywhere; the ice cube. Because I want to. Corin: does that make Tiri my sister? By the mother, always; the ribbon doesn’t care. Tiri hummed. At the turn, Aune: I’d have said yes, if you’d ever once noticed. Okafor’s line: the answer is still no; come and break the house. The white ship sent something long and fast toward the centre of the web.