Chapter 486 Word of Mouth

Mattick’s new ship was brown.

Halvane had it built at the second city’s yards, the way he said he would. It took the yards nine weeks, which Halvane says is the fastest the Aldri have ever built anything that wasn’t an engine for a world. It’s bigger than the old one. Much bigger. It can carry four times the crates. It has an Aldri engine in the back, small and quiet, that runs on Thole’s lumen at the fair price.

And it looks four generations old.

Halvane insisted. He said a trader’s ship should look like it’s been somewhere. So the yards painted it brown, a dull tired brown, and then they patched it. All over. Deliberately. Plates riveted on that didn’t need riveting. Scorch marks painted on round the engine that no engine had made. A dent in the nose that one of the Aldri engineers put there with a hammer, very carefully, while Halvane watched and told her where.

When Mattick saw it, at the yards, he stood and looked at it for a very long time.

“It’s beautiful,” said Mattick.

“It’s a disgrace,” said the Aldri engineer with the hammer. “I’ve never been so ashamed of anything in my life.”

“It’s perfect,” said Mattick.

He named it the Hesta.

After the girl. The one whose soft one they burned in the square on Carrow, while she watched. The one Sorrel wrote on her wrist every morning for weeks, until he found her and she had Sorrel’s soft one in her arms and said it smelled like somewhere else.

He asked Sorrel first. He sent a message on the thin band, before the yards were finished, very short, in the small worlds’ tongue, which Ilka read out at the long table.

May I name my ship for Hesta? She says yes. Does the girl with the green ears say yes too?

Sorrel said yes. Then she asked if she could paint it on. Halvane said she could. So she went through the Ister arch with Dory and Aune on a grey morning to the second city’s yards and stood on a ladder that the Aldri engineer with the hammer held very steady, and painted the name on the side of the brown ship herself. In the Collective’s script. One stroke at a time. The way she wrote Yours.

It’s a bit crooked. The Aldri engineer says it’s the only part of the ship she isn’t ashamed of.

That was the first thing. The second was the Table.

The Hedge Table met again on the thirtieth evening. On the rise. At dusk. With the river of blue lighting up down the middle of it.

Everyone came back. The Caddi grandmother. Wenna. Ebb, leaning a bit harder on his granddaughter. Aske’s grandmother from Sedge. Eska. The Kiln smith with the burned arms. Oss, with her ears up. The walker, standing on the grass. Kyria. Varra with the bowl of soil. Ilas. Mira Tannock. Mother at the side with the kettle.

And two new chairs.

Two worlds had asked to join.

Not Collective worlds. Not yet. Small ones. From further out than the Hedge goes, past Tiel and Lantern, at the edges where nobody’s ever been sure who anything belongs to. They’d heard about Thole. They’d heard about the Table. They’d heard, Wenna said, the way everyone hears everything now, which is from a trader, or a child with a soft one, or the bands at night.

One sent a fisherman. The other sent a very old woman who said she didn’t have a title, she was just the one who’d been told no the most times.

Mother poured them a cup each. And turned the handle round. And the Table said yes. Both of them. Before the kettle had gone cold.

Rory made two more chairs that week. He says that’s what the room was for.

Then Mira Tannock asked her second question.

“There were a hundred and sixty-three,” said Mira.

Everybody at the Table knew what she meant. Mara Quell’s list. The stars on the eater’s path, with member worlds under them. Four hundred million people.

“Thole was one,” said Mira. “There are a hundred and sixty-two left. Some of them nineteen, now. The nineteen have already gone.” She stopped. She’d had to stop, the first time she heard about the nineteen, at the long table, when Senna read the letter, and she has to stop every time she says it. “The rest are still there. Under their suns. In good standing. Waiting for a fleet to come and make light nine times and go home.”

She put her blue hands flat on the river.

“They don’t know,” said Mira. “They don’t know what the Collective’s doing. They don’t know about the luring, or the ore ships that come after, or anything. They think they’re just unlucky.” She looked round the Table. “We can’t tell them why. Not yet. Corvan hasn’t said. But we can tell them something.”

“What?” said Kyria.

“That if the dark comes,” said Mira, “and the fleet makes light at it and goes home, and the voice comes on every band and grieves for them, there’s somewhere they can ask.” She looked down at the blue. “There’s a Table.”

The Table was quiet for a long time.

“They’ll be banished,” said Oss. “If they ask. Like Thole. Like Lantern.”

“They’ll be dead if they don’t,” said Mira.

“How would we tell them?” said Wenna. “Lucas can’t go and stand on all of them. Dory can’t. They’d be watched. The Collective would know.”

“Not Lucas,” said Mira. “Not Dory. Not anyone they’d watch.”

She looked down the slope of the rise. At the arch, a long way off on the plain. At the brown shape you could just see past it, on the red glass, where the Hesta had come through from the yards that afternoon to be loaded.

“Traders,” said Mira Tannock.

So that’s what the Table decided.

Not a fleet. Not the Standing. Not a broadcast on every band. Traders. Mattick, and the ore captain of fleet nine, who’s been to Thole three times now for lumen and shakes Mira’s hand every time, and any other trader from inside the Collective who comes to the edge of the Hedge in a patched ship and asks to buy toys.

They’d carry crates. Of soft ones, and comics, and shores with clear hulls, and soft Tholes that light up when you press the sun. The way they already do. Into the Collective. Under the ban.

And they’d carry something else.

A word. Not on a slate. Not written down anywhere. Just said. Quietly. At the bottom of a ramp, to whoever bought the crates.

If your sun goes dark, ask.

That’s all. Four words. The Caddi grandmother chose them. She said four was two too many, but she’d allow it, because it was important.

Ebb asked one more thing. At the end. When the blue was the brightest thing on the plain.

“Who’ll hear them,” said Ebb, “if they ask?”

Nobody answered for a moment.

“Their queens,” said Kyria.

Dory, on the slope beside me, went very still.

“If a world on the list hears the four words,” said Kyria, “and the dark comes, and they want to ask, they don’t need a band. They don’t need a trader. They’ve got a queen under them. Every one of them. Holding the thread.” She looked down the Table at the bowl of soil from Root. “And the queen can call the eldest. The way Thole’s did.”

Varra put both hands on her chest.

The soil in the bowl, Dory says, got very slightly warmer.

The Hesta went out through the Watch eleven days later.

We went down to the red glass to see her off. All of us. Sorrel at the front, holding Dory’s hand, looking up at her crooked name on the side of the brown ship.

Mattick stood at the top of the ramp. He looked older than when he first came up the hill. More tired. But he was standing straighter, Mother said. She said he looked like a man who’d been asked to carry something important and had said yes.

The crates were loaded. Hundreds. Soft ones, comics, shores, Tholes, leaves. And three crates that weren’t for selling. That were for children whose soft ones had been burned. The toymakers had packed them themselves, Aune said, and wouldn’t say how many were in each, only that it was enough for a square.

Halvane came to the bottom of the ramp. Very slowly. On a stick, now, which he hasn’t needed for years, and which Halloway insists on since his heart stopped on Thole and started again. He looked up at Mattick.

“You know what you’re carrying,” said Halvane.

“Toys,” said Mattick.

“You know what else.”

“Four words,” said Mattick.

Halvane nodded. Slowly.

“If they catch you,” said Halvane, “they’ll put you on a frame.”

“I know,” said Mattick. “They’ve been threatening to for forty years. For buttons, mostly. And thread.” He looked down at Mother, at the back, with the pot. “Your mother told me about the man with the bag. On Earth. Who climbed the stairs.”

“He kept climbing,” said Mother.

“So will I,” said Mattick.

The Hesta went out through the Lantern arch onto the edge of the Hedge, and Aune took her as far as the Watch in her Ceren, with the other nine on her wings. The way Aune took the old ship.

Mattick flashed his lights twice. At the edge.

Then he went in.

Sorrel stood on the red glass for a long time after. Looking at the arch.

Then she wrote on her wrist. Under the C. that’s still there.

M.

“He’ll be all right,” said Dory.

“I know,” said Sorrel. “I’m just keeping him on. In case.”

While all that was happening, Trevor and Teva set a date.

I want to put this down properly, because it’s going to take most of a year, and because it’s the first time anyone in this house has ever tried to plan a wedding the Aldri way, and because Teva’s father nearly didn’t survive it.

They’ve been engaged since the top of the wheel. Trevor asked her with Ash’s ring, ridge-iron and Aldri silver, the one Odra told you’ll do. Teva said yes before he’d finished asking. The Aldri don’t change their minds. Once made, they stay made.

But an Aldri wedding takes a long time.

Teva told us about it at the long table. Very carefully. The way the Aldri explain anything they think might frighten people.

First the families meet. Not once. Nine times. Once in each family’s house, and once in the house of each grandparent, and once somewhere neither family has ever been. Then the couple goes to the long record and stands in front of the keepers and says, out loud, what they’re going to be called together, which can take a while if nobody agrees. Then there’s a year where they’re allowed to change their minds, which nobody ever does, because the Aldri don’t, but it’s a year anyway, because it’s always been a year.

Then the wedding. Which is very short. Halvane says Aldri weddings last about as long as it takes to say good morning.

“Nine times,” said Mother.

“Nine,” said Teva.

“The families meet nine times.”

“Yes.”

Mother looked down the long table. At twenty children and three babies and six wives and every grandparent we count as ours.

“Which family?” said Mother.

Teva’s father is an engineer. He works on the dream rooms, under the dream-maker who asked me to tell him everything that was wrong. He’s very tall and very gentle and very organised, and he’s the father of twins, so he thought he knew what a large family was.

He came to the long table for the first of the nine meetings with a slate. A list. He’d written down everyone in our family he thought he’d need to meet.

It had eleven names on it.

Mother looked at the list. Then at him. Then she gave him a cup of tea and turned the handle round for Oona and said, very kindly: “You’ll want to sit down, love.”

He sat down.

Then she started telling him who else.

It took her three hours. Andraste timed it. Every grandparent. Every one we count. Kyria and all six husbands. The Oseis, and old Efua, who shouted at him from the end of the table to speak up, he wasn’t speaking up. Maura and Rory, who brought a door. Ingrid and Konrad, who brought a list of their own. Halvane and Ilas, which surprised him, because he hadn’t known they counted, and Halvane said they did, and Teva’s father nearly dropped his cup.

Then the children. All twenty. Then the babies. Then Lio, and Sefa. Then Oona. Then Wren, who said she wasn’t family, really, and Mother said she most certainly was, she’d counted everyone in this house every morning for years and somebody had to count her back.

Then the queens.

“The queens,” said Teva’s father.

“They’ll want to come,” said Mother. “The Scarecrow queen always comes. And the eldest will want to know.” She poured him another cup. “She’ll want a bowl of soil at the table, probably. She likes to be there.”

Teva’s father looked at his slate. At the eleven names. Then he turned it over, to the clean side, and looked at that for a long time.

“I’m going to need a bigger slate,” he said.

“Wren had to get one,” said Mother. “Crane made it. I’ll ask him.”

The nine meetings are going to take most of a year. Teva says that’s normal. Teva’s father says it isn’t, not with this family, and that he’s had to start a second list for the second list. He comes to the long table every week now. He sits on the bench between Kesh and Halvane. Teo moves two of his arms.

He’s stopped bringing the slate. He says it doesn’t help.

The toymakers wrote to Teva. Very respectfully. They’d heard, of course. They asked if they might make something. For the wedding. A playset, perhaps. Of the long table. With the bride and the groom.

Teva wrote back. One line. In Aldri. Aune translated it.

Absolutely not.

Then, underneath, smaller:

But you may make Trevor’s grandmother sitting down very suddenly. He would like that. So would I.

The second of the nine meetings was at Teva’s house.

On Ister. In the third city. Not far from Ilas’s old house, down a long grey street of tall narrow homes, all very quiet and very tidy, with doors exactly as high as an Aldri and windows exactly as wide as their shoulders.

Teva’s father had prepared. He’d asked Halvane how many to expect. Halvane had told him. He’d gone very quiet and then gone out and borrowed every chair on the street.

We came through the arch in the afternoon. All of us. Mother and the wives and the children and the babies and Kyria and four of the six husbands, because the other two were holding the ridge. The Oseis. Maura and Rory, with a small door. Ingrid and Konrad. Halvane and Ilas, who said they were coming as Trevor’s family this time and not as anyone important, and who were the first two people on the street to recognise.

The street came out to watch.

Of course it did. Every tall narrow door on that long grey street opened, very quietly, and every Aldri on it came out and stood on their step, the way the Aldri stand for important things. Children with soft ones. A great many of them with copper in their hair. An old man with a soft Dot held against his chest, very carefully, like something that might spill.

Nobody said anything. They just watched us go by. All forty of us. Down their street. To the engineer’s house.

The engineer’s house was very small.

I don’t mean that unkindly. It was a beautiful house. Tall and narrow and grey and very tidy, with long pale walls and one long window at the end that looked out over the third city’s plaza. It was built for a family of four. Five, if you counted Teva’s grandmother, who lived on the top floor and came down for the meeting on a stick, very slowly, the way Ilas does.

We didn’t fit.

We tried. The engineer had put every chair on the street round the walls of his long front room, and we sat on them, and on the floor, and on the stairs, and on each other. Kesh sat on the windowsill. Teo sat on the stairs with his four arms folded. The babies went on the grandmother’s bed upstairs, in a row, Luka and Kyrie and Queenie, with Abena watching them, and Kyrie shouted, and Queenie looked at her, and she stopped.

Teva’s mother made tea.

She made it the Aldri way. Which is very slow and very careful and involves a pot with no handle at all, a smooth grey stone pot that you hold in both hands. She poured for forty people, one cup at a time, and it took her nearly an hour, and nobody minded, because the Aldri don’t hurry and by then neither did we.

Mother watched her do it. All of it. From the chair by the long window. Very quietly. With her own hands in her lap.

When Teva’s mother came to her, last, with the last cup, Mother took it in both hands. The way you have to, with no handle.

“Thank you,” said Mother. “That’s a beautiful pot.”

“It was my grandmother’s,” said Teva’s mother. “We have no handles. We were always told a handle is for passing a thing to someone else. We never had anyone to pass it to.” She looked at Mother. A long way down. “We only ever poured for ourselves.”

Mother didn’t say anything for a moment.

Then she held her cup out. Towards Teva’s mother. Both hands.

“Pour one for yourself, love,” said Mother. “And then sit down. You’ve done forty.”

Teva’s mother looked at her for a long time. Then she poured. For herself. And sat down. On the floor, next to Mother’s chair, because there wasn’t anywhere else.

And Mother put her hand on her shoulder. And left it there.

Teva’s grandmother, at the top of the stairs, said something in Aldri. Very low. Aune translated it for me afterwards.

She’d said: That’s the first time anyone’s poured for us in this house in four hundred years.

Nothing got broken. I want that written down. Andraste says it’s the first time in the history of this family that forty of us have been in a room that small and nothing got broken.

Except Teva’s father.

He sat on the bottom stair through the whole afternoon, with Halvane on one side and Rory on the other, and every now and then Rory handed him a small piece of wood and a plane and he planed it, without noticing, the way Rory does. By the end of the meeting he’d planed four pieces of wood into curls.

“Is he all right?” said Teva. To Rory.

“He’s fine,” said Rory. “He’s just found out what a large family is.” He took the plane back. Very gently. “Takes everyone like that, the first time.”

Luna and Trevor walked home through the north field that night. I went with them part of the way, and then dropped back, because it was theirs.

But I heard some of it. The wind was coming the right way.

“Nine,” said Trevor. “Nine of those.”

“Eight more,” said Luna.

“Mum.”

“It’s good for you,” said Luna. “All of it. The waiting. The year where you can change your mind and don’t.” She walked a while. She walks slowly in the north field, always, because she’s listening to the frost in the ground. “I didn’t have a year. With your father. Nobody had years, then. We had whatever there was between one thing and the next. I’d have liked a year.”

Trevor didn’t say anything.

“Teva’s mother poured for herself today,” said Luna. “For the first time. In her own house. Because your grandmother told her to.” She stopped walking. “That’s what you’re marrying into, love. Not just Teva. A house that never had anyone to pass a pot to. And they’ve got us now. All forty of us, on their street, on their stairs.” She looked at him. “Be kind to them. They’re not used to it.”

“I will,” said Trevor.

“I know you will,” said Luna. “You’re mine.”

Then she put her hand flat on the ground of the north field, the way she does, and listened for a moment. And the frost under it, Trevor told me later, made a very small pattern. Like a ring.

“Showing off,” said Trevor.

“A bit,” said Luna.

Small Sigmund and Tovi haven’t set a date. Sigmund says they’re watching how it goes with Trevor first. Tovi says that isn’t true, she’s already decided, she decided on the third day, she’s just letting Sigmund think it’s his idea. Sigmund says he heard that. Tovi says she knows.

The other thing. The one I don’t like writing.

The eldest is still listening. To the houses. At the bottom of her.

Dory goes every night. She sits by the iron candle with her hand flat on the green ground, and the eldest tells her what she’s heard that day. Most days it’s nothing much. The houses ask the Prime about the door, and the Prime says it’s coming, and the houses say you will be what he is, and the Prime goes quiet.

But nine nights ago, the eldest heard something else.

She said the Prime asked the houses a question. A new one. He asked what it would feel like. Being what I am.

And the houses didn’t answer for a long time.

Then they said: You will feel us.

Dory came home and sat on the roof with me and didn’t say anything for an hour.

“He doesn’t know,” said Dory. In the end. “Does he. He thinks they mean they’ll be with him. Helping. Like the queens are with you.” She pulled her knees up. “He doesn’t know what they mean.”

“What do they mean?”

Dory looked at the sky for a long time.

“The collar,” said Dory. “The voice. Inside. Where nobody can see it.” She put her hand flat on the slates. “You will feel us. That’s what they used to say to the Ashen, Lio says. Before they put the collars on. You will feel us, and you won’t be alone any more.”

She was quiet.

“He’s lonely,” said Dory. “Corvan said. He walks in the long hall at night and talks to the walls. He’s lonely and he wants to be what you are because he thinks it’ll make him never be alone.” She looked at me. “And they’re going to give him that. Exactly that. And it’ll be the worst thing anyone’s ever done to anybody.”

I asked her if we should stop it.

I asked her if we should go. Now. To the far hall. To the long hall where he walks at night. And stand beside him, the way I stood beside the twelve, and tell him.

Dory looked at me for a long time.

“Would he believe you?” said Dory.

I thought about it. About the white room. About the man who wanted Rhiannon and Isolde and Aune for concubines, and who wrote I have seen the source. Twice. About the letters. About the lure.

“No,” I said.

“No,” said Dory. “He’d think you were trying to keep it for yourself.” She put her glasses back on. “Corvan said wait. Corvan’s closer than anyone. We wait for Corvan.”

Kyrie tried to lift Holdfast.

She’s fifteen months old. She’s been walking since the shelf. She carries Odra’s small blunt blade everywhere, in her fist, the way Luka carries his candle-holder and Queenie carries her soft leaf, and she’s started doing something with it that Andraste says is the first form. Very badly. Very seriously. In the hall, in front of the hook where Holdfast hangs.

Then one evening she put the small blade down. And reached up. For Holdfast.

It was leaning against the wall under the hook, where Andraste had put it down to take off her boots. It’s taller than Andraste’s shoulder. It’s ridge-iron and silver and has a door in it that opens onto somewhere else. Nobody but Andraste has ever lifted it. Kyria says nobody but Andraste ever will, in Andraste’s life.

Kyrie put both her small hands round the grip. And pulled.

It didn’t move. Of course it didn’t. Nothing could have moved it. It hummed, very softly, the two notes.

Kyrie pulled harder. And shouted at it. No. Which is what she shouts at things that won’t do what she wants.

Andraste came out of the kitchen. And stopped. And didn’t say anything. And Kyria, behind her, put her hand on her daughter’s arm.

“Leave her,” said Kyria.

So they watched. For a long time. While Kyrie pulled at Holdfast and shouted at it, red in the face, furious, and it didn’t move, and didn’t move, and hummed.

Then it hummed the third note.

Once.

And Kyrie stopped pulling. And looked at it. And let go. And sat down very suddenly on the floor of the hall, the way Mother does.

And laughed.

Kyria put her hand over her eyes again. Andraste went and picked her up. Neither of them said anything to anyone for the rest of the evening.

Later, on the roof, Andraste told me what Kyria had said to her in the hall. In very old Hyrrani. The kind nobody uses except on the ridge.

She’d said: It knows her.

The other things. Quickly.

The second Hedge Table voted to call the four words the Word. Not a big name. Something you could say at the bottom of a ramp without anyone noticing. Did they get the Word? the Table will ask, when a trader comes back. They got the Word.

The ore captain of fleet nine came to Thole a fourth time. He brought a message. From his daughter. The one whose soft Dot they burned. She’s had the lumen stone Mira gave him on the shelf in her room since he got home. She says it glows a bit at night. She says she’s not frightened of the dark any more. She says to tell the woman with the blue hands thank you.

He also asked Mira, very quietly, at the top of the third shaft, if it was true. What they were saying on the ore men’s band. That if your sun went dark, there was somewhere you could ask.

Mira told him it was true.

He took four crates of soft ones back with him when he went. He didn’t say who for.

Kyrie has a fifth word. It’s Taveth. She says it when she smells the soup. Taveth says it’s the greatest honour of his life. Kyria says she’s never heard him say that about their wedding.

Queenie looked at Teva’s father all the way down at the first of the nine meetings, and came back out, and said leaf. Teva’s father asked what it meant. Hana told him. He’s been very happy ever since.

Luka has learned to hold a candle. Not lit. Just hold it. Sera says it’s practice. Halloway says it’s a fire hazard. Rory has made him a small iron candle-holder, planed very smooth, that he can carry round the house. Everything it touches is warm.

Mattick sent word on the thin band nineteen days after he went in. Very short. In the small worlds’ tongue.

First world on the list. A river town. Sold every crate by dark. Gave the Word to the woman who bought the last one. She asked: ask who? I said: the Table. She said: what table? I said: the one with room.

And then, under it:

She said she’d tell her queen.

Ilka read it twice at the long table. Then Mother made her read it a third time, slowly, so Ebb’s granddaughter could write it down for the next Table.

The toymakers have made a soft Rory. Of course they have. Big and quiet, with a small soft door under one arm and a plane in the other hand. Maura says it’s the best likeness of him she’s ever seen. Rory says it isn’t. Rory has one on the shelf in the barn.

The stars said Not yet this morning. Two hundred and eighty-six. The two new worlds’ stars asked to be on the list, the night they joined.

Wren wrote it at the top of the slate. Under the stars, and the ring, and Root is listening, and Corvan: soon.

And then, a new line:

Hesta: out.

Days 9769–9810. Word of Mouth.

Mattick’s new ship from the second city’s yards, nine weeks, four times the crates, an Aldri engine on Thole’s lumen at the fair price; painted a tired brown and patched on purpose; a dent put in the nose with a hammer while Halvane said where; it’s a disgrace; it’s perfect. He named it Hesta; asked Hesta, and the girl with the green ears; Sorrel painted the name on from a ladder, crooked, the only part the engineer isn’t ashamed of. The second Hedge Table: two new worlds from past the edges, a fisherman and the one who’d been told no the most; yes before the kettle went cold; Rory made two more chairs; that’s what the room was for. Mira: a hundred and sixty-two left, nineteen gone; they think they’re just unlucky; we can’t tell them why, but we can tell them there’s a Table. Not Lucas, not Dory: traders. Crates under the ban, and four words at the bottom of a ramp: If your sun goes dark, ask; the Caddi grandmother said four was two too many and she’d allow it. Ebb: who’ll hear them? Kyria: their queens; and the queens can call the eldest. The soil got warmer. The Hesta went out: three crates for children whose soft ones were burned, enough for a square; Halvane on a stick now: they’ll put you on a frame; they’ve threatened for forty years, for buttons; he kept climbing; so will I. Aune to the Watch; two flashes. Sorrel wrote M. under the C. Trevor and Teva: an Aldri wedding: nine family meetings, the long record, a year to change your mind that nobody uses, and a wedding as long as it takes to say good morning. Mother: which family? Teva’s father, the dream-room engineer, came with eleven names; you’ll want to sit down, love; three hours, Andraste timed it; the grandparents, Halvane and Ilas, the children, Lio and Sefa, Oona, Wren, who counts everyone so somebody has to count her back; the queens, and a bowl of soil for the eldest. I’m going to need a bigger slate. The second meeting at the engineer’s narrow house on Ister: the street came out to watch; forty of us didn’t fit; Teva’s mother poured forty cups from a pot with no handle, because a handle is for passing to someone and they’d never had anyone to pass to; Mother: pour one for yourself, love, and sit down; the first time anyone’s poured for us in this house in four hundred years; Teva’s father planed four pieces of wood into curls on the bottom stair; Rory: he’s just found out what a large family is. He sits between Kesh and Halvane now and has stopped bringing the slate. Luna in the north field: I didn’t have a year with your father, I’d have liked one; be kind to them, they’re not used to it; a ring of frost under her hand. Teva to the toymakers: absolutely not; but you may make Trevor’s grandmother sitting down very suddenly. Tovi decided on the third day and is letting Sigmund think it’s his idea. The eldest heard the Prime ask what it would feel like, and the houses said: you will feel us. Dory: that’s what they said to the Ashen before the collars; he’s lonely and they’re going to give him exactly that. Would he believe you? No; he’d think you were keeping it for yourself; we wait for Corvan. The Word. The ore captain’s daughter isn’t frightened of the dark; he took four crates and didn’t say who for. Kyrie’s fifth word: Taveth. Kyrie pulled at Holdfast and shouted no, and it hummed the third note once, and she sat down suddenly and laughed; Kyria: it knows her. Mattick on the thin band: a river town; ask who? the Table; what table? the one with room; she said she’d tell her queen. A soft Rory with a door and a plane. Queenie’s leaf for Teva’s father. Luka’s iron candle-holder. Two hundred and eighty-six. Wren: Hesta, out.