Chapter 69 The Balcony

They made speeches after the pudding.

I don't remember most of them. A man from the Council with a voice like a slow drip, about the founding of the dome. A woman from the treasury about what the program had cost and what it would return. The General, very short, standing very straight at the high table under the biggest chandelier, saying the future is where we will be fighting and sitting down again to applause that went on longer than the speech had.

Then Crane.

He stood up slowly, leaning on his cane, and the hall went quiet in a way it hadn't for anyone else. Not the fear-quiet. Something else. The quiet of people who knew who paid for the chandeliers.

"Forty," said Crane. That was how he started. Just the number. And then he talked about us. About forty children who would go where nobody had been. About seeds, and soil, and a green world that was waiting. About the first wave, brave beyond measure, who had gone before. He didn't say a number for them either.

He didn't look at me once, the whole time he was speaking.

I knew, because I was looking at him the whole time. Through the smoked glass. Through the needles, which had been getting worse all night, sliding in and out of the backs of my eyes in time with the chandeliers.

When he sat down, the music started again. Faster. Louder. People began to get up from the tables and move toward the middle of the floor, in pairs, in long bright dresses and black coats.

Dancing.

I'd never seen anybody dance. Not properly. Mother used to dance with Garnet on her feet in the kitchen, sometimes, when the filter was running well. That was all.

I watched them turn under the chandeliers. Round and round. The light catching on every jewel and every glass and every silver button, and coming at me from every side at once, and the needles going all the way in and staying there.

I put my hand over my eyes.

"Forty-one."

Okafor. Beside me. I hadn't seen her come.

"Sergeant."

"How bad?"

"Bad."

She didn't say anything for a moment. She stood beside me at the glass wall, very straight, in her black and silver, with her small faded ribbons over her heart, and looked out at the dancing.

"There's a door," she said. "At the end of this wall. Behind the curtain. It goes out onto a balcony, under the dome. For the engineers. No lamps." A pause. "I've not seen you go through it. If anybody asks."

"Thank you, Sergeant."

"Don't thank me. Go. Before you fall over in front of the Council and they write it in a report."

I went.

The curtain was heavy and dark red and smelled of dust. Behind it, a small plain door, painted the same color as the wall. I opened it.

And it was dark.

Not completely. The light from the hall came through behind me for a moment, until the door swung shut on its own. Then just the night. And the dome.

The balcony was narrow. A ledge, really, with a railing. It ran along the outside of the Great Hall's glass wall, a hundred and forty floors up, right under the gold glass of the dome itself. So close above me I could have reached up and touched it. The dome curved away overhead, enormous, gold even in the dark, holding the whole city in. And below the railing, a long, long way down, the city. Every tower. Every lamp. Spread out under me like a field of lights, glittering, all the way to the far edge of the glass.

No chandeliers. No crystal. No four hundred people.

The needles slid back into their holes.

I took Father's dusk off, for the first time since Okafor's office, and held them in my hand, and leaned on the cold railing, and breathed.

The door opened behind me.

Light, for a moment. Music. The sound of four hundred people. Then the door swung shut again, and it was dark, and quiet.

And cold.

Not much. Just a little. Just enough that I knew.

I didn't turn round.

"Okafor told me where you'd gone," said Luna Windsor.

She came and stood at the railing beside me. Not close. An arm's length. The way I'd sat down beside her on the gallery, in the rain.

I looked at her.

I'd thought I'd got used to it. In the hall, across three meters of black floor, I'd thought my head had just been surprised, and would stop being surprised once it had looked for long enough.

It hadn't.

She was standing in the dark at the railing in her blue dress, with her bare arms resting on the cold metal, and her silver hair all the way down her back, catching what little light came up from the city. The snowflake clip glinted. Her face was very pale and very still, looking out at the lights.

"Your hair's down," I said.

That was the first thing I said. After forgetting how to talk for an hour, in front of the General and the Council and four hundred people. Your hair's down.

Luna turned her head and looked at me.

"Yes," she said. "It is."

"I've never seen it down."

"Nobody has," said Luna. "Not since I was eight. Father's orders. A Windsor keeps it out of her face." She looked back at the city. "Tonight he told the woman who does Mother's hair to take it down. And put me in this. And put this in." She touched the snowflake clip. "He chose it. Himself. He's never chosen anything I wore in my life."

I didn't say anything.

"Do you know why?" said Luna.

"No."

"Because tonight," said Luna Windsor, "he wanted them to look at me."

She told me in the dark.

Like Okafor. Like the rain. I was starting to understand that the people I knew told the truth best where there wasn't any light.

"He spoke to me in the lift," she said. "On the way up. He doesn't usually speak to me in lifts. He doesn't usually speak to me at all, except over coffee." She was looking at the city. "He said you'll walk in with me. You'll sit at the high table. You'll be seen. And then he said, Tonight the Council decides how much the second wave gets. More ships. More kits. More money. They need to see that it's in good hands."

"Your hands."

"His hands," said Luna. "Through mine." She was quiet for a moment. "And then he said the other thing."

I waited.

"He said, The Dask boy listens to you."

The cold came off her in a slow wave, across the arm's length between us. My breath went white.

"He's watched the board," said Luna. "Four-twelve. Nobody hurt. He's read Okafor's reports. Keep leads, Scarecrow waits. He's read every word." Her voice didn't change at all. "And he said, in the lift, with the attendant pressing the button and pretending he wasn't there, That's the most valuable thing in this program, Luna. Not the boy. The fact that he listens to you. Don't lose it."

I didn't say anything.

"Don't lose it," said Luna Windsor. "Like it's a key. Like it's a rank. Like it's something he gave me that I might leave on a table." She took her hands off the railing. "He's not interested in what you can do, Lucas. Everyone else in that room is frightened of what you can do. Crane wants to measure it. The Council wants to own it. But Father." She looked at me. "Father wants to know who you'll listen to. Because whoever you listen to, he can point."

The city glittered below us.

"So he points me," said Luna. "That's what I am. That's what I've always been. Since I was six, and I froze Albert's hand, and he said now you know what you are. I'm a thing he can point. He made my heart slow so I'd be steady. He made my face still so nobody could read it. He made me first in every class and leader of the first squad and put me in a blue dress so the Council would see that the weapon was clean and well-kept and his." She breathed in. It shook, just slightly. "And tonight he found out I could point you."

I didn't say anything for a long time.

Not because I didn't have anything to say. Because I was trying to find the true thing. The way Father would have. Not the kind thing. Not the thing that would make it better. The true one.

"Is it true?" I said finally.

"Is what true?"

"That I listen to you."

Luna looked at me.

"In the jungle," I said. "When you said wait. I waited. When you said now, I did it. On the range, when you said hold." I looked at her. "I do listen to you. More than anyone. More than Okafor. He's right."

"I know he's right," said Luna. "That's the worst part."

"No," I said. "That's not the worst part. The worst part would be if you didn't know why."

She went very still.

"I listen to you," I said, "because you asked Okafor how many you were expected to bring back. Before you said yes. In front of everyone." I looked at the city. "I listen to you because you told me you were frightened. On the gallery. In the rain. Because you didn't freeze Toby. Because you kept the ice cream cold for Garnet. Because you read my notebook upside down every night and ask me questions I can't answer, and then help me find the answers." I breathed. "I don't listen to you because you're a Windsor. I don't listen to you because you're the leader. I'd stop, if you told me to do something wrong. Tomorrow. I'd stop the second you pointed me at something that wasn't the right thing."

Luna didn't say anything.

"He can't point me through you," I said. "Not really. Because the only reason I listen to you is that you'd never let him."

She looked at me for a long time, in the dark, with the city glittering below her and the dome curving gold overhead.

"You don't know that," she said finally. Very quietly. "You don't know what I'd do. If he—if it came to it. I don't even know."

"No," I said. "I don't. But I know what you've done. Every day for five months." I turned the dusk over in my hands. "That's all anybody can know about anybody, isn't it? Father used to say that. You don't know what a field will grow. You only know what it's grown."

Luna was quiet.

Then she said:

"What were you raised to be?"

I thought about it.

I thought about the field. The house at the bottom of a valley nobody had any reason to look at. The filter humming under the boards. Father at one end of the table, Mother at the other.

Father, who'd been sixteen in the program. Who'd made himself a pair of dark spectacles out of lamp soot on an infirmary step. Who'd come out of the war with black eyes and a Field Unit and things in his file that Okafor wouldn't tell me yet. Who'd been sent out into the dead lands with a soldier's rifle and an order, and been, Luna's father would have said, an asset. A weapon. A thing somebody pointed.

Mother. Subject 0117. Fifteen, in an orphan hall, held down while they put the stuff in. Half her hall didn't wake up. She did. And then the war had her too, the way it had him.

And then they'd left.

Both of them. Together. They'd walked out of the dome, and out of the war, and out of everything anybody had ever made them for, and they'd gone and found a valley full of ash and broken glass a hundred miles from anywhere. And Father had stood at the edge of it for three days, not doing anything. Just looking.

And then he'd made it into a field.

And they'd had me. And then the twins. And raised us there. In a gray world, in the one green square in it, with a scarecrow in the middle that had no crows to frighten. And taught us to read, and to cook, and to say thank you and please and I was wrong. And taught me what water was made of, and what a leaf was, and to close my eyes when I was frightened of what I'd do.

They'd never once pointed me at anything.

"I was raised," I said slowly, "to be a person."

Luna looked at me.

"By people who were weapons," I said. "Both of them. They were made to be pointed. They were pointed. For years." I looked at the dusk in my hands. "And then they stopped. They just. Stopped. And went somewhere nobody could point them, and grew wheat, and had children, and raised us to be people." I swallowed. "That's what they were proudest of. Not the war. Not what they could do. That they stopped being weapons, and raised people. It's the only thing they ever made that nobody told them to."

The cold had stopped coming off Luna.

I didn't notice when. But my breath wasn't white anymore. The air between us was just air.

"You can stop too," I said. "Whenever you want. That's the thing nobody tells you. You can just stop."

Luna Windsor didn't say anything for a very long time.

She stood at the railing in the dark, in her blue dress, with her hair down her back, and looked at the city. And I stood beside her, an arm's length away, with my father's spectacles in my hand, and looked at it too. The music came very faintly through the door behind us. Something slow. People turning under the chandeliers.

"I don't know how," she said at last.

"Nobody does," I said. "Father didn't. He stood at the edge of the field for three days."

"Three days."

"Not doing anything. Just looking." I turned the dusk over again. "And then he started with the soil. A few square yards a day."

Luna was quiet.

"A few square yards a day," she said.

"That's all."

She looked down at her hands on the railing. Very white. Very still. And I watched the frost that had been gathering on the cold metal under her fingers, all night, all the time she'd been standing there, slowly, quietly, turn back into water, and run down the railing in little drops, and fall away into the dark.

The door behind us opened.

Light. Music. A voice, a man's, an officer's, calling Miss Windsor? The General is asking for you. And then the door held open, waiting.

Luna didn't move for a moment.

Then she straightened up. Took her hands off the railing. Her face went still. Not cold-still. The other kind. The kind I'd seen on the gallery before she made it snow.

And she turned to go.

And then she stopped. And turned back. And took one step toward me, across the arm's length, so close I could see the snowflake in her hair catch the light from the door. And she went up, very slightly, on her toes, in the blue dress, and put her mouth against my cheek.

Just for a second.

Cold. Not very cold. Just cold enough that I knew it was her.

Then she stepped back.

"A few square yards a day," said Luna Windsor.

And she went in through the door, into the light and the music and the four hundred people, very straight, in blue, with her hair down her back. And the door swung shut behind her.

And it was dark.

I stood on the balcony for a long time.

I don't know how long. Long enough for the music to change twice. Long enough for my face to stop feeling cold in the one small place, and then to start feeling warm there instead, which didn't make any sense, but was true. Long enough to put Father's dusk back on, and take them off again, and put them in my pocket.

I didn't think about anything. I didn't want to. I just stood at the railing, a hundred and forty floors up, under the gold glass of the dome, and looked at the city glittering below me like a field of lamps.

Nothing else happened.

That was all.

I want to be clear about that. Liam has told it since, and Toby, and other people who weren't there, and they all add things, the way people do. They didn't happen. She kissed my cheek, and said a few square yards a day, and went back in to her father.

That was all.

It was enough.

When I finally went back in, the hall was too bright, and the needles came in through the dusk, and I walked back along the glass wall to the end of our row with my eyes on the floor.

Liam looked at me.

Then he looked at me again, harder. Then his eyebrows went up, very slowly, toward his red hair. And his mouth opened.

"Don't," I said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were going to."

"I wasn't going to," said Liam. "I was just—your face is doing a thing. On one side. It's gone all—" He stopped. Looked down the hall, at the high table, at a blue dress beside a black uniform with three rows of medals. Then back at me. At the one side of my face.

"Oh," said Liam Calder. Very quietly. With enormous, terrible, delighted understanding. "Oh, mate."

"Liam."

"I have to tell Sera," said Liam. "I have to. It's—"

"I know. The rule."

"Two things now," said Liam, almost to himself, with something like awe. "Two. In one night." He shook his head slowly. "She's going to set us both on fire."

On my other side, Toby looked at the floor, and very carefully didn't smile.

He didn't manage it.