Chapter 609 - 604: Somebody It Will Not See (Edited)

Chapter 609: Chapter 604: Somebody It Will Not See (Edited)

Location:The Pavilion — The Workshop · Kaelport — The Long Shed, the rail above the water

Date/Time:13–16 Flamefade 9943 AZI, Hammerday to Quenchday (outside)

Realm:Lower Realm

Chalk, on the side of her hand, from the heel to the last joint of the little finger, where it always ended up when she worked on a wall.

The corps survey was pinned flat across the workshop’s long wall now, four sheets joined edge to edge with paste, every road and river and village of four provinces on it in Eden’s color and Jayde’s. Two days ago it had been an empty map. It was not empty any longer. There were chalk crosses on it, small and white, and every one of them was a village hall where somebody had said the word testing in the hearing of somebody who had told somebody else.

Jayde stood back from the wall and counted them again.

Thirty-eight.

Meifen’s surveyors had given her eleven, from the relay lines: a hall seen open on a Kindleday with a cart in the yard, a crowd at a door. Bai Shu’s people at the herb blocks had given her six more, from the families who came to buy. The queue at the Tiller’s Row bathhouse had given her nine, because a queue at a bathhouse is the best place on any continent to hear what is happening in every village within twelve days’ walk. Eden’s ninety-one families had given her the rest, and Eden had sat with the roll for a whole inside day matching villages to names to find them.

"There are more," Cangwei said, from the bench behind her. "These are the ones somebody talked about."

"Then we find the others."

"It should be said aloud." Cangwei did not look up from the ledger. She had a column on the left of the page with thirty-eight entries in it and a cross beside every one. "Every hall on that wall is a guess. Not that there is testing there. That the cart goes on Grindday. Nobody has seen a Grindday cart in nine of them."

"Then those nine are where we learn whether the pattern holds."

Cangwei made a small mark in the margin and said nothing more.

+++

The question was not where. The question was who.

Jayde had written it on the slate on the first inside morning, and it had stayed there in her own hand ever since, at the top, with nothing under it for most of a day: Somebody it will not see.

A cart was a small thing. A farm cart, one horse, two men in white and a woman, a load of children who believed they were going somewhere good. It went at a walking pace on a road that every villager for half a day’s walk knew by heart. Anybody who followed it on that road would be seen by the first child who looked back. Anybody who followed it off the road, through fields and hedges, would be seen by the first farmer. And whoever was waiting at the other end, wherever the other end was, would be watching the road the cart came in on, because that is what you watch.

"No dragons in the air by day," Cangwei said. "Not at any height. A black shape against the sky is a signature, and there is no disguise for it. I crossed a world on that rule."

"The quintet can walk," Xinglong said.

He was standing by the door with Hulong, in human form. The other three were in the long hall. Jayde had sent for all five, and they had come in under an hour, inside, which was six minutes outside, and she had noticed, and it had not seemed like the time to say so.

"You can walk," Jayde agreed. "In human form, in plain clothes, on foot or on a hired horse, on a road. You can be a man going to market a few hundred paces behind a cart and never look at it once." She turned to him. "Can all five of you do that?"

"Xingteng will look at it," Hulong said.

"She will not," Xinglong said, mildly, and that was apparently the end of that.

Yinglong had come to the door while they spoke, and stood in it, and did not come in, and Jayde understood that she was waiting.

It had been seventy days, inside, since the Medical Bay. Seventy days since Yinglong had said the oldest law in front of everybody and then turned to Jayde and waited, and not conceded, and gone red and gone on not conceding. Jayde had let it sit. There had been nothing to do with it but let it sit.

Yinglong came one step into the room. Then she knelt on the workshop floor, on one knee, in the old way, with her right hand flat over her heart and her eyes down, and Xinglong went very still by the door.

"The law is the Sovereign’s," Yinglong said. Her voice was steady. "The woman on the wall is sworn to her, and the law is hers to keep or set down. I will not raise it again. Not in this house. Not in any other." She lifted her eyes. "Send us."

Behind Jayde, very quietly, Cangwei put down her pencil.

"Get up," Jayde said, gently.

Yinglong got up. Her face had gone red again, to the ears, but she held it up.

"Five roads," Jayde said. "Five of you. Cangwei will give you each a hall and a direction. You leave the Pavilion on Quenchday night, outside, and you are in position by first light. You follow the cart to wherever it stops. You do not go in. You do not go near. You see where it goes, you see what is there, and you come back and put it on the wall." She paused. "If a child is in danger in front of you, you do what you would do. If not, you do nothing at all."

"Nothing at all," Xinglong repeated. It was not a question. He had made it a statement, as he always did. "We can do nothing at all. It is the thing we are best at."

+++

Five roads was not thirty-eight.

"The Panthera," Jayde said, on the second inside day. "Takara."

Present. He had been present for some time, lying across the workshop door at full size, which he did not need to do and which he had decided was protocol. His mane gave a small crackle. My liege’s people are four. Canirr, Suki, Prota. And one other.

"Bring all four."

There was a pause. Takara’s head came up off his forepaws.

All four, he said. Commander.

"Every one."

They came through the long hall a quarter of an inside hour later, three of them in the shapes Jayde knew. Canirr first, sleek and silver with electric blue down her spine, already looking at the wall before anybody spoke; she had put eight hundred and forty-seven listening posts into the eastern ground in a year while Jayde was under the mountain. Suki, from nowhere in particular near the door, midnight-black, the kind of black that drank light, her purple eyes flecked with gold. Prota, with the metal-grafted foreleg he would not let anybody look at and which ached in the cold.

The fourth came last, and bounding, nose going before the rest of her, was through the door.

What is it? It is something big. Lord Fahmjir’s guard does not get pulled off the eastern roads for a chalk wall unless—

She saw Jayde looking at her, and stopped in the doorway.

She was smaller than the others, and mottled gray and silver, and her eyes did not match: the left silver, the right gold. They were on Jayde, and they had the look of eyes that had been on Jayde for a very long time without Jayde knowing.

Jayde looked back at her.

The air in the workshop tasted, faintly, of metal and of rain. The rain was not coming. It had not been coming at the rail on the ninth, or at the shed door on the twelfth, or on any of the dozen evenings before that when Jayde had stood at the top of the yard and noticed the taste, and noticed that it was not new, and let it go.

"Amaya," Jayde said.

The cat in the doorway went perfectly still. Canirr turned her head. Suki, who never showed anything, showed something. None of them had ever seen Amaya still.

You know my name.

The voice was not Takara’s. It came into her head the same way, under her own thoughts, but it was lighter and younger, and it was furious.

"I know what you taste like," Jayde said. "I have been tasting you at the rail for a month."

Behind her, very softly, Takara’s mane crackled, once, and Jayde did not turn round to see what his face was doing.

Amaya came into the room, though not far.

You are going to send them all, she said. The four of us and the quintet and the shadowbeast. Every one of us who can follow a cart without being seen. Out onto the roads, on the same night, a day from here or two days, every one of us. Her tail moved once, hard. And leave you with nothing.

"With a household."

A fox and a doctor and a woman on a wall with one hand. The mismatched eyes did not leave her. I was set on you by my lord’s own order. Not to the Commander. To YOU. I have not been more than a short run from you since the mountain. I will not be two days’ walk away on a farm road watching a cart while somebody walks into Kaelport with a paper.

Jayde did not raise her voice.

"There are thirty-eight halls on that wall," she said. "There are more we do not know. Behind every one of them is a cart, and behind every cart is a place where children are kept for months before they are walked up through a gate and ground into something a noble house swallows for a better road. Four hundred of them. Five. Cangwei’s guess." She did not look at the jar, face down at the end of the bench. "If we take one place, they move every child in every other place before the sun is up. If we take three, they move the rest. The only way to bring every one of them home is to know every place, and then to hit every place at once, on one night, fast, before a single runner can reach a single door. There is no other way to do it that does not leave children behind."

Then send the others and keep me.

"I need every one of you who can follow a cart and not be seen. That is a short list. You are on it. You are the top of it. Anything that runs, you catch. Anything that hides, you find."

Amaya’s ears went flat. Those were her lord’s words, and Jayde had not been told them, and they both knew where she had heard them: through Takara, in the dark, a long time ago.

And you?

"I will be here."

That is not an answer.

"No," Jayde agreed. "It is not."

Amaya’s lip came up off one long tooth, very slightly, and went down again. Amaya did not move.

"Child."

It came from behind Jayde, from the bench by the synthesis unit, where Isha had been sitting through all of it with his tails gathered round him and his hands folded in front of him and nobody remarking on it. He did not usually say it. He said it when he forgot himself, and he had forgotten himself now, and Jayde heard it and did not turn round.

"Hear me, Amaya," Isha said, and his voice was quiet and grave and very old. "I am the oldest thing in this room by some distance, and I have kept watch over a great many things in a great many places, most of them inside things that were not built to be watched over at all. I have watched over this one since she was a child in a pit with nobody in the world to watch over her." The nine tails had gone very still. "While you are on the roads, I will not leave her. Not at the shed. Not at the rail. Not anywhere she goes outside this house. If anything comes for her that should not, I will be between it and her before it has finished arriving, and it will regret the arrangement." He paused. "That is the badly-put version. The good version is shorter. I will keep her."

Amaya looked at him. Then at Jayde. Then at him again.

A fox, she said. A fox in a robe.

"An old fox," Isha agreed, mildly. "In a robe."

He is not a guard. He has never stood a post in his life.

Amaya.

Takara’s voice came into the room like a parade-ground order, flat and formal and with no room left in it for anything. He had not moved from the door. His mane had stopped crackling. He was lying with his head up and his eyes on her, and he looked, for the first time since Jayde had known him, exactly what he was: the head of an elite guard.

You are under my command on this continent, he said. That is my lord’s order as well as yours. The children are the mission. You will follow the Commander’s plan.

She will be unprotected.

That is incorrect. Takara did not look at Isha. I have stood a great many years of posts that mattered to nobody, and I know what a guard is. Trust the Fox.

The workshop was very quiet.

Amaya looked at Takara and did not blink. Then at Isha, at his gathered tails and his folded hands and the old gold of his eyes. Then at Jayde, last, and longest.

The stillness went out of her, slowly, from the tail first.

If you are hurt, she said, I will not forgive him.

"That is fair," said Isha.

And I will not forgive you, Amaya said to Jayde, either.

"That is also fair," Jayde said.

Amaya turned, without another word, and went to stand beside Canirr at the wall, and looked at the thirty-eight crosses as if she meant to learn every one of them by heart before the night came. After a moment her nose began to go again, at the paper, at the chalk, at the paste.

Takara put his head back down on his forepaws.

She is very good, he said to Jayde, privately, in a tone of great formality. She is also very tiresome. It is generally the case.

+++

Yinxin found out on the third inside day, which was inevitable, because Tianxin found out on the second.

She came up from the sanctuary in her human shape, which she did not do for anything she did not consider important, and stood in the workshop door, and looked at the wall for a long time without saying anything. The strap across her chest was thin now, a band of linen no wider than two fingers. That morning she had flown to the far end of the copse and back. Jayde had watched from the rise.

"You are sending the quintet," Yinxin said.

"Yes."

"My quintet."

"Your quintet."

"And Takara’s cats. And the shadowbeast." Yinxin’s golden eyes went down the column of crosses. "And not me."

"Not you."

"I can fly."

"To the copse."

"There and back," Yinxin said, with dignity. "Twice, if I am not interrupted, which I was."

"Not you," Jayde said again.

Yinxin turned and looked at her. It was the long look, the one she did not give often, and there was nothing dry in it at all.

"There are children," Yinxin said. "In those places. Somebody’s children." She did not say mine. She did not need to. "Please."

Jayde had known it was coming and had not known how much it would cost to hear.

"You have a week," she said. "Outside. Green has said half and not a day more. You went into the Pavilion so that you would come out whole, and if you go out on a road on Quenchday you will come back in on Grindday worse than you went, and the next time a nest needs closing you will not be able to close it." She kept her voice level. "There will be a night. When there is a night, every one of those places will need somebody at the door the children can look at and not be afraid of. I want you at one of them. I want you whole." She paused. "Not this. That."

Yinxin looked at her a long time.

"You learned that from me," she said at last.

"I did."

Yinxin made a sound through her nose that was very nearly a laugh, and very nearly not, and went back down the long hall to the sanctuary without another word.

+++

Meifen had to be told. There was no way to put First Company on four provinces’ roads on the night without telling her what it was for, and Jayde would not send Meifen’s people anywhere blind.

On the fifteenth, outside, Jayde told her, at the trestle in the long shed, at first bell, with the brazier lit and the door shut.

She told her the Temple and the children. The testing, and the carts, and the months, and the column at Ashmarch, and the jar. Not the nests. Not the Pavilion, or what was under the long hall, or what Jayde was. Only where children went when they read well, and what was done with them at the end, and she watched Meifen’s broad face go gray from the jaw upward and stay that color.

Meifen did not sit down. She stood at the trestle with both her burned hands flat on it, exactly as Jayde stood, and did not seem to know she was doing it.

"How many?" she asked.

"Four hundred. Perhaps five. It is a guess."

Meifen nodded once. She did not ask how the Commander knew, or who else knew, or how long Jayde had known, or why she had not been told before. Jayde watched every one of those questions arrive in her face and watched her set each one down, deliberately, the way you set down a tool that is not the one the job needs.

"First Company’s ready," Meifen said. "Wherever it is."

"When we know."

"Then I’ll have them ready for when we know." Meifen straightened. "My surveyors. Lantern Hill and the rest. They can be anywhere on the map with a chain and a staff and nobody looks at them twice. If you want eyes near a hall the day before, they’re already the eyes."

"Yes," Jayde said. "I want that."

Meifen went to the door. There she stopped, with her hand on the latch, and stood a moment, and did not turn round.

"My father always says," she said, "you strike while it’s hot, or you don’t strike."

Then she went out, and down the stair, at exactly the deliberate pace she had come up it.

+++

The note from the Headmaster came on the sixteenth, Quenchday, a little after the noon bell, by an Academy runner who would not give it to anybody but the Commander and then would not leave until she had read it.

It was one line, in a plain upright hand that had not been in a hurry.

The cellar rolls go back further than the door’s last opening. There are names. Q.

Jayde read it twice. Then she folded it once and put it in her coat, against the left side, with the docket and the slip, and told the runner to tell the Headmaster thank you, and later, and the runner went.

Later. There were children on the roads first.

+++

They went out of the Pavilion on Quenchday night, outside, after dark.

Five of the quintet, in plain coats, in human form, with a hall each and a road each, by the long shed’s back door and out into the yard and gone. Takara and his four, low and dark and fast, down the slip and along the water and away, with the lightning in their coats damped to nothing at all. Reiko last, at dog size, who stood for a moment at Jayde’s boot and looked up at her.

[Back by night,] he said. [Smell everything.]

[I know you will.]

[Smell the CHILDREN,] Reiko said, and his hackles were up, and then he was a shadow along the bottom of the wall, and then he was not anything.

Jayde went to the rail.

The water was flat and black. The beach below was only a beach. Behind her the yard was dark and empty, and the long shed was dark, and somewhere inside it, on the far side of a door no one in Kaelport knew was there, thirty-eight chalk crosses on a wall waited to become marks.

She put her hand on the coat, over the docket and the slip and the Headmaster’s line.

The air at the rail tasted of nothing. Of cold water and old tar and the night. She stood in it a long time, and understood for the first time what it was that had always been in it, every evening for a month, and was not there now.

Beside her, a little behind, something sat down on the rail with nine tails folded round it and its hands in its lap, having first looked once along the empty yard and the dark windows of the town and found nobody awake to see it, and said nothing at all, and did not leave.