Chapter 617 - 612: Not Yet

Chapter 617: Chapter 612: Not Yet

Location:Hearthwell · The Pavilion — The Workshop · Obsidian Academy — The Lower Hall

Date/Time:26 Flamefade 9943 AZI, Hammerday, first bell to dusk (outside)

Realm:Lower Realm

An hour before first light, the children were asleep in rows in the long hall at Hearthwell, eleven hundred and forty-two of them, in bunks of new pine three high, and the three fires in the kitchen had been banked down to the color of embers.

Jayde stood at the end of the hall and counted them anyway.

They had come through six doors in one breath, and the eleven from the column road a little before first light, and not one of them knew how. Six valleys behind them stood empty to the walls, and there was not a slate, not a pendant, not one twist of waxed paper left in any of them. The Temple could come and look as long as it liked. It would find six schools with the beds made.

On the long table in the kitchen lay Meifen’s ledger, shut, with eleven hundred and forty-two lines in it in her hard round hand: a name, an age or a guess at one, a village, a mother, a valley, a hall, and at the end of every line a four-figure number that nobody would ever be called by again. Two trays of discs sat beside it, face down.

Orsa came down the hall between the bunks in her gray shawl with a lamp, stopping at every third one, and did not look at Jayde as she passed. She had been told on the bench on Tiller’s Row not to ask who anybody was, and she had not asked once.

"They’re all breathing," Green said, beside her, without being asked. "I counted too."

"I know."

"The baths start tomorrow. Eden’s formula is good. One child at a time, twenty basins, first light to dark, and nobody cultivates." Green looked down the rows. "Eleven hundred children. It will be months. I said I wanted more basins."

"You did."

"I am saying it again, so that it is said."

Jayde did not answer. At the far end of the hall a girl of about eight with her hair in two plaits had sat up in a lower bunk and was looking round her at the lamp and the high new roof and the sleeping rows, frowning, the way she had frowned in the bed of a cart on the column road. Tilla. The name of her village had come back an hour after Eden took the pendant off her; she had said it once, very quietly, and then cried for a long time.

A large black dog was lying across the end of her bunk with one foreleg drawn up in a sling of corps linen. The girl put her hand on his nose. He did not move.

+++

Back in the Pavilion that afternoon, outside, the council was short, because it was only the people who already knew everything.

Isha by the door, his tails gathered. Yinxin in her human shape with her arms folded, by the workshop door, looking at nothing. Heiteng against the wall. Cangwei at the bench with the ledger. Eden on the stool, already writing the bath formula on the back of a slate. Green standing.

"They stay on the mountain until they mend," Jayde said. "That is not a question. Eden says weeks inside. Then what?"

"Then they go home," Yinxin said. "That is what you told me. On the slope. Every child home, and every family knows why."

"I said it."

"And?"

Jayde looked at Cangwei.

Cangwei kept her eyes on the ledger. She turned it round on the bench and pushed it across, and Jayde read it, though she had read it twice already in the night: a column on the left of the page, ruled with the edge of a slate, small fair hand, every line with a cross beside it.

The testing villages are the Temple’s best-served villages. That is why they were chosen.

In every village, at least one family that is proud the child read well.

In every village, at least one family that is frightened of the Temple.

In every village, at least one family that is paid by it.

Eleven hundred and forty-two families. Forty-odd villages. Every one of them told the same thing on the same day.

The Temple does not need a witness at the valley. It needs one mother in one market saying my boy is safe, the corps has him.

And at the bottom, no cross:

Then it knows who.

Yinxin read it over Jayde’s shoulder, and said nothing for a while.

"I lay on a slope for five months with my children on the far side of a pond," she said at last, "and my children were on the far side of a wall, and I could hear them. You are going to tell eleven hundred mothers nothing at all."

"For now."

"For how long?"

"That is what I am going to ask the others," Jayde said. "The ones who have mothers in those villages. Not us."

Yinxin turned away. At the door she stopped, and her face did a thing Jayde had seen it do only over her own three.

"Ask them, then," she said. "And then tell me what they said. All of it."

Heiteng had not spoken. When Jayde passed him at the wall, he said, very low, "The Headmaster will say what nobody else in that room will. Let him."

"I intend to."

+++

The lower hall of the Academy had not changed since the night she carried the chairs into it herself. Zhong Huian was there first, as he was at everything, sitting square with his hands on his knees. Li Shenwei had the chair nearest the door. Ruifen was standing furthest from the lamp, reading something, and did not sit. Feng Lian came in counting the chairs under his breath and stopped when he got to the right number. Hu Bing put his back to the wall between the two windows. Ryo took the window. Kiran came in last with his satchel and did not put it down. Bai Shu sat beside Meifen, and Meifen sat with both burned hands flat on the table and her jaw set, because she had been on the mountain for two days and knew some of what was coming.

Eden came in with Jayde, hooked a stool with her foot, sat on it with her boots on the crossbar, and did not take off her coat.

In the middle of the table, at the exact center, sat a small black cat with one foreleg held off the wood in a sling of corps linen, apparently asleep.

Qin came last of all. He came in without a sound and took the chair at the foot of the table that nobody had taken, and folded his hands, and looked at Jayde.

"Commander," he said.

"Headmaster."

She told them. Standing, the way she told the staff anything that mattered, in order and flat, with nothing in it for effect. The testing and the carts. The six valleys. The schools behind their walls, and what the walls did, and what the pendants did, and what the pills in the waxed paper did, and the numbers stamped on the backs of the discs. What the children had been fattened for. The breath. The men at the gates who had not walked away from it. Eleven hundred and forty-two children, safe, somewhere the Temple could not reach, being mended.

She did not tell them where. Meifen knew, and Ryo, and Kiran, and the old man at the foot of the table knew there was a mountain, and nobody else in the room asked.

"The children are mended in weeks," Jayde said. "Then there is a question, and I am not going to answer it alone. On the twelfth I said that when this was done, every child would be home, and every family would know why. I want to know if I was right."

+++

Meifen spoke first. Jayde had known she would.

"Yes," Meifen said. "You were right."

She did not raise her voice. She looked at the table, at her own two hands on it, and said it to them.

"Tam is seven," she said. "The Fenwicks’ eldest, across the lane from my father’s forge. Reads since four. Best in the Lower School class this year. Sleeps with a slate." Her jaw worked once. "If anybody had ever thought Loam Hollow was worth a cart, Tam would have been on it. And if Tam came off that cart alive, and somebody in this room knew where, and didn’t tell the Fenwicks, I’d want to know who." She looked up. "I’d walk there. I’d walk there that day."

Nobody answered her.

"They’ve been told their children went to be blessed," Meifen said. "They’re telling each other it’s a good thing. Every day we don’t say anything, we’re letting them go on believing the Temple."

"Nobody comes," said Bai Shu quietly.

They looked at her.

"In my village." Bai Shu turned her cup round on the table. "Every third spring the river comes up and takes somebody, and nobody comes. Four days later the Temple sends a man to say words over the field. That’s what people believe out there. Nobody comes. You sent a corps in and took four hundred children back, and if you say nothing, then as far as their mothers know, nobody came." She put the cup down. "Again."

"Somebody came," said Ryo, from the window.

He had not turned round. He was looking down into the courtyard, where the evening light lay along the flagstones.

"My father’s house has kept secrets for eleven generations," Ryo said. "We lost three of them in my grandfather’s time. Not one was lost to a traitor. Every one of them went out through somebody who loved somebody. A wife who told her sister. A steward who told his son. A boy who told a girl." He turned round. "Eleven hundred families. Every one of them loves that child. Every one of them has a sister."

"So we tell them to keep it quiet," Meifen said.

"We tell eleven hundred mothers to keep quiet about the best thing that ever happened to them," said Ryo, "and hope."

Hu Bing, at the wall between the windows, had been counting on his fingers. He stopped.

"Forty-one villages, near enough," he said. "If you go to them, you go to every one. A man on a horse at least, because you can’t send a letter; half of them can’t read it. If you bring the families to the children, you need carts. Two families to a cart, more if they’re thin. The elder comes, because the elder always comes." He looked at the ceiling, doing it. "Something over two hundred carts on the roads in four provinces in the same week, going to the same place, coming back with their faces changed." He brought his eyes down. "That’s not a secret, Commander. That’s a parade."

+++

Eden had not said anything. Jayde looked at her.

"Medically?" Jayde asked.

"Medically, it doesn’t matter yet." Eden did not take her boots off the crossbar. "Their meridians are frayed. Every one. They get a bath a day, made up fresh, for weeks, and they don’t cultivate while it’s working, and they don’t go anywhere. If you told every mother tonight, she still couldn’t have her child back until I said so." She looked at Meifen, not unkindly. "So the question isn’t when they go home. It’s when the mothers know. And that’s not mine."

"It’s a long time not to know," Meifen said.

"It is," said Eden. "I know exactly how long it is."

Jayde heard what was under that and did not look at her.

Kiran had his satchel on his knees with both hands on it. "The couriers," he said. "On the Harrowing I ran four hundred people’s messages. Every time somebody knew where somebody else was, I had to know who else knew it, or the next message went to a dead man." He shook his head. "I can’t run eleven hundred families. Nobody can. You’d have to know every mouth they’d open."

Feng Lian had been sitting very still, which for Feng Lian meant something. Now he put one finger on the table.

"The question isn’t the families," he said. "Forgive me, Captain." He did not look at Meifen; he was looking at the wood. "The question is how long the Temple can reach a village. As long as it can walk into Ostrey with a coat and a list, every family we tell is a family it can walk into and ask. And it can walk into any village it likes, because it comes down the passage from the Mid Realm whenever it wants, and goes back up it, and there is nothing at the top of that road but its own desks." He looked up. "The passage, Commander. Until the passage is ours, nobody on this continent is safe from a cart. Not the children. Not the families. Not Tam."

Ryo turned from the window.

"When the passage is ours," he said, "there are fourteen houses at my father’s table who will want to hear it the same night. They have been asking him when every month since the spring tithe." His voice was mild and even, as always. "They are not asking whether any more. They have men, and grain, and the Temple’s own collectors’ rolls, and they know which of the Temple’s people in their towns would go quietly and which would not. They are ready, Commander. They have been ready for a while."

"Then they wait," Jayde said. "Tell him they wait for the passage. Not one house moves before it."

"He knows." Ryo turned back to the window. "He will tell them again. They will not like it."

Ruifen, standing furthest from the lamp, lowered the sheet she had been reading.

"And the others," she said. "Six valleys. We don’t know they were all. We know they were all we found." She did not raise her voice. "There’s a column every few weeks. There may be places we haven’t found. Older children, for all we know, somewhere else. If we spend the next month telling families, we’re not spending it watching the roads."

+++

Jayde had been waiting for him, and he let them all finish first.

Qin unfolded his hands.

"Commander," he said. "May I say what nobody in this room will?"

"That is why you are in it."

He inclined his head.

"You are about to keep eleven hundred and forty-two children from their mothers," Qin said. His voice did not rise; it never did. It arrived, and was exactly loud enough, and the room went still around it. "For their own good. In a school, behind a wall, under formations, where they will be fed and taught and mended. And you will tell their families nothing, because you have judged that the families cannot be trusted with the truth." He paused. "Do you know who else says that?"

Nobody moved. Meifen’s hands had gone flat and white on the table.

"I know," Jayde said.

"I thought you might." Qin looked at her for three seconds. She let him. "I do not say it to change your mind. I say it so that it has been said, out loud, by somebody old, in a room where it will be written down. So that in a year, when you are tired, you cannot tell yourself that nobody saw what it looked like." He folded his hands again. "Now decide."

She stood at the head of the table and looked at them. At Meifen, white-knuckled. At Bai Shu, who had grown up in a village where nobody came. At Ryo at the window and Hu Bing at the wall and Feng Lian with his finger still on the wood. At Eden, who knew exactly how long it was not to know. At the old man at the foot of the table, who had sent children through doors he could not follow for ten thousand years.

"I said every child home and every family knows why," Jayde said. "I meant it. I still mean it. Not yet."

Meifen closed her eyes.

"Not one family," Jayde said. "Not one elder. Not one village. Not until I can stand between every one of them and the Temple, and that is not now, and it is not this year." She did not soften it. "The children are mended where they are. When they are mended, they stay where they are, and they are taught, and they are fed, and they are safe. And on the day the passage to the Mid Realm is ours, every family on that list is told, by somebody who was there, and every child goes home."

She put her left hand flat on the table.

"Four things, and they go on the slate in that order. One. The passage. It is the first thing this staff works on from tonight, and every other thing waits for it. Feng Lian and Ruifen will tell me what it costs by the end of the month. Two. The watch. Every collection site we know of and every one we don’t, every column, the road north. No child is moved on this continent again without this staff knowing it the same day, and no child who is moved reaches the top of that road. Not one. Whatever it costs, we take them all. Meifen’s surveyors, Kiran’s couriers. Three. The women in white. They are taken children, not Temple. They live, and they go somewhere nobody walks, and nobody says one word in front of them that is not true and written down first. The survey camp at North Kessig. Dead ground, a closed field, a corps tent nobody looks at twice. Four." She looked at Meifen. "The list stays where it is. In the Captain’s hand. And on the day, the person who has been carrying it walks up to the first door."

Meifen opened her eyes.

For a long moment she did not say anything at all. Then she took her hands off the table, and Jayde watched her do what she had watched her do on the first morning in the long shed: turn the thing over once, the way she turned a fitting before she trusted it.

"I’ll carry it," Meifen said.

"I know."

"I’ll carry it, and I’ll hate every day of it." Her voice was very level. "And on the day, I’m walking to Loam Hollow first. Even though there’s nobody from Loam Hollow on it." She looked at Jayde. "Because I’ll want to see Tam’s face anyway."

"Yes," Jayde said.

+++

She wrote the order herself, at the end of the table, after the others had gone. Left hand, the letters leaning the wrong way. Qin stayed in his chair at the foot of the table and watched her do it and said nothing.

1. The passage.

2. The watch.

3. The women in white. North Kessig.

4. The list. M.

She signed it with one letter.

"You did not tell them where the children are," Qin said, when she had finished.

"No."

"You did not tell me."

"No."

He considered that. Then he looked at the slate, at the second line.

"You understand what the second line is," he said. "It is not a watch. You are taking the Temple’s harvest. All of it. Every column, from tonight, for as long as it takes." He did not move. "It cannot buy children from this realm any more, and it cannot steal them. Sooner or later it will have to come down that road itself and look for them."

"Yes."

"You want it to."

"I want it gone," Jayde said. "Off this realm, and the road shut behind it. It will not go until it comes." She did not look up from the slate. "So it can come."

Qin was quiet.

"Good," he said. He got up, without his hands, and went to the door, and stopped there. "I have been in rooms where that question was answered the other way, Commander. More than once. In ten thousand years." He did not turn round. "It is a better room tonight than most of them were."

He went out.

Jayde sat at the end of the table with the slate in front of her and the small black cat at the center of it, which had stopped pretending to be asleep and was looking at her with its foreleg in a sling.

Eleven hundred and forty-two, Takara said, in her head, formal and flat, as if he were reading out a garrison roll. Accounted for. The girl Tilla is asleep. I left a guard on her.

"Who?"

Suki. At the size of a house cat, at the foot of the bunk, where an old woman with a lamp will think she is a house cat. A pause. She volunteered. I did not argue. It is generally a mistake.