Scarecrow

Bree and Roan asked me on the fourth morning after Cormac.

Not on the porch. Not at the long table. At the forge.

Sera’s forge, on the edge of the red glass, the big one, where the young grey for the Wall gets its first heat before it goes up the eldest’s thread. I was there because Sera had asked me to look at a seam that wouldn’t take. They were there because they’d come looking for me, and Maura had told them where I’d be, and then Maura had stood in the doorway of her kitchen for a long time after they’d gone, and hadn’t said anything.

I found that out later.

They stood just inside the door of the forge. In the heat. Side by side.

Bree in her apron from Meg’s, with flour still on the front of it. Roan in his work clothes, with a roofer’s belt and his cap in his hands. Cormac’s younger sister and brother. Liam’s and Sera’s cousins. Aunt Nessa’s two who are left.

I’d met them a hundred times. At the long table on Sundays. On the steps in the town under the garden wall. I’d never once heard either of them ask me for anything.

”Lucas,” said Bree.

I put the seam down.

”We’ve got silver,” said Roan.

He said it straight out. The way roofers say things, Sera says. As if he was telling me where the leak was.

”In us,” he said. ”Both of us. The Program tested us when we were small. On the lower levels. The way they tested everybody under the dome whose mam had a Program number.” He turned his cap in his hands. ”They wrote it down and narrowed it and sent us home. Never finished it. Nobody came back.”

”I know,” I said.

I did. I’d felt it. Every time they sat at the long table. The way I feel it in everyone. Two small narrow seams of silver, cut back the way the Project cut back everyone’s, so they’d be useful and not too much. Paths laid down and never joined.

I’d never said anything. Nobody had asked.

”Halloway’s got the files,” said Bree. ”From the Program floors. She showed us. Last night.” She looked at the forge. At Sera, very carefully not listening, at the far end with her hands in the white heat. ”She said you could finish it. If we asked.”

”Yes.”

”If you did,” said Roan. ”Would we be able to fight?”

I didn’t answer straight away.

I’ve been asked that before. By Ingrid, in a sense. By Jessa, before Inga. By Wren, not long ago, from a bed on the long ward. I don’t want to be someone else. I want to be the one who knows who’s missing before they’re missing.

Nobody’s ever asked me straight out if finishing them would make them able to fight.

”I don’t know,” I said.

They both looked at me.

”I don’t know what it’ll make you,” I said. ”Nobody does. It listens. To you. To your mam and your dad. To whatever’s on the world it grew on.” I looked at them. ”Hana’s water became air. Anja’s strength became something nobody can measure. Wren’s counting became every heart through every open arch.” I wiped my hands. ”I can’t tell you what yours will be until it’s done. And I can’t undo it after.”

”We know,” said Bree.

”Do you?”

”Liam told us,” said Bree. ”Last night. After Halloway.” She looked at her cousin’s sister at the far end of the forge. ”And Sera. She said when she was finished she couldn’t touch anything for a week without it going up.”

At the far end of the forge, Sera didn’t turn round. But the white heat in her hands went a little whiter.

”Why?” I said.

They looked at each other.

The way siblings look at each other. The way Genny and Garnet do, when one of them is going to say something and the other one’s deciding whether to let her.

Roan let her.

”Because of the babies,” said Bree.

”Cormac,” she said. ”And little Rory.” She was holding her apron in both hands. ”Liam’s two. Our cousin’s boys.” She swallowed. ”Cormac’s named after our brother. You know that. You were in the kitchen. You saw Mam.”

”Yes.”

”Our brother died of the fire fever when he was eleven,” said Bree. ”On the lower levels. Because nobody came down that far.” Her voice was very steady. ”I was eight. Roan was six. We watched it. Mam held him the whole time. Nobody came.”

Roan didn’t say anything. He was looking at his cap.

”And now there’s a baby with his name,” said Bree. ”And Liam says his fire’s his own, it’ll never take him. And I believe that.” She looked at me. ”But there’s other things that could take him. Aren’t there. There’s the Hands. And the Ashen. And the Hungry. Coming through every arch on every world.”

”Yes.”

”And Liam’s at the front,” said Bree. ”With his fire. And Anja’s at the front. And Sera.” She looked down the forge. ”And Maura and Rory, Maura’s in the Mom Squad. Everybody who loves those two babies is at the front.” She held on to her apron. ”Except us.”

”We work the ovens,” said Roan. ”And the roofs.” He turned his cap over. ”When the arches open and everyone goes, we go to the hollows. Like the children. And sit at the bottom with Taveth’s soup. And wait.” He looked at me. Very straight. ”I’m a grown man, Lucas. I fixed half the roofs in the town under the garden wall. I’m not sitting at the bottom of a hole waiting to hear if somebody else kept my cousin’s baby alive.”

”I’d like to be the one who does it,” said Bree. ”Once. If it comes to it.” She swallowed. ”I’d like, for once, for somebody from our family to come.”

The forge was very quiet.

Even the white heat in Sera’s hands had gone still.

I looked at them for a long time.

”What does your mam say?” I said.

They didn’t answer.

They didn’t need to. Roan looked at his cap again. Bree looked at the floor.

”She doesn’t know,” said Roan.

”She knows,” said Bree. Very quietly. ”She knows we went to see Halloway. She heard us at the door last night. She didn’t say anything.” Bree’s hands were shaking. ”She just sat on the step. All night. She was still there when we came out this morning.”

I put my hands down on the anvil.

”Then go home,” I said.

They both stared at me.

”Not because I won’t,” I said. ”I will. If you still want it. After.” I looked at them. ”But not without her. Not like this.”

”We’re grown,” said Roan. Very quietly. ”She can’t stop us.”

”No,” I said. ”She can’t.” I wiped my hands. ”And she sat on the step all night. And she’s sitting there now. And she’s already lost one of her children because nobody came.” I looked at Bree. ”Don’t make her lose you without anyone coming to tell her first.”

They went home.

Mother went with them.

I didn’t ask her to. Nobody did. She was on the porch of the house on the rise when they came back up from the forge, past the foot of the hill, toward the town under the garden wall. And she saw their faces. And put her cup down. And got up out of Father’s chair.

And walked down the hill beside them. All the way. Without saying anything.

Maura met them at the bottom.

She’d been waiting. In her apron, at the gate of the town. With her hands in her pockets. She didn’t say anything either.

The four of them walked to the crooked house at the end of the street near the bakery.

Aunt Nessa was on the step.

I wasn’t there.

Mother told me. That night. On the porch. With her tea. She said she’d tell it once, because it was Nessa’s and not hers.

”She didn’t get up,” said Mother. ”When we came. She was sitting on the step with her hands in her lap, looking at the street. And she saw the two of them. And then she saw Maura. And then she saw me.” Mother turned her cup. ”And she knew. Before anyone said anything. She’d known all night.”

”What did she say?”

”Nothing,” said Mother. ”For a long time. Then she said: I’ve already lost one.” Mother looked at the plain. ”To Maura. Not to them. I’ve already lost one, Maura. On the lower levels. Holding him. With nobody coming.”

I didn’t say anything.

”And Maura sat down on the step beside her,” said Mother. ”And said: I know. I was two doors down. I heard.” She put her cup on the rail. ”And Nessa said: You knelt in the snow at the gate with your baby in your coat, when they came for Rory’s fire. I didn’t.” Mother was quiet. ”I stayed in. With Cormac. And held him. And he burned up anyway.”

”And then,” said Mother, ”she looked at me.”

”At you?”

”At me,” said Mother. ”Because I’m the one who lost hers for years. To the halls. And to a chair, after.” She folded her hands. ”She said: They took your boy. For years. And told him what he was for. And you sat in a room with a band round your neck and couldn’t do anything.”

”What did you say?”

”I said yes,” said Mother. ”I said: every day. And then I said: and then he came and got me.”

”She cried, then,” said Mother. ”Not much. Nessa doesn’t. She cried on the step and Maura held her and Bree and Roan stood in the street and didn’t know what to do with their hands.” She almost smiled. ”So I told them. I said go and sit with your mam. Both of you. One on each side. The way you’d sit with someone on a step who’s been there all night.”

”Did they?”

”They did,” said Mother. ”And after a long time, Nessa said: If he finishes you. And you go. Through the arches.” Mother’s voice was very low. ”You come home. Every time. You come up the street and you sit on this step and you let me look at you.” She turned her cup. ”And if you don’t come home, I will walk through the arch myself and I’ll bring you.”

”And they said yes.”

”They said yes,” said Mother.

She looked at me for a long time.

”She doesn’t want them to go, love,” she said. ”She never will. That’s what mothers are. But she said yes.” She picked up her cup again. ”And she asked if she could sit with them. When you do it. The way I sit behind Dory when she holds.”

So Nessa sat with them.

The next morning. In the Calders’ kitchen, because Maura insisted, and because Nessa said she wasn’t having it done on a hospital ward with strangers in the next bed, and because Halloway said the kitchen was as clean as any ward she’d ever worked on and a great deal warmer. Bree on one side of the long table. Roan on the other. Their mother between them, on the bench, with one hand on each of their arms.

And me across from them. With my hand very lightly on Bree’s wrist, and then Roan’s.

Out from the heart. One path, then the next, then the next.

Their silver was very narrow.

Narrower than Wren’s. Narrower than Mother’s was, before. The Program had cut it back hard, on the lower levels, where nobody would ever come to check what they’d done. Paths laid down and stopped. Paths turned back on themselves. One or two, in each of them, deliberately broken, the way you’d break a branch to stop a tree growing toward a window.

I found every one.

And asked them, very gently, to finish.

Nessa didn’t say anything at first. She sat on the bench between her children with her hands on their arms and watched my face. The whole time.

Partway through Bree’s, she said: ”Does it hurt?”

”No,” said Bree.

”I wasn’t asking you,” said Nessa. ”I was asking him.”

I looked at her.

”It doesn’t hurt them,” I said. ”Not this. Not the finishing.” I kept my hand on Roan’s wrist. ”It hurt them when it was done. When they were small. On the lower levels. When the Program cut it back.” I looked at the broken path in Roan’s silver. The one somebody had snapped on purpose. ”That hurt. They wouldn’t remember. They were very young.”

Nessa didn’t say anything for a long time.

”Roan cried for a week,” she said. Very quietly. ”When he was four. After they tested him. He wouldn’t say why. Cormac sat up with him every night.” She looked at her son. ”I thought it was the needle.”

Roan looked at his mother.

”I remember Cormac sitting up,” he said. ”I don’t remember why.”

”No,” said Nessa. She put her hand on his face. Which Maura says she never does. ”No. You wouldn’t.”

It took less than an hour. Both of them. Maura’s kettle hadn’t boiled twice.

I felt Bree’s last path join. And then, a little after, Roan’s.

And both of them went very still.

Bree’s first.

She sat at the long table in the Calders’ kitchen with her eyes shut. With her mother’s hand on her arm. And then she opened them and looked at the oven.

The old one. The iron one, that Anja keeps putting down on Rory’s foot. With a fire in it, low, the way Maura keeps it in the mornings for the bread.

Bree looked at it for a long time.

Then she put her hand out. Toward it. Not touching.

And the fire came out of the oven door.

Not the way Sera’s fire comes. Not living flame, white-gold, as hot as a dying star. Not the way Liam’s comes, or little Rory’s, scorching the stairs.

It came out in a ribbon. Orange and gold. Slow. Across the kitchen. And curled round Bree’s outstretched hand like a cat round a leg.

And didn’t burn her.

And didn’t burn the table, when it went past it. Or Nessa, when it brushed her sleeve. Or the bread on the board.

It went round the kitchen once. Very slowly. Past every person in it. Past Maura at the stove, who stood very still. Past Sera in the doorway, who’d come up from the forge and was gripping the frame. Past Liam, by the window, with Cormac on his shoulder.

And when it came to Cormac, it stopped.

And went round him. Very close. Very gentle. And the baby, who’d been frowning at the lamp, turned his head and frowned at the ribbon of fire instead.

And laughed.

”Oh,” said Bree.

She was crying. She didn’t know it, I think.

”It’s not hot,” she said. ”It’s not—” She looked at her hand. ”It doesn’t burn anything. It just—” She stopped. ”It’s warm. It’s only warm.”

Maura, at the stove, had both hands over her mouth.

”Like mine,” she said. Through them. ”Like mine, love. Only out loud.”

Halloway said later what it was. After she’d sat with Bree for two days and filled a notebook and argued with Doctor Bell about it on the porch.

Fire that won’t burn anything living.

Not won’t. Can’t. Bree’s fire goes round people. Round anything with a heartbeat. It’ll burn stone, and iron, and Sorn black, and the Ashen’s dark ships, Bell thinks, and the acid the Hungry spit, and the Hungry themselves, because Halloway says whatever the Hungry are they don’t have a heart the way people do. But it can’t burn a child. It can’t burn a fever.

”It’s the other way round,” said Halloway. Very quietly. On the porch. ”From the fire fever. The fever burned from the inside, and nothing could reach it. Hers burns from the outside, and nothing living can be hurt by it.”

She took her spectacles off.

”I don’t think the silver listened to her,” she said. ”I think it listened to her brother.”

Roan didn’t do anything for a long time.

He sat at the long table with his eyes open and his mother’s hand on his arm, very still, and looked at the ceiling. At the beams. At the place in the corner where the Calders’ kitchen roof joins the wall, where there’s been a crack since the first winter that Rory keeps meaning to fix.

Then he stood up.

And walked to the corner.

And put his hand flat on the wall under the crack.

The crack closed.

Not the way I’d close it. I’d have asked the atoms. He didn’t. He just put his hand on the wall and the wall held. The crack came together from the bottom up, very slowly, the way a roof settles after rain. And the beam above it, which I hadn’t noticed was sagging, straightened. And the roof above that, which Rory had been meaning to look at for years, stopped creaking.

Roan took his hand away.

The wall stayed.

He did it again that afternoon. On the town wall, at the end of the street. And on the bakery roof, where the timbers had been going since the second winter. And on the old bridge over the stream at the bottom of the town, which Kwame Osei had been saying for a year would need to come down.

Every time, the same. He put his hand on it. And it held.

Bell says it isn’t strength, like Anja’s. It isn’t making things heavier or lighter, like Okafor’s. It isn’t changing what they’re made of, like mine.

”He makes things stay up,” said Bell. On the porch. ”That’s all. Whatever he touches, it remembers how to hold itself together. And keeps remembering, after he lets go.” She took her outer spectacles off. ”He’s a roofer, Dask. The silver made him the best roofer there’s ever been.”

”Is that a fight?” said Roan. Very quietly. From the bottom step.

The General answered.

From the end of the porch. Where he’d been sitting with his watch since the afternoon, watching Roan go up and down the town with his hand on things.

”Do you know what the Ashen do?” said the General.

Roan looked at him.

”They go for the arches,” said the General. ”They go for the smiths. They go for the keystones. They go for the walls of the hollows, from the top, where the shafts come down.” He put his watch away. ”They don’t fight people, mostly. They knock down the things that hold people up.”

Nobody said anything.

”And the Hungry eat stone, almost,” said the General. ”And iron. And towers.” He looked at Roan for a long time. ”If there were someone who could put his hand on the frame of an arch and make it hold through the Ashen wave. Or on the wall of a hollow, at the top, and make it not come in.”

He stood up.

”I’d put him at the bottom of the shaft,” said the General. ”Under the children. With his hands on the roof.”

Roan looked at him for a long time.

Then at his sister. With her ribbon of fire curled round her wrist, very small, the way Risa’s cloud sits.

Then at Liam. On the porch rail. With Cormac on his shoulder and little Rory leaning on his knee, very hot, scorching the boards.

”Under the children,” said Roan.

”Under the children,” said the General.

Roan put his cap on.

”Yes,” he said.

Sera found Bree on the north field the next evening.

I saw it from the porch. I don’t think either of them knew. Sera came up from the forge in the dusk, still glowing faintly at the hands the way she does after a long day, and stopped at the edge of the field where Bree was sitting on the grass by Brock’s beans, with her ribbon of fire curled round her wrist.

Sera didn’t sit down.

She stood there for a long time.

Sera’s afraid of fire. She told me so on the roof, the first year. She said Cormac was the first person she ever saw burn from the inside, and that she’d been frightened of fire ever since, even her own. Especially her own. She burns as hot as a dying star and she’s never once stopped being frightened of it.

Bree looked up.

”Sit down,” she said.

Sera didn’t move.

Bree held out her hand. With the ribbon round it. Orange and gold. Slow.

”It can’t,” she said. ”Halloway says. It can’t burn anything with a heartbeat.” She held it closer. ”Cormac’s fire burned from the inside. Mine can’t get in at all.”

Sera looked at it for a long time.

Then she knelt down on the grass. Very slowly. And held out her own hand. Glowing white at the fingertips. Shaking.

And Bree’s ribbon went across the space between them. And curled round Sera’s wrist. Round Sera’s white-hot hand. The way it went round Cormac in the kitchen.

And didn’t burn her.

And her fire didn’t burn it.

They sat on the north field for a long time. Holding hands. With two kinds of fire going round both their wrists, one white and one gold, and neither of them hurting anyone.

When Sera came up the hill afterward, she was crying. And laughing. And her hands had stopped glowing for the first time in days.

”I was nine,” she said. On the porch. To me. Sitting down very suddenly on the step. ”I was nine and I watched him burn and I thought fire was the thing that takes people.” She wiped her face. ”And Bree’s is the thing that can’t.”

She put her head on my shoulder.

”I don’t think I’m frightened any more,” she said. ”Not of mine. I don’t think I have to be.”

Nessa sat on the step of the crooked house that night.

The way she does. With her hands in her lap, looking at the street.

Only she wasn’t alone. Bree was on one side of her. Roan on the other. And Maura on the step below, with the teapot, because Maura’s never let anyone sit on a step without tea in her life.

I went down the hill. I don’t know why. I just went.

I stood at the end of the street, by the bakery, and didn’t go any closer.

Nessa saw me.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t get up. She looked at me down the length of the street for a long time.

Then she lifted one hand. Very slightly. Off her lap.

And put it back.

Maura told me afterward what she’d said, when I’d gone.

”She said: He told them to come home first. Before he’d do it.” Maura looked at her hands. ”She said: Nobody ever came to tell me anything before. Not once. Not on the lower levels. They just did it, and I found out after.” A pause. ”She said: He sent them home.”

The General took them both on the north field the next morning.

At dawn. With his watch. With Kyria, who’d come to see, and the Hyrrani who drill the hollows, and Kwame Osei with his stick, and Okafor, standing at the edge with a slate.

Bree, with her ribbon.

Roan, with his hands.

And on the edge of the north field, by the beans Brock planted at the wedding, in her dark coat, with her hands in her lap, on a folding chair Konrad had carried down for her without being asked: Aunt Nessa.

Watching.

She didn’t say anything all morning.

But she didn’t look away once.

The General did it properly. He always does.

He had Kyria’s Hyrrani raise a shield wall at the end of the north field. Iron. The best Odra’s forges make. And told Bree to burn it.

Bree looked at the wall for a long time. Then she put her hand out.

The ribbon went across the field. Slow. Orange and gold. And touched the iron.

And the iron went red. Then white. Then ran, in long slow drops, onto the grass. And the grass under it didn’t burn. And the Hyrrani standing behind the wall, holding it up, didn’t burn either. The ribbon went round every one of them the way it went round Cormac. Very close. Very gentle. And took the iron off their arms like a coat.

Kyria stood at the edge of the field for a long time afterward. Looking at the forty women who’d held the wall, untouched, with their iron gone to puddles at their feet.

”She could burn an Ashen ship,” she said. To the General. ”With the crew of a Hand holding on to it. And not one of our people inside would feel it.”

”Yes,” said the General.

”Nobody’s ever been able to do that,” said Kyria.

Then the General had Odra’s smiths raise an arch.

A test one. No queen to sing it. Just the stone. Red-grey. With the water pattern. And had Hesk, the smith, pack the keystone with the thing from under the mountain. And light it.

”Hold it,” said the General. To Roan.

Roan looked at the arch. At the keystone. At the packing, going off, with a sound I felt in my teeth.

He put his hand on the stone.

The arch didn’t come down.

The keystone cracked. The packing went off. The stone round it went black and smoked. And the arch stood. Every block of it. Held. The way the Calders’ kitchen wall held. As if it had forgotten how to fall.

Hesk stood beside it with her hammer, staring.

Roan took his hand away.

The arch stood for another minute. Two. Then, very slowly, because there was nothing holding it any more and the keystone was gone, it came down. Block by block. Gently. Into a neat heap on the grass.

”He held it after he let go,” said Hesk. In Hyrrani. To nobody. Dot gave it to me. ”For a while. Until he’d stepped back.”

The General looked at his watch.

”Two minutes,” he said. ”After the keystone. With nobody touching it.” He put the watch away. ”Two minutes is everyone through an arch at the end of a bad day. Two minutes is the last street.”

He looked at Roan.

”You’ll be at the arches first,” he said. ”Before the hollows. With your hand on the frame. So that when Hesk has to bring it down, it comes down slow.”

Roan looked at Hesk.

Hesk looked back. With her hammer.

Then she held out her free hand. And Roan shook it. Very carefully. A roofer and a smith.

Nessa, on her folding chair by the beans, didn’t say anything.

But she put her hand over her mouth.

Liam found Roan at the foot of the test arch afterward.

In the heap of red-grey blocks, where it had come down slow. Roan was sitting on one of them with his cap in his hands, looking at his palms.

Liam sat down on the next one. With Cormac asleep on his shoulder, hot, and little Rory on the grass at his feet, burning very small patterns in it.

Neither of them said anything for a long time. Calder men don’t, Maura says. Not when it matters.

”You taught me to fix a hinge,” said Liam. Eventually. ”On the lower levels. When I was seven and you were five and Cormac was too sick to come out. You sat on our step with Rory’s old screwdriver and showed me.” He looked at the arch. ”You were five. You couldn’t even reach the top hinge.”

”I remember,” said Roan.

”And I never once fixed anything after,” said Liam. ”I set fire to it.”

Roan almost laughed.

Liam looked down at the baby on his shoulder.

”I’m at the front,” he said. ”Every day. Every arch. With Anja.” He was very quiet. ”And every day I go through, I think: if something comes for the hollow. While I’m out there. If the roof comes in.” He swallowed. ”And I can’t do anything. Because I set fire to things, and that doesn’t hold anything up.”

Roan didn’t say anything.

”You’ll be under them,” said Liam. ”Under the children. With your hands on the roof.”

”Yes.”

Liam didn’t say anything else. He held Cormac out. Asleep. Hot.

Roan took him. Very carefully. The way his mother did in the kitchen. And the baby didn’t wake up, and didn’t burn him.

”Hold him up,” said Liam. Very quietly. ”That’s all. Hold them all up.”

Roan looked down at the baby in his arms for a long time. At the frown. At the red hair. At the small hot hand that had found the edge of his roofer’s belt and was holding on.

”I will,” he said.

Keir came down off the Wall that same evening.

He’d been up there for nine days. Up the eldest’s thread above Root, with Enna and Aster and the young grey, which had climbed all the way to Tiamat’s first ring now and was growing out round it, dark, with Odra’s stone in it and Enna’s second skin over that. He came down through the arch on the north field with chalk on his sleeves and his drawings under his arm and a look I’d never seen on him.

Enna came down behind him.

They didn’t say anything. They walked across the north field together, past the test arch in its heap, past Brock’s beans. Not touching. Very close.

Aster came down last. Her lights were very bright. A colour I’d never seen on her.

”This unit,” she said to me, very quietly, at the edge of the field, ”has been asked not to say anything.”

”About what?”

”About the forward compartment of the third ring,” said Aster. ”Where this unit went to check a seam on the fourth night. And found it already being checked.” Her lights went brighter. ”By two people. Very close together. Not checking the seam.”

I looked at Keir and Enna. At the far end of the north field. Standing by the beans. Keir was saying something and waving his drawings and Enna had her arms folded, the way she always does.

And then she unfolded them. And took his hand.

Keir told me himself, later. On the porch. Red to the ears.

”She told me the load path on the third ring was wrong,” he said. ”At two in the morning. On the fourth night. In the forward compartment. And I said I knew. And she said she knew I knew.” He looked at his hands. ”And then she said she’d been coming through the arch every day for weeks to tell me things I already knew, and did I really think that was about load paths.”

”What did you say?”

”Nothing,” said Keir. ”I’m not good at saying.” He looked at the north field. ”So I drew her something instead. On the wall of the compartment. In chalk.”

”What?”

Keir went redder.

”The Open Hand,” he said. ”The first one. That never flew. With her line moved.” He swallowed. ”The one she told me was wrong, all those years ago, on the relay. Before I’d ever seen her face. I’ve kept the drawing ever since. With her line on it.”

Rhiannon, at the long table that night, looked at Enna once. Just once. And then at Keir.

And put an extra piece of bread on both their plates.

The war didn’t stop for any of it.

It doesn’t. While Bree and Roan learned what they were, with their mother watching from her folding chair, the arches went out from the north field every dawn the way they had for a month.

Five names left on Konrad’s sheet. Then four. Then three.

Wren, on the long ward, with Rafe on her chest, counted the far side of every arch before it opened. Rhiannon went where Wren said. Vessa turned twice in seven days, and Andraste said so, and both times Hearth’s ships were already between the Ashen and the door. Risa and Arcturus flew everything from the interceptor field, Risa with her two clouds and her eyes shut and Halloway standing beside her every hour saying any day now and Risa saying I know.

On the sixth day, the Ashen came over the fourth name with forty ships instead of twenty.

On the seventh, the Hungry came down on the third name in pods so big the Hyrrani said they’d never seen anything like them, and the Hands that came with the Ashen burned half of them before the swarm turned on the Hands.

Three names left.

The hardest three. Konrad said so. At the dawn count. The three nearest the far yard. With the most towers. And the most pieces of queen. And the most people.

”Those three,” said Konrad, ”are where everyone’s going to be.”

He didn’t mean us.

Okafor wrote it on the wall that night. Under HEARTH’S THREE and SEVEN OF SEVEN. Under the one at the wall and her mother is.

B. & R. — the arches, then the hollows. Under the children.

And beside it, very small, the way she writes the things that matter most:

Their mother said yes.

Days 4550–4561. The Two Who Are Left.

Bree and Roan came to the forge: the Program narrowed our silver on the lower levels; if you finish it, could we fight? Because of the babies, Cormac and little Rory; everybody who loves them is at the front except us; for once, somebody from our family should come. Their mother sat on the step all night. I sent them home. Mother and Maura walked them. Nessa: I’ve already lost one; nobody came. Maura: I was two doors down; I heard. Mother: and then he came and got me. Nessa: come home every time, sit on this step, let me look at you. She sat between them; it took less than an hour. Roan cried a week at four; Cormac sat up with him. Bree’s fire goes round anything living: warm, only warm; it can’t burn a child, or a fever. Halloway: it listened to her brother. Sera held it and stopped being frightened. Roan puts his hand on a thing and it stays up; the test arch stood two minutes after the keystone went. The General: the Ashen knock down what holds people up; under the children. Liam gave Roan Cormac to hold: hold them all up. Keir and Enna came down off the Wall together; he’d kept her line on his first drawing all these years. Three names left; the hardest three; everyone’s going to be there. Nessa: he sent them home first. Their mother said yes.