Scarecrow

Three names.

Konrad didn’t read them out at the dawn count. Not the first morning. He stood on his stool on the red glass with the old sheet in his hands, the front of it with the three last worlds and the back of it with all the names of the ones who’d come home, and didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then he gave it to Aurelius.

”You read them,” he said. ”You put them in order. I can’t.”

Aurelius looked at him for a long time. Then he took the sheet. And read the three names. Very gently. In his own language, and then, slowly, in ours.

Ostrel. Morvane. Halcro.

And put them in an order nobody argued with.

”Ostrel first,” said Aurelius. Through Dot. ”Because it has the most children. And the Ashen know that. And they will expect us to wait until we are strongest, at the end, for the one with the most children.” He folded the sheet. ”So we go first. Before we are strongest.”

Okafor didn’t say anything.

”Morvane second,” said Aurelius. ”Because it has the most pieces of queen. Wren says forty-one, in nine towers. The Hungry will want those more than anything.” A pause. ”And Halcro last. Because it is nearest the far yard. And whatever happens at Halcro, there will be nothing after it to save.”

He gave the sheet back to Konrad.

Konrad put it in his coat. Over his heart.

”And Risa?” said Okafor.

Everyone looked at the edge of the red glass.

Where the interceptor field starts. Where Risa stands at the arch every morning, now, in her flying leathers worn through at both elbows that don’t close at the front any more, with both clouds over her head. The big one grey. Wheel white, flickering, nearly as big as the other, now.

She was already there.

Of course she was.

Halloway was beside her. With her bag. She’d been beside her every day for three weeks, saying any day now.

Risa didn’t turn round.

”I heard,” she said. To Okafor. Across the red glass. Without raising her voice. ”I’m standing here. I’m commanding the wing. Arcturus is commanding Hearth’s ships. Ingrid is going up first.” She put one hand on her middle. ”And she’s going to wait.”

”Risa—”

”She’s waited since Wren’s,” said Risa. ”Three weeks. Every evening the wing comes home and she counts them through the arch with me and when the last one’s down she settles.” She turned her head, finally. And looked at Okafor. ”She won’t come while they’re out. I know she won’t. She’s mine.”

Okafor looked at her for a long time.

Then at Halloway.

Halloway didn’t say anything. She took her spectacles off. And rubbed her eyes. And put them back on.

”She’s right,” said Halloway. ”God help me. I think she’s right.”

So we went to Ostrel.

I’ll write it the way it happened. Because it happened all at once, and because it was the day everything we’d built since the Watch got tested at the same time.

Wren counted it first.

From the long ward. With Rafe asleep on her chest and Rhiannon sitting on the other side of the bed with her hand on Wren’s arm, making Wren’s silver reach further. Before the arch was even cut. Before I’d gone up the thread.

”Six hundred and eighty thousand,” said Wren. Through the silver. Into every one of us. ”Two hundred thousand under twelve. In nine cities. The biggest is the one in the valley; that’s where they’ve all been walking to since Vantle.” She was quiet for a moment. ”And four hundred and eleven who aren’t walking. In the hill towns. Old. Ill. Too far.”

”Rhiannon,” I said.

”She’s already writing them down,” said Wren.

I went up the thread.

Scattered. The long way. To Ostrel. A green world, warm, all rivers and long low hills, with cities built along the water in white stone. And came back together on a hill above the biggest of them, the valley city, where six hundred thousand people were standing in the streets and the squares and the fields round it with bags.

Waiting.

The way Imber waited.

I put my hand on the hill and found Avalon. The long way. The red glass. The north field. The arch, and Dory’s hand on it, and Corin’s beside hers, and Thessaly’s.

”Here,” I said.

Kyria’s cutters came on the Open Hand. Keir flying. Enna beside him, with her arms not folded for once.

And they cut the arch.

And every queen on Avalon sang it.

And it opened.

Roan was the first through.

Not the Hyrrani. Not the Mom Squad. Roan. In his roofer’s belt. With his cap in his pocket, because his mother had told him he’d lose it. He walked through the arch onto the hill above Ostrel and turned round and put both his hands flat on the frame of it.

The red-grey stone. Kyria’s cutters’ work. With the water pattern in it.

And held.

He didn’t do anything you could see. He just stood there with his hands on the arch, very still. But I could feel it. Every atom of the stone. Remembering how to hold itself together. Remembering so hard it would keep remembering after he let go.

Hesk was behind him. With her hammer. And a second smith behind her, back to back, the way Odra sends them now.

Hesk looked at Roan’s hands on her arch for a long time.

Then she put her cup of tea down on the stone by his foot.

And then everyone else came through.

The Mom Squad. All ten. Mother at the front, and Rhiannon at the back with her basket and Wren’s list.

Forty thousand Hyrrani. The walking engines. Hearth’s three: Gilgamesh with every weapon on his back, Alexander with his hundred blades already in the air behind him in formation, Julius with his shield. Odra’s smiths. Halloway’s people for the hearts. Sigmund. Bree, with her ribbon of fire curled very small round her wrist.

Okafor.

And Aurelius.

I hadn’t known he was coming.

Nobody had. He’s the Chancellor. He plans. He sits at the long table beside Okafor and moves two names on a sheet and changes everything. He doesn’t come through arches.

He came through this one.

In silver. Not armour, quite. A long command coat with a high collar, the kind Hearth’s emperors wore, and his right arm heavy with silver plate. And on his left arm, a shield.

Not large. The size of a door.

He walked to the top of the hill beside the arch, beside Roan with his hands on the frame. And stood there. And looked up at the sky over Ostrel.

And waited.

”Why’s he here?” said Okafor. To Dot. Very quietly.

Dot didn’t answer.

Rhiannon did. From the back. With her basket.

She said one word. Very sharp. In her own language. And Dot gave it to Okafor.

”Watch.”

The children came first.

The way they always do. Two hundred thousand under twelve. Up the hill from the valley city, walking fast, holding on, singing something in Ostrel that Toby said afterward was the song they sing at the end of every school day. Mother at the bottom of the hill with her hand up. Maura with bread. Ingrid hushing the whole city so nobody screamed.

Luna’s ice roads, from every street.

And through the arch.

And in the hill towns, the four hundred and eleven.

Rhiannon went for them. With Teshka and Kyria. And Cleopatra, with her necklace already throwing a field wide over the three of them. And Tiamat.

Tiamat went as herself. And Rhiannon went beside her, on her own wings. The silver went out over her all at once on the hill above the valley city, the way it did on the tower on Corran. Wings. Horns. Scales. A long armoured tail.

A dragon.

She lay down on the hill. Very low. And Teshka and Kyria and Cleopatra climbed onto her back. And she went up, with Rhiannon beside her in her winged dress and her crown, flying.

Over the hills. To the hill towns. To the old and the ill and the ones too far to walk.

And came back with them. Thirty at a time. On her back. Every hour.

Wren counted.

”Three hundred and ninety,” she said. In my head. On the long ward. ”Four hundred.” A pause. ”Four hundred and nine. The last two are in a house on the far side of the river. A man and his father. The father can’t be moved. The son won’t leave him.”

”Rhiannon,” I said.

”She knows,” said Wren.

The Ashen came at noon.

Vessa turned first. On the red glass. A long way off. On Andraste’s chest, at the arch. And Andraste said so.

Ashen. Ostrel. Soon.

And then Vessa turned again.

And Andraste said, very quietly, through the silver, into every one of us:

Many.

They came out of the sky over the valley city the way they came over Vantle. Low. No lights on them anywhere. Not twenty. Not forty.

I stopped counting at a hundred.

And with them, round them, twelve Hands. Folded. Coming down.

And behind all of it, very high, from the direction of the far yard, pods.

All three.

At once.

”There it is,” said the General. On the red glass. A long way off. Into the silver. With his watch. Very calm. ”All three. The thing we drilled for.”

The Ashen turned toward the arch.

Of course they did. They always do now. They’ve learned what we are. They came in low over the valley city with the dark wave going out ahead of them across the ground, straight up the hill toward the line of children and the arch and Roan with his hands on the frame.

And Aurelius raised his shield.

I’d seen Hearth’s silver do a great many things by then. Dinraal’s bridge across the canyon. Tiamat’s dragon. Alexander’s hundred blades. Isolde’s leaves. Gilgamesh with a weapon for every moment already on his back.

I’d never seen this.

The shield on Aurelius’s arm, the size of a door, grew.

Not into a bigger shield. Into a wall. Silver. Thin as a soap bubble. Bright. Out from his arm across the hill in both directions, and up, and over. Over the arch. Over the line of children coming up the hill. Over Roan, and Hesk, and Mother at the bottom of the hill with her hand up. Over the whole of the hilltop. A great curved dome of silver light, the size of a city square.

And still growing.

The Ashen wave hit it.

It didn’t break.

It went dark where the wave touched it, the way Dinraal’s silver went dark at Vantle. Black. Smoking. A long black stain across the bottom of the dome where the dark met the silver.

But it didn’t break.

Aurelius stood at the top of the hill with his shield arm up and his armoured arm braced under it and his gentle face very still. And held it.

Rhiannon, in the air beside Tiamat, a mile off over the hill towns, turned round.

And put her hand up.

Toward her husband.

And every suit of silver on Ostrel got brighter.

I felt it. Everyone did. The way you feel the sun come out. Every piece of Hearth’s silver on the hill and in the sky and over the hill towns, brighter. Stronger. More. Dinraal’s. Tiamat’s. Alexander’s blades. Julius’s shield.

And Aurelius’s dome.

It went from the size of a city square to the size of the valley.

”That,” said Rhiannon. Through Dot. From the sky over the hill towns. Very sharp. Very satisfied. ”Is why he came.”

It didn’t reach Varrow.

I have to write this part too.

Varrow was the ninth city. The smallest. On the far bend of the river, downstream of the valley, where it goes out of the hills into the flat country. Eleven thousand people. They’d been walking since dawn, up the river road, toward the valley and the hill and the arch. Wren had counted them all morning. Getting closer.

They were four miles short when the Ashen came.

The dark wave went out ahead of the Ashen ships across the ground, the way it did on Vantle. Not toward the arch. Not first. Across the river road. Across the long line of people on it, walking with their bags.

Aurelius’s dome was still growing. It reached the edge of the valley. It reached the first bend of the river. It reached the road.

It reached the front of the line.

Not the back.

”Nine hundred and forty,” said Wren. Very quietly. In my head. On the long ward. With Rafe asleep on her chest. ”At the back. The old ones. The slow ones. The ones carrying the old ones.” She stopped. ”And sixty-one under twelve. Who’d stayed with them.”

Nobody said anything.

”They held on,” said Wren. ”To each other. At the end.” Her voice didn’t go. Wren’s voice doesn’t, now, when she counts. She says it’s because somebody has to say the number in a voice that doesn’t break, so that everyone else can. ”I counted every one.”

Aurelius didn’t put his arm down.

He didn’t look away from the sky. He’s a gentle man. I don’t think I’d understood until that day what it costs a gentle man to hold a wall up over ten thousand people and watch it fall short of a thousand more, and keep holding.

But I saw his face.

And afterward, on the long table, on the back of Konrad’s sheet, under Ostrel, in a hand nobody on Avalon knew, very small, in Hearth’s letters and then in ours: Varrow. 1,001. Mine.

Konrad didn’t cross it out.

Then the Hands.

Okafor took four. Heavy. Into the swarm coming down from the pods behind them.

Ingrid took three. From high. With Callum and Rowan under her.

Risa took the rest.

From the arch. On Avalon. With her eyes shut.

And on the ground, the Hungry came down.

Not on the hill. Aurelius’s silver was over the hill. Into the valley city, behind the last of the children, into the empty streets and the white stone squares, where the pods split open on the paving and the Hungry came out of them the way they always do. Fast. Low. Everywhere.

Hearth’s three went down to meet them.

I’d heard about them by then. Everyone had. Since the slate. Since Okafor started sending them where nothing else would hold. But I’d never stood on a hill and watched them work.

Gilgamesh went first. He always does. Into the square at the foot of the valley road with his sword in one hand and his axe in the other, and when the sword wasn’t enough it was a spear, and when the spear wasn’t enough it was a hammer the size of a door, and he never once looked down to see what he was holding. He just reached, and it was the right thing.

Alexander came behind him, above him, with his hundred blades. Not swung. Flown. In formation, like Risa’s wing. Out over the square in long silver lines that turned all at once, the way starlings turn, and came down.

And Julius held the street.

The one street. The valley road. The one the last of the children were still on. He stood at the bottom of it with his short sword and his cloak, and the cloak went out behind him across the whole width of the road like a wall, and nothing came past him.

Nothing.

”Discipline,” said Dot. When I asked her afterward what he’d been saying, the whole time, under his breath. ”It’s the only word. He says it over and over. He says it’s the only one he needs.”

And Bree.

Bree went down the valley road behind Julius. With the last of the children. The very last. The slow ones, the ones who’d fallen, a girl of nine carrying her brother. And her ribbon of fire came off her wrist.

It went out over the children. All of them. Round them. Through them. A long gold ribbon of flame, wrapping round the little ones on the road, round the girl and her brother, round their hair and their bags and their hands.

It didn’t burn them.

It can’t. It’s the only thing it can’t do.

The Hungry came at the back of the line, past the edge of Julius’s cloak, low and fast, and touched the fire.

And burned.

The girl of nine stopped on the road and looked down at the fire wrapped round her arms. And then up at Bree.

Bree didn’t say anything. She just held her hand out. And the girl took it. And they walked up the hill together inside the fire. To the arch. To Roan.

”She’s warm,” said the girl. To her brother. In Ostrel. Toby gave it to me afterward. ”The fire lady. She’s warm.”

I didn’t see it. I was on the hill. With my hand on the arch, holding the place, the long way. But I felt it. Through the silver. Through every pilot in the wing and every one of Hearth’s ships.

Risa flew them.

Not talked to them. Not told them where to go. Flew them. All of them. Forty interceptors and sixty of Hearth’s long dark ships with the shape at the front like a hand closing. Arcturus beside her, with his visor down, seeing every one. Risa, with her eyes shut and both clouds over her head and her hands flat on her middle.

They went up through the Hands like a storm going up a mountain.

And the Hands came down.

And then, halfway through, her voice changed.

”Arcturus,” she said. Into the silver. Very level. The voice that means storms. ”Take the left wing.”

”Commander?”

”Take it,” said Risa. ”I’ll keep the right. I need my left hand for something.”

A pause.

”Halloway,” said Risa. Still very level. ”Now’s good. If you don’t mind.”

Halloway didn’t mind.

I heard it afterward. From everyone. Halloway, and Hana, who’d stayed on Avalon to breathe for the long ward and ran to the interceptor field when she heard, and Andraste, who was at the arch beside Risa the whole time with Vessa on her chest. And Wheel.

Wheel told me most of it. In a way. Clouds don’t talk. But Wheel was over Risa’s head the whole time, and I felt it through the silver. White. Flickering. Very bright.

Risa didn’t lie down.

Halloway told her to. Hana told her to. Andraste didn’t, because Andraste knew better.

Risa stood at the arch on the edge of the interceptor field with her eyes shut and her right hand out, flying the right wing of the whole fleet over Ostrel through twelve Hands and a hundred Ashen ships and a sky full of the Hungry, and her left hand on her middle.

And had her daughter.

Standing up.

The way Andraste did on the ridge. The way First Blades do. Because Andraste was there, and Andraste said, very quietly, through the silver, when Halloway tried to make her sit: She’s commanding. You don’t sit down while you’re commanding. Hold her up.

So Hana held her up. On one side. And Andraste on the other. With Vessa between them.

And Halloway knelt in front of her. On the red glass. With her bag. Saying good, good, that’s it.

And on Ostrel, the wing went through the last Hand.

Down, said Ingrid. From very high. That’s the last.

Then come home, said Risa. Through her teeth. All of you. Through the arch. Now.

They came.

Not through Ostrel’s arch. Through the sky. Over the dome of Aurelius’s silver, which was holding the Ashen wave over the whole of the valley now, black and smoking at the edges. Back toward the hill. Toward the arch. Toward home.

Forty interceptors. Low. Fast. One after another. Through the arch on the hill, which Roan was holding, which Hesk had her hammer over, into the red glass on Avalon a world away.

Onto the interceptor field.

Past Risa.

One after another.

Wren counted them.

On the long ward. With Rafe on her chest. Out loud. Into the silver. So Risa could hear.

”Thirty-one,” said Wren. ”Thirty-two. Thirty-three.”

Risa’s eyes were shut.

”Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine. Forty.”

A long pause.

”Ingrid,” said Wren. ”Ingrid’s last. She’s at the arch. She’s—”

Ingrid came through the arch as lightning.

A long blue line, out of Ostrel, onto the red glass of Avalon. And stopped. And was Ingrid. Thin. Old. With the air very still round her. At the edge of the interceptor field.

In front of her daughter.

”Forty-one,” said Wren. Very quietly. ”That’s everyone.”

And Risa opened her eyes.

And the baby came.

Halloway caught her. On the red glass. On her knees. In front of the arch. With Hana holding Risa up on one side and Andraste on the other and Ingrid standing in front of them all in the blue light still coming off her.

A girl.

Small. Very small. Smaller than Dory was. With a shock of pale hair, like Ingrid’s, and silver round her eyes already, and her fists tight.

She didn’t cry.

She opened her eyes. And looked up.

At the sky over the interceptor field. At Wheel, white and flickering, directly over her.

And Wheel came down.

Not rain. Not the way it rained on Risa and her mother on the porch, the first time. Not three drops on Rafe.

It came down. All of it. Out of the sky over Risa’s head. Very slowly. A small white cloud, the size of a plate, flickering silver. Down. And down. Until it was over the baby in Halloway’s hands. And then lower. Until it touched her.

And went into her.

Every bit of it. Into the small body in Halloway’s hands. The way breath goes in.

I felt that.

On the hill above Ostrel. With my hand on the arch and Roan’s beside it, holding the place, the long way, a world off. I felt it come through the silver the way you feel your own name said in a crowded room.

A heart. New. Very small. Very fast. Going on its own for the first time.

My daughter’s.

I didn’t take my hand off the arch. I couldn’t. There were still thousands on the valley road, and Aurelius’s dome was still holding and the whole of Ostrel was still the long way from home. Risa wouldn’t have forgiven me. She’d have been right.

But I said it. Into the silver. Very quietly. The thing I say to all of them.

There you are.

And a world away, on the red glass, Risa laughed. Hana told me afterward. In the middle of all of it. With her eyes shut.

”He’s late,” said Risa. ”He’s always late. He’s holding a planet.”

And was gone.

And the baby, in Halloway’s hands, on the red glass, opened her mouth.

And a very small cloud came out with her first breath. And sat over her head. White. The size of a thumbnail. Flickering.

Hers.

Nobody said anything.

Then Risa sat down.

Very suddenly. On the red glass. The way Andraste sat down on the ridge. Hana went down with her. Andraste caught her shoulders.

And Halloway put the baby in her arms.

Risa looked at her for a long time.

At the pale hair. At the silver round her eyes. At the tiny white cloud over her head, flickering.

”Hello,” said Risa. Very quietly. ”You waited.”

The baby looked at her.

”You counted them all home,” said Risa. ”Didn’t you. Every one. Before you’d come.” Her voice went. ”You’re mine.”

Ingrid knelt down.

On the red glass. Beside her daughter. With the last of the blue light going out of her. And looked at the baby for a long time.

”She came out quiet,” said Ingrid. Very low. ”The way you went quiet. At the ford.” She swallowed. ”Before anything happens. The air goes still.”

Risa looked up at her mother.

”Here comes the Hush,” she said.

Ingrid made a sound, Hana says, that none of us had ever heard her make.

I came through the arch from Ostrel an hour later.

It was over. Not all of it. Ostrel was over. Six hundred and seventy-eight thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine of six hundred and eighty thousand, through the arch. The four hundred and eleven from the hill towns, on Tiamat’s back. And the two in the house on the far side of the river, the man and his father who couldn’t be moved, because Rhiannon had gone into the house herself and sat down with the father and said something to him in her own language, and he’d let his son carry him out.

Aurelius had held the dome for four hours.

When the last of them were through, he put his arm down. And the dome went out. And he sat down on the hill above the valley city, very suddenly, the way everyone was sitting down that day.

Rhiannon came down out of the sky and walked across the hill to him and sat down beside him. And put her head on his shoulder.

He didn’t say anything. He’s a gentle man. He doesn’t, much.

But he was smiling. Very slightly. The way Dot says he smiled at his soup.

Roan let go of the arch last.

After me. After Hesk. After everyone. He stepped back from the frame with his hands red from the stone, and Hesk swung her hammer at the keystone, and the packing went off, and the arch on Ostrel didn’t fall.

It stood.

For two minutes. Three. Long enough for Roan to walk through it backward, onto the red glass on Avalon, with his hands still out, holding nothing.

Then it came down. Slowly. Gently. Block by block. On the far side.

Behind him.

Aunt Nessa was on the red glass.

She’d come down with Maura. To wait. On the folding chair Konrad had carried down for her, until she couldn’t sit any more. She stood at the foot of the arch in her dark coat with her hands in her pockets and watched her son walk backward through it with his hands out.

And her daughter behind him. Bree. With her ribbon of fire very small round her wrist and ash on her apron.

They didn’t say anything.

They went to their mother and stood in front of her.

She looked at them for a long time.

Then she took one hand out of her pocket. And put it on Roan’s face. And then on Bree’s.

”Home,” said Aunt Nessa.

I found my wife on the edge of the interceptor field.

She was sitting on the red glass. Where she’d sat down. Nobody had moved her; she wouldn’t let them. With her back against Andraste and the baby on her chest and Ingrid on one side of her and her father on the other. Konrad. Who’d come running from his stool when Wren said that’s everyone, with his hat in his hand and his coat buttoned wrong.

Hana was there. And Luna, who’d come off the ice roads with frost still in her hair. And Sera, with soot on her hands from the long ward, where she’d kept the stoves going all day for the ones Wren was counting in. And Andraste, of course, with her back as a wall for Risa to lean on, and Vessa asleep against her shoulder.

All of them. Round her. On the red glass.

The way they’d knelt round Andraste in the snow on the ridge. So the children know, from the first day, that they have more than one mother.

Small Sigmund was on her knee. With his spark going round his ear very fast and his own cloud over his head.

He was looking at his sister’s cloud.

”Mama,” he said. ”There’s two again.”

There were.

Small Sigmund’s. Grey. Rumbling a little.

And the baby’s. White. The size of a thumbnail. Flickering.

They drifted. Both of them. Toward each other. The way Wheel used to drift toward small Sigmund’s on the porch in the mornings, before the dawn count, a thin ribbon of white going out to meet him.

And touched.

And rained. Together. Very gently. Warm. Silver. On Risa and the baby and small Sigmund and Ingrid and Konrad and Andraste and Hana and Luna and Sera and me.

”That’s the thunderstorms sorted,” said Mother. From behind me. Very quietly. She’d come down the hill. Of course she had.

Dory came last.

From the north field. With her hands still red from holding the arch since dawn. She’d held it the whole time. Corin on one side of her and Thessaly on the other, all three with their hands on the frame, and she hadn’t let go, not when Wren said Varrow, not when Wren said forty-one, not when the whole north field went quiet because everyone could feel through the silver what was happening on the edge of the interceptor field.

She let go when Roan came through backward.

Then she ran.

She stopped at the edge of the red glass. In front of her mother. And looked at the baby.

For a long time.

Dory checks everyone. She always has. She comes into a room and goes round it, one after another, the way Mother does, and stops at whoever needs it. She’s held arches between worlds. She’s held the whole of Avalon with her hand flat on the red glass. She doesn’t cry, much. Risa says she came out frowning at the sky as if it owed her something.

She looked at her sister.

”I asked,” she said. Very quietly. To nobody. To the sky. ”On the ridge. When Vessa came. I asked for a sister.”

”I know,” said Risa. ”Your grandmother heard you.”

”I didn’t think it worked,” said Dory. ”Asking.”

She knelt down. On the red glass. Beside her mother. And put out one red finger. And the baby took hold of it.

Hard.

Dory’s face did something.

”She’s strong,” said Dory. In a very small voice.

”She’s yours,” said Risa. ”Half of her. That’s what sisters are. I never had one. I asked, too.” She put her free hand on Dory’s hair. ”Nobody heard me.”

”I heard you,” said Ingrid. Very low. From beside them. ”I couldn’t do anything about it. I was in a room.” She looked at the three of them. ”I heard.”

I knelt down beside Risa on the red glass.

She looked at me.

”You’re late,” she said.

”I was holding a planet.”

”I know,” said Risa. ”I heard you. Through the silver. In the middle of it.” Her mouth did something. ”There you are. That’s what you said. You say it to all of them.”

”I mean it to all of them.”

”I know you do,” said Risa. And put the baby in my arms.

She weighed nothing. She weighed more than anything I’ve ever held. Her cloud sat over her head, the size of a thumbnail, and leaned toward me a little, the way Wheel used to lean toward small Sigmund’s. And her fists were tight. And she looked up at me with silver round her eyes, very serious, as if she was counting me.

I said it again. Out loud, this time.

To her. To small Sigmund, who climbed onto my knee to see. To Dory, who leaned against my arm and didn’t let go of her sister’s hand.

Then I gave her back.

”Have you got a name for her?” I said.

Risa looked at the baby for a long time.

Then at her mother.

”Mother said don’t,” she said. ”Not until I could see her face.” She put her hand on the baby’s pale head. ”I can see it.”

”Kesh,” said Risa.

Ingrid didn’t move.

Konrad, on Risa’s other side, put his hat over his face.

”For the ford,” said Risa. Very quietly. To her mother. ”Where you walked out in front of three hundred with your hand out. Carrying me. And nobody knew.” She looked at the baby. ”So she’ll always know. That before anything happens, somebody can make the air go still.”

Ingrid looked at the baby for a long time.

Then she put one thin hand out. Very slowly. And touched the tiny white cloud over Kesh’s head.

It didn’t rain.

It went very still.

The way the air goes, just before.

Okafor came to the interceptor field at dusk.

She didn’t say anything to Risa. Risa was asleep. She stood at the edge of the red glass for a long time with her hands behind her back, looking at the bench, and the basket, and the two small clouds.

Then she took the chalk out of her pocket. And knelt down. And on the red glass at the foot of the arch, where the wing comes home, where Risa stands every morning, she wrote one word. Very small.

Commander.

And under it, smaller:

Both of them.

Halloway saw her do it. She says Okafor stayed on her knees a long time after. She says she thinks Okafor was counting too. Morvane. Halcro. Two more.

Then Okafor got up and went back to the long table. Because there were two more.

Konrad wrote it on the sheet that night.

On his stool. On the red glass. By the lamp. With Kesh asleep in a basket at his feet, because Risa had fallen asleep at last on the bench by the arch with small Sigmund on one side of her and Dory on the other, and Ingrid had put the basket down beside her husband without a word and gone to sit with her daughter.

He wrote Ostrel. And beside it, Home. And under it, in Aurelius’s hand, Varrow. 1,001. Mine. He looked at that for a long time.

Then he turned the sheet over. To the back. To the names. All the names of all the ones who’d come home since Imber. Thousands of them. Very small. In his signing hand, the one he used for thirty years on things he never looked up from.

And at the bottom, under all of them, he wrote one more.

Kesh Dask. Came home with the wing. Waited till they were all counted.

Then he put the pen down. And looked up.

At the sky over the interceptor field. At the two small clouds over the bench. At his granddaughter in the basket at his feet.

And kept looking.

Days 4562–4565. Kesh.

Ostrel, first of the last three. Aurelius came and held a dome over the valley for four hours; Rhiannon made every suit of Hearth’s silver brighter. It didn’t reach Varrow: 1,001, written on the sheet in his hand. Mine. 678,999 home. Bree’s fire round the last children; Julius held the road. Risa flew the right wing standing at the arch and had our daughter there; I felt her heart start from Ostrel and said there you are. Wren counted forty-one; that’s everyone. Wheel came down and went into her. Dory: I asked. Kesh, for the ford. Ingrid touched her cloud and it went still.