Scarecrow

We had nine days.

That’s what I keep coming back to, when I think about it. After Isca. After the lid, and the Hill, and Merrit carrying the queen down the new shaft into the new hill. We had nine days of nothing. Of sleeping. Of Halloway looking at Andraste’s arm and saying things about it. Of Arcturus with his wings in a sling, sitting on the edge of the interceptor field every morning watching Risa fly, and Risa letting him call left once a day, very badly, so he’d feel useful.

Nine days.

And then Tiamat came down off the Wall.

She came at dawn. Through the arch with two faces. In her woman’s shape, very straight, in her own scaled silver, with ash still on it from Isca because she hadn’t stopped to take it off.

She didn’t go to the map room.

She came to the kitchen. In the house on the rise. Where the slate is, on its nail by the door, with ten names on it and HONORY and Soon.

Mother was at the stove. Mother’s always at the stove at dawn.

Tiamat stood in the doorway and didn’t say anything for a long time.

”Sit down,” said Mother. Without turning round. ”Love.”

Tiamat sat down.

And put her face in her hands.

I found out what it was from Asha. Because Tiamat couldn’t say it. Not that morning.

Hearth has nine stations.

Round the world. In orbit. Tiamat built them. She told the eldest so, on Root, the day of the Watch. Hearth’s stations are held together with silver that holds its own shape. Because Lucas showed Dinraal on the eighth day. We have nine. Round Hearth. I built them.

They listen. That’s what they’re for. Like Ilka’s ears at the edge of Root. Tiamat built them to listen to the dark round Hearth, so that nothing would ever come up to Hearth out of the dark again without someone hearing it first.

The way something came up to the edge of Hearth’s sky, once, before Dinraal stood at the edge of it.

At midnight, the ninth station heard something.

”An arm,” said Asha.

At the long table. In the map room. With everyone. Talking very slowly, for once. With Eve beside her, not telling her to stop.

”That’s the word. We don’t have a better one.” She put her hands flat on the table. ”The Hungry aren’t a swarm. Not really. We’ve always known that. They’re one thing. A mind. Very large. Spread out across more of the dark than anyone has ever measured.” A pause. ”And sometimes, when it wants something very much, it reaches.”

Nobody said anything.

”An arm,” said Asha. ”A part of itself. Very long. Very thick. Reaching out of the dark toward one place.” She looked at Okafor’s map. At the grey edge of it. ”The ninth station saw it at midnight. Coming out of the dark past the edge of everything. Not toward Root.”

She stopped.

”Toward Hearth,” said Asha.

”How big,” said Okafor.

Asha didn’t answer.

Eve did.

”Bigger than Hearth,” said Eve. Very quietly. ”Bigger than Hearth’s sun.”

”How long,” said Okafor.

”Nine days,” said Asha. ”At the speed it’s coming. Maybe ten. It’s getting faster.”

”Why Hearth,” said Okafor.

Nobody answered.

But I knew.

I knew the way you know something you’ve been afraid of for a long time without letting yourself say it.

”Isca,” I said.

Everyone looked at me.

”On the third morning,” I said. ”On the top terrace. When all of Hearth’s silver joined. Every suit. Into one. To make the hole.” I looked at Dinraal, at the end of the table, with Isolde beside him and the First Weapon at his feet. ”That was the loudest silver anyone’s ever made.”

Dinraal didn’t say anything.

”And it sang,” I said. ”Finished silver sings. That’s what finishing does. It holds its own shape, and it sings while it does it. I taught Dinraal how. On the eighth day. And Dinraal taught Hearth.” I put my hands flat on the table. ”And on Isca, every bit of it sang at once. Under a lid. With everything hungry in the universe on the other side of it, listening.”

Nobody said anything.

”The queen said they’d learned,” I said. ”On Isca. To come as one.” I looked at the map. ”They learned something else. They learned what Hearth tastes like.”

Asha didn’t argue.

That’s how I knew I was right.

Aurelius stood up.

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 stand up much.

He stood up. In his command coat. With his armoured right arm. With his gentle face very still.

”We cannot fight it,” he said. Through Dot. Very gently. ”Not something bigger than our sun. Not with every gun Hearth’s silver has ever thought of.” He looked down the table. At Okafor. At me. ”So we will do what you do.”

He looked at the slate on the wall. At Okafor’s map. At the grey edge of it.

”We will leave,” said Aurelius. ”All of us. Everyone on Hearth.”

”How many?” said Okafor.

Aurelius didn’t need to look anything up.

”Four hundred and twelve million,” he said.

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Okafor picked up the chalk.

”Where?” she said.

But she already knew. Everyone did.

I went out onto the porch.

I don’t remember deciding to. I was at the long table, and then I was on the porch, at the rail, looking out at the north field and the town under the garden wall and Thera past it and Shell on the ridge to the east and the new Tor Isca to the south, and the river, and the grass, and all of Avalon going away from the house on the rise in every direction under a pale sky.

Room.

There’s always been room on Avalon. That’s what it’s for.

But not four hundred and twelve million. Not without making it.

Mother came out.

She stood beside me at the rail and didn’t say anything. She had the teapot. She always has the teapot.

”It’s my fault,” I said.

She didn’t say anything.

”I taught Dinraal,” I said. ”On the eighth day. I showed him where the leash was. I showed him how to finish one small path so it could hold its own shape.” I looked at my hands. ”And then I asked them to come through the Hedge. Into the Watch. To Isca. And on Isca—”

”On Isca,” said Mother, ”they saved one million, three hundred and seventy-eight thousand old people who’d never been found. And a queen nobody had ever heard of. And you.”

I didn’t say anything.

”Dinraal chose,” said Mother. ”Aurelius chose. Every one of them chose. On the top terrace. With their silver.” She poured tea. Into a cup. And held it out to me. ”You don’t get to take that away from them by saying it was yours.”

I took the cup.

”It still feels like mine,” I said.

”I know,” said Mother. ”That’s what being somebody’s son is like. You’ll find out.” She looked out at Avalon. ”So what are you going to do about it?”

I didn’t answer.

I went to find Isolde.

She was in the map room still. At the long table. With her notebook.

On Hearth, Isolde’s notebook is the most anyone can trust anyone with. Dinraal told me that once, through the relay, a long time ago, before there was an arch with two faces. He’d trust them with Isolde’s notebook, he said, about us. Which on Hearth is the most anyone can say.

I sat down across from her.

”Your notebook,” I said. ”What’s in it?”

She looked at me for a long time.

”Gardens,” she said. In our language. ”Mostly. Everything that grows on Hearth. Where. And how. And which roof.”

”Every roof?”

”Every roof I’ve ever seen,” said Isolde.

I looked at her.

”And the rest of it?” I said. ”The city. The rivers. The hills. The house with Dinraal’s window.” I put my hands flat on the table. ”Can you show me?”

She understood before I’d finished.

I saw it on her face. Isolde, who asks about gardens first. Who keeps the notebook. Who’s one of the two most beautiful women in the universe, they say on Hearth, and who has never once in all the time I’ve known her seemed to notice.

She put her hand on the notebook.

”You want to make it again,” said Isolde.

”Yes.”

”Here.”

”Yes.”

She didn’t say anything for a long time.

”All of it?” she said.

”As much as I can,” I said. ”Every hill. Every river. Every roof. The house with the window.” My voice did something. ”So that when they come through the arch, it’s home.”

Isolde went and got Dinraal.

And Asha, with her instruments, which have been mapping Hearth since before anyone on Avalon knew there was a Hearth. And Aurelius, who knows every street of the city. And Rhiannon, who knows who lives on every one.

And Tiamat, from the kitchen, with Mother’s tea.

And they sat round the long table. Six of them. And showed me Hearth.

I’ve never been to Hearth.

I want to say that. In all the time since the relay, since the arch with two faces, I’d never once gone through it. I’d always meant to. There was always somewhere else.

They showed me.

Asha’s instruments first. A great slow map in the air over the long table, silver, the whole of Hearth from above. A green world. Greener than Isca. With a long sea down one side and mountains down the other and between them, all the way along, a great river valley, very wide, very old, with the city of Hearth along both banks of the river for forty miles.

And bridges. Hundreds of them. White stone and silver, very long and very fine, across the river. Dinraal’s bridge across the canyon, on the first day on the plain, was a small one, Isolde said. Hearth has bridges a mile long that sing in the wind.

And roofs.

Every roof in the city of Hearth is a garden.

Then Isolde’s notebook. Page after page. In her very small writing, in her own script, with drawings. What grows on which roof. Which roofs have water, and how it comes down. Which have fruit trees. Which have nothing but moss, because the old woman who lives under that one likes moss. Thousands of pages.

Then Aurelius, very quietly, through Dot. Street by street. Every square. Every fountain. The Senate. The old quarter by the water, where the houses lean together. The new quarter on the hill, where the houses are white.

Then Rhiannon. Who lives where. Who’s old, and needs the house nearest the bottom of the stairs. Who’s just had a baby. Who has nine children and needs the house with the big kitchen.

And then Dinraal.

He didn’t say anything.

He put his silver hand on the long table, flat. And the silver went out of it. Into the wood. Very fine. Like roots. Across the table to where my hands were.

And into mine.

And I saw it.

Through his silver. Through him. The house.

His mother’s house. On the hill above the river, in the old quarter, where the houses are build in the classic Draec Imperial style and the gardens on the roofs are older than the houses. A house of grey stone with a silver roof, and a garden on the roof with a tree in it, very old.

And a window.

On the second floor. Looking out over the garden at the back. Where Dinraal sits. Where he sits with his mother. Where he sat the night the relay opened and a boy with black eyes said hello from a world with a red-glass yard.

Garnet drew a copy of him there once. From the relay. Dinraal at his window. It hangs by the kitchen door, beside her drawing of Father, above the slate.

I saw the window. The real one. Through his silver.

The latch. The crack in the third pane. The worn place on the sill where his elbow goes.

I took my hands off the table.

Nobody said anything.

”I’ll need somewhere big,” I said.

Okafor said it.

”The west,” said Okafor. ”Past the sea.”

Avalon has a sea to the west. Past the river. Past the long plain beyond Thera. A great grey sea, very cold, with nothing on the far side of it. Keir mapped it the first year. He drew a line where the coast was and wrote sea and then, further out, sea, and then, at the edge of the map, more sea.

There’s nothing there.

Nothing at all. No land. No islands. Water, all the way to the far side of the world.

”Lucas,” said Okafor. Very quietly. ”You’d have to make all of it.”

”I know.”

”Not a hill,” she said. ”Not a city. A country. Mountains. A sea. A river valley forty miles long.” She put the chalk down. ”You’ve never made anything that big.”

”I made the ground for Thera,” I said. ”In a night.”

”Thera’s a town,” said Okafor.

”I know.”

She looked at me for a long time.

”Nine days,” she said.

”Then I’d better start,” I said.

So two things happened at once.

For nine days.

On Hearth, they left.

Kyria’s cutters cut arches. Not one. Not twelve. Kyria brought every cutter on Hyrran, four hundred of them, and Odra brought every smith, and they went through the arch with two faces onto Hearth and cut arches in every square of the city. Along both banks of the river. Forty miles of them. Four hundred arches, one in every square, every one sung open from our side by every queen on Avalon and from Hearth’s side by Dory, who went through to Hearth on the first morning with Corin and Thessaly and stood in the biggest square in the city of Hearth with her hands on the frame and sang.

And on the other side of every arch, on Avalon, at first, there was nothing. Just the long plain beyond Thera, going down to the edge of the grey sea.

And the people of Hearth came through.

They came very calmly.

That’s the thing everyone says about it afterward. On every tithe world we ever went to, there was screaming. There was running. There were people who didn’t believe us and people who wouldn’t leave and people who hid. On Hearth, there was none of that.

Aurelius stood in the Senate and said one thing, through every piece of Hearth’s silver at once, so that every one of four hundred and twelve million people heard it at the same time. Dot gave it to us afterward.

”We are going to our friends,” said Aurelius. ”Who have made room.”

And they came.

The children first. Of course. Even on Hearth.

Down the streets of the city, to the squares, to the arches. In rows. In their school clothes. Holding hands. With their silver very small on them, the way Hearth’s silver is on children, a ring, a bracelet, a thread round the wrist. Singing. Something Isolde says every child on Hearth learns before they can walk. A song about a garden.

And through.

Onto the plain beyond Thera. Under Avalon’s sky.

Into Maura’s arms.

Maura had brought every grandmother on Avalon.

Every one. The ones who went down to the river for the twenty-nine thousand. The ones from Shell, from the walls of the moon. The ones from Tor Isca, from the bottom terraces. Merrit, a hundred and four. Ama Sollen, with the girl from Vantle on her hip. Nan Vey, with her iron. Aunt Nessa. Teshka, sitting down, very straight.

Standing at the foot of every one of the four hundred arches. On the plain. With bread.

Every child a grandmother, Mother wrote on the slate. Or a grandfather.

That’s what it was for.

And on Avalon, I made Hearth.

I’m not going to be able to write this properly. I’ve tried. I’ll write what I can.

I went out to the edge of the grey sea on the first night. Past the plain. Past the arches. To the coast Keir drew on the map the first year and wrote sea beside.

And put my hands in the water.

And went down.

The sea floor. Very deep. Cold. Old. The rock under it. The hard sheets. The warm. Avalon, all the way down, the way I know it. The way I’ve known it since the first year, since the garden wall, since I put my hand on the ground and found the queens.

And I asked it to come up.

It’s the thing I do. I ask. Very politely. And things say yes.

I’d never asked anything that big.

I asked the floor of the western sea of Avalon to come up out of the water and be a country. Mountains, along the north side, high, with snow on them, the way Asha’s map showed Hearth’s mountains. A long coast along the south, where Hearth’s sea is. And between them, a valley. Very wide. Very old-looking, though it would be a day old. With a river down the middle of it.

Forty miles.

It said yes.

It took two nights.

I didn’t sleep. I sat on the coast with my hands in the sea and felt the floor of it come up, very slowly, a mile under the water, then half a mile, then the first peaks of the mountains breaking the surface in the dark, very far out, white with spray.

Andraste sat beside me. The whole two nights. With her arm in Halloway’s bandages and her blade across her knees. She didn’t say anything.

Hana sat on my other side. And breathed for me, when I forgot to.

On the third morning there was land.

Wet. Grey. Steaming in the cold. Mountains to the north. A coast to the south. A long valley between them, empty, with nothing in it but rock and the sea draining out of it.

And then I started on the rest.

The river first. Asha’s map, in the air over the coast, silver, showing me where. And I asked the rock to open, very slowly, in a long line down the middle of the valley, forty miles. And the water to come down from the mountains, the way it comes down on Hearth. And it did.

Then the soil. All of it. A whole valley of it. Brought up from deep under Avalon, where it’s been waiting since before there were queens, and spread out, the way you’d spread a blanket.

Then the hills. On either side of the river. The old quarter on one. The new quarter on the other. Aurelius, beside me, at the coast, with his gentle hand on my shoulder, telling me through Dot where every street went.

Then the city.

I’ve never made a city.

I made the ground for Thera. Water and roads and hollows. And stopped. And they built the houses themselves, crooked. I made the ridge for Shell, with doors in it. And stopped. They built the rest.

I didn’t stop.

I couldn’t. They were coming through the arches already. Forty million a day. Onto a plain with nothing on it but Maura and bread. They didn’t have time to build a city. They’d had a city. A very nice one. They’d had to leave it.

So I made them that one.

From Asha’s map. From Aurelius’s streets. From Rhiannon’s who-lives-where. From Isolde’s notebook, page after page.

The squares. The fountains. The old quarter by the water, where the houses lean together. The new quarter on the hill, where they’re white. The Senate. The bridges, hundreds of them, white stone and silver, across the river, very long and very fine, so that when the wind came down off the new mountains on the fifth night they sang.

Isolde was standing on the first of them when it did.

She didn’t say anything. She stood on a bridge that hadn’t been there that morning, in the wind, listening to it sing the way the bridges on Hearth sing, and put both her hands over her mouth.

And the roofs.

That was Isolde. All of it. I made the roofs flat and asked them to hold soil, and she did the rest. With her notebook. With her leaves, which aren’t guns now. She went from roof to roof, every one, all through the fifth night and the sixth, with the people of Hearth coming through the arches behind her. And on every roof, she put her hand on the soil and told it what was supposed to grow there.

And it grew.

Moss on the old woman’s roof. Fruit trees on the roof with the water. Thousands of roofs. Each one the way it was.

The way it is.

On the seventh night, I made the house.

On the hill above the river. In the old quarter. Grey stone. A silver roof. A garden on the roof, with a place for a tree.

I couldn’t make the tree. Nobody can make a tree. Isolde said she’d bring a seed from it, from Hearth, on the last day, and plant it, and it would grow, slowly, the ordinary way.

But I made the window.

On the second floor. Looking out over the garden at the back.

From Dinraal’s silver. From what he’d shown me through the long table. The latch. The crack in the third pane. The worn place on the sill where his elbow goes.

I didn’t tell him.

I just made it. And went back to the coast. And started on the next street.

The stations were the last thing.

Nine of them. Round Hearth. Tiamat built them. Held together with silver that holds its own shape, because I showed Dinraal on the eighth day.

On the eighth day of the nine, everyone on Hearth was through but the stations.

Four hundred and eight million on the new valley in the west of Avalon, walking up streets they’d known their whole lives, finding their own front doors. Finding their own roofs, with their own gardens on them, the way Isolde’s notebook said.

And on the nine stations, four million more.

”They won’t fit,” said Tiamat.

On the eighth night. At the arch with two faces. Looking up through it, at Hearth’s sky, where the nine stations were, very bright, in a ring.

And past them, at the edge of Hearth’s sky, the arm.

I could see it.

Everyone could. Through the arch. From Avalon. A darkness at the edge of Hearth’s sky that wasn’t the dark of space. Bigger than the sky. Coming. Very slowly, it looked, because it was so big; and very fast, really, because it was so far away and getting closer that fast.

It had eaten the ninth station’s light already. The far side of it.

”The people can come,” said Tiamat. ”Through the arches. In their ships. To the surface, and through.” She didn’t look away from the sky. ”There’s time. Just. They’re going now.”

”And the stations?” said Okafor.

”The stations are too big,” said Tiamat. ”They won’t fit through any arch Kyria can cut. And there’s no time to fly them. Avalon is too far.” Her voice was very level. ”They stay. It eats them.”

Nobody said anything.

”I built them,” said Tiamat. ”For listening. So nothing would ever come up to Hearth again without someone hearing.” She looked at the dark at the edge of the sky. ”They heard.”

I looked at the stations.

Nine of them. In a ring. Very bright. Silver. Every one of them held together by silver that holds its own shape, and sings while it does it.

They won’t fit, she said.

Not as they are.

”Tiamat,” I said.

She looked at me.

”Get everyone off,” I said. ”Every person. Every one.”

She looked at me for a long time.

Then she understood.

I’ve told everyone what scattering is like. Over and over. I don’t think anyone understands. I go up the thread the long way, in pieces. Every atom of me, apart. Not falling. Not flying. Just apart, very fine, very far, going along the thread, and then together again on the other end.

I’ve done it more times than I can count. I’ve never done it to anything but me.

The last of the station people came down to Hearth in their ships at dawn on the ninth day. Four million. Through the squares. Through the arches. Onto Avalon. Tiamat came last, in her woman’s shape, through the arch with two faces, and stood beside me on the red glass.

”Empty,” she said. ”All nine.”

I put my hand on the arch.

And went up through it. Into Hearth’s sky.

The first station was the nearest. Very bright. Very big. Bigger than a city. Silver and grey and black stone, Tiamat’s work, held together with silver that holds its shape.

I put my hands on it.

And asked it to come apart.

It didn’t want to.

That’s the thing nobody tells you about silver that holds its own shape. It holds. That’s what it does. That’s what I taught Dinraal to teach it, on the eighth day. And now I was asking it to let go of every shape it had, every atom of it, all at once, and trust me to put it back together on the other end.

It held.

I asked again. Very politely.

Please. It’s coming. It’ll eat you. I’ll put you back. I promise.

And it let go.

I took it apart. All of it. Every atom. The way I take myself apart. Very fine. Very far. And took it down the thread, the long way, through the arch with two faces, in a river of something like light, so thin that the whole of a station bigger than a city went through an arch the width of a street.

And on the other side, in Avalon’s sky, very high, over the new valley in the west, I put it back.

Every atom. Where it was. Every corridor. Every room. Every shelf. Every cup someone left on a table.

And the silver held its shape again.

And sang.

Then the second.

I’m not going to write them all. They were all the same, and they were all different, and by the fifth one I wasn’t writing anything in my head at all.

I remember the fourth was the one Tiamat lived on. Her quarters. A room with a window looking down at Hearth. With a drawing on the wall that Bahamut did, once, of a dragon, very badly.

I put that back exactly.

I remember the sixth took longer, because it was the oldest, and its silver had been holding its shape the longest, and didn’t want to let go at all. I had to tell it about Avalon. About the red glass and the garden wall and the queens. About the room there was.

It let go.

I remember the seventh.

I don’t remember the eighth.

The ninth was at the edge of Hearth’s sky.

Nearest the arm. Already half in its dark. The far side of it gone, eaten, the way the ninth station’s light had gone. Only the near half left. Very dim.

I went up to it.

And I could feel the arm.

I’m not going to describe that either.

I’ll say that it was very close. That it was bigger than anything. That it was hungry, the way nothing else is hungry, all the way through, with nothing else in it at all. And that when I put my hands on the ninth station, half eaten already, at the edge of the dark, it felt me.

And reached.

I took the station apart.

Very fast. Faster than the others. The half that was left. Every atom.

And went.

Down the thread. The long way. Through the arch with two faces, with the dark of the arm coming down Hearth’s sky behind me, very fast. Onto Avalon.

And put it back.

Half of it. In Avalon’s sky. Over the new valley. With the other eight. A ring of nine, very bright, over the west.

One of them only half.

And Hesk brought the arch down.

The arch with two faces. On the red glass. Hearth’s face on one side and ours on the other. Hesk stood at it with her hammer, the way she’d stood at it since the first day Kyria’s cutters cut it.

She looked through it one last time.

At Hearth’s sky. Dark now. Almost all of it. With the arm coming down.

And swung.

The packing went off. The keystone moved.

And the arch came down. Slowly. Gently. Block by block. Onto the red glass.

And on the other side, in the last of the light, very far away, I think—I’m almost sure—I saw a garden on a roof. With a tree in it. Very old.

And then I didn’t see anything.

My nose was bleeding.

I didn’t notice. I was on my knees on the red glass, beside the stones of the arch with two faces, with my hands flat on the ground. And something was running down my face.

Hana noticed.

Of course she did. Hana, who hid her nosebleeds for seven weeks in the dome because her family needed the stipend. Hana, who knows exactly what it looks like when someone’s done too much and is pretending they haven’t.

She knelt down in front of me. On the red glass. And put her hand under my chin. And lifted my face.

And looked at it.

”Oh,” said Hana. Very quietly. ”Oh, Lucas.”

I hadn’t had a nosebleed in years.

Not since the early days. Not since I learned how much I could do, and how to do it without pushing. Not since the first year, when everything was too much and I didn’t know where the edges were.

I’d found the edges.

Nine stations bigger than cities. The floor of a sea. A country. A river forty miles long. Four hundred bridges. A window with a crack in the third pane.

In nine days.

Hana took off her scarf and held it to my face.

She didn’t say anything else. She just held it there, kneeling on the red glass, with her other hand on the back of my neck. And breathed for me. Very gently. In and out. Until I remembered how.

And then Luna was there, with her cold hand on my forehead. And Sera, very warm, at my back. And Andraste, standing over all of us with her blade out, because Andraste doesn’t kneel in the middle of a field. And Risa, with Kesh on her shoulder, who came down off the interceptor field at a run when she felt it through the silver.

And Mother.

Behind me. With her hand on my back.

Of course.

”You stupid boy,” said Mother. Very quietly. ”You stupid, stupid boy.”

She didn’t take her hand off my back.

Wren counted.

From the long ward. With Rafe. In the voice that doesn’t break.

She’d been counting for nine days. All of them. Every one. Through four hundred arches. The furthest she’d ever counted and the most. Rhiannon’s hand on her arm the whole time, making her reach.

”Four hundred and twelve million, one thousand, six hundred and nine,” said Wren. ”Of four hundred and twelve million, one thousand, six hundred and nine.”

A pause.

”Everyone,” said Wren.

Konrad wrote it on the sheet.

He didn’t have a line for it. Hearth was never on the sheet; Hearth was never a tithe world. So he turned to the back. To the very bottom. Under Yet and And the room.

And wrote: Hearth. All.

And then, after a long time, very small:

He bled.

I slept for two days.

In my own bed. In the house on the rise. With Hana on one side, who wouldn’t leave, and the other four taking turns on the other. With Kesh in her basket at the foot of the bed, and her cloud very still, because Ingrid was sitting in the chair by the window.

When I woke up, there was a drawing on the table beside the bed.

Garnet’s.

Dinraal. At a window. In a grey stone house with a silver roof, on a hill above a river, with a garden behind him. Looking out.

But not the way she drew him from the relay. Not from outside, through the glass, the way you’d draw a stranger.

From inside. From the room. Over his shoulder. Looking out with him. At the garden on the roof. Where Isolde was kneeling in the soil, in the morning light, with her hands in it. Planting a seed.

Under the drawing, in Isolde’s very small writing, in her own script, one word.

Dot told me what it was.

Home.

Days 4609–4630. Copy.

Nine days of nothing. Then the ninth station heard an arm of the Hungry, bigger than Hearth’s sun, coming for Hearth. Isca taught them what Hearth’s silver tastes like; I taught Dinraal to finish it. Mother: you don’t get to take their choosing away by saying it was yours. Aurelius: we will leave; four hundred and twelve million. Isolde’s notebook; Asha’s map; Aurelius’s streets; Rhiannon’s who-lives-where; Dinraal’s window, through his silver. Kyria’s four hundred arches; Dory sang from Hearth; every grandmother at the foot of every arch. I raised the floor of the western sea. A river forty miles. The bridges sang and Isolde put her hands over her mouth. She grew every roof. I made the window with the crack in the third pane. Nine stations, taken apart and put back over Avalon; the ninth only half. Hesk brought the arch down. My nose bled; Hana held her scarf to it. Everyone. Konrad: He bled. Garnet drew Dinraal from inside. Home.