Scarecrow

The queen sang for a long time.

In the cave under the ridge. On the black floor that’s smooth as water. With the twelve old Hyrrani who keep her standing in a line in front of her with their blades, not moving. With Andraste in the mouth of the tunnel with Holdfast silent in her hand. And between them, hundreds of grey ones. Standing very still.

Listening.

I came back together in the cave behind Andraste. Out of the rock. And stopped.

Because they weren’t moving.

I’d seen grey ones stand still. On the walls of the city, in rows, in the snow. That’s how they wait. Very straight. Very even. Like a clock that’s been stopped with its hands up.

This wasn’t that.

They were swaying.

Very slightly. All of them. Not together. Each one on its own. Very slowly. The way you sway when you’re very tired and someone’s singing and you didn’t know you were tired until they started.

Do you hear it, said the queen. Not to them. To me. Through the rock. Very old. Under the grey.

I put my hand on the black floor.

And listened.

They breathe like clocks. We learned that on One. Even. Slow. Every one the same. That’s the first thing Wren said about them, from the long ward, through the arch, when the twelve came through the black doors in the hall. Their hearts don’t sound like anyone’s.

I listened to them breathe.

Even. Slow. All the same.

And then, under it, very faint, the way you hear a second voice under a song when someone’s humming along without meaning to—

Something else.

Not even.

A catch. In one of them. Near the front. A breath that went in and didn’t come out at quite the right time. And then went on, even again.

And then another one. Further back. A heart that missed. Once. And went on.

And then another.

They were somebody, said the queen. Every one. The building takes what they were and puts something on top of it. Very heavy. Very grey. A pause. But it does not take it away. It cannot. Nothing can take that away. Not even the Sorn.

She sang.

I am singing to what is underneath, she said.

”Lucas,” said Asha. Through the silver. Very quietly. From the courtyard arch, where her instruments were. ”Lucas. The forge gate.”

I went.

Up through the rock. Scattered, a very short way. And came back together in the snow at the forge gate, beside Gilgamesh with his axe lowered, and Odra in her apron with her blade.

And the grey one.

Still standing there. In the gate. With its hand open where it had let go of Odra’s iron.

It hadn’t moved since.

It was swaying too.

Very slightly. In the snow. With its hand open. The way the ones in the cave were. As if it could hear the queen through the rock. As if something under it were listening.

Odra was looking up at it. She’s very small; it was very tall.

”It let go,” said Odra. In Hyrrani. To me. Without taking her eyes off it. ”I told it to and it let go.”

”I know.”

”Nothing lets go of my iron,” said Odra. ”Not in sixty years.” She looked at the grey one’s hand. Open. Grey. All the same as every other grey one’s hand. ”It knew what iron was. Somebody taught it once.”

She looked at me.

”Somebody who worked a forge,” said Odra.

I put my hand out.

Not touching. Not yet. The way I put it out to Tavvan in the crevasse. Just there.

The grey one didn’t turn toward it. It didn’t do anything. It stood in the snow with its hand open, swaying, listening to the queen under the rock.

And I listened to it breathe.

Even. Slow. Like a clock.

And then a catch.

”Holt,” I said. Into the silver. ”Tavvan. I need Tavvan.”

Holt didn’t ask why.

He went back through the courtyard arch himself. In the snow. With his coat round Saska’s shoulders still and nothing round his own. And came back through four minutes later. Exactly. The General’s drill.

With Tavvan.

He came through the arch onto the ridge in his own coat now, a Hyrrani one, grey, that Odra’s people had made him. With Holt’s stick. And stopped in the snow and looked at it. The snow. He’d never seen snow; One is ice, but it never snows on One. Nothing falls from that sky but the front.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he looked at the forge gate. At the grey one standing in it.

And went very still.

”He knows them,” said Holt. Very quietly. Beside me. ”He told me. On the porch. Last week. He said he watched them walk out of the other side of the building for forty years, and he knew some of them.” Holt looked at Tavvan. ”From the hall. Before.”

Tavvan walked to the forge gate.

Slowly. With Holt’s stick. Across the snow. Past Gilgamesh, who stepped back. Past Odra, who didn’t.

And stopped in front of the grey one.

And listened.

He did it the way he did it in the hall. Bent down. Very slowly. With his long many-jointed fingers on the stick. His head on one side. Listening to it breathe.

For a long time.

The grey one didn’t move. It stood in the gate with its hand open, swaying, listening to the queen.

And Tavvan listened to it.

Then he said something.

Very soft. Like water over stones.

Dot was on the red glass, through the courtyard arch. She heard it. And didn’t translate it for a long time.

Then she did. And her voice did the thing.

”He says,” said Dot. ”I know this one.”

”He says he slept in the third row,” said Dot. ”Twelve years ago. By the east wall of the hall. He says he breathed with a catch in it, every eleventh breath, because he’d had a fever on his own world before they took him, and it never went away.” A pause. ”He says he named him for it. By the way he breathed.”

Tavvan said the name.

Dot gave it to us. The nearest she could.

Ossel.

”He says it means,” said Dot, ”the one who keeps stopping and starting again.”

The grey one’s breath caught.

Every eleventh breath. Tavvan said so. And it did. Even, even, even. Ten breaths like a clock.

And the eleventh caught.

And didn’t go on even.

I put my hands on it.

I’m going to try to write this. I’ve tried four times since. I’m not sure I’ll get it right.

It was grey all the way down.

That’s the first thing. Every atom. I’ve put my hands on grey things before. The Sorn black, on Avalon, that the queens grew walls out of. The collars, that I turn to sand. The grey of the houses’ Hands. This was different. This grey wasn’t on anything. It wasn’t a collar or a coat or armour. It was all of it. Every atom of the thing in front of me, grey, heavy, even, very carefully arranged into something tall and smooth and all the same as every other one. Like a statue that breathes.

And under it—

Under every atom of the grey, very faint, very far down, like a song you can hear through a wall, the atoms remembered.

Not much. Not clearly. The way you remember a dream in the morning, for a moment, before it goes. But they did. Every one. Something they’d been before the building. A shape. A different shape. Shorter. Thinner. With long hands. With too many joints in the fingers.

With a fever that never went away.

Ossel, said Tavvan. Again. Very softly. To the grey one. Ossel. The one who keeps stopping and starting again.

And under the rock, the queen who’s never been taken sang.

And I asked.

Not to come apart. Not to be something else. I can make anything into what I want it to be; I hate doing it. I ask a thing to be what I want, and it usually says yes.

So I asked every atom of the grey one in the forge gate to remember.

You were somebody. Before. You had a fever and it never went away. You slept in the third row by the east wall of a hall under the ice, and an old man swept the floor round you every night, and listened to you breathe, and gave you a name. You keep stopping and starting again.

Start again.

It didn’t want to.

The grey didn’t. It held. The way the oldest station held, at Hearth, that didn’t want to let go. Heavy. Even. Very carefully arranged by something that knew exactly what it was doing.

I asked again.

And again.

And under my hands, under the grey, the atoms that remembered pushed.

My nose was bleeding.

I didn’t notice. Hana did, afterward. She said it had been bleeding since the second time I asked. She said she was at the north wall and felt it through the silver and was at the forge gate before she knew she’d moved.

She didn’t stop me.

She stood behind me in the snow with her hand on my back. And breathed for me. And didn’t say anything.

The grey came away.

Not all at once. Not like a collar going to sand. Slowly. From the hand first. The open hand, where it had let go of Odra’s iron. The grey went out of it like colour going out of a cloth in water. And under it, a hand.

Thinner. Longer. Soft grey, like the inside of a shell. With too many joints in the fingers.

Then the arm.

Then all of it.

It got smaller.

That’s what Odra says. She was watching it, closer than anyone, from right in front of it in the gate. She says it got smaller, the whole time, the way something gets smaller when it stops holding itself up. Down from taller than Brock. Down. And down.

Until it was a young man. Thin. Very thin. With soft grey skin and long hands and very large dark eyes. Standing in the forge gate on Hyrran in the snow, swaying.

And then not standing.

Tavvan caught him.

Holt’s stick went down in the snow. Tavvan caught him in both arms, both long many-jointed hands, before he fell. And went down on his knees in the snow with him.

And held him.

The young man breathed.

Not like a clock.

In. And out. And in. Ragged. Uneven. The way children breathe in their sleep.

And on the eleventh breath, it caught.

And started again.

Tavvan made a sound I’m not going to write.

I sat down.

In the snow. Very suddenly. The way everyone sits down at the end. With my nose bleeding into my hands and Hana’s scarf already there, held to my face, and her other hand on the back of my neck.

”One,” I said. Through the scarf. ”Just one.”

”I know,” said Hana.

”There are thousands,” I said. ”On the walls. Millions. On One. In the lines.” I couldn’t see properly. ”I did one. And look at me.”

”I’m looking,” said Hana. Very quietly. ”I’m always looking.” She didn’t take the scarf away. ”It was one. Yesterday it was none.”

Then one of them spoke.

It came down the forge stairs from the city. Out of the snow. Through the last of the Hyrrani on the walls. Not in a row. Alone.

Taller than the others. Older. I don’t know how I knew it was older; they’re all the same. But it was. The grey of it was darker, heavier, smoother, as if it had been grey for a very long time. And it didn’t sway. Not at all. Not even a little.

It stopped at the top of the forge gate. Above us. Above Tavvan on his knees in the snow with Ossel, and Odra with her blade, and Gilgamesh, and Hana, and me sitting in the snow with her scarf on my face.

And looked down at Ossel.

And then at me.

And opened its mouth.

”World-breaker,” it said.

Not in its voice. It didn’t have a voice. In the voice. The one the houses use. The one that came into the long table the day Abena was nine days old and said the terms. The one that said make it white on Merrow.

Out of a grey mouth. On Hyrran. In the snow.

”You have taken something that was ours,” said the voice. Very even. ”It is on the line for stock. It will be written on the line for lost.” A pause. ”Nothing that is written there has ever been taken back.”

It looked at Ossel. In Tavvan’s arms.

”We will take it back,” said the voice.

And came down the steps.

I couldn’t get up.

I tried. Hana’s hand was on my back and my legs wouldn’t. I’d done one. I had nothing left. I sat in the snow and watched it come down the forge steps toward Tavvan and Ossel, very smooth, very even, with the voice of the houses in its mouth.

And Gilgamesh stepped in front of it with his axe.

And it caught the axe.

The old one. Black and silver. With the notch from Holdfast. The one the light doesn’t want to touch.

It caught it. One-handed. And held it. And Gilgamesh, who’s older than anything on Hearth, who has never in his life not been able to move a weapon where he wanted it, couldn’t move it.

And it pushed him back. One step. In the snow.

Gilgamesh didn’t laugh.

Then the First Weapon came through the forge gate.

From the city. From nowhere. A corgi, very small, very low, with his crown on, the way he goes when he isn’t sure of a place.

And then not.

He grew.

In the snow. In the gate. All at once. The size of a house. Bigger. With wings out, wide, and claws, and the cannon on his back swinging round.

And Dinraal behind him. In his armour. With every gun he could think of.

And Isolde behind Dinraal. With her hand on her middle and her leaves already in the air round her, ten thousand of them, all turning.

The grey one let go of Gilgamesh’s axe.

It turned. Toward the First Weapon. Very smooth. Very even.

And the First Weapon fired.

Point-blank. In the forge gate. A corgi the size of a house with a cannon on his back, firing into something that had the voice of the houses in its mouth.

It went back up the steps. Ten steps. Twenty.

And stopped. And stood. And came back down.

Dinraal fired. Everything. All at once. The turning barrels. The tubes over his shoulders. And the grey one walked into it, very smooth, very even, and kept walking, and the grey on it went darker, and darker, and cracked, all down the front, like old paint.

And didn’t stop.

And Isolde’s leaves turned. All ten thousand. Toward it.

”No,” said Odra.

She was standing beside me. In her apron. With her blade.

She’d watched all of it. The axe. The cannon. The guns. She’d watched it the way she watches iron in the fire, when she’s deciding when to take it out.

”It’s not iron,” said Odra. ”It doesn’t know what iron is.” She looked at the grey one coming down the steps with the cracks in it. ”Not this one. The other one did. This one never knew anything.”

She looked at me.

”There’s nobody under it,” said Odra. ”I can tell. Sixty years. I can tell good iron from bad by the sound.”

She lifted her blade.

”This one’s just grey,” said Odra.

And Gilgamesh, beside her, very slowly, reached over his shoulder.

And it was the first sword. The plain one. Almost not there. The one he made for someone.

He didn’t swing it.

He put it in Odra’s hand.

And took hers.

Odra looked at the sword in her hand. The first one Gilgamesh ever made. Silver. Very old. Very plain. She looked at it the way she looks at iron. For a long time. In the snow. With the grey one coming down the steps.

Then she looked up at Gilgamesh.

”Good,” said Odra. ”Very good. For a first one.”

And turned round.

And met the grey one at the bottom of the steps.

I’m not going to describe it. It was one stroke. A very old woman with short white hair and bare scarred arms in the snow, with the first sword the oldest man on Hearth ever made, because he’d made it for someone. And a thing with the voice of the houses in its mouth, cracked all down the front by Dinraal’s guns and a corgi’s cannon, putting its hand up to catch it.

It didn’t catch it.

The voice stopped in the middle of a word.

Odra stood over it for a long time.

Then she gave Gilgamesh his sword back. Hilt first. The way you hand a blade to a smith.

”Make me one,” she said. ”Like that. When there’s time.”

Gilgamesh looked at her.

Then he laughed. Out loud. In the snow. At the forge gate on Hyrran. With the notched axe on his back and the first sword in his hand.

”For you,” he said. Isolde gave it to us. ”Yes. Always the first one, for someone.”

And then the Ashen came down.

They’d been watching. All night. Very high, over the ridge, in the snow. Not coming down. Not lidding. Waiting to see how even it was.

They saw.

”Lucas,” said Asha. Through the silver. Very fast. ”They’re moving. All of them. Down. Toward the cave.”

The cave.

Where the grey ones were standing on the black floor, hundreds of them, swaying, listening to the queen sing to what was underneath.

And the Ashen wave came down through the ridge toward them.

I couldn’t get there.

I tried. I got up out of the snow with Hana’s scarf on my face and reached for the rock, to go down through it, and my hands wouldn’t. Nothing would. I’d done one, and I had nothing left.

Aurelius got there.

He’d been on the ridge all night. Over the city. With his shield up. With his dome over the halls, under Cleopatra’s field, so the Hands’ fire hit both. I hadn’t written him because he doesn’t do anything you can write. He holds. That’s all. He’s a gentle man. He holds the sky up over people and doesn’t say anything.

He went down into the mountain.

Through the forge gate. Past Gilgamesh, past Odra, past Tavvan on his knees in the snow with Ossel in his arms. Down the forge stairs. Down the tunnel. To the cave.

And stood in the mouth of it. Beside Andraste.

And put his shield up.

The Ashen wave came down through the rock of the ridge.

It doesn’t need a door. It doesn’t need a tunnel. It ends things; it goes through the rock of a mountain the way light goes through water. Down. Toward the cave. Toward the black floor, and the grey ones swaying on it, and the queen.

And met Aurelius’s dome.

It went black where it touched. The way it went black on Ostrel, and Isca. Smoking. A long black stain across the top of the dome, under the roof of the cave, where the dark met the silver.

It didn’t break.

But it didn’t cover the cave. It couldn’t. The cave is the size of the north field, and the dome came out from the mouth of the tunnel, and it was very wide, and very bright, but the Ashen wave came down through the whole of the ridge at once.

Over the near half of the cave, the dome.

Over the far half, nothing.

I’m going to write this because it happened.

The grey ones on the far half of the black floor. The ones nearest the queen. The ones who’d been swaying the longest, listening to her sing.

The Ashen wave came down on them.

And ended them.

Not like the Hungry. The Hungry, when the Ashen wave touches them, go away. These didn’t go away. They stopped. All at once. Standing. Swaying. Listening.

And then they weren’t there.

Two hundred and eleven.

Wren counted. She counts everyone.

The queen stopped singing.

Andraste, in the mouth of the tunnel beside Aurelius, made a sound. Not the one she made on the ridge when the twins came. The other one.

And Holdfast, in her hand, hummed.

Not toward the grey ones under the dome. Toward the Ashen. Up. Through the rock. Toward the ships very high over the ridge that had just ended two hundred and eleven people who’d been somebody, before, and were starting to remember.

So that nobody would know it could be done.

Andraste went up.

I don’t know how. Nobody does. Kyria says a First Blade can go anywhere her blade is pointing if she wants to badly enough, and that it’s never been tested, because no First Blade has ever wanted to go anywhere that badly.

She went up through the mountain. Out of the cave. Up the tunnel and the forge stairs and out of the forge gate past us in the snow, faster than anything, with Holdfast humming so loud the snow on the ridge came down off the peaks.

And up.

Into the sky.

Risa caught her.

Of course she did. From the courtyard arch, with her eyes shut, flying the wing. She felt Andraste come up off the ridge and she sent Rowan’s interceptor under her, very fast, very low, without asking Rowan, and Andraste came down onto the wing of it in the snow with Holdfast in her hand and didn’t even look.

And Rowan took her up.

To the Ashen.

I’ve never seen anyone fight the Ashen. Not like that. Nobody fights the Ashen. Dinraal says Hearth has fought them for longer than anyone remembers and that you don’t fight them, you stop them, or you don’t. Their ships have no lights. Their wave ends things. You can’t get near.

Andraste got near.

On the wing of an interceptor flown by Rowan, who’d been told by his commander to go up and hadn’t been told why, with Callum beside him in another one with his arm still in Maura’s bandages, very badly, and Risa flying both of them from the ground.

To the nearest Ashen ship.

And stepped off.

Onto it.

It was dark. All of it. No lights. No edges. Like standing on a piece of night. And the wave coming off it, all round her, that ends things.

Holdfast went into it.

Into the wave. Into the dark coming off the ship. And the wave tried to end it, the way it ends everything.

And there’s a door in the middle of Holdfast that doesn’t shut.

The wave went through the door.

Corin’s door. The small one. In the middle of the blade, where the light is. That Thessaly keeps open. Anything that hits Holdfast hard enough to break it, goes through the door. Somewhere else.

The Ashen wave hit Holdfast hard enough to end it.

And went through the door.

All of it. The whole of the wave coming off that ship. Into Holdfast. Through the small door that doesn’t shut. Somewhere else.

And there was nothing coming off the ship.

And Andraste cut it.

One stroke. Down. Through the dark. Through the ship that had no lights and no edges and had just ended two hundred and eleven people swaying on a black floor listening to a queen.

It came apart.

In the snow. Over the ridge. In two pieces. Falling.

And Rowan was under her before she’d finished the stroke, and she stepped back onto the wing of his interceptor and didn’t look down.

The Ashen left.

All of them. All at once. The way they left Isca when the lid broke. Very high. Very fast. Up, out of the snow, into the dark over the north pole of Hyrran.

And the Hands went with them.

And the grey ones on the walls of the city, all of them, all at once, the way they do everything, turned. And went to the long grey ships. In rows. Very smooth. Very even. And up the ramps. And the ramps closed.

And the long grey ships went up into the snow.

Not the ones in the cave.

The ones under Aurelius’s dome. On the near half of the black floor. The ones who’d been swaying the shortest time, nearest the tunnel.

They didn’t go.

They stood on the black floor of the cave, under the dome, very still. Swaying. With the queen not singing any more. With the far half of the cave empty.

Waiting.

Forty-four.

Wren counted them. And then she counted the rest.

”Three hundred and eighty of the Hyrrani,” said Wren. At the dawn count. On the red glass. With Konrad on his stool. ”On the stairs. Where it was even.”

”Two hundred and six in the city. Old ones. Children. Four of them children.”

”Two hundred and eleven in the cave,” said Wren. ”Who were somebody.”

A pause.

”Forty-four in the cave who are still standing,” said Wren. ”And one at the forge gate.”

She stopped.

”He’s breathing,” said Wren. ”Every eleventh one catches.”

Andraste came down at dawn.

Rowan put his interceptor down on the ridge in the snow, very carefully, very badly, he says, because he couldn’t feel his hands. And Andraste stepped off it.

She didn’t sit down. She doesn’t, in the middle of a field.

She walked across the snow to the forge gate. To Tavvan, still on his knees, with Ossel in his arms, asleep now, breathing. And stood over them for a long time.

Then she knelt down.

She doesn’t. She knelt down in the snow beside a man she’d never met and the young man he’d named by the way he breathed. And put her hand flat on the snow beside them.

And said it. In Hyrrani. Very quietly. The same thing she said to the wall of ice on One.

Kyria told me what it was.

You were somebody.

And then the next thing. That she hadn’t said on One. That she couldn’t, on One.

You are.

Ossel opened his eyes.

Very large. Very dark. He looked up at the First Blade of Hyrran kneeling over him in the snow with Holdfast across her knees and two white ribbons on the hilt.

And then at Tavvan.

And said something. Very hoarse. In his own language. Like water over stones.

Dot gave it to us. She didn’t do the thing with her voice. She was past it.

”He says,” said Dot. ”You swept the floor.”

Odra came out of the forge at noon.

She’d gone back down at dawn. To her anvil. Because the fire had been burning all night with nobody at it, and she said a forge fire left alone for a night sulks for a week. Nobody argued.

She came up at noon with something in her hands. And walked across the snow to the forge gate, where Tavvan was still sitting with his back against the stone, with Ossel asleep against his shoulder in a Hyrrani blanket, breathing.

She stood over them for a long time.

Then she knelt down. Very slowly. Sixty years at the forges is hard on knees. And held out what she’d brought.

A pair of tongs.

Small. Old. Iron. Very worn at the handles where hands go.

”My first pair,” said Odra. In Hyrrani. To Tavvan, who doesn’t have Hyrrani, and to Ossel, who was asleep. Dot gave it to them anyway. ”My mother gave them to me. When I was twelve.”

Tavvan looked at them.

”He let go of my iron,” said Odra. ”At the gate. When I told him to.” She looked at Ossel, asleep. ”Nothing lets go of my iron. Only a smith. Only someone who knows what it means when a smith says give it back.”

She put the tongs down in the snow beside Tavvan.

”He worked a forge,” said Odra. ”On his own world. Before. I’d stake the ridge on it.”

Tavvan asked him. That evening. When he woke.

Ossel didn’t remember much. Not yet. Halloway says it might come back, a little at a time, the way things come back to the children who were in boxes. But when Tavvan asked him, very softly, in their own language, whether there had been fire on his world, before, Ossel looked at the tongs in the snow beside him for a long time.

Then he picked them up.

The way you’d pick up something you’d held every day of your life. Without looking. His long many-jointed fingers going round the worn handles exactly where the wear was.

And held them.

And didn’t put them down.

He slept with them that night. In the hall under the city, where Julius had held the inner stair, on a pallet the Hyrrani made him beside Tavvan’s. With the tongs in both hands against his chest, the way Ione used to sleep with her hand at her throat.

Tavvan didn’t sleep. He sat beside him all night with Holt’s stick across his knees.

Listening.

Every eleventh breath.

Odra watched him from the forge gate.

She didn’t say anything. She went back down to her anvil.

But Kyria says that night, for the first time in sixty years, Odra left the door to the deepest forge open behind her. Propped. With a cold cup of tea on the step, the way Hesk does at the arches.

In case.

Konrad wrote it at the dawn count.

On the front of the sheet. Under Ione Friese. Under 1,960. Home.

A new line. That nobody’s ever written.

Ossel. Somebody.

And beside it, very small:

44 more, waiting.

Days 4721–4722. Somebody.

The grey ones in the cave were swaying. Under the even breathing, a catch. The queen: I am singing to what is underneath. At the forge gate, the one that let go of Odra’s iron was swaying too; it knew what iron was. Tavvan listened: I know this one; third row, east wall, a catch every eleventh breath; Ossel, the one who keeps stopping and starting again. I asked every atom to remember. My nose bled; Hana: yesterday it was none. The grey came away, and he was small, and Tavvan caught him. Then the Ashen came down through the ridge so nobody would know; Aurelius held half the cave; 211 ended on the far half. Andraste went up; Risa put Rowan under her; the Ashen wave went through Corin’s door and she cut the ship in two. They all left. 44 stayed under the dome. One came down the steps with the voice of the houses: we will take it back. It caught Gilgamesh’s axe and walked through the cannon and the guns. Odra: there’s nobody under this one. Gilgamesh gave her his first sword. Very good, for a first one. You were somebody. You are. You swept the floor.