Scarecrow

Luka found out first. Before the Herald. Before Wren. Before anyone.

He came running up the hill road at dawn with the morning sheet from Commonhold flapping in his hand, the one the Herald puts out before the real one, and his face bright red, and he ran straight past Mother on the porch and into the kitchen and stood in the middle of it, breathing very hard.

“Thrane’s joined,” he said.

Nobody knew what he meant.

“Thrane,” said Luka. “Thrane. The Table said yes last night. At midnight. It’s in the sheet.” He held the sheet up. His hands were shaking. “Thrane’s in the Hedge.”

“That’s very nice, love,” said Sera, at the stove. “Where’s Thrane?”

Luka looked at his mother as if she’d said something completely mad.

“It’s where Saelle’s from,” he said.

I didn’t know who Saelle was either. I’ve been a long time on a hill.

Luka knew. Luka knew everything. He’s eight. Nearly nine. He’s Sera’s, and he’s the one who warmed the river all the way to the kit bridge when he was five, and he’s quieter than most of mine, and very serious, and until that morning nobody had ever once seen him go red.

He stood in the middle of the kitchen and told us. All of it. Very fast.

Saelle is a singer. From Thrane, which is a Collective world on the far side of the second arm, very old and very rich and very cold, where people have been making music for longer than the Aldri have been running. She’s the most famous singer in the Collective. She’s twenty-four. She’s been singing since she was nine. She sings in the great hall in Thrane’s capital, which holds two hundred thousand people, and every time she sings there, the whole Collective listens on the band.

“Three hundred billion people,” said Luka. “Every time.”

“How do you know about her?” said Sera.

Luka went redder.

“Mattick,” he said. “He brings the recordings. Under the rabbits. With the comics.” He looked at the floor. “I’ve got all of them. Nine. Under my bed.”

Sera put her spoon down very slowly.

“Luka Dask,” she said. “Have you been buying smuggled music from a trader?”

“With my own fair,” said Luka. “I saved it. From the river.” He looked up. “She sings about the sea, Mum. On Thrane there’s a sea that freezes in the winter and sings when it cracks. She sings like that.”

Sera looked at her son for a long time.

Then she said, “Play me one.”

He played it on the box in the kitchen, the one Ilka gave us years ago, very quietly, with everybody listening.

I don’t know how to describe it. I’m not good at music. Toby is. Toby was at the long table, because Toby’s at the long table more and more, and he closed his eyes the moment it started.

It was a woman’s voice. Very high, and very clear, and very cold, like ice. With nothing behind it at first. Just the voice. And then, a long way behind it, something else. A low sound. A cracking. Like a whole sea of ice moving very slowly in the dark.

And then her voice went down, very low, to meet it. And the two of them sang together. The woman and the sea.

It went on for a long time. Nobody moved.

At the end Toby opened his eyes.

“Oh,” he said. Very quietly. “Oh, she’s very good.”

Luka stood next to the box with his hands at his sides and his face bright red and didn’t say anything at all.

Sera came across the kitchen. And knelt down. And put her hand on his cheek, which was very hot. Hotter than it should have been. Sera can feel that. She’s fire.

“Oh, love,” she said. “Oh, love. You’ve got it bad.”

Luka went so red the box started to steam.

Saelle came to Avalon nine days later.

Not to sing. Not yet. To ask.

She came through the Thrane arch on the red glass, which Crane opened the day after the Table said yes, with nobody. That was the thing everybody said afterwards. The most famous person in the Collective, and she came through on her own. No crowd. No guards. Just her, in a long grey coat very like Aune’s, with a bag over her shoulder and her hair, which is white, all of it, the way all Thrane people’s hair is white from birth, tied back in a knot.

She stood on the red glass and looked round. At the house on the rise. At the north field. At the hill road.

Then she walked up it.

Mother was on the porch. With Rue.

Saelle stopped at the bottom of the steps. She’s very tall. Thrane people are. She looked up at Mother on the step, a long way up, because Mother’s very small.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know how to do this. I’ve never asked anybody for anything. Not since I was nine.”

“That’s all right, love,” said Mother. “Nobody here knows how either. We just do it.” She shifted Rue on her hip. “Have you eaten?”

Saelle looked at her for a long time.

“No,” she said.

“Then come in,” said Mother.

Luka was at the long table.

He’d been at the long table since dawn. Every day. For nine days. Since the Thrane arch opened. Just in case.

He saw her come into the kitchen behind Mother. He stood up so fast the bench went over. Then he stood there. With the bench on the floor behind him. Not saying anything. Bright red.

Saelle looked at him.

Then she looked at the bench on the floor.

Then she looked at him again. And she smiled. Very slightly. The way you smile at somebody very small who’s trying very hard.

“Hello,” she said.

Luka opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

He closed it again. Then he picked up the bench. Very carefully. And put it back. And sat down on it. And looked at his porridge.

Sera, at the stove, turned round so nobody could see her face.

Saelle had porridge. And tea. And two of Mother’s bread rolls. And then she told us why she’d come.

“Thrane’s never sung for anybody outside the Collective,” she said. “Not in nine hundred years. It’s the law. Thrane’s music is the Collective’s. That’s what they always said.” She turned her cup round in her hands. “When we sat down, the Prime said Thrane’s music belonged to the Collective, and Thrane didn’t. He said I’d never sing in the great hall again.”

“Is that true?” said Mother.

“It’s true,” said Saelle. “He’s closed it. The great hall. The Refined are standing in the doors. Nobody’s allowed in.” She put the cup down. “So I’d like to sing somewhere else.”

Nobody said anything.

“Here,” said Saelle. “On Avalon. If I’m allowed. For everybody who wants to come. Not just the Hedge. Anybody. On the band, so the whole Collective can hear.” She looked round the long table. “So they know where it went. The music. So they know it didn’t stop. It just moved.”

She looked at Mother.

“I’m asking,” she said.

Mother didn’t say yes. It wasn’t hers to say. It went to the Table. The Caddi grandmother said yes before Saelle had finished asking.

And then it went to Okafor. Because a concert on Avalon, on the band, for the whole Collective, with two hundred thousand people and the Prime listening and the fold, is a very big thing, and Okafor has to say yes to big things on Avalon too.

Okafor stood at her board for a whole night.

In the morning she came up the hill road and stood in the kitchen doorway. Saelle was there. At the long table. She’d stayed. In the wing, next to Sabeth, who she says reminds her of her grandmother.

“Where?” said Okafor.

“Wherever’s biggest,” said Saelle.

“The great lake,” said Okafor. “In the lake country. Below the Lake House. The shores hold a million. More, on the slopes.” She looked at her slate. “Every kit on every post. Every listener. Every battery. Dot on the Meridian. The Standing in the crowd in quiet coats. Gilgamesh at the stage.” She looked up. “If he wants to make a point, this is where he’ll make it.”

“I know,” said Saelle.

“Do you still want to?”

Saelle didn’t say anything for a long time.

“When I was nine,” she said, “the Refined came to my school on Thrane. They were looking for children with gifts. One a morning. Like Carrow.” She looked at her hands. “They took my best friend. She could make the sea crack by singing to it. They took her and I never saw her again.”

Okafor didn’t say anything.

“I’ve been singing her songs ever since,” said Saelle. “Every one. I learned them from her. The sea songs. Everybody in the Collective thinks they’re mine.” She looked up at Okafor. “They’re hers. I’d like to sing them where she’d be allowed to hear them.”

Okafor wrote one word on her slate.

Yes.

It took a month. And it nearly didn’t happen the way it happened, because Halvane was at the long table when Saelle said Wherever’s biggest.

He’d been listening. On his bench. He hadn’t said anything. When Okafor went back down the hill road he was still sitting there, very still, with his hands on his knees.

“They loved it,” he said. To nobody. “Three hundred billion people. They loved it so much the Prime could take it off them as a punishment.” He looked at Saelle. “They’ve been listening to you in a great hall for fifteen years. On a little box.”

“Yes,” said Saelle.

Halvane stood up.

“Then let’s do it better,” he said. “Better than they ever could have. Better than anybody in the Collective has ever seen anything done.” He looked at Mother. “May I use your box?”

He called Imre.

Imre called Quenby.

Quenby’s cover came out four days later. Saelle, in white, with her white hair down, standing on nothing over dark water, with a frozen sea behind her in the sky. Nobody knows how they took it. Eluned Sabe won’t say.

The headline was the longest Quenby’s ever run.

THE GREATEST CONCERT EVER PERFORMED. AVALON. THE GREAT LAKE. EVERYBODY.

It went a very long way away. Further than anything Quenby’s ever printed, Bell says. Mattick took nine crates of it into the Collective and came back with none and a list of nine thousand people who wanted to come.

Imre made a soft Saelle. Tall and white-haired, in a long grey coat. Ninety thousand. They sold out in a morning. She made four hundred thousand. They sold out in a day.

And then she made a special one. Not for sale. A soft Saelle in white, with her hair in a thread of Thrane silk that glows at dusk, faintly, like ice catching a lamp, and in her hands a very small round drum made from a sliver of Thrane’s cracked sea. A million of them. One for every person on the shore on the night. Kiln and Marrach and Thole made the drums. The second city sewed the hair. It took every toymaker in the Hedge.

Halvane’s people built the stage. Over the water.

There’s a great lake in the lake country north of Commonhold, below the Lake House. The biggest on Avalon. Kwame dug its springs. It’s long and deep and very still, with low green shores going up on every side in slopes, like a bowl. Halvane looked at it from the Lake House roof for a whole afternoon.

Then he built the stage in the middle of it.

Out of Ister gold and Kessry stone and something of Bell’s that makes sound go further. Floating. Held up on nothing anybody could see, just above the surface, so that from the shore it looked as if Saelle would be standing on the water. No bridge. No boat. You got to it by Rory’s stairs, which went down from the end of a long jetty, very gently, onto the gold, and Rory planed every one.

Toby told them where to put everything. He went round the shores for nine days with Wren, listening. He said the lake had to breathe in properly. He said water’s the best thing in the world for breathing in, if you let it.

And the dream room people pulled out all the stops.

The dream-maker came. The one nobody names, who used to fly in Aune’s squadron, who made the new dream where you get to be you. And Teva’s father, with nine slates. And every engineer who’s ever worked on a dream room on any of the two hundred worlds.

They put rings of lumen in the water. Under the surface, all the way round the lake, in circles. Deep, where nobody would see them. And they put something in the air above the lake that Teva’s father tried to explain to me for an hour and I still don’t understand, except that it works the way a dream room works, without anybody having to lie down.

“They’ll see it,” Teva’s father said. “Whatever she sings. Everybody on the shore. All at once. Not in their heads. In the sky.”

“What will they see?”

Teva’s father looked at his slates for a long time.

“We asked her,” he said. “She told us about the north shore. About the frozen sea. About two little girls on the ice.” He put the slates down. “We’ll see what the lake makes of it.”

Thrane sent its musicians. Two hundred of them. Through the arch. With instruments nobody on Avalon had ever seen, long ones made of white wood and ice that doesn’t melt, and drums made from the cracked sea. They camped on the near shore in white tents and played every night, very quietly, getting ready, and the people from the third city on Ister came through and sat outside the tents in the dark and listened.

And Luka went every night.

He didn’t go near her. He sat at the edge of the musicians’ camp with his knees up, in the dark, every night, and listened. Sera knew. She let him. She sat a little way behind him, on the grass, every night, and didn’t say anything.

On the ninth night Saelle came out of her tent.

She saw him. On the grass. On his own, at the edge of the camp, in the dark, with his knees up.

She came over. And sat down. On the grass. Next to him. Not too close.

Luka didn’t move. Sera says he stopped breathing.

“You’re the one who knocked the bench over,” said Saelle.

Luka nodded.

“Your mother says you’ve got all nine recordings,” said Saelle. “Under your bed.”

Luka nodded again. He’d gone so red that the grass round him had started to steam very slightly.

“Which one’s your favourite?”

Luka didn’t say anything for a long time. Sera says she thought he wasn’t going to.

Then he said, very quietly, “The fourth one. Where the sea comes in late. After the voice. Where you wait for it.”

Saelle went very still.

“That’s hers,” she said. “My friend’s. That’s the one she made first. When we were eight.” She looked at him. “Nobody’s ever said that one. Everybody says the ninth.”

“The ninth’s very good,” said Luka. “But you don’t wait in the ninth.”

Saelle didn’t say anything for a long time. Then she put her hand on the grass between them. Flat. Not touching him.

It was warm, she said afterwards. The grass. Very warm. All round him.

“Will you come?” she said. “To the concert?”

Luka nodded. He couldn’t speak.

“Then I’ll sing the fourth,” said Saelle. “For you. And for her.”

She got up and went back to her tent.

Luka sat on the warm grass for a long time. Then he got up and walked back to Sera, very carefully, as if he was carrying something that might spill.

“Mum,” he said.

“I know, love,” said Sera. “I heard.”

She put her arm round him. He let her. He was very hot.

Liam’s Rory asked for nine tickets.

That was the first thing. Rory’s never asked for anything. Not once. He’s Liam’s younger boy, the one who sets fire to things, the one who asked for a girl to set fire to things with when Anya said she’d like another. He’s sixteen. He’s tall and quiet and he does a great deal of standing about in doorways and saying very little.

He came up the hill road a week before the concert and stood in the kitchen doorway, the way he does.

“Gran,” he said. To Maura. Maura was at the long table, knitting. She’s always knitting now. “Can I have a ticket?”

“They’re not tickets, love,” said Maura. “Anybody can come. It’s at the lake.”

“I know,” said Rory. “But Toby’s got a list. For near the front. For family.” He shifted his feet. “Can I have a place on the list.”

“You’re already on the list,” said Maura. “You’re family.”

“Can I have two,” said Rory.

Maura stopped knitting.

Nobody knew who the second one was for. Rory wouldn’t say. Liam asked, at supper, and Rory said, “Someone,” and ate his potatoes. Anya asked, and Rory said, “A friend,” and went red. Cormac, home from the Wall, asked, and Rory set fire to Cormac’s napkin.

Maura asked everyone. Every grandmother on the hill. Nobody knew.

“He’s got a girl,” she said to Mother, at the sink. “Dot. He’s got a girl and he won’t tell anybody.”

“Then let him, love,” said Mother. “He’ll tell you when he’s ready.”

“He’s sixteen.”

“Yes,” said Mother. “That’s how old Liam was. When he wouldn’t tell you about Anya.”

Maura stopped drying the cup.

“He did,” she said. “For a year. He set fire to the curtains when I asked.”

“There you are, then,” said Mother.

On the day before the concert, Luka asked his mother to teach him something.

He’s been learning from Sera since he was small, the way all of mine learn from their mothers. Fire. Not burning. Warm. The difference. Sera taught him the river when he was five. She taught him to warm a room without touching it, and a cup of tea without the cup, and the ground under a sick queen.

“How do you make something stay warm?” he said. “After you’ve let go of it. For hours.”

Sera looked at him.

“What for, love?”

Luka went red.

“Her hands,” he said. “On the stage. Thrane’s cold. She said. She’s always cold. She said in the great hall on Thrane they keep the doors open in winter for the sound and her hands go numb by the fourth song.” He looked at his feet. “The fourth song’s the one you wait in.”

Sera didn’t say anything for a while. Then she went out into the garden and came back with a stone. A small smooth one, from the river, the size of an egg.

She sat down at the long table with him. And showed him.

It took him all afternoon. Sera says it’s the hardest thing she’s ever taught anybody. Not because of the fire. Because you have to ask the stone to remember being warm. Not to be warm. To remember. So that it goes on being warm after you’ve gone, because it wants to.

At dusk Luka held up the stone. It was glowing. Very faintly. Very slightly pink.

Sera held out her hand. He put it in her palm.

“Oh,” said Sera. “Oh, Luka.” She closed her hand round it. “That’ll stay warm all night.”

He took it to the musicians’ camp. He didn’t give it to her. He gave it to the oldest Thrane drummer, a very tall woman with white hair down to her knees, and asked her to put it on the stage, by the place where Saelle would stand, so she could pick it up if her hands were cold.

The drummer looked at him for a long time.

“Does she know who it’s from?” she said.

“No,” said Luka. “Please don’t tell her.”

The drummer put the stone in her pocket.

She told Saelle, of course. Before the concert. Everybody knew she would. Luka didn’t.

The concert was on the last night of the warm season.

I’ll try to put it down. Toby says I won’t be able to. He’s right. But I’ll try.

The great lake at dusk. Very still. The stage floating in the middle of it, gold, empty, just above the water. And all round it, on the shores and up the green slopes on every side, people.

A million. Dory stopped counting at a million. She says there were more coming. Through every arch on the red glass and in the Arch Hall and in every city, all night, from every world in the Hedge. Kiln and Hyrran and Ister and Thole and Brannock. Caul and Myre and Onsey, all three, with their Stile teams in their colours. Kessry in its new cold sun. Ammet. The Soon came, all nine of them, in their team coats, with Saffa Rennick and her soup bowl.

And from the Collective. Under the rabbits and the barley and the iron bells. Mattick brought nine hundred people through on the Hesta from the edge worlds, people who’d never been to the Hedge, who’d come because it was Saelle. They stood at the top of the far slope in their Collective coats, very close together, looking round at everything.

The Standing was in the crowd. In quiet coats. Faint as lamps under cloths. Gilgamesh at the end of the jetty, at the top of Rory’s stairs, with his axe. Dot on the Meridian. Every kit on every post in the Hedge listening for the fold.

And on the band, Ilka said, everywhere. Every Collective world. Every square. Every house with a box.

The Prime had said nobody was to listen.

Ilka says she’s never seen so many boxes turned on at once.

And in every hand on the shore, a soft Saelle in white, with a tiny drum. The Lake House children gave them out at dusk, one each, going along the shores in lines. A million. When the light went, all their hair began to glow. Very faintly. All round the lake. Like ice catching a lamp.

We were near the front. On Toby’s list. All of us.

Mother with Rue on her hip. Rue had her hands over her ears. Mother hadn’t told her to. She’d seen the crowd and put them there herself. With the leaf in one fist and the horse in the other, pressed against her ears.

Oona next to them. Then the rest. Liam and Anya, very round now. Maura with her knitting. Rory.

And next to Rory, a girl nobody had ever seen.

She was about sixteen. Small and quick, with very short dark hair and a scar across the back of one hand, an old one, a burn. She stood next to Rory with her hands in her pockets and looked at all of us, all the family, very carefully, one at a time. As if she was checking we were real.

Maura stopped knitting.

Liam looked at Rory. Rory looked at the stage.

“This is Isla,” said Rory. To the stage. Not to anybody.

The girl took one hand out of her pocket. The one with the scar.

“Hello,” she said.

And the palm of her hand lit up. Very briefly. A small flame. The size of a candle. Just for a breath. Then she put it out, and put her hand back in her pocket.

Maura put her knitting down.

“Where are you from, love?” she said.

“The Lake House,” said Isla. “The fire room. Rory comes on Tuesdays. To help Rory teach.” She looked at Liam. “Your dad. I mean. The other Rory. Rory teaches. Your Rory helps.” She stopped. “There are a lot of Rorys.”

“There are,” said Liam. He was looking at her hand. At the scar.

“I set fire to my house,” said Isla. “On Kiln. When I was four. Nobody knew what I was. Then the Lake House came.” She looked at Rory. “Rory showed me how to put it out. On the first Tuesday. He’s very good at putting it out.”

Liam didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then he looked at his son. And his face did something I’ve never seen it do. Not even when Cormac was born.

“Is he,” said Liam.

“He’s the best in the fire room,” said Isla. “At putting it out. Everybody says.”

Maura picked up her knitting. And started again. Very fast.

She’s knitting a scarf now. A red one. She won’t say who for. Everybody knows.

Then the lights went down over the lake.

And a million people breathed in.

Saelle came down Rory’s stairs on her own, onto the gold. In white. With her white hair down. Very tall, very straight, standing in the middle of the lake on what looked like nothing. With nothing behind her. No musicians yet. Just the dark water, and a million small glowing heads on the shore, and a million people.

She stood there for a long time.

Then she said, into the dark, very clearly, so the band would carry it everywhere:

“Thrane’s great hall is closed. The Refined are standing in the doors. I was told I’d never sing again where anyone could hear me.” She looked out at the shores. “So I came here. To the Hedge. To the people who sit down.”

She waited.

“This one was made by my friend,” she said. “When we were eight. On Thrane. She could make the sea crack by singing to it. The Refined took her when we were nine. I’ve been singing her songs for fifteen years and telling nobody they were hers.” Her voice didn’t shake. “Her name was Ilya Cord. She was from the north shore. I’d like everybody to know her name.”

And then she sang the fourth one.

The voice first. Alone. Very high. Very clear. Going out over the lake in the dark like ice going out over a sea. A million people, perfectly still.

And above the lake, in the sky, the dream room people’s air began to show it.

The north shore of Thrane. White. A long low shore of snow under a grey sky, and beyond it a sea, frozen, flat and white to the edge of the world. And on the ice, very small, a long way out, two little girls. In coats too big for them. Holding hands. Standing on the frozen sea.

A million people looked up and saw it.

And she waited.

The way the song waits. The way Luka said. Where the sea comes in late, after the voice. She held the high note and waited, on her own, over the dark water, for a very long time. Longer than on the recording. Much longer. Toby, next to me, had his eyes shut and his hands over his mouth.

And then, under her, very low, the sea came in.

Not the drums. Not the musicians. Not yet.

The lake.

Luna did it. With Kwame. I found out afterwards. Nobody told Saelle.

Luna was on the far shore, alone, with her hand flat on the water. When Saelle held the note and waited, Luna asked the lake to freeze. All of it. All at once. From the shore to the gold stage and out to the far side. A whole lake of ice in a breath, white and flat, with Saelle standing in the middle of it.

And Kwame was under it. On the lakebed, in the Ground’s hollow under the deepest part, with nine of the Ground. And when the ice was made, he asked the lakebed to move. Very slightly. Very slowly. The way the bottom of a frozen sea moves.

The ice cracked.

The whole lake made the sound. The low long cracking of a frozen sea moving in the dark, going out from under the gold stage in long white lines towards every shore, a million people hearing it come towards them through the ice and the ground under their feet.

And in the sky, on the frozen sea of the north shore of Thrane, the two little girls looked up at the same moment. As if they’d heard it too.

And Saelle heard it. On the stage. She hadn’t known. Nobody told her.

Her voice went down. Very low. To meet it.

And the woman and the sea sang together, over the great lake on Avalon, for a million people with a million small glowing soft ones, and for everybody in the Collective with a box turned on, and for a girl called Ilya Cord from the north shore of Thrane who could make the sea crack by singing to it, wherever she was.

At the end of the song, in the sky, one of the two little girls let go of the other’s hand. And walked a little way out across the ice. On her own. And turned round, and waved.

Then the sky went dark.

Saelle stood in the middle of the frozen lake with her hand over her mouth.

Teva’s father says the lake made that part up. He says they didn’t put it in. He says he doesn’t know where it came from.

Dot was listening. On the Meridian. On every band.

She told me afterwards that somewhere in the Collective, in a hall nobody had found yet, a long way past the second arm, a root moved. Very slightly. When the sea came in. Towards the sound.

A sleeper. A very old root. Fifteen years.

“This one does not know if it is her,” said Dot. “This one only knows it moved. When the song came. The way the bells lean.”

“Can you find it again?”

“This one is trying,” said Dot. “Logged.”

I haven’t told Saelle. Not yet. Not until we know.

Rue took her hands off her ears.

In the middle of the fourth song. When the sea came in. Mother felt her do it. She took the leaf and the horse away from her ears, very slowly, and held them in her lap, and listened.

She didn’t breathe in. Toby says she didn’t need to. He says she was already holding it. She’d been holding it since she was taken.

When the song ended, and the lake went quiet, and a million people didn’t make a sound for as long as it takes to say good morning, Rue let it out.

All of it. In one long breath.

And then she said, very clearly, to Mother, the first whole thing anybody’s heard her say:

“The water sang.”

“Yes, love,” said Mother. “It did.”

Luka was at the very front. Sera had put him there. Right at the end of the jetty, at the top of Rory’s stairs. Next to Gilgamesh, who’d let him stand on his boot to see better.

When the fourth song ended, Saelle looked down. Straight across the ice. At the end of the jetty. At a small red-faced boy standing on a very large man’s boot.

She didn’t say anything. She just put her hand on her chest. The way Varra does. The way Okafor does.

Luka put his hand on his chest back.

Then he cried. Very quietly. Standing on Gilgamesh’s boot. And Gilgamesh put his very large hand on top of Luka’s head and kept it there for the whole of the next song.

The ice round the end of the jetty, Sera says, melted in a small circle and didn’t freeze again all night.

She sang nine songs. All nine. All Ilya Cord’s. And at the end of every one she said the name again, so everybody would know.

And on Carrow, Mattick says, in the square, at dawn the next morning, the old woman at the front didn’t read the Herald first. She sang. The fourth one. In a very old cracked voice. With her hands folded.

And the whole square sang it back to her.

Nine Refined folded onto the far slope during the seventh song.

The kits heard them eleven breaths before. Every kit on every post on Avalon, all at once, and Dot on the Meridian. Okafor had nine hundred of the Standing in quiet coats round the edge of the crowd before the Refined had finished arriving.

They didn’t do anything. The Refined. They stood at the very top of the far slope, behind Mattick’s nine hundred people from the edge worlds, in a row, in white, with their hands in their sleeves.

And listened.

The Standing stood round them. Not touching. Faint. Gilgamesh’s best. Waiting for the order.

Okafor didn’t give it.

The Refined stood through the seventh song and the eighth. And during the ninth, Dory says, one of them, the one at the end of the row, took his hands out of his sleeves.

He didn’t do anything with them. He just held them at his sides. Open.

When the ninth song ended, they folded away again. All nine. Except the one at the end.

He stayed. On the slope. In his white robe. With his hands open at his sides. And when the Standing came forward, very slowly, out of their quiet coats, he didn’t move. He just stood there.

“I used to listen on Thrane,” he said. To the Kasrai woman in front of him. “Before. When I was young. Before the white.” He looked at the stage, empty now, in the middle of the ice, with the gold going dark. “I’d like to stay. If I’m allowed.”

He’s at the Lake House. In the wool room. With Aurin Vell and Toby. Toby says the three of them sit in the silence every afternoon and that it’s a very good silence.

Saelle came to the long table the morning after.

She hadn’t slept. Her white hair was down and her eyes were red and she had Luka’s stone in her hand, still warm, still very faintly pink. She sat down on the bench and put it on the table in front of her and looked at it.

Mother poured her a cup.

“I’ve said her name nine times,” said Saelle. “In front of everybody. For the first time in fifteen years.” She put her hands round the cup. “I always thought if I said it out loud I’d fall apart.”

“And?” said Mother.

“I didn’t,” said Saelle. “The lake held me up.” She almost laughed. “It froze under me. Somebody froze it. And somebody under it made it crack.”

“Luna,” said Mother. “And Kwame. Hana’s. He’s very good with ground. And the dream people did the sky.”

Saelle looked at her cup for a long time.

“The little girl waved,” she said. “At the end. We didn’t ask them to put that in. I asked Teva’s father. He says nobody did.” She put her hands flat on the table. “She always waved. When she went out on the ice on her own. She always turned round and waved so I’d know she was all right.”

Nobody said anything.

Saelle looked at the stone.

“And somebody made this,” she said. “So my hands wouldn’t go numb in the fourth.”

Mother didn’t say anything.

“They didn’t,” said Saelle. “Not once. All night. For the first time since I was nine.” She closed her hand round the stone. “I held it in the fourth. While I waited. It was the only thing on that whole frozen lake that was the right temperature.”

Luka was at the far end of the long table, eating his porridge, very fast, not looking up.

Saelle didn’t look at him either. She knew better. She just said, to her cup, quite loudly:

“Thank you. Whoever you are.”

Luka’s porridge started to steam.

The Prime didn’t say anything about the concert. But two days later, Ferro Hale says, the Refined left the doors of the great hall on Thrane. All at once. In the night. Nobody knows why.

The people of Thrane went in the next morning. And sang.

Liam sat on the porch step that night. With a bottle. The second time ever.

He poured two cups. He handed me one. He drank his.

“She sets fire to things,” he said.

“I noticed.”

“Rory asked,” said Liam. “When Anya said about the baby. He said, can it be a girl, I’d like someone to set fire to things with.” He laughed. Once. “He’d already found one. He was asking for a sister so he’d have an excuse.”

“Are you going to tell him you know?”

“No,” said Liam. “I’m going to let him think he got away with it for a year. Like I did.” He poured another. “Mum’s knitting her a scarf. A red one. She’s never knitted anybody a scarf in her life that she hadn’t decided on.”

“Decided on?”

“For the family,” said Liam. “Mum knitted Anya one. The first winter. Before I’d even said anything.” He looked at the north field. “She’s knitting Isla one after a single concert. She must have decided in about a breath.”

He drank.

“She’s the best in the fire room,” he said. “At putting it out. That’s what she said. About Rory.” His voice went very slightly wrong. “My boy. The best at putting it out.”

I didn’t say anything. I’ve learned that much.

The Hedge leagues, for the record, because Toby says I have to keep up:

In Stile, the Hill are top of the long table after nine games. Sigmund has thrown four full games without anyone climbing a stile. Caul’s second team, the Haze, are just behind. Brannock’s Fell won their first game, in the snow, against Onsey’s third team; Hesper Daine threw the last ball and then sat down on the mound in the snow and laughed.

In Ring, the Commonhold Gales lost three in a row and then won six. Kesh’s rain has been officially ruled not an advantage after Myre’s Long Hall Wanderers complained. The roof stays sealed.

In Ridge, the Ridge-Ends won their first game. Kyrie got the ball to the top of the slope. Once. The Hyrrani grandmothers stood up. Okafor wasn’t there. Holt says she asked for the score at the board three times before anybody had it.

In the Long Way, Thole tried it in blue. Halvane went to watch. The ships went over very slowly, gold against blue, for the first time ever, and Halvane stood on Thole’s roof the whole afternoon and didn’t say anything. Ilas says he cried. He says it was the wind.

And the Run: Liam’s racer isn’t finished. Anya’s baby isn’t either. Liam says it’s a race. Anya says it isn’t.

The stars said Not yet this morning. Nine hundred and sixty-one. Thrane’s star said it very high and very clear. Like a voice over ice.

Ammet’s said Soon. Same as every morning.

Wren wrote the count. And under it:

Ilya Cord. (Nine songs.)

Rory: Isla. (Fire room.)

Rue: “The water sang.”

Days 12422–12490. Saelle.

Thrane joined, and its great singer Saelle, banned from the closed great hall, asked to sing on Avalon; Luka, eight and very red, knew every recording and named the song where the sea comes in late. Halvane said to do it better than the Collective ever could, so Quenby hyped the greatest concert ever performed, Imre gave away a million glowing soft Saelles, and the dream room people built a floating stage on the great lake that showed Thrane’s frozen shore in the sky while Luna and Kwame froze and cracked the lake beneath her. Rory brought Isla from the fire room, Rue said her first whole sentence, and somewhere far off a fifteen-year-old root moved toward the song.