Chapter 210: Stich

Logan woke with Alice’s words still in his head.

He lay on the shelf and looked at his mother sleeping. Her wrapped hand was curled under her chin, the way Vina slept. He had never noticed before that they slept the same way.

’Let her know you know,’ he thought.

When she woke, he held the cup to her mouth. She looked at him over the rim of it and understood. She only drank.

The ledge reached the floor of the canyon a little after that.

The floor was sand, but it was not like any sand Logan had ever walked on.

It was red and coarse, and every grain of it was a tiny chip of the same glassy rock as the walls. It crunched under their boots like broken crockery.

The walls went up on either side, sheer and glittering, until the strip of ember-red roof between them looked no wider than a road.

The units went first, as Logan had told them.

He watched them do it, and he made himself keep watching. Terry walked at the front with his broad plates scraping the walls on the narrow turns. Every scrape left a bright scratch in his armor.

Billy’s rim struck a jutting edge of glass on the third turn and came away with a notch in it. He looked down at it, and then he rolled on.

’Their wounds go nowhere,’ Logan thought. ’They take all of it, every time. And not one of them has complained.’

He caught up with Billy at the next turn and put his hand on the notch in the rim. Billy looked up at him.

"Thank you," Logan said.

"Obviously," said Billy.

It was the first thing he had said out loud since the falls of the Fourth Layer. He looked very pleased to hear himself say it.

They found the settlement where three canyons ran together.

The meeting of the three made a wide open space with a spring rising in the middle of it. The water came up out of the red sand clear and cold, and it ran away down the widest of the canyons in a narrow stream.

Houses had been dug into the canyon walls around the spring. They had doors of stretched hide and windows cut square into the rock, and smoke came out of holes above them.

People were sitting outside in the red light. They looked up as the units came round the corner, and two of them got to their feet.

It was a man and a woman. They were both lean and brown, with grey in their hair. They came across the sand toward the family together, very close, the way everyone on the Fifth Layer had walked.

Logan saw the scars before he saw their faces.

The woman had a long white scar down the side of her neck. The man had one exactly like it, on exactly the same side. She had a ragged mark across the back of her left hand. So did he.

Every scar on one of them was on the other as well. They were as alike as two prints of the same block.

"You came down the Throat," said the woman. She looked at their wrapped hands. "Good. Somebody told you."

"Nobody told us," said Alice. "We found out."

The woman’s eyes went to Helen’s hand, to the clean pink line across the palm where the cut had been. Then they went to Vina’s.

"The hard way, then." She nodded slowly. "It is the only way anyone finds out. I am Wenna. This is Dace. This place is called Stitch."

"Because of the scars?" asked Vina.

Wenna looked down at her. Then she laughed. It was a short, dry laugh, but it was real.

"Because of the scars," she agreed.

They let the family rest beside the spring.

There was no food to give them, and Wenna said so plainly. Martha cooked out of her pot instead, and the people of Stitch came and sat a little way off and watched the units with open curiosity.

Dace sat down beside Logan. He was looking at Terry, at the bright scratches all down the big unit’s plates.

"Yours," he said. "All of those?"

"Mine."

"And they take it all themselves." Dace shook his head slowly. "No one to carry it. I would not have thought I would ever envy that. But I have seen what happens to the ones who carry too much."

"What happens?" asked Logan.

Dace did not answer at once. He looked across the spring, at the houses in the canyon wall.

"Ask Corran," he said.

Corran was sitting in the doorway of the last house.

He was very old. He was older than Rishin, Logan thought, though it was hard to be sure. His hair was white and thin, and his hands lay in his lap like two folded pieces of leather.

He was covered in scars.

They were on his arms and his neck and his face. There were long thin ones and short deep ones, old white ones and new pink ones. Some of them crossed over each other.

None of them matched anybody’s. There was nobody beside him.

Vina had come with Logan. She stood in front of the old man and looked at his scarred hands, and then up at his face.

"Who do those belong to?" she asked.

Corran smiled at her. It pulled at a scar on his cheek.

"My son," he said.

His son had gone down to the Seam.

"That is where the three canyons go," Corran said. He lifted one scarred hand and pointed down the widest of them, where the stream ran.

"They run together, and they run together again, and at the end of all of them there is one great crack in the floor of the world. The way down is in it."

"Your son went down it?" asked Logan.

"He went to it. I do not know if he went down it." Corran turned his hand over and looked at it.

"He was young and quick, and he said I was too slow. He said he would go and look at it, and come back for me."

He was quiet for a little.

"He did not come back."

"I am sorry," said Logan.

"Do not be." Corran touched a thin pink line along his jaw with one finger. "This one came at the last sleep. It is not very deep."

He looked up at them, and his eyes were wet and quite steady.

"Every few sleeps there is a new one," he said. "I do not know what he is doing down there to get them. But every time one comes, I know that he is alive."

Logan did not look round at Rishin.

He did not have to. He heard the old man’s step on the red sand behind them stop. When he did turn, a little later, Rishin was standing by the spring with his back to all of them and his hands in his sleeves.

Vina had gone to him. She was standing beside him, not saying anything, only holding on to his sleeve.

Logan watched the old man’s back. Then he made himself turn away.

’It is not my question,’ he thought. ’Not yet. He will tell me when he tells me.’

Wenna told them the rest while they sat beside the spring.

"The Seam is three sleeps down the wide canyon," she said. "Two, if you are fast. There is water all the way. There is nothing to eat."

"And between here and there?" asked Garen.

Wenna looked at Helen.

"Shardcats," she said. "They hunt the canyons. They have coats like the walls, and you will not see them until they move."

"They hunt anything?"

"They hunt blood. And they can tell whose blood is doubled." Wenna’s voice did not change. "They go past the one who was hurt. They go for the one who carries it."

Logan felt his mother go still beside him.

"Whoever has the most to carry," said Wenna, "smells the strongest to them. And they will cut through anyone to reach her."

The only sound after that was the spring.

Then Daniel put his arm round Helen’s shoulders. He did it slowly and firmly, the way he had set his feet on the stair of the Third Layer, and he did not take it away.

"Then they will have to cut through me," he said.

"And me," said Logan.

Helen turned from Daniel to Logan.

"You will not," she said to Logan. Her voice was sharp. "You will stay out of the way and let the units do it. Every scratch you take, I take half of. Then I am slower, and then they have me. Do you understand?"

Logan stared at her.

He had never heard his mother speak to him like that. She was not angry. She was giving him an order, the way Rishin gave orders, and she meant every word of it.

"Yes," he said.

"Good." Helen leaned back against Daniel. "Then we will be fine."

They slept beside the spring, all together, with the units in a ring round them and Link standing guard at its edge with his flame held high.

Before Vina slept, she went to him and asked what the seventeen inside him were saying.

Link tilted his head, exactly as Pebble did. He could speak again here, and he did it carefully, as if he were trying out a new pair of boots.

"Anvil says I hold it too low," he said. "Kite says I hold it too high."

Vina laughed out loud, and from across the spring, the old man told her to go to sleep.

Logan lay awake again. He watched the red flame burn and listened to the stream.

Across the spring, Corran was asleep sitting up in his doorway. His scarred hands were folded in his lap.

On one of them, as Logan watched, a thin new line came up across the knuckles. It beaded red.

The old man did not wake. In his sleep, he smiled.

[ Time remaining: 332 days ]