Chapter 632: Where Children Go

They talked it through in the vestry that night, because it was the only room in Holloway with a door that locked and a table big enough for Valerica’s maps.

There were eleven of them around it: the six of them, Brynn and Marta Rusk, Father Cray, Anastasia, and Mara, who had not been invited and had come anyway and was sitting on a stool at the corner of the table with her ledger open, writing down everything anyone said. Nobody suggested she leave. Vane had stopped trying that around the time she turned thirteen.

"Start with what we have," Valerica said.

Father Cray had the number. He had gone house to house that afternoon with Mara’s copy of his book, ticking off names.

"Two hundred and four in the town tonight," he said. "Seven more at Teller’s Point with Tobi. One we don’t have." He did not say Corin’s name. He did not need to. "Most of them are from this valley. Carrow, Holloway, Fordham, the hill farms. A few from further. Most of them have somewhere to sleep tonight."

"Tonight," Valerica said. "Then the first question is whether they can stay." Valerica laid her palm flat on the map of the valley. "The register is gone. There’s no record left of which children were taken, or from where, or what their numbers were. As far as the Household can prove, none of this happened." She looked up. "That buys them some time. It doesn’t buy them anything else."

"Because the table comes back," Brynn said.

"Because the table comes back. Next spring, or the one after. Someone sits under an awning in the market square with a silver rod, and every one of these children touches it, and it lights up the way it did before. Only this time there’s no Ormond keeping them alive for his own reasons." Valerica’s voice did not change. "There’s just the statute. Secure or liquidate."

Nobody spoke for a moment. Marta Rusk had her big hands folded on the table in front of her, and Vane saw them tighten.

"Could you stop it?" Ashe asked Anastasia. "The statute."

"No." Anastasia did not hesitate. "I can close Greywater. I’ve already written the order and my father will sign it without reading it, the way he signs everything. I can make sure Ormond’s program is finished on paper. But the statute is three hundred years old. It was written after the Unbound. My father could end it with a sentence." She paused. "He won’t. Not because he believes in it. Because he would have to think about it for long enough to say the sentence."

"So it stands," Valerica said.

"It stands."

"Then they can’t stay. Not all of them. Not for long." Valerica moved her hand east across the map, off the edge of the valley and the coast and onto the bare paper where the sea was. "Second question. Korreth."

"Ryuken will take them," Ashe said at once. "He said so. He’s kept dangerous children alive for three hundred years."

"He has," Isole said quietly. "A few at a time. In one compound, on a cliff, with a small eastern wing and one old healer." She did not look up from the table. "Two hundred children, Ashe. That’s not a wing. That’s a town."

"And there’s the crossing," said Brynn.

She did not need to say any more. They had all been on that boat. They had all felt what passed under it, the coastline of slow light that had no aura and no interest in them at all.

"Two boats left Carrow this spring," Brynn said. "Eleven children between them. One boat made it. I don’t know how to get two hundred across that water. I don’t think anyone does." She rubbed her bad arm. "And the Household asked for the eastern ports. If they get them, there’s nowhere on the other side to land."

Valerica nodded. She had known all of this. She was making them say it aloud so nobody could pretend afterward that they hadn’t.

"Third question," she said, and did not move her hand anywhere on the map, because there was nowhere to move it. "The Palaces."

The room went quiet in a different way.

"The statute exists because of the Palaces," Valerica said. "Secure or liquidate them before the Palaces or the East can recruit them. That’s the wording. The Palaces have been taking low-born children with strong Authorities for as long as the Empire has been trying to stop them."

"They take them," said Isole. "That’s not the same as keeping them."

"No."

"My mother’s family has dealt with the Palaces for three hundred years. I know how they talk about it." Isole’s hands were folded on the table, left over right. She separated them. "They don’t take children. They take Authorities. If a child comes with it, that’s an inconvenience they’re prepared to accept."

"And the ones whose Authorities aren’t worth having?" Ashe asked.

Isole looked at her, and did not answer, which was an answer.

"So," Nyx said. She had been lying across two chairs with her eyes closed. Now she opened them. "Home kills them in a year. The east drowns them. And the Palaces cherry-pick them." She stared at the ceiling. "I’ve had better evenings. I’ve had better evenings on the Dark World."

"You’ve had worse," said Ashe.

"I’ve had very few worse."

Mara had stopped writing.

She sat on her stool with the pen in her hand and looked around the table at them, one after another, the way she looked at a column of figures that did not add up.

"Where did I go?" she said.

They all looked at her.

"When I was twelve." Mara looked at Vane. "When they came for me. Where did you take me?"

He thought about it. The Iron-Groves, and a girl with amber eyes sitting on a crate she had turned to crystal without meaning to, while men with badges came looking for her. And then the long way out, and a cliff-top estate of white stone and gold leaf, where nobody had asked her for anything except whether she was hungry.

"Somewhere that didn’t want you for anything," he said slowly. "Somewhere that just let you be there."

"Is there one of those for two hundred and four?"

Nobody answered her.

Outside, quite suddenly, the light changed.

It had been dusk in the square, the long blue end of an autumn evening. Now a shadow fell across the vestry window, slow and enormous, and the candle on the table bent sideways in a draught that came from nowhere. The air went cold. Down in the square, the children stopped shrieking.

Nyx was on her feet before anyone else had moved.

"That’s not the sea," she said.

Vane went to the window.

Something was coming down out of the sky over Holloway. It was long and pale and slender, like the hull of a ship turned to bone, and it had no sails at all. Instead, along its sides, curved panes of something clear as glass held the wind in them the way a hand holds water, and the wind they held was bright. It sank toward the square without a sound, until it hung above the rooftops as lightly as a leaf on a pond, and its shadow covered the whole town.

Behind him, Valerica let out a long breath.

"Of course," she said. "They’ve always had eyes in the west. That’s why the statute exists." She came and stood at his shoulder, looking up. "You stood on a road and told the whole valley your name."

"So they heard."

"So they heard," Valerica said. "That’s a Palace ship."