Chapter 498: Bright Beside You

I didn’t sleep the night Corvan’s letter came.

I’ve said that before, about other nights. This was different. On the other nights I lay awake because I was frightened, or because Dory was out on the net, or because somebody I loved was on a world I couldn’t reach. That night I lay awake because I was so angry I couldn’t keep my eyes shut.

I’ve been angry before. I was angry when I was seventeen and Mother told me what they’d done to her and my father. I was angry at One, in the room under the building, with the collars. I was angry on Tirr, when we were late.

This was something else. I didn’t have a word for it. I still don’t.

Where his mother pours.

He’d said it twice. In front of all of them. In the dark under Velle, with the houses listening and his son a step behind him. He’d stood in that room and picked out the one thing on Avalon he could think of that would hurt me most, and he’d said it out loud, twice, so they’d be sure.

Not the Table. Not Commonhold. Not the Arch Hall.

My mother’s kitchen.

At about three in the morning I got up and went down to the kitchen.

She was there. Of course she was. She doesn’t sleep much now either. She was sitting at the end of the long table with a cup in front of her and the tea towel over her shoulder, and the lamp turned low, and when I came in, she didn’t look round.

“I thought you’d be down,” she said.

I sat on the bench across from her.

“He said your kitchen.”

“I know, love. I was there.”

“He said where you pour.”

“I know.” She turned her cup round. “He’s never been in it. He doesn’t know where the kettle is. He doesn’t know which step creaks.” She looked at me over the cup. “It’s just a kitchen, Lucas. It’s a room with a stove in it. He picked it because he knew it’d do this to you.”

“It’s working.”

“I can see that.”

I put my hands flat on the table. The long one, the real one, with the oatmeal stain.

“I’m going to answer him.”

Mother didn’t say anything for a long time. Then she put her cup down, and reached across the table, and put her hand on top of mine. Her hand is very small. It’s always been very small. I used to think, when I was little, that it was the strongest thing in the world.

“Then answer him,” she said. “But answer him as you. Not as him.”

I didn’t ask the Table.

I want to put that down honestly. I’ve said for years that I don’t decide things on my own any more, and that the hill is better for it, and I meant it. I still mean it.

I didn’t ask the Table. I didn’t ask the Senate, or the Cabinet, or Okafor, or Konrad, or anyone at all. I asked Dory, because I needed her for one part of it, and she said yes before I’d finished. And I asked Ilka, because she keeps the old bands, every one of them, the ones that reach into the Collective’s back rooms and cupboards and ore-ship bunks.

Ilka looked at me for a long time when I asked her. Then she said, “All of them?”

“All of them.”

“Every band the Collective has? Every one they listen on?”

“Every one.”

She went to her board, in the room at the back of the listening hall in Commonhold, with the sixty dials and the old Ister headset. And she started opening them. One after another. It took her an hour. When she’d finished, she turned round on her stool.

“They’ll all hear,” she said. “Every world in the Reach. Every ship. Every room with a band in it. The Assize. Velle.” She paused. “Him.”

“Good,” I said.

I’ll put down what I said. Wren wrote it down. Mara Quell checked it against the band afterwards. It went out at noon by Carrow’s clock, the hour the Prime walks the square.

I didn’t stand anywhere grand. I stood in the kitchen, by the stove, with the kettle on behind me. Ilka’s people had brought a picture-box up the hill and set it on the long table. I could see myself in the little glass at the side of it. I looked very tired. I looked about forty, if you were being generous.

I didn’t care.

“This is for the Prime of the Collective of the Bright Reach.

“My name is Lucas Dask. You know who I am. You’ve said my name on every band. You’ve called me a cadet, and a coward, and a king without a crown. I’m none of those things, except the first. I never sat the last test.

“A little while ago, in a room under the gardens of Velle, you asked for a door. A big one. Big enough for a white ship and a regiment. And you told them where you wanted it opened.

“You said: on Avalon. On the hill. Where his mother pours.

“You said it twice.

“My daughter heard you. She hears you every night. She’s heard you at your window, holding your head. She heard you in your room, counting my children by name. She was listening when you said it. She’s always listening.

“So here is my answer.

“You threatened my mother. You threatened the house my wives sleep in. You threatened the rooms where my children are asleep at night, my small ones, the four-year-olds, the ones you’ve already got on your list.

“Everything you send through that door will die.

“Not the way I’ve done it so far. On Ammet and Isk and Pell’s Reach and Hollen, I asked your Refined to be air. They didn’t feel it. That was a kindness. It was the only one I had.

“I won’t be kind to anything that comes up my mother’s hill road. I’ll take it apart slowly. Every part of it. It’ll feel every one.

“And then I’ll come to you.

“Not through a door. I don’t need one. I’ll be beside you. Bright. In your house, in the great house on Carrow, where your own wives sleep and your own children sleep. I’ll stand next to you in the dark, the way you’ve been planning to stand in my mother’s kitchen.

“And I’ll do the same to you.

“I’ve never once struck first. Not in my whole life. Not at the Watch. Not at Root. Not at the Assize, when you sat there in the white and asked for my daughter. Ask anyone in the Hedge. Ask anyone in your own Reach who’s honest.

“If you open that door on my hill, you’ll have struck first.

“And I’ll strike last.”

I stopped. The picture-box stayed on. Ilka was looking at me from the doorway with her hand over her mouth.

There was one more thing. I hadn’t planned it. It just came.

“To everyone else listening. Every world in the Reach. Every ship. Every cupboard and bunk where there’s a child with a soft one hidden.

“I’m sorry you had to hear that. I’m sorry I had to say it.

“He threatened my mother. Some of you have mothers. You’ll understand.

“That’s all.”

Ilka closed the bands.

Nobody said anything in the kitchen for a long time.

Mother was at the end of the long table. She’d been there the whole time, out of the picture, with her cup. I couldn’t look at her.

Then I did.

She was looking at me. Not at my face. Lower. At my hands. They were shaking. I hadn’t noticed.

“You said painful,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You’ve never once in your life done anything to anyone painfully.”

“No.”

“Would you?”

I didn’t answer straight away. I wanted to be honest. I’ve always tried to be honest with her.

“To anything that came up the hill road for you,” I said. “Yes.”

Mother looked at me for a long time. Then she nodded, very slowly, and picked her cup up, and drank.

“Then you’d better make sure nothing does,” she said.

Okafor came up the hill an hour later.

She didn’t knock. She came in and stood in the doorway in her grey, with her slate under her arm, and looked at me sitting on the bottom step with my head in my hands.

“You didn’t ask the Table, Cadet.”

“No.”

“You didn’t ask me.”

“No.”

“You didn’t ask the Senate. Or Konrad. Or the General. Or anyone. You went to Ilka and told her to open every band the Collective has and then you stood in your mother’s kitchen and told the Prime of the Reach you’d stand beside him in the dark.”

“Yes.”

Okafor came in. She sat down on the step below me, the way Dory does, and put her slate on her knees.

“Good,” she said.

I looked at her.

“I’ve been wanting somebody to say that to him for a very long time,” said Okafor. “I just didn’t know it’d be you.” She tapped the slate. “Next time ask me first. So I can have the Standing ready for what he does about it.”

“What will he do?”

Okafor thought about it.

“Nothing,” she said. “For a while. That’s the point of what you did, isn’t it? He’s got to think about it now. Every night. At his window.”

The wives came in from wherever they’d been listening. All five, and Aune. Nobody said anything for a while. Then Andraste walked across the kitchen and stood in front of me.

“You should have let me say it,” she said. “I’d have said it shorter.”

“What would you have said?”

Andraste thought about it.

“Come up the road,” she said.

Kyria, behind her, made a small sound that on Hyrran is a laugh.

Risa didn’t say anything at all. She came and sat on the step beside me and put her hand on the back of my neck, the way she has since we were cadets. Her hand was very warm. There was a small spark in it. I don’t think she knew.

Sera said, “Liam’s going to be furious he wasn’t here.” Luna said, “Father’s going to want a copy for his tin box.” Hana said nothing, and went and put the kettle on again, because Mother’s had gone cold.

Aune said, very quietly, “Ister heard. All of it. The whole of the second city was in the plaza. They stood up.” She paused. “Isar Thenn sent a note. It says, I couldn’t have played that. I’m not sure whether it’s a compliment.”

It is, Aune says. From Isar, it’s the biggest one there is.

The children had all heard. Every one, on every world they were on. Trevor came through the Arch Hall from Isk without asking Okafor and stood in the doorway with his glass cup in his hand. Kesh came down from the roof, where she’d been listening, and didn’t frown for once. Corin came from the ridge and sat on the bottom step on my other side, and didn’t say anything, and didn’t need to.

Queenie came in last. She was holding Hana’s hand. She looked at me for a long time with her black eyes, all the way down, and then she let go of Hana and came across the kitchen and put her small hand flat on my knee.

“Leaf,” she said.

By the end of the week, the Collective’s walls had writing on them.

Not on Carrow. Not in the inner gardens. On the edge worlds, the grain worlds, the ore worlds, the ones Mattick sells to in the dark. On the sides of tithe sheds and warehouse doors and the white walls of the Collective’s own offices, at night, in paint, in chalk, in whatever people had.

Bright beside you.

Nobody knows who started it. Mattick saw it on nine worlds in a month. He says on one of them it was written in the dust on the side of a Refined ship, very small, near the bottom, where you’d have to bend down to see.

Quenby’s magazine didn’t have a picture on the front that month. Just the words, in plain black letters, on white.

HE THREATENED HIS MOTHER.

Eluned Sabe says it sold nine million. She says it’s the first time Quenby’s ever printed a cover she agreed with.

And the soft Mother, the one in the long brown coat with the pot, the one Imre made years ago and that’s always sold steadily and never very fast, sold out on every world in the Hedge in two days. Then on the edge worlds of the Collective, in the dark, the next week. Mattick took nine crates in and came back with none. He says people were queuing for them at the bottom of the ramp in daylight.

Mother says she doesn’t understand it. She says it’s only a soft one of an old woman with a pot.

“That’s why,” said Oona.

The two houses had heard too. Through the eldest. We went up at dusk, the Overseer and Dory and I.

“Good evening,” said the first house.

“Good evening,” said the Overseer.

The two notes went back and forth for a while. Then the second house said, “The ones in Velle heard.”

“What did they do?”

“They went quiet,” said the second house. “All of them. For the length of a breath. We could feel it even from here.” A pause. “They have never once gone quiet together. Not in all the time there have been houses.”

“Were they frightened?” said Dory.

“We do not know what that is,” said the first house. “We are learning. We think it is like what you said to the man. We think it is the word last.”

The Overseer put his cup down on the rock.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s what it’s like.”

Dory listened that night. All night. At the red glass. I sat with her.

At about midnight, she said, very quietly, “There.”

“Him?”

“Him.”

She didn’t say anything for a long time. Her eyes were closed. Her hand was flat on the glass.

“He’s not at his window,” she said. “He’s in the middle of the room. He’s moved the bed. He’s sitting with his back to the wall, in the corner, with the lamps all lit.” She was quiet. “He’s frightened, Dad.”

“Good.”

“No,” said Dory. “Listen.”

I listened. I’m not as good at it as she is. But I heard it, a long way off, past the Watch, past Carrow. A man sitting very still in the corner of a room with every lamp lit.

And then, underneath the fear, very slowly, like water coming up through a floor, the other thing. The thing she told me about on the roof, at the end of the golden year. The kind that’s decided.

“It’s coming back,” said Dory. “Over the top of it. The hate.” She opened her eyes. “It’s always going to come back, isn’t it. Whatever you say to him.”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you say it?”

I thought about it.

“So he’d have to sit in the corner,” I said. “Even if it’s just for one night. So he’d know what it’s like.”

Dory looked at me for a long time. Then she put her head on my shoulder, the way she used to when she was small, and we sat there until the stars said Not yet.

The Assize didn’t say anything for nine days.

Mattick says the white hall was full every one of those nine days. The Assessors in their row. Messengers going in and out. Lamps lit all night. Nobody came out to the steps. The Prime didn’t walk the square. It’s the first time since he took the white that he’s missed it.

On the tenth day, a short statement went out on every band, read by an Assessor, not by him.

The Assize had heard, it said, a broadcast from the so-called Hedge, containing threats against the person of the Prime. The Assize regarded these threats with the utmost seriousness. The Assize would consider its response.

It didn’t mention a door. It didn’t mention Velle. It didn’t mention a kitchen.

It didn’t deny any of it.

“They can’t,” said Senna, at the long table. “If they deny it, they have to say what he did say. And they don’t know what your daughter heard.” She folded her hands. “He’s put them in a room with no doors, Lucas. That’s quite funny, if you think about it.”

Nobody laughed. But Iolo smiled.

The rest of the Reach didn’t wait nine days.

I hadn’t thought about that. I’d been talking to him. I’d forgotten, for most of it, that everyone else was listening.

They were. All of them. Every world. Every ship. Every cupboard and bunk with a child and a soft one hidden.

And every one of them had heard what he’d said. Not from him. From me. On the hill. Where his mother pours.

Mattick says he’s never seen anything like it. He says he went into ports on the Collective’s edge that week where people who’ve been buying soft ones from him in the dark for two years, very quietly, at night, with the shutters down, came out onto the quays in daylight and shook his hand. He says an old woman on a grain world he’s been trading with for forty years came down to the bottom of the Hesta’s ramp, which she’s never once done, and said to him, quite loudly, so the whole quay could hear,

“He threatened that man’s mother.”

Mattick said yes.

“That woman with the pot. In the film. That one.”

Mattick said yes, that one.

The old woman stood there for a while.

“I’ve had seventy years of him and his father and his father before that,” she said. “Tithes and white ships and smiling on the steps. I’ve never once said a word.” She put her hand on the ramp. “You can tell her I said one now.”

Mattick asked her what it was.

She told him. Mattick says he can’t repeat it in front of the children.

Worlds left.

Not one or two. Not in the dark, under a river, the way Sallow did. In daylight, on every band, with their names on it, the way Ammet and Isk did, but more. Many more.

Mara Quell counted. In the thirty days after I spoke, seventeen member worlds of the Collective in good standing sent word to the Table that they wished to ask. Not border worlds. Not edge worlds. Three of them were from the middle of the Reach, a long way inside, closer to Carrow than to the Watch. One of them was a world called Thessaly, which Andraste’s Thessaly says she’s never heard of and which she’s now determined to visit.

Every one of them, in their first message to the Table, said the same thing, in different words.

The smallest of them, a wet little world called Arn, put it most simply. Their First wrote, in very large letters, on the first line:

We have mothers too.

The Table said yes to all seventeen. It took one dusk. The Caddi grandmother said yes, good seventeen times, one after another, and by the end of it was laughing.

There are four hundred and thirty-seven worlds in the Hedge now.

The Arch Hall has seventeen new arches down the long white sides. Wren wrote the names over them herself. She says she’s going to need a longer hall. Tavish Orne says Marrach’s already started on it.

And on the Table, at the end by the stove, next to Varrin’s cup under its iron cover and the line from Ammet, somebody had left a small grey soft one, of a woman with a pot.

Nobody knows who. Mother didn’t move it.

Corvan’s packet came on the forty-first day.

The Hesta brought it in a convoy of three, the way it always does now. Sorrel had tied it to the bottom of an empty crate with a bootlace. Dory looked all the way down it before she opened it, the way she always does. It was paper. Only paper.

It was not the word. Dory knew that before she opened it. She said so.

But it was close.

There was a note on top, in his narrow hand.

I heard you. So did he. I was a step behind him, in the long hall, when it came on. He dropped his cup. I’ve never seen him drop anything.

He sleeps in a different room every night now. He has the lamps lit. He won’t let anyone stand behind him, not even me. Especially not me. I don’t think he knows why.

I don’t think you meant it about the wives and children. I’ve thought about it a great deal and I don’t think you did. I think you meant him. I’m writing it down so that you’ll know I knew.

The other things are from the long room. They’re older than the door. They’re older than Lure. I found them looking for something else. I think you need to see them before you decide what to do about the door.

Nearly. Not yet. Nearly.

C.

Under it, a thin bundle. Letters. His father’s hand. From years ago, Mara said, by the Collective’s count. Before the forty ships. Before Thole. Before Lure. Before the Hedge was anything at all.

To the head of the seal of the Refined.

Most of it was about tithes. Very dull. Mara read it all anyway. Then she came to one, near the bottom, and stopped, and read it again, and took off her spectacles, and didn’t clean them. She just held them.

Then she gave it to me.

I’ll put it down exactly.

The river world on the third arm has refused again. Third time. I asked for the fish and the rice. Nothing else. Live stock and seed, enough to establish them in the garden here. They are not found anywhere else in the Reach, which I am told is why the river people value them, and why I want them.

They sent a woman in a boat. To the Assize. In a boat. She stood in the hall with river water on her boots and said, very politely, that the fish don’t travel. That the rice won’t grow anywhere but in the river. That it isn’t theirs to give.

It isn’t theirs to give. She said that to me.

I have looked at the list your scientists prepared. The river world’s star is on a path the phenomena could be persuaded to take. It would not be quick. Twenty years, perhaps more. That is acceptable. I am patient.

Mark it.

When it is done and the river people are gone, send the miners in. Not for ore. There isn’t any. For the river. Drain it. Bring me the fish and the rice and enough of the mud to grow them in.

I should like to eat them in my own garden before I am old.

Mara had the list. The one Corvan sent before, at Lure. The nineteen stars marked Directed, with Thole at the bottom, Openly.

The stars on it aren’t named. They’re numbered. The Collective numbers its stars from Carrow outward along each arm, and nobody in the Hedge had ever thought to check the numbers against a name, because we knew what the nineteen were. We’d been told. We thought we’d been told.

Mara checked the numbers.

The seventh star on the list was Sallow’s old sun.

I went to Sallow myself. I didn’t send anyone. I didn’t want anyone else to have to.

Orra was on the landing, in the warm gold light, under the new sun. She was mending a net. She saw me coming along the planks and put it down, and looked at my face, and stood up.

“Sit down,” she said. “You look like a man with a stone in his boat.”

I sat down. On the end of the landing, where Halvane sat the first day, with my legs over the water.

And I told her.

I’ve told a great many people a great many terrible things. I’ve told mothers on Tirr. I’ve told the Sedge about the mat boat. I’ve stood at the Table and said Varrin’s name.

I’ve never told anyone anything like that.

Orra listened all the way through without saying a word. She didn’t move. When I’d finished, she sat there on the landing for a very long time, looking at the river.

“Twenty years,” she said, at last.

“Yes.”

“He sent it twenty years ago.”

“About that.”

“For the fish.”

“And the rice.”

Orra looked at the water. There were fish in it. There are always fish in it. Little silver ones, that come to the landing when the boats come in, and hang there in the brown water with their mouths open.

“The woman in the boat,” she said. “The one who went to the Assize.”

“He doesn’t say her name.”

“He wouldn’t,” said Orra. “It was my grandmother.”

She told me about it. Her grandmother rowed to the Collective’s arch on the third arm when Orra was a girl, because the Collective kept sending letters asking for the fish and the rice, and nobody on Sallow could read their letters very well, and her grandmother said that if the man wanted an answer he could have one in person. She rowed to the arch. She went through. She stood in the white hall with river water on her boots and told the Prime of the Reach that it wasn’t theirs to give.

Then she came home and said it had been very grand and very cold and that the man had very nice hands and very bad manners.

She died eleven years ago. In her sleep. In her boat, tied up at this landing. She never knew.

“She was right,” said Orra. “It isn’t ours to give. The fish don’t go anywhere but here. The rice won’t grow anywhere but here. We’ve known that for longer than we’ve had boats.” She looked down at the water. “It’s hers. It’s always been hers. The queen’s.

“We just didn’t know that’s who we meant.”

Then Orra got up. She went to her boat and untied it, and got in, and took the cup out from under the seat. The one she uses for landings. And she rowed out, very slowly, to the middle of the widest river, under the warm new sun, and stopped.

I stayed on the landing. I knew this was hers.

She filled the cup from the river. And she poured it back, very slowly, and she said something. I couldn’t hear what. The river carried it away.

Dory told me later what the queen said back. She was listening, on the hill, at the glass. She heard it all.

The queen under the widest river said: I know.

And then: He tried. In his garden. He had the seeds they took from me. He planted them. I felt them, a long way off, in the dark.

And then, in a voice Dory says she’s never heard from a queen before, very slow, very old, very quiet:

They would not grow.

They wouldn’t. Corvan’s note said so too, at the very bottom, in a line I hadn’t understood until Dory told me what the queen said.

He has a bed of mud in his garden that the survey ship brought back. He had it planted the year the river world was lost. Nothing has ever come up. The gardeners have tried everything. He goes and looks at it, sometimes, at night. He doesn’t say anything. He just looks.

Taken silver only knows where it was.

So, it turns out, does taken rice.

Senna has the letter now, with the rest. With the Vessels and the nineteen and Lure, and Corvan’s half-sheet, and everything since. She keeps it all in the small room at the back of the kitchen, in a box Rory made, with a lock that Dory made, that only opens by shape.

She says when it’s yes, this goes out first. Before all the rest. She says she wants every world in the Reach to know what he was willing to do for a bowl of rice.

Okafor’s slate says Now. Under it: Velle. Under that: Avalon. And now, under that, in her square sergeant’s hand:

Sallow. The seventh.

I sat at the long table that night, late, with Mother.

She’d made rice. I don’t know where she got it. Not Sallow’s; Sallow’s won’t travel. Ordinary rice, from Tiel, in a bowl, with a bit of butter on it.

She put it in front of me.

“Eat that,” she said.

“I’m not hungry.”

“I know. Eat it anyway.” She sat down across from me. “He’s never once in his life eaten a bowl of rice because somebody who loved him put it in front of him. I’d put money on it. Not once.” She pushed the bowl towards me. “So you’ll eat yours.”

I ate it.

She watched me eat every grain.

The stars said Not yet this morning. Four hundred and thirty-seven. Seventeen new ones. Wren says one of them said it in a voice like a mother calling children in for supper.

Sallow’s star said it too. Gold and warm. The same as every morning.

Wren wrote the count at the top of the slate. And under it:

Sallow: the seventh.

Rice: wouldn’t grow.

The hill: still here.

Days 10782–10836. Bright Beside You.

I didn’t sleep for anger: where his mother pours, twice. At three in the morning Mother said it’s just a room with a stove in it, he picked it to do this to you; answer him as you, not as him. I didn’t ask the Table. Ilka opened every band the Collective has, and at noon by Carrow’s clock I stood by the kettle and said: you threatened my mother, the house my wives sleep in, my children’s rooms; my daughter heard you, she always hears you; everything you send through that door will die, not the way I’ve done it, it will feel it; and then I’ll be beside you, bright, in the great house where your wives and children sleep, and do the same to you; I’ve never struck first; if you open that door, you will have, and I’ll strike last. And to everyone else: I’m sorry you had to hear that; some of you have mothers. Mother: you said painful; then make sure nothing comes up the road. Okafor: good; next time ask me first. Andraste: I’d have said it shorter: come up the road. Queenie’s hand on my knee: leaf. Bright beside you in chalk on the Collective’s walls, even on the side of a white ship; Quenby: HE THREATENED HIS MOTHER, nine million; the soft Mother sold out everywhere (Oona: that’s why). The houses in Velle went quiet together for a breath, for the first time ever; the two think it’s the word last. Dory heard him move his bed into the corner with every lamp lit, frightened, and then the hate came back over it; I said it so he’d sit in the corner for one night. Nine days of silence from the Assize; then: we will consider our response; they can’t deny it (Senna: a room with no doors). The Reach heard what he’d said: an old woman on a grain world said one word on the Hesta’s ramp; seventeen worlds in good standing asked in thirty days, three from the middle, one called Thessaly; Arn wrote: we have mothers too. Four hundred and thirty-seven. A soft woman with a pot on the Table. Corvan: I heard you; he dropped his cup; he sleeps in a different room each night and lets no one behind him; I don’t think you meant the wives and children; nearly, not yet, nearly. The old letter: the river world refused the fish and the rice three times; a woman in a boat said it isn’t ours to give; mark it; twenty years; drain the river; I should like to eat them before I am old. The seventh Directed star was Sallow’s. It was Orra’s grandmother in the boat; she died in her sleep at the landing and never knew. It’s hers, the queen’s; we didn’t know that’s who we meant. Orra poured in the widest river; the queen: I know; they would not grow. He looks at his bed of mud at night. Taken rice only knows where it was. Senna: when it’s yes, this goes first. Okafor: Sallow, the seventh. Mother made me rice from Tiel and watched me eat every grain. Sallow: the seventh. Rice: wouldn’t grow. The hill: still here.