Chapter 528: Two Billion

Quenby started it. Of course she did.

The cover came out on the first morning of the warm season, nine months before the Fours, and it wasn’t a picture of anybody. That’s what everybody noticed. Every Quenby cover since the first has been somebody. Mother with the pot. Vesk with her quill. Saelle over the water. The Drenn queen in her box.

This one was a field.

Caul’s Hazy Field. Empty. At dawn. The long green bowl with the four dark stiles at the bottom, very small, and the haze lying over it the way it does, and nobody in it at all. Not one person. Nine million seats going up the slopes, all empty, catching the first light.

And across the top, in letters so small you had to hold it close:

Every seat. Every world. One breath.

And underneath, smaller still:

Nine months.

Eluned Sabe sent one to the long table. The way she does. From a very long way away. Mother propped it on the windowsill between the bells and Trevor’s glasses.

Toby picked it up at breakfast and looked at it for a long time.

“She’s left the picture empty,” he said, “so you’ll fill it.” He put it down. “That’s very clever. I’d like to be cross about it.”

He wasn’t cross about it. He took it to the Senate and showed the subcommittee and they all sat and looked at it in silence for as long as it takes to drink a cup of tea.

Imre started the next week.

Not soft ones. Not yet. She did something she’s never done. She made a thing you could keep count with.

It’s a board. Wooden, from Rory’s shed, the size of a slate, with nine small wooden stiles along the top and a row of holes under each one. You put a peg in a hole every morning. Two hundred and seventy holes. Nine months of mornings. When all the holes are full, it’s the Fours.

She called it the Count. After Wren’s. She asked Wren first. Wren said yes and then went out on the porch and stood there for a long time.

Imre made ninety thousand. They went in a morning. Quenby put one on the next cover, with nine pegs in and two hundred and sixty-one holes empty, and no headline at all. Eluned Sabe said the board was the headline. She made nine hundred thousand. They went in a week. Mattick took nine crates into the Reach and came back with a list of nine million, and on the edge worlds, he says, people who’ve never seen a stile in their lives are putting a peg in a hole every morning before they read the Herald, and the Herald prints how many holes are left every day on the front, in the corner, next to the stars.

Rue has one. On the windowsill. Next to the bells she counts. Ennis has one at Next Door, and Okafor has one on the shelf behind the board, next to the soft one that faces the wrong way, and Holt says she puts the peg in before she looks at the post lights. She puts the peg in herself. Mother holds the board. Rue says the number. Out loud. Every morning. It’s the most words anybody’s heard her say in a row.

Two hundred and nine.

Two hundred and eight.

Then the worlds started coming.

It was Rhun who noticed. He does the worlds, in the Herald. The long lists. Who’s joined and who’s jumped and who’s dug a hollow. He came up the hill road one morning with a sheet and stood in the kitchen doorway and didn’t come in.

“Nine,” he said. “This week. Nine worlds. Collective. Asked the Table.”

“That’s good,” said Mother.

“Nine’s the most in a week since the broadcast,” said Rhun. “Since Senna. And I asked every one of them why.” He looked at the sheet. “Not the Refined. Not the bells. Not the queens.”

“Then what?”

Rhun put the sheet on the long table.

“The Fours,” he said. “All nine. They want to watch.”

It didn’t stop at nine.

The next week it was fourteen. Then nineteen. Then twenty-two in a single week, which Konrad says is more than joined in the whole of the first year of the Hedge. Small worlds and middling ones and two big ones on the second arm that the Collective had held for nine hundred years. Every one of them asking the Table. Every one of them saying the same thing, in different words.

We’ve read about it. We’ve seen the cover. We’ve been counting. We’d like to be there when everybody breathes in.

The Caddi grandmother said yes to all of them. She says she’s never said yes so many times in a season. She says she’s going to need a new chair.

By the end of the second month it was fifty-three. Fifty-three Collective worlds, in one season, because of a game where you climb over a fence.

Corvan read the list at Konrad’s table on the Sunday. All fifty-three. Out loud. Slowly. Ferro Hale and Vesk and Tamsin and Rhun and Lio and Sefa listening.

When he got to the end he put it down.

“He can’t stop this,” he said. “Father. The voice. Whatever he is now. He stopped Caul and Myre playing and it emptied his stands. He can ban the Fours on every band and it’ll fill the arches.” He looked at the list. “You can’t ban a breath. You can’t put Refined in the doors of it.”

“He’ll try,” said Ferro Hale.

“He’ll try,” said Corvan. “And every world he tries it on will ask the Table the next morning.”

Vesk picked up the list and looked at it over her glasses for a long time.

“Fifty-three,” she said. “I sat in the white hall for sixty years and we never once got fifty-three worlds to do anything in a season. Not with ships. Not with the Refined.” She put it down. “Stile.”

Senna put it on the morning band. Not the fifty-three. Hanne Brisk’s letter. The one she sent to every world, Hedge and Collective and past everything, nine words long, in her own hand, printed on the Herald’s front and read out on every band in her carrying voice that doesn’t try.

The gate is open. Come and breathe in with us.

Mattick says that on the edge worlds it’s pinned over doors. He says on Carrow somebody chalked it on the fountain, and the Refined washed it off, and the next morning it was chalked on every stone in the square, and they gave up.

The fifty-three Firsts came to the long table.

Not all at once. Mother wouldn’t have it. Nine a night, the way the Next Door children come, for six nights, with the Caddi grandmother at the end of the bench to say the names. They came through the arches in their Collective coats, which most of them hadn’t taken off yet, and stood in the kitchen doorway the way everybody does, and Mother said you’ll want feeding, and they sat down.

Most of them had never seen a Stile game. That was the thing. They’d read about it. They’d seen the covers. They’d put pegs in a board. One of them, a thin grey man from a mining world on the second arm, said he’d learned the rules from the Herald’s back page and taught them to his whole town on a diamond drawn in chalk on the pithead, and that they’d climbed the stiles so many times in practice that the chalk had worn through to the iron.

“We’ve never seen it done properly,” he said. “We’ve only ever read it.” He looked at his tea. “We’d like to be there when it’s done properly.”

Mother looked at him for a long time.

“Then you’ll sit with us,” she said. “Front row. Next to Rue. She counts.”

Okafor drew a sheet about it. Of course she did.

She came up the hill road on the night of the fifty-third world with her slate and stood in the kitchen doorway and didn’t sit down.

“Two billion people,” she said. “In one valley. On one world. On one day.” She put the slate on the long table. “I’ve never seen a target that size. Nobody has. The Prime could put every Refined in the Collective through the fold onto that field in a breath and there’d be nowhere to run that wasn’t somebody’s seat.”

Nobody said anything.

“Bells,” said Okafor. “Under the valley. One would do it. One bell under two billion people and a swarm from the second arm.” She looked at Dot. “Every kit. Every post. Every one of Crane’s hundreds. I want them in the terraces. Listening. From now until the last person goes home.”

“Affirmative,” said Dot.

“The Drenn queen’s young. All nine hundred. Unseen. Among the seats.”

The Drenn queen was in the garden. She’d heard. She always hears. Yes, she said, through the open door, very high and clear.

“The light-benders on every arch. The Kethri on the top terraces, because nothing else can get up there. Teth’s batteries on every moon Caul’s got, and Caul’s only got one, so Halvane’s building two more.” Okafor looked at the sheet for a long time. “And the Standing. All of it. In quiet coats. In the crowd. Two hundred thousand people watching a game and watching the sky.”

“They’ll want to watch the game,” said Mother.

“They can watch the game,” said Okafor. “They can breathe in with everybody else. I’d just like them to be breathing in with their hand on something.”

She picked up the slate.

“Hanne Brisk asked me if I thought anything would happen,” she said. “I told her I’d like very much to be wrong about everything on this sheet.” She went to the door. “I’ve never once been.”

The Prime did try.

He came on the band on the ninth night of the third month and said the Fours were a Hedge provocation. He said any citizen of the Collective found travelling to Caul would be detained. He said the arches to Hedge worlds would be watched.

The next morning, nineteen worlds asked the Table.

Mattick says that on Carrow, the old woman at the front of the square read out the Prime’s words first, very slowly, the way she always does. And then she read out the nineteen names. And then she held up a Count board that somebody had brought her, under the rabbits, with a hundred and twelve holes left, and put a peg in it.

And the whole square breathed in.

Halvane came up the hill road on the first morning of the fourth month and sat down on his bench without being asked and put his head in his hands.

“Two billion,” he said.

Nobody understood him.

“Two billion,” said Halvane, into his hands. “Hanne Brisk sent the count last night. Everybody who’s written to Caul asking for a seat. From every world in the Hedge. From the fifty-three. From the edge worlds under the rabbits. From past everything, from the worlds with boxes.” He looked up. “Two billion people want to be on the Hazy Field. In person. When everybody breathes in.”

“The field holds nine million,” said Mother.

“The field holds nine million,” said Halvane. “With every seat we’ve built. With people standing on the slopes behind. With the Kethri in the air.” He looked at his hands. “It’s a bowl of grass on a quiet green world. It was never meant for this.”

“Then what do you need?” said Okafor, from the doorway.

Halvane was quiet for a long time.

“A bigger field,” he said.

He drew it on the long table. On nine slates, the way Okafor does sheets. Ilas held the lamp.

Not a stadium. Not the way the Collective builds them, Corvan says, great white rings of stone with everybody facing the middle and nobody able to see anybody’s face. Halvane said that was the wrong shape. He said a Stile game isn’t about the middle. It’s about the breath. And you can’t breathe in with two billion people if you can’t feel them doing it.

So he drew a valley.

A real one. On Caul, next to the Hazy Field, where the green hills roll away to the south in long low waves. Halvane wanted to ask the hills to be a bowl. Not dig them. Ask. The way the queen of Ammet asked the sand to be light. The way Kwame asks hollows to open. A valley nine miles across, with the field at the bottom, and the slopes going up and up in green terraces, every one of them a seat, so that from the bottom you could look up and see two billion faces looking down, and from the top you could see the stiles, very small, and everybody between.

“Nobody’s ever built anything for two billion,” said Halvane. “Not the Aldri. Not the Collective. Not anybody. We never had two billion people who wanted to be in the same place.” He put his chalk down. “We’ve had two billion running. Never two billion sitting down.”

“Can you do it?” said Okafor. “In six months?”

Halvane looked at Kwame.

Kwame had been standing at the end of the long table since the word valley. With his black eyes. He’d gone very still.

“Caul’s ground is kind,” he said. “Hanne says it’s never been asked anything it didn’t say yes to. It’s that sort of world.” He looked at the slate. “If I ask it to be a bowl. And the Ground digs the terraces. And Rory does the benches.”

“Two billion benches,” said Rory, from the stove. He’d come in for tea. He put the cup down. “You’ll want every planer in the Hedge. And the Aldri. And the Kethri, because they’ll need to be high up and they can fly.” He looked at Halvane for a long time. “I’ll do the first stile. Myself. The old one from the Hazy Field, moved over. So it’s the same stile.”

Halvane nodded very slowly.

“Then I’ll ask Caul,” he said.

Hanne Brisk said yes before he’d finished. The way the Caddi grandmother does. She said the hills south of the Hazy Field had belonged to her family for nine hundred years and had never once been used for anything but sheep, and the sheep could go up the other side.

Then she cried, on the band, at the Table, in front of everybody, the way she cried when the Senate told her about the leagues.

“We sat down,” she said, “thinking we’d lost the Long Season. And now the whole Hedge is coming to the Hazy Field.” She wiped her face. “The whole galaxy. To watch us climb a fence.”

Kwame asked the hills on the ninth day of the fourth month.

I went. I wanted to see. Halvane and Kwame and the Ground, nine thousand of them, and Rory with his plane in his coat, and Hanne Brisk with her arms folded at the top of the first hill, and the sheep going away over the far side in a long grey line, very offended.

Kwame lay down. The way I do. The way Father did. On his back in the long grass at the bottom of the valley with his hands flat and his black eyes shut.

He asked the hills what they were.

They told him. Sheep hills. Nine hundred years of sheep. Rain and wind and the haze and the smell of wet wool. Very content. Not asked anything in a very long time, and not expecting to be.

And then he asked them, very politely, if they’d mind being a bowl.

I’ve seen Kwame open hollows under a hundred towns. I’ve seen him ask the ground of Ammet to remember being a sea floor. I’ve never seen him do this.

The hills moved.

Not fast. Not like Ammet’s sand lifting. Slowly. The way a very large animal shifts in its sleep. The valley floor went down, very gently, and the slopes went up, very gently, and all along them, from the bottom to the top, the grass folded itself into steps. Terraces. Thousands of them. Rising in rings. Nine miles across. With the haze lying over the whole thing like a cloth over a table.

It took nine hours. Kwame didn’t move once. His nose bled at the third hour and Oriel, who’d come through Elin’s door with a cloth, wiped it and didn’t say anything. At the ninth hour he opened his eyes.

“It says it’s always wanted to be a bowl,” he said. “It just never had the sheep’s permission.”

Hanne Brisk, at the top of the first terrace, sat down on it very suddenly. The first person to sit on the new field. She says she’ll keep that seat. She says they can put her name on it.

Toby went to the valley on the first night. When it was still empty. No benches. No stile. Just the terraces going up into the dark and the haze lying over them.

He took Wren. They stood at the bottom, in the middle, where the diamond would be.

He listened.

Wren says he stood there for an hour with his eyes shut and his head on one side and didn’t move. She says she could see him listening. She’s always been able to.

At the end of the hour he opened his eyes.

“It breathes,” he said. “Already. Empty. The whole bowl.” He looked up the terraces. “The hills were sheep hills for nine hundred years. Sheep breathe. Very slowly. All together. At night.” He put his hand on Wren’s. “The ground remembers it. Kwame asked it to be a bowl and it brought the breathing with it.”

Wren didn’t say anything.

“When two billion people breathe in on this,” said Toby, “the ground’s going to breathe in with them. I don’t know what that’ll sound like.” He was quiet for a long time. “I’d like to be standing exactly here.”

Hanne Brisk has had a bench put there. At the bottom, in the middle, just behind the throwing mound. It’s got no name on it. Toby says it doesn’t need one. He says everybody’ll know.

The Prime tried once more.

Dot heard it. On the grey band. Eleven breaths before. The fold, opening onto the top terraces of the new valley, in the dark, in the fourth month, when the benches were half done and the Kethri were sleeping in the mist at the top with their wings folded.

Nine Refined. In white. With slates. Come to look.

The Kethri woke. Nine thousand of them. All at once, the way they do, without a sound. And stood up out of the mist on the top terraces, tall and feathered and very quiet, with their long spears, and looked down at nine Refined standing on Hanne Brisk’s benches.

The Refined looked up.

Nobody did anything. The Kethri didn’t move. The Refined didn’t fold. Dot says it went on for as long as it takes to drink a cup of tea. Nine thousand feathered people looking down at nine men in white, in the dark, in the haze, on half-built benches.

Then the Kethri First, who stands at the top of everything, said, very clearly, down the terraces:

“These seats are taken.”

The Refined folded away.

Hanne Brisk had the benches they’d stood on taken out and burned. Not because they were damaged. Because she said she wasn’t having anybody sit on them. The Kethri set new ones. Higher. In the mist. Where you can only get to them if you can fly.

Rory did the first stile.

The old one. From the Hazy Field. The one Brann Harrow climbed nine years ago, and the Caul girl climbed in the first Hedge game, and every Caul child has climbed since the field was made. They carried it over on a cart. Nine of them. Hanne wouldn’t let anybody use a door for it. She said it had to go over the hills on wheels, the way it came.

Rory set it in the ground at the bottom of the new valley with his own hands. He planed the top rail, very lightly, just the top, where you put your hand when you climb. Then he stood back.

“That’s the same stile,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how big the field is. You climb that one and you’ve climbed the same thing Brann Harrow did.”

Brann Harrow was there. Old. With his stick. Come over from Brannock, where he teaches the Fell in the snow. He walked up to the stile very slowly and put his hand on the top rail where Rory had planed it.

Then he climbed it.

Badly. Slowly. With his stick. One leg and then the other. Everybody in the valley stopped work and watched an old man climb a fence.

He got to the other side. He stood there. He looked up the nine miles of green terraces going up into the haze.

“That’ll do,” he said.

The benches took the rest of the season.

Every planer in the Hedge. Rory’s shed on Avalon and Kyria’s ridge-wood cutters and the Aldri joiners from the second city and the Caddi, who don’t plane but will dig anything, and the Kethri, who went up the highest terraces where nobody else could get to and set benches in the mist with their wings folded.

Two billion seats. Rory counted. He has a sheet. Konrad helped. He says there are two billion and nine, because he made nine extra, in case.

Rue went to see them. In the sixth month. Mother took her through the Caul arch on a quiet morning with the peg-board under her arm, and they stood at the bottom of the valley by Rory’s stile and looked up.

Two billion empty benches. Going up into the haze in rings. Very quiet.

Rue looked for a long time. Then she held up the board. Not to Mother. To the valley. Up. So it could see. With the pegs in and the holes left.

“Forty,” she said. To the benches.

Mother says the valley didn’t say anything back. Not in words. But she says the haze moved. Just a little. The way it does when something very large breathes.

And the Count went on. Every morning. Rue putting the peg in.

A hundred and one.

A hundred.

She said a hundred very carefully. Mother says it’s the first time she’s said a number that big. She looked at the board for a long time afterwards, at all the holes behind the peg, full, and all the ones in front, empty.

“Lots,” she said.

“Yes, love,” said Mother. “Lots and lots.”

Sigmund went to see the field in the fifth month. On his own. Through the Caul arch. Nobody knew he’d gone until Tovi came up the hill road asking where he was.

Hanne Brisk found him. At the bottom of the valley. On the throwing mound. The new one, that the Ground raised and Rory shaped, with the old stile a long way off at the first corner, and nine miles of empty terraces going up on every side into the haze.

He was standing on the mound with a ball in his hand. Not throwing it. Holding it.

“I can’t,” he said. To Hanne. Not turning round. “I throw at the orchard wall. I throw at the Hill with nine thousand people. I’ve never once thrown with anybody behind me I couldn’t count.”

Hanne Brisk came and stood next to him on the mound. She’s broad, and cheerful, and her voice carries across the rings of Commonhold without trying. She didn’t use it. She said, very quietly:

“Brann Harrow threw up on this field. The Hazy one. Before the Long Season final. Nine years ago. Behind the stand. I held his coat.”

Sigmund looked at her.

“He climbed four stiles that day,” said Hanne. “Everybody in the Collective knows where they were when he did it. Nobody knows about the coat.” She looked up the terraces. “Two billion people aren’t going to be watching you. They’re going to be breathing in. It’s not the same thing. You’re just the reason they do it at the same time.”

Sigmund didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then he threw. Once. At nothing. Up the valley. The ball went a very long way and landed on the ninth terrace and rolled down nine benches and stopped.

Hanne Brisk went and got it. All the way up. All the way down. She gave it back to him.

“That one wanted to,” she said. “I could tell.”

Imre made the soft ones in the fifth month.

Not of people. She’d done the people. Brann Harrow and Hesper and Kyrie and the Before. She did the field. A soft Hazy Field, green, that folds out of a small square into a bowl with four tiny stiles at the bottom, and if you hold it to your ear, Bell did something, you can hear the haze.

And a soft valley. The new one. Nine miles across, folded very small. When you open it out, it keeps opening, further than it should, until it’s the size of the long table, and there are terraces all the way up, and the stile at the bottom, and Hanne Brisk’s seat at the top with a tiny name on it.

It takes nine breaths to fold back up. Rue times it. She breathes in for the whole nine.

Kyrie asked Okafor to come.

Not to a Ridge game. To the Fours. She came down the hill road from the Hyrrani quarter on her own, which she’s not supposed to do, with her stick, and walked into the Arch Hall and all the way down the long corridor to the board, where Okafor was, with Ennis standing behind her the way he does.

Kyrie stopped in front of the board. She’s small. She’s grown, but she’s small. She stood with the stick in both hands and her chin up, the way Andraste stands, the way Kyria stands.

“General,” she said. “I’m playing Ridge at the Fours. For the Ridge-Ends. On the slope they’ve made at the side of the big bowl.” She stopped. “I’d like you to come. And stand at the bottom. The way you did.”

Okafor didn’t turn round from the board.

“I’ll be there,” she said. “I’m there for all of it. I’m the General.”

“No,” said Kyrie. “Not for all of it. For mine.” She shifted the stick. “At the bottom of the slope. With the grandmothers. Where I can see you.”

Okafor was very still for a long time.

Ennis, behind her, took his slate out from under his arm. Wrote something. Held it up so Kyrie could see. Kyrie looked at it. Then she looked at Okafor’s back.

Okafor turned round.

“What does it say?” she said. To Kyrie.

“It says Go,” said Kyrie.

Okafor looked at Ennis. Ennis looked back. Six years old. Very straight. Hands behind his back.

“I’ll be at the bottom,” said Okafor. “With the grandmothers.” She turned back to the board. “Don’t fall over more than nine times.”

“I’ll fall over as many times as I need to,” said Kyrie, and went back up the hill road with her stick, and Ennis put his slate under his arm, and Holt says Okafor was humming by noon.

Dory and Corvan picked seats.

Hanne Brisk sent a map. Of the whole valley. Two billion and nine seats on it, very small, in rings. She sent it to the long table with a note that said the family first, before I lose my nerve and give them all away.

Mother sat with the map for an evening. She put everybody where she wanted them. The front row, at the bottom, behind the throwing mound: her, with Rue. Rue counts. Oona. Bess, because Bess has never seen a game and has started mending Sigmund’s throwing glove without being asked. The fifty-three Firsts along the row. Toby’s bench just behind, with nobody on it, for Toby to stand at.

The wives in the second row. All six. Luna wanted to be nearer Sigmund. Risa said she’d rain on him. Luna said that was Kesh. Risa said it ran in the family.

And then Mother put her finger on two seats, side by side, halfway up the first terrace, a little apart from everybody, with a good view of the stile.

“Those,” she said.

“Whose?” said Dory.

“Yours,” said Mother. “And his.”

Dory looked at the two seats for a long time. Then she looked at Mother.

“You didn’t ask me.”

“No, love,” said Mother. “I didn’t.” She folded the map. “He’s going to buy the bread rolls. You’re not going on the sky ride. Pebble’s got the seat at the end.”

Dory didn’t say anything. She went out onto the porch. Corvan was at the bottom of the steps. He’d heard. He always hears, now, when it’s Dory.

“Halfway up the first terrace,” he said. “A good view of the stile.”

“Apparently.”

He looked at her for a long time. Then he put his hand in his coat pocket, and stopped, and took it out again empty.

“Not yet,” he said. To himself. Dory heard it. She says she pretended not to.

The glass bird’s still on his windowsill. Lio says he’s started picking it up.

The leagues, which Toby says I’m not allowed to skip even in a chapter about leagues:

The Hill beat Caul’s Haze. Nine to eight. In the eleventh. At the Hill, on Rory’s stand, with nine thousand people and every one of Hanne Brisk’s letters pinned to the fence behind the throwing mound where Sigmund could see them. He threw a hundred and twelve times. The Haze’s last batter climbed three stiles and fell off the fourth, and lay on the grass laughing, and Sigmund walked over and helped him up. The Hill are top of the long table. They’ll go to the Fours first seed. Tovi ate an apple on the mound afterwards. Sigmund says it’s a tradition now. He says he can’t win without it.

In Ring, the Commonhold Gales beat the Wanderers. Finally. By one. The tiny Next Door boy got in the way of the last shot and fell over and the ball went out and the hall went so quiet you could hear Kesh not raining. Then it went very loud. The boy’s name is Pim. I never put that down. He’s eight now. He says he wants to play at the Fours. Kesh says he will if she has to carry him.

In Ridge, the Ridge-Ends finished second. Kyrie was top scorer in the league by eleven. Kyria says Hyrran hasn’t had a top scorer that young in four hundred years. Okafor came to the last game. She didn’t shout. She stood at the bottom of the slope among the grandmothers and when Kyrie scored she put her hand on her chest and kept it there until the game ended.

In the Long Way, Halvane found the problem. It was him. He was sailing the Lumi himself, and Ilas says he hasn’t sailed anything in two hundred years and never once admitted he was out of practice. He’s given it to Tiri. She beat the Kethri on her first run. By a long way. Halvane stood on the roof of the third city and didn’t say anything at all and Ilas says that was worse than the shouting.

In the Run, Liam finished third. He’s on the board. He’s never been on the board. Aoife set fire to the board.

And the Count says sixty-one.

The stars said Not yet this morning. A thousand and ninety-four. Fifty-three of them new, from worlds that came in for a game. Wren says they said it very eagerly. As if they were practising for something.

Wren wrote the count. And under it:

Fifty-three worlds. (Stile.)

Two billion and nine.

The Count: sixty-one.

Days 13171–13302. Two Billion.

Quenby’s empty-field cover and Imre’s peg-board Count started it, and fifty-three Collective worlds joined the Hedge in a season to watch the Fours; the Prime’s ban brought nineteen more. Two billion asked for seats, so Kwame asked Caul’s sheep hills to be a bowl nine miles across, Rory set the old stile at the bottom and Brann Harrow climbed it, and every planer in the Hedge made two billion and nine benches. Rue counts the days.