Chapter 106: What We Ask It to Be

On the third morning, Dinraal put down his cup and asked Lucas to show him.

They were on the porch of the house on the rise.

The First Weapon lay across the top of the steps. People had begun stepping over him with an ease that suggested he had lived there for years. Below, the town was waking. Beyond it, the roads toward Thera caught the early light.

Lucas looked at him.

Dinraal waited for Dot to finish carrying the question.

Then he added, “What you can do.”

The silence that followed was small, but he noticed it.

He had spent two days learning how much the man preferred questions about his children to questions about his power.

Now he had asked the second kind.

“The ice moon,” Dinraal said. “The world beyond Vessa’s arch. I have read the accounts.”

He turned the bracelet on his wrist.

“I’ve read everything we received. More than once. But I need to understand what those words mean when we’re making plans together.”

Lucas looked out toward the plain.

Dinraal saw the reluctance in his face.

It was familiar.

He knew what it was to enter a room and discover that the people waiting there had already decided which part of him they wanted.

“And I’ll show you mine,” he said.

Lucas turned back.

“What the silver does on Hearth. What it became after you helped us.”

That changed something.

Dinraal held out his wrist.

“You showed us how to let it keep its own shape. You’ve never seen what we did afterward.”

At the bottom of the steps, Okafor stopped beside the First Weapon.

She looked from one man to the other.

Then she spoke.

Dot translated without appearing surprised.

“Somewhere empty.”

Dinraal glanced toward the town.

Okafor continued.

Not the porch. Not the north field. Not anywhere with a house, a child, or a bean.

From behind Dinraal, Isolde made a quiet sound of agreement.

He looked over his shoulder.

She stood in the doorway with her notebook, looking considerably more rested than he felt.

“You heard?”

“Most of it.”

“And?”

“I think somewhere without beans is an excellent choice.”

He smiled.

She came beside him and took the cup he had forgotten.

“Also, you’re going to finish this.”

He looked at Lucas.

Lucas looked at the cup.

There was no sympathy to be found there.

Dinraal drank.

Tiamat arrived before noon.

She came through the arch with a small bag, a secure communicator, and the expression she wore when entering a room whose exits she had not yet counted.

Dinraal met her in the courtyard.

She stopped just beyond the threshold.

For several moments, she said nothing.

He let her look.

The house. The sky. The trees beyond the wall.

Another world, reached without a ship.

Then her eyes returned to him.

“How much have you slept?”

Isolde, behind him, answered before he could.

“Less than he should.”

“I slept last night.”

“Eventually.”

Tiamat regarded him.

Dinraal spread his hands.

“I see information moves very quickly here.”

“It always has where you’re concerned,” she said.

Then she embraced him.

The suddenness of it caught him off guard.

He held her tightly.

When she stepped back, her hand remained on his shoulder.

“I read your report.”

“I know.”

“Reading isn’t the same.”

“No.”

Her gaze moved toward the arch.

“Arcturus has the stations. Nothing approaches without being noticed by several very irritable people.”

Dinraal nodded.

“And you?”

“I wasn’t going to watch this on a recording.”

Rhiannon appeared behind her carrying a basket.

She took one look at Dinraal, another at Isolde, and asked whether they had eaten.

“Yes,” Isolde said.

Dinraal opened his mouth.

Rhiannon raised a finger.

“Your wife answered quickly enough. You may benefit from that.”

He closed it again.

Lucas came out to meet them.

Dinraal made the introductions.

Rhiannon studied him while Dot translated.

Then she asked what he had eaten.

Tea.

The answer crossed the language barrier and arrived in Rhiannon’s face as an offense requiring immediate attention.

Dorothy stood in the doorway.

The two women looked at each other.

Dinraal felt Isolde’s fingers close around his wrist.

“Oh,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

Rhiannon opened her basket and handed Lucas a thick piece of Hearth’s bread.

The command needed little translation.

Eat.

Lucas accepted it.

Dorothy made a sound suspiciously close to laughter.

Tiamat looked around the courtyard again.

“I think she’ll settle in.”

They went to the plain beyond the canyon at noon.

Dinraal had expected a small group.

That expectation survived until he saw the chairs.

Then the children.

Then the baskets.

Then Doctor Bell with a notebook already open and Keir carrying enough drawings to suggest he had considered several practical uses for whatever might happen.

“Everyone?” Dinraal asked.

Lucas’s expression suggested he had also been surprised, but only briefly.

Apparently, this was how the family worked.

The country beyond the canyon lay bare beneath the sun.

Red stone extended in broad, worn sheets. The wind carried grit along shallow cracks. Far away, the land dropped into a grey distance that seemed to continue beneath the horizon.

Dinraal walked ahead while the others settled.

He studied the ground.

No buildings.

No cultivated land.

No people beyond their group.

A place where damage could be seen and repaired before anyone needed to live with it.

He liked Okafor’s choice.

Isolde came beside him.

“Are you nervous?”

“A little.”

“About the demonstration?”

He looked toward Lucas.

“About making him feel as though he has to prove something.”

She followed his gaze.

“You offered to show him first.”

“Yes.”

“Then show him what you wanted him to see.”

Dinraal looked down at his hands.

The silver rested in its familiar bands.

For years, he had thought of it as an inheritance whose meaning had already been decided.

Armor.

A weapon.

The thing that made him useful when there was no one else left to ask.

Now there were bridges in it.

Doors that remained open after he stepped away.

Hulls carrying people who did not know his name.

He looked back at Isolde.

“That’s what I intend.”

She smiled and squeezed his hand.

Then she went to sit near Rhiannon.

The First Weapon followed Dinraal onto the plain.

He stopped a few steps behind him and lowered himself to the stone.

Watching.

Always watching.

Dinraal turned toward the gathered people.

Dot waited.

“I’ll begin with what we knew first.”

He raised his wrists.

The silver lifted.

A fine strand rose from the right bracelet, caught the light, and divided.

Three branches.

Nine.

Then more, spreading above him in a bright, delicate canopy.

For one moment, the shape resembled roots reaching into the sky.

Then it closed.

Silver flowed over his shoulders, across his chest, down his arms and legs.

The armor settled without a fastening.

Dinraal felt the familiar completion of it.

Weight distributed.

Sight clear.

Every movement answered.

He turned slowly so they could see.

Kyria spoke under her breath.

Andraste looked toward her mother, then back at the armor.

Dinraal did not catch the word.

He saw the respect.

That was enough.

He extended his right hand.

A blade grew from the wrist, long and curved, its edge bright against the red plain.

Then a shield from the left.

He held them for a moment.

These shapes had kept him alive.

They had kept others alive too.

He did not despise them because he had learned to want something else.

He let them return.

The silver sank into the armor.

Then he raised one arm toward the empty expanse.

The cannon formed along it.

He checked the target zone again.

A small salvo crossed the plain and burst against distant stone.

The sound returned a few moments later.

Several children looked up.

Nobody was close enough to be harmed.

Dinraal lowered his arm.

The cannon became a hand.

He looked at that hand for a moment before continuing.

Then he knelt.

Both palms met the stone.

The silver went outward.

Not deep.

He was not reaching for the heart of this world.

He could not have done what Lucas had described.

Instead, he let the fine threads spread through the shallow cracks beneath him, finding contact, following the shape of the ground.

A step became a small pressure.

A chair leg.

The movement of someone changing their weight.

Warmth where sunlight had held the stone all morning.

Cooler hollows beneath the surface.

He felt the gathered people through the places where they touched the plain.

No thoughts.

No names.

Just lives occupying space.

Isolde’s familiar presence could not be distinguished by magic from everyone else’s.

He knew where she sat because he had watched her sit there.

That mattered to him.

He was listening, not claiming.

Asha began explaining what they had discovered after the relay learned to hold itself.

Dinraal let her.

He withdrew the silver slowly, leaving the stone as he had found it.

When he stood, the armor had already begun flowing back toward his wrists.

He turned toward the canyon.

This was the part he had wanted Lucas to see.

The gap was nearly a mile across.

Dinraal stood at its edge with the wind lifting his coat.

Far below, broken shelves of stone descended into a depth that made the distant ground look unreal.

He extended his right hand.

One bright strand went out.

Then another.

They crossed the open space together, weaving as they traveled.

The far side remained a narrow line beneath the sky.

Dinraal followed the first contact carefully.

Stone.

A purchase.

A place to carry load.

More silver spread along the rim, finding several points rather than trusting everything to one.

Then the structure broadened.

A surface emerged between the strands.

Fine crosswork.

Supporting members beneath.

Edges high enough to be seen in the glare.

Wind pressed against it.

Dinraal felt the movement, adjusted the pattern, and let the stresses settle through the whole.

The bridge reached from one side of the canyon to the other.

Silver lace over empty air.

Wide enough for a cart.

Behind him, the conversation stopped.

He made the final connection.

Then lowered his hand.

The bridge stayed.

He stepped back.

The silver at his wrists rested quietly.

No line joined him to the structure.

No part of his attention was required to keep it from falling.

Lucas moved closer.

Dinraal turned toward him.

“You showed me one path,” he said.

Dot translated.

“On material outside a person. A small thing that could keep its shape without me holding it.”

He looked toward the far side.

“We used it for the relay first. Then other things.”

Hulls.

Bridges.

Drives.

The stations above Hearth.

Work done by many people over years of testing, failure, correction, and trying again.

“I wanted you to know where that small thing went.”

Lucas looked at the bridge.

Then at Dinraal.

For once, neither seemed to have an immediate answer.

Dinraal understood.

He had read reports of people surviving because he held a door or repaired a ship.

He had rarely stood before the full consequence of something he had done without expecting to see it again.

Now Lucas was doing that.

Dinraal rested his hand against the nearest rail.

“It holds,” he said.

He did not mean only the bridge.

Isolde waited until the first silence had passed.

Then she walked out.

Dinraal turned toward her.

She could see the instinct in him.

A quick assessment of the span.

The wind.

The height.

Then he remembered whose work she was walking on.

His mouth softened.

She took several steps and stopped.

Below her lay a great emptiness, cut through with stone and shadow.

The silver beneath her boots was firm.

She could feel the slight movement of the bridge in the wind. Not failure. Flexibility.

It was strange to stand on something so delicate and know how much thought lived in its shape.

She opened her notebook, then realized she did not want to write yet.

Instead, she lifted her wrists.

Her silver moved more quietly than Dinraal’s had.

A narrow ribbon slipped along the edge of the bridge.

Then another.

They traveled away from her, winding around the rail, crossing the small openings, settling where the structure could carry them.

Leaves formed.

Small at first.

Then larger, each with a fine central vein and an edge that caught the sunlight differently as it turned.

They climbed the bridge like ivy.

All the way across.

Isolde let the pattern repeat without making every leaf identical.

She wanted it to look grown.

The wind moved over them.

A soft sound followed.

Behind her, someone laughed with delight.

She turned.

Elin and Goldie stood near Luna, watching the leaves.

One pointed toward the far side.

Isolde smiled.

Then she walked back.

Dinraal met her at the edge.

“You’ve improved it.”

“I haven’t changed the load path.”

“Enna will be grateful.”

She looked past him at Lucas.

Dot waited.

“I always ask about gardens first,” Isolde said.

She glanced toward the silver leaves.

“So I thought I should bring one.”

The words crossed.

Dorothy smiled.

Dinraal took Isolde’s hand.

For a moment, they stood beside the bridge they had made together, and Isolde thought of the drawing above their bed.

Two hands.

Neither one doing everything.

Lucas began with a stone.

That was what Dinraal would remember afterward.

Not the light in the sky.

Not the great block of ground hanging above the plain.

A man kneeling and placing his hand on red stone.

He spoke while Dot translated.

The surface.

The ancient layers beneath it.

The old hollows.

Warmth.

Water.

Deeper structures.

Then the heart of the world.

Dinraal listened without moving.

He could feel a footstep through silver laid in a shallow crack.

Lucas spoke of the turning depths beneath a planet as though he had put his hand against the side of a familiar machine.

Asha stopped talking.

The silence she left was almost as startling as the words.

Then the stone changed.

Clear glass lay where rough red ground had been.

Sand ran through Lucas’s fingers.

White salt.

Iron.

Silver.

Then stone again.

The original color.

The original shape.

Dinraal stared at it.

He knew enough to understand how little he understood.

Beside Keir, Enna unfolded her arms.

Lucas stood.

Farther out on the plain, the ground rose.

A great piece of it, as broad as the house on the rise, lifted into the air.

Sand fell from its underside.

The hole beneath it lay open and exact.

Dinraal felt his body prepare to move before his mind accepted that there was nowhere he needed to go.

Nobody was beneath it.

Nobody was endangered.

Lucas turned the mass slowly.

Then lowered it.

The ground accepted its own weight.

Every seam vanished.

The plain was whole.

Isolde had moved beside Dinraal.

He took her hand without looking.

Then Lucas disappeared.

No smoke.

No blur running across the open ground.

One moment he stood before them.

The next he was on the far side of the canyon.

A mile away.

He raised a hand.

Dinraal looked from the distant figure to the bridge.

Then Lucas was beside Dorothy again.

The First Weapon lifted his head.

He regarded Lucas with deep attention.

Dinraal sympathized.

He had come prepared to be astonished.

Preparation had accomplished very little.

The second light appeared high above them.

At first, Isolde thought it was a reflection.

A bright point in a clear sky.

Then it grew.

Small.

White.

Too bright to look at directly.

She glanced toward Dinraal.

He was watching Lucas rather than the sky.

That steadied her.

Lucas stood on the plain with his attention lifted far above them.

There was effort in him, but no display of strain intended for anyone watching.

The light remained high, beyond the ordinary blue.

Isolde knew the words before Dot finished translating.

A little sun.

Held far away.

For a short time, the world had two sources of light.

The silver leaves on the bridge answered with a thousand tiny flashes.

Then the point went out.

The sky was blue again.

Nobody spoke.

Isolde looked at Lucas.

He lowered his gaze.

He seemed almost uncertain what to do with his hands.

That detail moved her more than the light had.

Beside her, Dinraal let out a breath.

Tiamat spoke from behind them.

Very quietly.

“The universe should be grateful he was raised to be a kind boy.”

Dot carried it.

The words moved across the group.

Tiamat continued, choosing each one.

Patient.

Even-tempered.

Someone who asked and put things back.

She looked at the place where the second light had been.

Then, slowly, in words she had learned from the dictionary, she said what frightened her.

If that power belonged to someone cruel, someone who believed every life existed for his use, there might be no meaningful limit to the harm.

Dinraal watched Lucas hear it.

He wished, suddenly, that the demonstration had ended with the bridge.

Not because Tiamat was wrong to be afraid.

Because he could see a person disappearing behind what everyone now knew he could do.

Then Dorothy stood.

She crossed the plain toward Tiamat.

The two women faced one another.

Dorothy was smaller.

She did not seem smaller.

She spoke.

Trevor and I raised him right.

Dinraal felt Isolde’s hand tighten around his.

Dorothy continued.

The forge.

The lessons.

The things a father had taught through his hands because words had been difficult.

And the words he had nevertheless said every night, beside the beds of his sleeping children.

Before other people tried to tell Lucas what he was for.

He had already heard something else.

Dinraal looked down.

The red stone blurred.

He thought of Bahamut.

Of all the records that described what his father could endure, where he could be sent, what his power might accomplish.

So few that described what he had wanted.

Tiamat listened.

Then she bowed.

Low.

Deliberate.

Dinraal had seen her greet commanders.

He had seen her acknowledge kings.

He had never seen precisely that.

When she straightened, Dorothy touched her arm.

The demonstration was over.

Something more important had begun.

Rhiannon had acquired a baby.

Isolde did not see how.

One moment, Vessa was with her family.

The next, Rhiannon stood with the little girl settled securely in one arm and Abena balanced against her other side, speaking to them in the same firm voice she used when adults attempted to explain why lunch had been unnecessary.

Both children appeared interested.

Dinraal looked at Isolde.

“She’s practicing.”

“She doesn’t need practice.”

“No. I suppose not.”

Isolde sat on the red stone where the sun had warmed it.

Luna came to her with Elin and Goldie.

The girls looked at Isolde.

Then at her bracelets.

Then at each other.

Whatever decision passed between them was immediate.

Soon Isolde had one on each knee.

The air softened.

She felt it before she understood it.

The dry wind gentled around her face. A faint smell of rain moved through the warmth.

She looked up.

Luna smiled.

Isolde laughed.

“Oh.”

The children seemed pleased.

One touched the edge of her bracelet.

Isolde let a small silver leaf form above her hand.

Both leaned closer.

Behind her, Dinraal made a sound she did not recognize.

She turned.

He was smiling.

Not the careful smile he used when someone asked whether he was all right.

Not relief after danger.

Simple pleasure.

She held his gaze for a moment.

Then one of the girls tugged her sleeve, demanding the leaf become something else.

Isolde returned to the work.

Nearby, Thessaly approached Tiamat.

The child looked up.

Tiamat looked down.

Then two small arms rose.

For the first time that day, the woman who commanded Hearth’s orbital watch looked genuinely unprepared.

She bent.

Lifted the child.

Thessaly put a hand against her face.

Tiamat went still.

Dinraal watched her expression change.

He did not know what had passed between them.

He did not ask.

Some things did not become more complete because everyone in the room was given an explanation.

Tiamat held the little girl closer.

Isolde looked away before she could be caught watching.

The afternoon became untidy.

There was food.

There were children everywhere.

Doctor Bell wrote so quickly that she had to stop and sharpen her pencil twice.

Keir and Enna vanished onto the bridge.

Asha attempted to follow them, became distracted by Lucas answering a question about the stone, and forgot which question she had originally meant to ask.

Isolde met the children one by one.

Not in the order she had written their names.

Not as reports.

As people.

Ash explained something about the bright glass at the ends of her branches with such solemn clarity that Isolde found herself sitting straighter to pay attention.

Trevor watched the air.

Small Sigmund’s cloud changed when he became excited.

Efua had opinions and no hesitation about making them heard.

Dory let Rhiannon take her hand.

A faint brightness rose along the girl’s arms.

She looked up and spoke.

Rhiannon began crying.

Dinraal, who had just returned with water, stopped.

Isolde shook her head slightly.

Nothing was wrong.

That was almost the point.

Later, Corin climbed into her lap.

He did it carefully, shifting his weight before reaching, as though already thinking about where he would land if something moved beneath him.

Isolde helped only when he accepted the help.

He settled.

Then looked at her.

She remembered him beside the relay.

The small question traveling through the silver.

The floor answering.

The doorway where there had been a wall.

“Hello,” she said.

He watched her mouth.

Then answered.

The word was small.

It filled her.

For a moment, Isolde could not speak.

She rested one hand lightly against his back.

Across the plain, Dinraal stood beside the canyon with the First Weapon at his feet.

The silver bridge shone behind him.

She looked at the child in her lap.

Then at her husband.

“Seven.”

Dot turned toward her.

Isolde repeated it.

Dinraal looked around.

“Seven what?”

“Children.”

He became very still.

Isolde smiled.

“Seven.”

The translation arrived.

Silence followed it.

Then Risa began to laugh.

Dinraal looked at Isolde for a long time.

Then toward Lucas.

Then toward the five women sitting nearby.

Isolde saw the arithmetic happen.

“No.”

He turned back immediately.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were counting.”

“I was considering the scale of—”

“No.”

Laughter spread across the plain.

Risa’s clouds rained.

Andraste laughed so hard that she covered her mouth.

Sera briefly scorched a small patch of stone, and Luna dealt with it without looking.

Dinraal stared at his boots.

Isolde pointed at him with her notebook.

“Don’t get any ideas.”

He raised both hands.

“I believe I have enough ideas to occupy me.”

“Good.”

Corin watched them with grave interest.

Isolde brushed his hair back.

Then her smile softened.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time,” she said.

Dinraal looked up.

“Every name that came through the relay. Every birthday. Every new thing someone learned.”

She lifted the notebook.

“Now I’ve met them.”

The laughter quieted.

She looked at her husband.

Not asking for a promise made before an audience.

Letting him see how large the future had become in her mind.

“Seven,” she said again, more gently.

Dinraal’s expression changed.

He did not answer yet.

She was content to let him think.

He walked out onto the bridge because he needed somewhere to stand.

The structure held beneath him.

Halfway across, Keir and Enna knelt over a section of the deck with drawings spread between them.

Tools weighed down the corners.

Neither looked up until Dinraal’s shadow crossed the page.

Enna pointed at the silver.

“This pattern.”

“What about it?”

“Over another hull.”

He crouched.

Keir spoke quickly.

Dot helped.

A second skin.

One structure supporting another.

Something that might remain intact long enough for a damaged ship to escape after its first protection had failed.

Dinraal looked at the drawing.

He remembered the Ashen vessel opening in the sky.

The creatures moving through it.

“No single layer we’ve seen stops them indefinitely,” he said.

Enna nodded.

“We aren’t promising indefinitely.”

Keir added something.

More time.

A different obstacle.

A chance to get the people inside away.

Dinraal studied the proposed arrangement.

There were places where his silver could hold a shape apart from the material beneath it.

Places where a wound in one layer would not necessarily become an opening through both.

He pointed.

“This connection would carry too much if that section failed.”

Enna looked at Keir.

Keir looked offended.

Then moved the line.

Dinraal smiled faintly.

For the first time since returning from the reconnaissance, he could place a useful answer beside one of the images in his head.

Not victory.

Not certainty.

A thing they could build and test.

He stood.

At the near end of the bridge, Isolde sat among the children.

Her head was bent toward something Ash was showing her.

Seven.

The number was absurd.

The house had two bedrooms.

One was Aurelius’s whenever he wanted it.

They did not yet know how the first pregnancy would unfold.

There were threats beyond their sky that could eat armies.

Dinraal rested his hands on the rail.

The silver leaves moved in the wind.

He thought of the first time Isolde had spoken about wanting a place to leave things.

He had imagined a room.

She had kept imagining.

Now he could see a hallway.

Small shoes.

Arguments.

Someone calling from another room.

A child who needed him for something that had nothing to do with war.

He bowed his head.

For a little while, he let himself want all of it.

Near dusk, Dinraal found Aramaeis still seated at the edge of the plain.

Crane stood beside him.

Both looked toward the empty sky.

Lucas had come back to help.

Dinraal stopped a short distance away, not wanting to interrupt.

His uncle spoke slowly.

Dot translated.

An army had written him down as dead while he was still alive because he had ceased being useful in the way it required.

Dinraal knew that story.

Hearing it on another world made it no less bitter.

Aramaeis looked toward the place where the second sun had been.

“If they had had you…”

He stopped.

Lucas answered.

They had not.

Aramaeis looked at Dorothy, farther along the path.

“No,” he said. “Your mother had you.”

Then his hand settled on Crane’s arm.

The man did not pull away.

Dinraal watched them.

He had spent years thinking the silver army needed stronger weapons.

Sometimes it did.

He would never pretend otherwise.

But today he had watched a mother answer a terrifying truth about her son with the history of loving him.

He had watched Tiamat bow.

He had watched Rhiannon cry because a girl had found her and said so.

He had watched his uncle sit beside a man whose guilt was visible, and still leave his hand on his arm.

These things did not fire across a battlefield.

They determined what the people firing were willing to do.

And what they would refuse.

Lucas helped Aramaeis toward the bridge.

Crane walked beside them.

Dinraal followed.

The silver leaves caught the low sun.

Behind him, the First Weapon rose and came along, keeping pace without being asked.

They walked back at dusk.

Dorothy and Tiamat went ahead.

Rhiannon followed with Abena asleep against her shoulder and a basket considerably lighter than when she had arrived.

Isolde walked with the others for a while.

Dinraal remained near Lucas at the rear.

Neither spoke until they reached the end of the bridge.

Then Dinraal stopped.

He rested his hand against the rail.

“My father could do a great deal,” he said.

Dot carried the words.

“Not what you can. But enough that other people stopped asking who he was.”

Lucas listened.

“They told him what he was for. Every day. For years.”

Dinraal looked at the silver beneath his hand.

“I found him in pieces. Records. Things people remembered. Things they’d been told not to remember.”

His throat tightened.

“Every official line was about what he could do. How he could be used. What he could survive.”

Across the bridge, Isolde had turned.

She stood far enough away to give him the choice of finishing.

He looked back at Lucas.

“Your father stood between your beds.”

Lucas’s face changed.

Dinraal looked toward Dorothy walking ahead.

“Nobody did that for his.”

He did not know every night of Bahamut’s childhood.

He knew enough of what had followed to feel the absence.

He also knew that grief could make a person speak too absolutely.

For now, Lucas heard what he meant.

The First Weapon leaned against Dinraal’s leg.

He rested a hand on the creature’s head.

Then looked back at Isolde.

She waited.

Seven.

A frightening number.

A ridiculous number.

A number that would require rooms and years and a thousand decisions neither of them could yet imagine.

Dinraal touched one of the silver leaves.

“I will stand between seven beds,” he said softly.

Not an order for their future.

Not a promise that the world would give them everything they hoped for.

A statement about the father he wanted to become, however many children came.

Lucas put a hand on his shoulder.

Dinraal looked at him.

Then nodded.

They went to join the others.

Supper belonged to Dorothy and Rhiannon.

Maura attempted to assist.

Both women turned toward her at the same time.

Two languages.

The same expression.

Maura accepted the bowl she was given and sat down.

Dinraal watched from the table.

“I’m beginning to fear for the autonomy of both worlds.”

Isolde smiled.

“They’ll let us visit.”

“Under supervision.”

“Obviously.”

At the stove, Rhiannon tasted the stew.

Added something.

Dorothy tasted it.

Added something else.

Rhiannon tried it again.

Nodded.

Dorothy did the same.

No treaty signed that morning had looked more final.

Bread moved around the table.

Children asked questions.

Someone spilled a cup and three different people reached for it.

The First Weapon and the dog had established an arrangement beneath the benches which left very little room for feet.

Dinraal ate.

Not because anyone reminded him.

Because he was hungry.

He noticed Isolde noticing.

She said nothing.

He appreciated that.

After supper, the women took her upstairs.

All five of Lucas’s wives.

Isolde looked back at Dinraal as they approached the ladder.

There was a question in her face.

He smiled.

“Go.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’ll try not to dismantle anything while you’re away.”

“I meant—”

“I know.”

She came back long enough to kiss him.

Then went with them.

Risa said something firm to Lucas at the foot of the ladder.

The meaning required no translation.

He was not invited.

Dinraal looked at him.

Lucas looked back.

They went outside.

On the roof, Isolde settled between women whose names she had written for years.

Now they were close enough to share a blanket.

The chimney still held a little warmth.

Beyond the rail, Avalon’s evening spread over the lakes and the roofs.

Andraste sat with Vessa against her chest.

The baby faced outward.

Isolde looked at her for a moment, then returned to the conversation.

Seven had followed her up the ladder.

Of course it had.

Sera thought it sounded reasonable.

Luna pointed out that numbers felt different when someone had to carry them.

Hana agreed.

Risa laughed.

Isolde found herself laughing too.

She had not known how much she needed a conversation in which no one mistook her hope for either recklessness or a solemn obligation.

They asked what she wanted.

She answered.

A noisy house.

Children who knew one another.

Enough ordinary days that no one remembered every quiet supper because there had been so few.

Andraste spoke about how quickly some of her children had arrived.

Isolde shook her head.

“I’m expecting ours to come the ordinary way. Nine months, if everything goes that way.”

She glanced down at her notebook.

“Seven would be sixty-three months.”

For a moment, the roof became very quiet.

Then Luna did the arithmetic aloud.

More than five years.

Without stopping.

Isolde looked at their faces.

“I wasn’t proposing a schedule.”

Risa laughed so hard that warm rain fell from her cloud.

Sera complained.

Luna dealt with the wet blanket.

Hana shook her head, smiling.

Isolde laughed until her sides hurt.

Later, the conversation grew quieter.

Andraste mentioned Dinraal looking toward the five of them on the plain.

Isolde rolled her eyes.

“I saw.”

“He was counting.”

“Yes.”

Andraste was silent for a moment.

Then she spoke more carefully.

Dot translated.

Someone who had stood at an edge alone for too long could begin wanting everything at once. People. Rest. A person beside him who would still be awake when he could no longer stay awake himself.

Isolde looked out over the roofs.

Below, she could hear Dinraal’s voice.

Low.

Answering Lucas.

She thought of the night after the reconnaissance, when he had finally slept beside an open doorway he did not have to hold.

“I know,” she said.

Andraste watched her.

Isolde rested a hand against her middle.

“That’s why I want a house full of people. Not because children should carry what we can’t.”

She paused.

“Because I want him to wake up one morning and hear someone laughing in another room, and know he hasn’t earned it by saving them that day.”

The women were quiet.

Then Hana took her hand.

Isolde held it.

Below them, someone laughed on the porch.

She recognized her husband’s voice.

They crossed back to Hearth late.

The laboratory lamps had been lowered.

The watch greeted them softly.

Dinraal carried the empty basket because Rhiannon had entrusted it to him with instructions sufficiently detailed to suggest that losing it would be worse than losing a ship.

Isolde tucked her arm through his.

For a while, they walked without speaking.

At home, the drawing waited on their bedroom wall.

Held, and holding.

Dinraal set down the basket.

Isolde sat on the bed and removed her boots.

He knelt to help with the second.

“I can still manage my shoes.”

“I know.”

She let him.

When he had put them neatly aside, he remained where he was.

Looking up at her.

“What?”

“Seven.”

She smiled, a little sheepishly now that they were alone.

“It wasn’t a demand.”

“I know.”

“We’ll see how this one goes.”

“Yes.”

“And I wasn’t inviting anyone else into our marriage.”

He laughed.

“I understood that part very clearly.”

“Good.”

He took her hands.

Then his expression softened.

“I liked hearing what you wanted.”

She looked at him.

“All of it?”

“All of it.”

“Even the arithmetic?”

“Especially the part where I survive it.”

She laughed and drew him up beside her.

For a little while, they sat beneath the picture.

Then Dinraal said, “The bridge stayed.”

“Yes.”

“I know it should. I knew it would.”

“But?”

He looked toward the window.

“For so long, everything depended on whether I could keep holding it.”

Isolde leaned against his shoulder.

“And now?”

He thought of silver over the canyon.

Of Enna and Keir finding a way to give ships more time.

Of Lucas putting the stone back.

Of Dorothy standing before Tiamat.

Of the children on the red plain.

“Now we get to choose what else it can be.”

Isolde took his hand and placed it gently over the small life neither could yet feel.

They sat there without asking the silver for anything.

Outside, Hearth’s watch lights burned steadily.

Far away, beneath another sky, leaves climbed a bridge no one needed to keep awake to hold.

And in their room, Dinraal bent his head and spoke softly to his wife and the child they were waiting to meet.

Not instructions.

Not promises of what either would become.

Only that he loved them.

And that he was there.