Neither

It was quiet inside.

He’d never known it quiet. Not since the reliquary. There had always been something — the Lamp’s cold, the Snake’s heat, the two of them talking, pulling, arguing, the dark full of their voices. Even asleep. Even on the slab in Coronet, with the white dripping into his arms, there had been Snake hissing as it burned the frost.

Now the dark of him was quiet.

He stood in it. Among the pillars of his long bones. Under the arch of his ribs. And looked.

The silver was everywhere. The Lamp. Thick. Branched. Filling every channel. But still. Not shaking. Not clenched. Lying in the dark between the pillars the way frost lies on a window at dawn, before the sun’s on it. Soft. Pale. Uncurled.

And the coal. In his left arm. In the forearm. Banked so low it was barely red. Embers. The warmth of a stove at the end of a long cold shift. Resting.

And from somewhere — far, faint, coming down through the frame of him from outside, from the root chamber, from the world — a sound.

Around. And down.

Five voices. Badly. Off-key. A rasp. A hum. A militia man’s growl. A woman singing through her teeth. And under them, no sound at all, a hand moving in the air.

They were still singing.

He didn’t know how long they could keep it up. Wick’s throat. Dorne’s wound. Brann’s arms. Ollo’s grip. He didn’t know how long until the song stopped and the hands woke and the shapes took them again. He didn’t know how long until the god’s dream went out in the walls and there was only one dream left.

Not long.

“Lamp,” he said. “Snake.”

“…Here,” said Lamp. Very softly. Drowsy. Like someone woken in the middle of the night, and not yet sure where they are.

“Here,” said Snake. Low. Warm. Slow. “Mule. That song. It’s — I didn’t know. Nine hundred and eighty years. Nobody ever —” It stopped. “Nobody ever sang to me.”

“Nor me,” said Lamp.

“They’re singing now,” said Creed. “It won’t last. You know it won’t. When it stops, the shapes come back.”

“Yes,” said Lamp.

“Yeah,” said Snake.

“So listen,” said Creed. “While you’re down. While you can.”

He sat down. In the dark of himself. Between the silver and the coal. Not closer to one than the other.

“You’re both right,” he said.

Silence.

“Lamp. You hold. You held the god’s mind when its heart stopped. If you hadn’t, it’d have gone out nine hundred and eighty years ago. Before the Wrights. Before anything. There’d be no dream. Nothing to wake. Nothing for my mother to copy.” He looked at the silver. “Holding’s not wrong. It kept something alive that would’ve been gone.”

The silver stirred. Faintly.

“Snake. You eat. You eat the dead. The finished things. So there’s room for what isn’t finished.” He looked at the coal. “The Stewardship’s dead. The Archon’s dead. They’ve been dead nine hundred years and won’t lie down. You’re right about them. Hunger’s not wrong. Something needs to clear what’s done.”

The coal glowed. Faintly.

“And you’re both half,” said Creed.

“Half,” said Lamp.

“Half,” said Creed. “Holding that never lets go. That’s the Bell. That’s the Drip. That’s the Kept in their rows and the faces on their hooks looking up. That’s Taavi at the rail for forty years. That’s Cor holding Aurel one step from the seat for nine hundred and eighty years.” He looked at the silver. “That’s what holding is with nothing to tell it when to open.”

The silver went very still.

“And hunger that never stops,” said Creed. “That’s the terminus. That’s my hand on Wick’s throat. That’s Sere drinking Dorne’s blood out of her arms in threads. That’s the Stewardship drinking the god grey. That’s what you’d be on the throne, with nothing to tell you when to stop.” He looked at the coal. “That’s what hunger is with nothing to tell it enough.”

The coal was very quiet.

“Neither of you’s the god,” said Creed. “The tablet said. The god has two hands. Neither is the god.” He looked from one to the other. “The god was the thing that told you both. When to open. When to stop. The god was the thing between.”

“And the god is dying,” said Lamp. Softly.

“The god’s dying,” said Creed. “So nobody’s between. And you’ve both been doing your shape, alone, in every one of us, for nine hundred and eighty years. With nobody to tell you.”

“My mother left me a message,” said Creed.

The silver stirred. The coal glowed.

“In the pump-house. On the dunes. In a cylinder in the wall. You were there. Both of you. You heard it.” He was quiet for a moment. “She said, I’m your mother. She said, we put the pattern back into you. She said, then you’ll wake up. All the way. The first one in a thousand years.” He breathed. “She said, I don’t know what it means. You could keep it. Nobody could stop you.”

“And then she said don’t,” said Lamp. Very quietly.

“She said, don’t. Don’t keep it,” said Creed. “Give it back. It was never theirs to keep, and it isn’t yours. It’s everyone’s.”

The dark of him was very quiet.

“I thought she meant the Catalyst,” said Creed. “The tanks. The Ninth. I gave the tanks to the Ninth, after. I said, my mother said don’t keep it.” He looked down. At the floor of himself. At the depth. The hole in the middle of him, under the place where the Lamp had stood for nine hundred and eighty years. At the grey and the gold at the bottom of it. “She didn’t mean the tanks.”

“No,” said Lamp.

“She meant this.” He looked down the depth. “The dream. The copy. The pattern. The thing that lets me carry both of you without coming apart.” He was quiet a long time. “She meant don’t hold it. Don’t eat it.”

“Give it back,” said Snake. Low. Slowly. As if tasting the words. “Give it back.”

“That’s the third thing,” said Creed. “That’s neither hand. Not holding. Not eating. Giving.”

The silver trembled. The coal flickered.

“I don’t know how,” said Lamp. “I don’t know how to give. I only know how to hold.”

“I don’t know how either,” said Snake. “I only know how to take.”

“Neither do I,” said Creed. “But I know where to find out.”

He stood up.

He walked to the depth.

He stood at the edge of it.

The hole in the middle of himself. Going down below the bottom of him, where he hadn’t known there was anything below. And at the bottom, far, faint — the grey and the gold. The sea. Pulsing. The dream his mother had copied into his marrow, in the god’s own script, so that one day he could do this.

“Creed,” said Lamp. Not drowsy now. Not shaking. Very clear. “If you go down — I don’t know what’s there. I’ve never been. I stood in front of it. I never turned around.”

“I know.”

“It might be the end. It might be where you go out.”

“It might.”

“I’m scared,” said Lamp.

“I know. So am I.”

A long pause.

“Moraine said you do it anyway,” said Lamp.

“He did.”

“Will you —” It stopped. “Will you take me with you. If you go. I don’t — I don’t want to stand in front of it anymore. I want to see what’s there.”

He looked at the silver. Thick and pale in every channel of him.

“You’re in my blood,” he said. “Wherever I go, you go.”

“Yes,” said Lamp. “But I’ve never gone with you. I’ve always gone in you. Holding.” A pause. “I’m asking. Can I come with.”

“Yes,” said Creed.

“And me,” said Snake. From the arm. Low. “If it’s all the same to you, mule. I’ve been in your arm since the Collar. I’ve been in a lot of places. I’ve never been down.”

“Yes.”

“Even after the terminus? After Wick’s throat?”

“Even after,” said Creed. “You told me the truth. Both of you. Come on.”

He stepped off the edge.

He fell.

Not fast. Not like falling off the stair into the hollow of the neck. Slowly. Like sinking into deep water. Down past the bottom of himself, through the dark, toward the grey and the gold. And as he fell, he felt them come with him.

Not in him. With him. The silver, unthreading itself from his channels, his vessels, his blood, and gathering — around him, beside him, a pale cold light drifting down at his left side like frost on a falling leaf. And the coal, unbedding itself from the bone of his forearm, and gathering — at his right side, a warm red glow drifting down like an ember from a fire.

Falling with him. On either side. The way they’d hung over his chest on the dock. White and red. Side by side.

Not fighting.

The grey and the gold came up to meet them.

It was a sea.

He’d known that. From the root chamber, with his hand on the floor. From the bone room, the depth looking up at him from the bottom of a well. But knowing was different from being in it.

It was warm. It was vast. It went on forever in every direction, grey and gold, pulsing, slow. Not water. Not anything. Dream. The stuff of a sleeping mind. And it was moving. Under him and around him and through him. Long slow waves. The pulse.

And it was hungry.

He felt it the moment he was in it. The hunger. Everywhere. Like the ache in a stomach at hour nineteen. Want. Reaching. Reaching for something and not quite —

“There,” said Snake. At his right side. Very quietly. “That’s me. That’s the shape of me. Everywhere.”

“Go deeper,” said Creed.

They went deeper.

Through the hunger. Down. The way you go down through the surface of the cold-pools on Sump-Nine, through the warm skin of the water into the cold below. The hunger was the surface. Vast. Aching. Corvane Ash had found it and stopped. He never went that deep. He was afraid to.

They went through it.

And under it —

It was the meal.

Not the hunger. After the hunger. He felt it the way you feel the end of a shift. The horn at hour twenty. The meal-bar in your hand. The first bite.

Enough.

He felt it everywhere. Under the hunger. Warm. Deep. Slow. The feeling of having eaten. Of being full. Of something that had been empty being filled.

And after that — under that —

Making.

He didn’t have a word for it. He felt it. The god, full. The god, having eaten the dead — the finished things, the dead forests, the dead seas, the things that had stopped and wouldn’t lie down — and having them in it. In its marrow. Broken down. Taken apart. The way Line C broke down bone. The way Kon Reclamation took the dead and ground them and sent what could be used back up the line.

And the god making something out of them.

Marrow. Blood. Gold. The stuff the Wrights had found in the caves of the leg. The stuff that woke Aurel. The stuff the Engine split and the Stewardship drank and the Concord froze and sold. The god’s blood. Made. Out of the dead. Out of the meal.

And giving it.

He felt that most of all. Under everything. Under the hunger, under the meal, under the making. The deepest thing in the dream. The thing the god had been doing, over and over, before it died, the shape under all its shapes:

It gave it back.

To the world. To the dying world it had bent over. The god ate the dead off the world and made them into blood and gave the blood back to the world. Into the soil. Into the seas. Into whatever was left alive, so it could grow. So it could heal. The hunger cleared and the holding kept and between them, the god — the thing between — gave.

Reclamation. All the way round. The whole circle. Not just the bin. The line, running.

“Oh,” said Lamp.

At his left side. Pale. Cold. Drifting in the deep of the dream. And shaking — not with fear. With something else.

“Oh. That’s — that’s what I was holding. All this time. That’s what I held, when its heart stopped. That’s what I wouldn’t let go out.” A sound like glass ringing. Not breaking. Ringing. “Not the hunger. Not the dream of eating. This. The giving. I held this. I kept it. Nine hundred and eighty years. I kept it alive and I never once knew what it was.”

“And I wanted to eat it,” said Snake. At his right side. Very low. “In every one of you. I wanted to finish the meal. I thought the meal was the end.” A long pause. “It’s not. The meal’s the middle. This is the end.” The ember glowed. “This is what the meal was for.”

They hung in the deep of the dream. The three of them. The white, the red, and him.

“Lamp,” said Creed.

“Yes.”

“On the Seventh Stair. You said you were looking for a word. For Ollo, kneeling between you on the dock. You said it was the most — and you couldn’t find it.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know it now?”

The silver was quiet for a long time. Drifting. In the warm deep. In the giving.

“Aurel,” said Lamp. Very softly. “I said she was kind to me. I said she was kinder to me than I knew how to understand.” A pause. “Ollo, kneeling between us. In the fire and the frost. Holding your wrist. Not in his place. In the one place on the dock nobody should have been.” The silver shimmered. “Moraine, telling me that’s scared. Wick, in the way. Mirelle, singing until there was no voice. Marchetti asking you not to let them hang her, and you saying yes, and the serpent making it gentle.” A long pause. “And this. Down here. The god, eating the dead and making them into blood and giving it back to a dying world so it could grow.”

“What’s the word.”

“Kind,” said Lamp.

The silver went still. As if listening to itself say it.

“Kind,” it said again. “That’s the word. It’s not a big word. I thought it would be bigger. I’ve been looking for it for a year and it’s — small. Plain. A Line C word.” A sound like a laugh. Like glass ringing. “It’s what holding is when it opens its hand. That’s all. Holding something so it can grow, and then letting it go when it’s grown. Not holding it forever. Not holding it still. Holding it kind.”

“Kind,” said Creed.

“Kind,” said Lamp. “I found it.”

At his right side, the ember was very quiet.

“Snake,” said Creed.

“Yeah.”

“Have you got one?”

A long silence. The ember drifting. Warm. In the deep.

“I didn’t think I had a word,” said Snake. “I told you. The white thing was looking for one. I didn’t even know there was one to look for.” A pause. “On the dock. When we touched. For one second I wasn’t hungry. You asked what I was, and I didn’t know.”

“Do you know now?”

“Down here,” said Snake slowly. “Under the hunger. The meal. The thing after the hunger, before the making. The horn at hour twenty. The meal-bar.” The ember brightened. Faintly. “The scared one said it. On the terminus. And today. Be hungry and wait. Wait for the horn.” A pause. “And then the horn goes. And you eat. And then —”

“And then?”

“Enough,” said Snake.

It said it like it had never said a word before. Like it was tasting it. Rolling it in its mouth.

“Enough,” it said again. “That’s the word. That’s what hunger is when it stops. Not because something stops it. Because it’s done. Because it’s had enough.” The ember glowed warm. “I never had it. Nine hundred and eighty years. I never once had enough. Nobody ever let me finish.” A long pause. “Down here. In this. Feeling the god give it back.” The ember went very soft. “I think I’ve had enough.”

He hung in the deep of the dream between them.

White. Kind. On his left.

Red. Enough. On his right.

And him. In the middle. The Engine. The thing his mother had made to keep them apart.

“I’ve been holding you apart,” he said. “Since the reliquary. That’s what the pattern does. My mother made me so you wouldn’t tear me apart. So I could carry both hands and not die of it.” He looked from one to the other. “I don’t want to hold you apart anymore.”

“If you let go,” said Lamp, “we’ll touch. Like the dock.”

“Yes.”

“And then we might be one thing,” said Snake. “And not two. Not white thing and snake. Something else.”

“Yes.”

“And we don’t know if we go out,” said Lamp.

“No.”

“Or if you do,” said Snake.

“No.”

They were quiet.

“The god was the thing between,” said Creed. “The tablet said. Neither hand. The thing that told you both when to open and when to stop. When to hold kind and when you’d had enough.” He looked at the grey and the gold around them. The dream. The giving. “I don’t want to be your house. I don’t want to be your throne. I don’t want to be your Engine either. Holding you apart forever.”

“Then what,” said Lamp. Very softly.

“The thing between,” said Creed. “Not holding you apart. Not letting you fight over me. Being the thing you’re both for.”

The deep of the dream was very quiet.

“The one who sits is neither hand,” said Lamp. Slowly. “The one who sits is the thing between.”

“Yes.”

“The one who sits is what the god was,” said Snake. “In the middle. Telling us.”

“Not what the god was,” said Creed. “I’m not a god. I’m a mule from Line C. I count things.” He looked at them. “But I can tell you when. I can tell you, hold that, it’s growing. I can tell you, let it go, it’s grown. I can tell you, eat that, it’s dead. I can tell you, that’s enough.” He paused. “Somebody’s got to. Nobody has for nine hundred and eighty years.”

“And the blood,” said Lamp. “The god’s blood. The whole blood. If you sit and turn the Key.”

“I don’t keep it,” said Creed. “My mother said. I give it back. Through me. Whole. Measured. To everyone.” He looked at the grey and the gold. At the giving. “That’s what the god was doing. Before it died. I’m just — finishing the shift.”

The white and the red drifted at his sides.

“Okay,” said Snake. At last. Low. Warm. “Okay, mule. Let go.”

“Lamp?”

“I’m scared,” said Lamp.

“I know.”

“I’m going to do it anyway,” said Lamp. “Moraine said.” A pause. “Let go.”

He let go.

He didn’t know how to describe it, after. He tried, for Wick, later, on the broken crown in the daylight, and he couldn’t.

He let go of holding them apart. That was all. The thing he’d been doing since the reliquary without knowing he was doing it. The thing his mother had written into his marrow so that two hands of a dead god could live in him without tearing him apart. He’d been doing it every second of every day for eight months. Holding. Keeping apart. An Engine. Spinning.

He stopped.

And the white and the red drifted toward each other. In the deep of the dream. Slowly. The way they’d sunk toward the mark on the dock. The way two people in a dark room move toward each other’s voices.

They touched.

Not like the dock. On the dock it had been one second, over the mark, and then the mark had taken them and they’d come apart again. This was not one second.

This was staying.

White at the center. Red at the edges. Turning. Slowly. Like an eye. Like a drop of water turns as it falls. Not two things touching. One thing. A small round light in the deep of the dream, cold at its heart and warm at its rim, holding and hungering, keeping and clearing, at once. Not fighting. Not pulling. Working.

And it didn’t go out.

He felt it not go out. He felt the Lamp — the kind — not stop being. He felt the Snake — the enough — not stop being. They were there. Both. In the one light. The way the gold and the white were both in the god’s blood before the Engine split them. The way two hands are both in a pair of hands. Still themselves. More themselves. Doing what they were for. Together.

“Oh,” said a voice.

Not the Lamp’s. Not the Snake’s. Both. One voice. Glass and ember. Cold and warm. Ringing and crackling at once.

“Oh,” it said. “This is what we were.”

“Yes,” said Creed.

“Before,” said the voice. “In the god. Before it died. This is what we were. Together.” A pause. The light turned. “We forgot. Nine hundred and eighty years. We forgot what we were.”

“You remember now.”

“We remember now,” said the voice. “Kind. Enough.” The light turned. “And you. In the middle. The one between.”

The light drifted toward him. Slowly. And he felt it come — not into him, the way the Lamp had always been in his blood and the Snake in his bone — to him. Like a hand put into a hand. Like a word you’ve been looking for, finally said.

He didn’t go out either.

He felt himself become — not something else. More. The way the light was more than white and red. Still him. Still Creed. Sump-Nine. Thirty-one C. Nine years on the books. A mule from Line C who counted things. But with the two hands in him not apart, not fighting, not held — with him. Working. And him between them. Telling them when.

And all around them, the dream. The grey and the gold. The giving.

It noticed.

He felt it. The deep of the dream his mother had copied into his marrow. The small one. The copy. It turned. Toward him. Toward the light. The way the god’s blood behind the Sluice had turned toward him, like the sea toward the moon.

And it recognized him.

Not as a Vessel. Not as a house. Not as a pattern-bearer.

As the thing between.

He opened his eyes.

The root chamber. The Lock. The tree hanging over it. The three faces on the trunk, open-eyed, looking down. Aurel at the top of the shaft. The roots in Dorne’s hands and Brann’s cable. Ollo’s hand on his wrist.

And Wick. A hand’s width away. Still singing. A rasp. A croak. Barely there. Around and down. His face wet. His throat bleeding through the bandage. Still singing.

Creed looked at him.

Wick stopped.

He stared at Creed. At his face. At his eyes.

“Your eyes,” whispered Wick.

Creed didn’t know what they looked like. He’d find out. Later. In the daylight. In a shard of the Lumen’s broken glass on the Second, held up by Quill. He’d find out that they weren’t ember anymore. Not the whites gone, the whole eye a coal. They were his eyes. The color they’d been before the reliquary, the dark brown of a Belly-born. With a ring, now, around each iris. Thin. Very thin. White on the inside edge, and red on the outside.

Like the light in the deep. Like an eye.

“Hey,” said Creed.

His voice was his.

“Hey,” said Wick. His face doing the thing. “You’re — are you —”

“I’m here.”

“The Lamp. The Snake. Are they —”

“Here.” He felt them. Not in his blood. Not in his bone. With him. Everywhere. In the one light. Kind. Enough. Quiet. Working. “They’re fine.”

He looked at his seams.

They were closing. The cracks along his old scars, the ones that had opened white on one edge and red on the other. Closing. Slowly. Like a wound healing in a day what should take a year. And where they closed, they didn’t leave red scars. Or gold. Or white. They left — lines. Fine. Faint. Silver-white at the center. Red at the edges. Like the script on his arm.

He looked at his left arm.

The black was still there. The script was still there. But it wasn’t glowing red now. It was glowing both. Every line. White at the center of each curl and hook and branch. Red at its edges. Like the ring in his eyes. Like the light.

He took his arm out of Ollo’s grip. Gently.

Ollo let go.

Ollo looked at him. Flat. Waiting.

“Horn’s gone,” said Creed.

Ollo considered this.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Yeah.”

Ollo nodded slowly. He sat back on his heels. He flexed his stiff burned fingers.

“About time,” said Ollo.

Creed stood up.

He stood in the root chamber at the base of the god’s mind, between the Lock and the seat, under the tree, with the three faces of the Vessels before him looking down and Aurel at the top of the shaft looking down and the roots straining in Dorne’s hands and Brann’s cable. And the god’s dream going out in the walls. And the gold going grey.

And he turned to the seat.

The hum came up through the floor.

He didn’t flinch from it this time. Neither did anything in him.

“Corvane,” he said. Not loud. He didn’t need to be loud. “I’m going to sit down now.”

The tree went very still.

“I’m not going to ask you,” said Creed. “You’ve had nine hundred and eighty years. You know what you think.” He looked up the shaft. At Aurel. “I’m going to ask her.”

He walked to the seat.

ROOT CHAMBER
THE STILL: —
THE BURN: —
VESSEL: RECONFIGURED
DESIGNATION: UNRESOLVED
NOTED