He stood on the iron landing at the top of the Collar’s well, where the Neck Gate had been, and looked down at them.
Hundreds. On the balconies of the well, going down and down, tier on tier, the way they’d stood when he put his hand on the plug of bone and they hummed the Long Way Down and the bone flowed back. On the stairs. On the lower landings. And beyond the well — he could feel them through the bone — out on the clavicles. On the great pale collarbones of the god. Thousands. More every day, Tamsin said. Coming up from the First and the Second and the Mid Ribs to stand on the clavicles and look at the line of yellow at the top of the world.
They were quiet.
Not the Kept’s quiet. Not the quiet of people who don’t look up. The quiet of a line at hour twenty when the horn has gone and nobody’s moved yet.
Waiting.
“They want to know what happened,” said Tamsin. Beside him. In her carried chair. Her splinted leg out in front of her.
He looked at them.
He’d thought about this. On the stair. Four hundred and twelve steps from the Seventh. He’d thought about what he’d say. He’d thought about the Engine, and the white, and the Stewardship, and the tree, and the hands, and Aurel, and Cor, and the seat, and the Key, and the Lock, and the blood going through him.
He didn’t know how to say any of it.
“Lamp,” he said. Inside. “Snake.”
“They felt it,” said the voice. Glass and ember. “On the beat. All of them. They don’t need you to tell them what happened.” A pause. “They need you to tell them it’s true.”
He looked down the well.
“You felt it,” he said.
Not loud. The well carried. The bone carried. It always had.
“On the beat. All of you. The god’s heart. The dream. The world outside, green. The sky. The song.” He looked at them. “You felt it. I know you did. I felt you feel it.”
Silence. Hundreds of faces. Looking up.
“It was real,” said Creed. “All of it. It’s not a story. It’s not a Lumen sermon. It’s not a dream you had in your drawer. It happened.” He paused. “The god was dying. It had been dying for nine hundred and eighty years. Something held it asleep and something drank it and it couldn’t finish. And we let it finish.”
He didn’t know what else to say.
“It’s dead now,” he said. “Properly. It gave you the last of its blood and it saw the sky and it sang, and then it lay down.” He looked at them. “You’re in its bones. You always were. But it’s not keeping you anymore. Nobody’s keeping you. Nobody’s going to ring a Bell over you, or put a tab in your hand, or put a light on your neck and take you up.”
He looked down at his own hands. The black one. The spurred one.
“I don’t know what happens now,” he said. “I’m a mule from Line C. I counted things. I don’t know what you do when nobody’s keeping you.” He looked up. “I think you find out.”
Nobody said anything.
Then, somewhere down the well, on a balcony on the fifth tier, somebody started to hum.
He knew the tune.
Not Liss’s song. Not around and down.
Lift your eyes, lift your hands.
The god’s song. The Long Way Down. The way they’d heard it on the beat. In their bones.
And the well took it up. The way it had at the Neck Gate. Tier by tier. Balcony by balcony. Down and down. Hundreds of voices. And out — he felt it go out — through the Collar’s walls onto the clavicles, where thousands stood looking at the line of yellow, and the clavicles took it up too.
The long way down is the long way home.
He stood on the iron landing and listened to them sing it.
Tamsin, in her chair beside him, wasn’t singing. She was crying. Silently. With her tinny precise voice shut tight behind her teeth and the comm-set in her lap and tears running down into her collar.
“Sorry,” she said. When it was done. “Sorry. It’s — I’ve been on the net for twenty-five days. I heard all of it. Every name. Every count.” She wiped her face with the back of her wrist. “I didn’t think I’d get to hear it end.”
Cassia Lund was on the top tier.
In the high round room where the Concord had laid a table for seven. The table was still there. The seven chairs. Six of them pushed back from it, empty, the way they’d been when the light came for the Seniors one a night. The seventh — Lund’s — pulled out. Facing the window.
She was sitting in it.
She’d been a prisoner. Tamsin had told him. Locked in a room on the third tier when the army went up the stair. And then, on the fourth day, she’d asked to see Tamsin. She says she wants to help with the relay. And Tamsin had let her. And Lund had sat at the comm-board in the relay room for twenty days, patching lines, finding frequencies, keeping the song going on every speaker in the Higher Ribs. She knew the Concord’s net better than anyone alive.
She didn’t get up when he came in.
She sat in her chair facing the window and looked at him. At his eyes. His arm. She was forty. Sharp-faced. The fine blue Catalyst vines up both her arms under the skin — the ones she’d had done to sit on the Concord, the ones she’d been so proud of — were glowing. Not blue. Clear and gold and red and white. Faint. Under her skin.
“It came up through the floor,” said Cassia Lund. “On the beat. Through the chair. Into my channels. The ones I paid for.” She looked down at her arms. “They were dead. Since the drums stopped. I thought they’d be dead forever.” A pause. “They’re not channel-grade. They’re not anything I paid for. They’re mine.”
“Yes.”
“I spent the beat looking at them,” said Lund. “Everybody else was looking up. At the line. At the sky. I heard them on the net. Everybody. Looking up.” Her sharp face did something. “I was looking at my own arms. Down. The whole time.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I never looked up,” said Cassia Lund. “Not once. Not in forty years. The Verbous don’t. We look at our channels. Our gold. Our seats.” She looked at the window. At the clavicles beyond it, where thousands stood. “I looked down at my arms while the god woke up and sang and died. That’s who I am.”
“You helped with the relay.”
“I helped with the relay,” said Lund. “Twenty days. Because I knew the net. Because I wanted to be useful. Because I was afraid that if I wasn’t useful, they’d put me back in the room.” She looked at him. “Not because I’m good.”
“Does it matter why?”
She looked at him for a long time.
“I don’t know,” said Cassia Lund. “I don’t know anything. I was a Senior of the Concord. I sat at this table. I voted for the Bell schedules. I signed Ascension lists. I sent Gilt down the Eighth to find you.” She looked at the table. At the six empty chairs. “And I hid in a box of bone while the light took the others by name. And I’m the only one left.” A pause. “What happens to me?”
He thought about it.
He thought about Varro, carrying Rell’s feet. About Quill, standing beside a chair in a vault of clocks. About Ferrin, logging people for seven years, and then sending a packet down to the Drop. About Taavi.
“Ask them,” he said.
Lund looked at him.
“Not me,” said Creed. “I’m not — I don’t decide things. I’m not a Senior. There aren’t any Seniors.” He tipped his head at the window. At the clavicles. “Ask them. The Collar. Tamsin. Sabine. The people on the bone.” He paused. “Tell them what you told me. That you looked down at your arms the whole time. And then ask what they want you to do.”
“They’ll want me dead.”
“Maybe. Some of them.” He looked at her glowing arms. “Or they’ll want you on the relay. You know the net better than anyone alive. Tamsin said.” He paused. “Ask.”
Cassia Lund sat in her chair at the table for seven and looked at him for a long time.
Then she looked down at her arms. At the faint glow under the skin. Clear and gold and red and white.
Then — slowly, the way the Kept had lifted their heads when a little brass bell ended — she looked up.
Out the window. At the line of yellow at the top of the world.
She looked at it for a long time.
“It’s very bright,” she said.
The wall that faced up was on the top tier, on the inner side, looking into the well.
He’d last seen it from the iron stairs going up to the Neck Gate. Full. Floor to ceiling, end to end, thirty meters of names. The forty from the shaft. The eleven from the west clavicle. The seven from the terminus on the Eighth. The dead from the Shelf. The two hundred the light had taken from the Ninth and the Sixth and the Fifth. Oriel Haske. Garrow Fisk. Maren Holt and Jory Tamm. Ilsa Marchetti, who stopped winding and fought all the way up.
And at the very bottom of the right end, in the last clear space, cut by a one-armed man with Creed holding the chisel, twelve blows:
DASK FERRIN. LINE C. HE LOGGED THEM.
He stood in front of it.
Ollo stood beside him. Wick behind. Sabine at the end of the wall, with her blasting bar, looking at the names.
The wall was full. There was no space under Ferrin’s line. It ran right down to where the wall met the floor.
Put me on again. Under it. Different line.
He looked at the wall for a long time.
Then he looked at the floor.
The floor of the top tier was stone. Grey. Old. Concord-laid, over the Wright bone of the Collar’s crown. Flagged. Each flag the size of a drawer-door. Running along the foot of the wall that faced up, the whole thirty meters.
He knelt.
He set the spurs of his right fist against the flagstone directly under Ferrin’s name. At the foot of the wall. Where the wall met the floor. So that the new line would sit right below the old one, and you’d read them together, one and then the other, the way you read a riser on the stair.
He carved.
HE HELD THE BRAKE. IT DIDN’T JUMP.
He sat back on his heels.
Ollo looked at it.
“Good,” said Ollo.
That was all.
Tamsin had the count.
She’d had it since the Engine. Ossian’s count, from the Register, and her own, from the net. Every station. Every relay. Every rib. Every name anybody had reported, of anybody who’d died in the waking. Old hearts. Wheel-Kept. Deep Gardens. Long Belly lungs. The ones who’d leaned on the white for seventy years and couldn’t walk without it.
She gave it to him on a sheaf of Concord paper, in her small precise hand. Pages and pages.
“Six thousand, two hundred and twelve,” said Tamsin. “As of last night. From the first valve to now.” She looked at the papers in his hands. “It’s slowing. Ossian says. Two yesterday. None the day before. The ones who were going to go — they’ve mostly gone.” A pause. “He estimated eleven to fourteen. The Archon. He said eleven to fourteen thousand.”
“Six thousand two hundred and twelve,” said Creed.
“It’s less,” said Tamsin. Quietly. “It’s a lot less.”
“It’s six thousand two hundred and twelve,” said Creed.
Tamsin looked at him. Then nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
He held the papers.
I’m going to carve them, Ferrin had said. Lying on his back under drum sixty-one with his arm shaking. All of them. When we go down. On the wall at the Collar. Same as the list. I’ll put my name beside every one. I turned the valves.
We turned the valves.
I turned them. With my hand. My name goes beside.
Ferrin wasn’t going to carve them.
He looked at the wall. Full. He looked at the floor. Thirty meters of grey flagstones running along the foot of it. And past the end of the wall, along the top tier of the Collar, around the curve of the well — more flagstones. And more. All the way around.
“Creed,” said Sabine. From the end of the wall. “That’s six thousand names.”
“I know.”
“That’ll take you a year.”
“Probably.”
“You’ve got the Second to go to. And the Ribs. And the Belly. And whatever’s — whatever’s next.” Her flat grey eyes held his. “You can’t stay here a year carving.”
“I know.”
He looked at the papers. At Tamsin’s small precise hand. Six thousand two hundred and twelve.
He looked at his own hand. The spurred one. The four short bone points that could cut stone like soft wood.
He knelt.
He set the spurs against the flagstone beside Ferrin’s second line. And carved the first name on Tamsin’s list.
HOLLAND BRAE. SUMP-SIX. 71 YEARS. DAY 3 OF THE VALVES.
And beside it, smaller:
TURNED BY D. FERRIN. AND CREED.
He sat back.
He looked at it.
Then he moved his fist a hand’s width to the right, and started the second.
He’d carved forty when he felt someone kneel beside him.
He looked up. A woman. From the Collar. One of the Discarded who’d stayed with Tamsin. Old. Thin. Grey-haired, loose. Her hands glowing faintly gold.
She had a chisel. A cold chisel, iron, from the Collar’s stores. And a mallet.
She looked at Tamsin’s list, in his lap. At the next name.
“I’ll do that one,” she said.
He looked at her.
“I can read,” she said. “Learned in the caverns. Last year. The Cantor taught us, off the Wall.” She looked at the name. “I knew her. Pell Mora. Sump-Twelve. She had the drawer next to mine for eleven years.” Her glowing hands tightened on the chisel. “I’d like to do hers.”
He gave her the list. Pointed to the place.
She set the chisel against the flagstone. And struck it. And struck it again. Slowly. Badly. The letters coming out crooked. Square Line C capitals, as near as she could make them.
PELL MORA. SUMP-TWELVE. 64 YEARS.
And then, smaller, beside it, without being told:
TURNED BY D. FERRIN. AND CREED. CARVED BY ESSA LANE, HER NEIGHBOR.
He looked at it for a long time.
Then someone else knelt.
A man. A Gilt. From the Second’s square, one of the four hundred, with his gold plate off and his old dead channels glowing in his arms. With a Lancer’s knife. He took the list. Found a name. Corran Vey. Rib Two. 80 years. His grandfather’s brother, he said. He’d never met him. He carved it.
Then a Kept. From the Gardens of the Fifth, come down the stair. With nothing. With a sharp stone she’d picked up on the landing. She found the forty from the Sixth on Tamsin’s list — the ones who didn’t wake, in time — and carved the first one, slowly, with the stone, in a script that was barely letters at all.
Then two Lancers. Ninth Rib blue. Then a cavern woman. Then a Mid from the Ninth with a cable-cutter. Then a Shelf mechanic, twenty or so, with a wrench and a bent nail. Carving a name with the nail, holding it against the stone and hitting it with the wrench. Badly. Steadily.
He watched them come.
All along the foot of the wall that faced up. Kneeling on the flagstones. With chisels and knives and stones and nails. Taking a page of Tamsin’s list, or a name off it, or asking somebody who had a page which one’s next. Carving. Badly. Crooked. In square capitals and in barely-letters and in something in between. Each one, when they finished, carving beside it, without being told: TURNED BY D. FERRIN. AND CREED. And then, sometimes, their own name. CARVED BY.
He sat back on his heels with his spurs against the stone and watched the Collar carve six thousand names.
“Huh,” said Ollo. Beside him. Watching too.
“Yeah.”
“Wouldn’t take a year,” said Ollo. “Not like this.”
“No.”
Ollo was quiet for a while.
“Ferrin’d like it,” he said. “All those names. His beside every one.” A pause. “He’d complain about the letters. Crooked. He’d say, that’s not how you cut an R.”
“He would.”
“He’d like it anyway,” said Ollo.
Wick didn’t carve.
He sat on the iron landing at the top of the well, where the Neck Gate had been, with his back against the bone of the neck and his comm-set in his lap and his knees drawn up. Looking at the people carving. At the line of yellow far above, falling down the inside of the neck.
He’d stopped reading names. There was nobody left to read them to. Ossian had all four thousand one hundred and nine. Tamsin had the six thousand. He’d read the last one into the net on the floor of the deepest fold, in the ash, Corvane Ash, Engineer, Second Class, and then he’d stopped, and he hadn’t said much since.
Creed came and sat down beside him. Half a meter away.
They didn’t say anything for a while.
“You’re not carving,” said Creed.
“I can’t read the list,” said Wick. “Tamsin’s handwriting’s too small.” A pause. “That’s not true. I can read it.” Another pause. “I just don’t want to. Not yet.”
“Okay.”
“I read four thousand names,” said Wick. His rasp of a voice — it was coming back, slowly, the root-wound healing under the bandage, but it was still a rasp. “Into the net. In the root chamber. While they lay down.” He looked at his hands. “Hesper. Corra. Asa. Ilse. Every one. I said every one.” He swallowed. “I keep hearing them. When I close my eyes. Like the count on Line C. Like the press. Hesper. Corra. Asa.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“I counted them,” said Creed. “Every one. While they touched me.” He looked at his black arm. “I can’t stop either.”
Wick nodded slowly.
“Somebody should,” he said. “Hear them. I guess.” He turned the dial on the comm-set. Click. Click. “It’s just a lot.”
“It’s a lot.”
They sat.
“Can I tell you something,” said Wick.
“Yeah.”
“On the dock,” said Wick. “On the Eighth. When I saw them. The Lamp and the Snake. Fighting over you.” He didn’t look at Creed. He looked at the line of yellow. “I thought I’d never tell anybody. Ever. I thought — I thought if I said it out loud it’d make it real and I didn’t want it to be real. A snake made of fire living in my friend. A ball of light so scared it screamed.” He laughed. Cracked. “And then I told you on the Seventh Stair. And then it was real. And then it got so much realer.”
“Yeah.”
“And now it’s — what is it now? In you? The Lamp and the Snake?” Wick looked at him at last. At his eyes. Brown, ringed white and red. “Ollo says they’re together. Mirelle wrote it. One thing. Kind and enough.”
“One thing,” said Creed. “White in the middle. Red at the edges. Like the eye on the dock. When they touched.”
“The eye,” said Wick. “I saw that. For a second. I told you. The most —” He stopped. “I never said what. I said it was the most something. I never said what.”
“Lamp didn’t have a word either. For a long time.”
“What word did it find?”
“Kind.”
Wick looked at him.
Then he looked away. Out at the people carving along the foot of the wall that faced up. Kneeling on the flagstones with their chisels and nails and stones. Badly. Crooked. TURNED BY D. FERRIN. AND CREED. CARVED BY.
“Yeah,” said Wick. Very quietly. “Yeah. That’s it. That’s the word.”
He sat with that for a long time.
“And the Snake?”
“Enough.”
Wick laughed. Properly. For the first time since the deepest fold. A rasp. A croak. A laugh.
“Of course it’s enough,” he said. “Of course. The hungry one. Of course its word’s enough.” He wiped his eyes. “That’s — that’s so stupid. That’s so Line C.”
“It got it from you. Hour sixteen. The meal-bar at twenty. Be hungry and wait.”
Wick stopped laughing.
He looked at Creed.
“It got it from me?”
“You told it how to stop. In the root chamber. Kneeling in front of me. It listened.”
Wick stared at him.
Then he looked down at his hands. At the comm-set in his lap. At the bandage on his throat, where eight old burns and a root-wound were healing, slowly, under a strip of Mirelle’s robe.
“I didn’t do anything,” he said. “I was just — I was scared and I said what I knew. That’s all.”
“That’s all anybody did,” said Creed.
Wick sat on the iron landing for a long time and didn’t say anything.
Then he picked up the comm-set. And clicked it. And rasped into it, quietly:
“Collar to Clock Hall. Collar to Clock Hall. Quill. This is Wick Moraine.” A pause. “How many?”
Static.
Then, faint, a calm, cold, tired voice:
“Clock Hall. Four.”
Wick looked at Creed.
“Four,” he said.
“We should go,” said Creed.
THE COLLAR
WALL THAT FACES UP: EXTENDED (FLOOR)
NAMES OF THE WAKING: 6,212
CARVERS: UNCOUNTED
CLOCK HALL: 4
—