Chapter 173: The Watch

They followed the people of Bide across the top of the column.

Feet scuffed in the dust. The beads on the coral trees gave off their faint light overhead, and under them the whole town walked in a loose crowd. A girl carried a smaller boy on her hip. An old man leaned on a woman’s arm.

On the far side, the ground ended at the head of a short stair.

A dented iron pot hung there by a chain from the lowest branch of a coral tree. Somebody had punched a hole in its bottom for the chain. A spoon on a string dangled beside it.

The stair led down to a long shelf cut into the side of the column. The shelf ran away around the curve of the stone in both directions, wide enough for three people to walk abreast.

Its outer edge was a lip of worn rock. Beyond the lip, the column fell sheer.

The Silver was coming up that sheer face.

It climbed the dark stone as soundlessly as frost spreading on glass. It was already close below the lip.

The townsfolk went down onto the shelf and sat along the edge in one long row. They kept their knees drawn up and their feet flat on the stone, and they waited.

Saba stopped the family at the foot of the stair with her stick.

"Here," she said. "Against the stone. Not one step nearer the edge."

They sat with their backs to the column wall, a few paces behind the long row. Logan had Alice on one side and his mother on the other.

Rishin sat at the end with Vina against his arm. Garen and Isolde sat beside Daniel, and nobody had to tell any of them to be quiet.

Ansel had not stopped with them. He went on to the lip and nodded to people as he passed. He sat down at the end of the row, cross-legged, with his feet tucked under him on the stone.

"He sits with them every time," Saba said. She was still standing by the bottom step. "He has nothing to watch. He says somebody ought to keep them company."

Vina waved to him. Ansel saw it, and his face went blank with surprise. Then he lifted his hand and waved back.

The Silver rose another hand’s width, until it lay a shin’s length below the lip.

It did not slow. It simply stopped, as a held note stops, and the bright surface lay flat and still from the column to the end of sight.

"The turn," Saba said.

"At the top of the flood, the Silver stands still, and so does everything in it. It does not last. It is long enough to sit and look, and to say what needs saying. Not much longer."

"The great ones do not swim while it lasts," she added. "Bide watches then, because then it is safe to."

Nobody rang the bell again, and nobody gave a signal. The whole row swung their legs out over the edge together and let their feet down into the white.

The candles came up.

They did not come up in rings. Logan saw that first, and his throat tightened. All along the lip, small flames woke over more than sixty heads.

Because every face there was above the surface, the candles burned in clear air, as plainly as lamps over a doorway.

A great many of the townsfolk had one. Some had two. Here and there, somebody had three, and they looked almost rich.

The woman who had been carving a comb sat near the middle of the row. One flame stood over her grey head. It leaned out from the column and down, very steeply.

She did not look at it. She looked at the place where it pointed, down through the bright surface, and her lips moved as though she were talking to somebody in the next room.

Most of the flames leaned down toward the far side of the bowl, where the Sink would be. A few leaned up and back over the town, toward the cliff and the Narrows and the layer above it.

Vina had seen that too.

"Those ones are pointing up," she whispered to Rishin. "Like my Teska one."

"Somebody who stayed behind on the first layer," Rishin said, just as softly. "Or on the rim."

"And the ones pointing down?"

Rishin did not answer at once.

"People who went on," he said.

Saba had come to sit down against the column wall at the far end from Rishin. She lowered herself onto the stone with a grunt and laid her stick across her knees.

She did not go to the edge. Helen noticed, and asked.

"I watch at the next flood," Saba said. "Somebody has to watch the watchers."

"How many do you have?"

"Three." Saba nodded at the Silver, as if she could see them already. "My two boys went on down. My sister stayed on the rim, because she was too frightened of the Ribs, and I do not blame her for it."

"Your boys," Helen said carefully. "Are they all right?"

"They have not moved for many ebbs." Saba’s voice did not change.

"Down here, that can mean they have found somewhere to rest. It can mean the other thing. A candle that has stopped looks the same either way, until it has been still for longer than anybody rests."

Helen took her hand. Saba looked down at it, surprised, and did not take it back.

"Only three," Helen said. "After living among all these people."

"Nobody in Bide lets anybody in." Saba said it plainly, as she said everything.

"Every candle you carry is one more thing to sit here and watch. Ansel has been the most careful of all of us. He has to be. One candle over his head, and he could never hunt at the flood again."

Logan was looking along the wall to where Rishin sat.

The old man’s face was turned toward the Silver. It showed nothing at all.

Rishin’s two flat flames had pointed straight down at Tidemark. They had pointed the same way in the stone house, and again at the bottom of this column.

’They have not moved either,’ Logan thought. ’Not once, since he first saw them.’

He shut that thought away before it could finish.

It happened halfway along the row.

A young man was sitting there, thin, with one leg held out stiffly over the edge. It was bound straight with splints of pike bone. Two flames stood over his head. They leaned down together toward the Sink.

As Logan watched, both of them went out.

There was no flicker. One instant they were there, two points of gold side by side. The next, the air over the young man’s head was empty.

He made a sound.

It was not loud. It was the noise a man makes when he has been hit in the chest and has not yet fallen. The people on either side of him turned. Then the whole row turned toward him.

The young man was staring at the empty air. He put up one hand toward it, the way Alice had put her hand into the cloud of little fish.

Saba was already on her feet.

"Tobin," she called along the shelf. Her voice cracked across the stillness. "Both?"

Tobin’s mouth opened and shut. He nodded, hard.

"Together?"

"Together," Tobin said. "Pointing down. They went down."

Saba went back up the stair, took the spoon on its string, and struck the pot twice.

The flat, tinny note rang out over the Silver. Up and down the shelf, the townsfolk pulled their feet out of the white and scrambled up.

Some of them were cheering. Some of them were crying. A great many were doing both, and Logan could not tell which was which.

The woman with the comb reached Tobin first and put both hands on his shoulders. Another person took her place, and then another.

One by one, the whole row came past him. They touched him on the shoulder or the head or the back, and went back to their places on the lip.

"His mother and his sister," Saba said when she came down again. She was wiping her good eye with her sleeve.

"His leg went at the lip of the Sink, and they could not carry him through. They went on to the end without him. He has five days left on his count. They cut it as fine as Ansel’s did."

"And they made it," said Alice.

"They made it." Saba looked along the row. "Two more. That is the first going out since Ansel’s."

"People do reach the end," Helen said. She sounded as though she had not quite let herself believe it until now.

"Yes," said Rishin. "They do."

Ansel had gone to Tobin last.

He did not touch his shoulder. He sat down beside him on the lip, with his legs folded under him, and he put an arm around him and held on while Tobin shook.

"Now you can walk at the flood," Ansel said. Logan could only just hear him. "The hunters will never see you again."

"I would rather have the candles," said Tobin.

"So would I," said Ansel.

While the row was still settling, Garen leaned toward the old woman.

"Saba," he said, keeping his voice down. "Ansel told us the wardens of the Sink rise out of the candles. What do the ones who cross it do?"

Saba studied him with her one good eye.

"The Sink weighs what comes to its lip," she said. "All of it at once, if it comes at once."

"And if it does not come at once?"

"Then it weighs you apart." She tipped her head toward the edge. "Come an ebb apart, and the wardens rise for the first of you, and then again for the next. Small parties meet small wardens."

Isolde drew the conclusion before anyone else could.

"So we split," she said.

"Every family that has crossed from Bide has crossed in pieces." Saba lifted her stick toward the small lights over the row. "The ones who would not split up are sitting on this shelf."

"And the ones who did?"

"A good many of them are on this shelf too," said Saba. "Looking at the pieces."

Isolde’s hand found her husband’s and closed on it.

Logan looked along the line of his family against the wall. His mother and father sat side by side. Vina was pressed against the old man’s arm. He found that he had started counting again.

’Seven and seven and eight and nine,’ he thought. ’Split us up any way you like. It is still us that has to walk into it.’

Garen had turned to Rishin.

"Senior. You crossed it."

"I did."

"How?"

Rishin looked out over the still Silver before he answered.

"I will tell you," he said. "Not on this shelf."

The Silver began to move.

Logan saw it at the lip. The flat surface took on a faint stir along the stone, and the stillness was over. The flood had turned.

All along the row, people drew their legs up out of the Silver and stood. Their candles went out as their feet came clear.

They came back past the family without looking at it, and they climbed the stair and went home through the trees in ones and twos.

Tobin went up between two men who had his arms over their shoulders. His candles did not come back.

Ansel was the last to rise.

He had laid his staff along the lip beside him. When he got to his feet, his heel caught it, and it rolled off the edge.

He dropped to his knees and snatched after it without thinking. His arm plunged into the Silver almost to the shoulder, and he caught the staff by its iron hook.

A single flame lit over his head.

It was small and pale gold, like every other candle on that shelf. It stood a hand’s width above his ragged hair. It did not lean down toward the Sink, and it did not lean back toward the Narrows.

It leaned in from the edge, toward the column wall, where a girl sat beside an old man.

Every person still on the shelf stopped.

Ansel had not seen it. He saw their faces first, and then he tilted his head back and looked up.

A sound came out of him that was half a laugh and half a cough. Then his mouth closed hard. He knelt there at the edge and did not move his arm.

Vina was on her feet.

"That one is mine," she said. "Mister Ansel. That one is pointing at me."

Saba had gone white around the lips.

"Ansel," she said. "Take your arm out of that. Now."

He drew it out with the staff in his hand, and the flame over his head went out.

He walked back along the shelf to where Vina stood. He looked down at her the way he had looked at the walls of Xairon’s house, when he did not believe in walls below the flood.

"One," he said. His voice was not steady. "I had forgotten what one feels like."

Rishin was watching him over the girl’s head. The old man did not look surprised.

"It will cost you," said Rishin. "You know what it costs."

"I know what it costs," said Ansel. "Every fish on this layer can see me now."

He looked at the Silver, and then back at Vina.

"It is very good to be seen," he said.