Chapter 175: Pieces

"No," said Alice.

She said it before Logan had finished turning his head. Her hand had come out of his, and she was sitting up very straight on the cold floor.

"Hear him out," Rishin said.

"I heard him. He said alone." Alice did not take her eyes off Logan.

"Nobody goes anywhere alone in this place. Not to a circle, not to a door, and not over the edge of a hole with seven of our faces coming up out of it at him."

"Count it with me," Logan said.

"I do not want to count it."

"Count it anyway." He kept his voice level, because hers was not. "Four of us can lift a weapon against a face and keep on lifting it. You and me, and your mother and father."

Garen grunted. Nobody argued with the number.

"My mother and father are Level 8," Logan went on. "They could not kill a pike unless a unit held it for them. Vina is a child. Senior has done this before, but he did it at a level he gave away in our garden."

"So there are four pieces," he said. "One of us goes in each of them, to cut for the ones who cannot. That leaves a piece with nobody in it to look after but itself."

"Then let it be mine," said Alice.

"And who goes over the lip with my mother?"

Alice opened her mouth, and then she shut it.

’He has already done the sums,’ she thought. ’He did them while Rishin was still talking, and he has been waiting for me to catch up.’

She hated him a little for it. She looked at Helen, who was sitting with her hands knotted together, and the feeling went out of her as fast as it had come.

"I could manage one ebb by myself," Helen said. Her voice shook only slightly.

"No," said Rishin. "Not on that lip, you could not."

Helen held his gaze. Then her shoulders came down.

"No," she agreed. "I do not suppose I could."

Isolde had been watching Logan with her head tilted, the way she watched a fight before she stepped into it.

"There is a better way to do your sum," she said. "I am the strongest of us, and I carry seven. If somebody is to go over first and alone, it ought to be me."

Garen’s head turned sharply toward her.

"You will be needed on the lip with somebody who cannot lift a blade," Rishin said, before Garen could speak. "The first one down needs a steady hand on the lip and patience at the bottom. It is the worst place, and the easiest."

"Why the worst?" asked Daniel.

"Because he waits the longest." The old man looked at Logan. "Three ebbs at the bottom, boy. Watching your candles and not knowing which of them will come down to you."

"I would rather wait," Logan said, "than be waited for."

Rishin set the pieces out after that. He did not draw anything this time. He simply named them, one after another, and nobody stopped him.

"Logan goes first. Then Alice, with Helen. Then Isolde, with Daniel." He laid his hand on the sword across his knees.

"Garen and I go last, with the girl. Somebody who knows that lip has to send each of you over it at the start of the right ebb."

Helen’s head came up.

"Vina comes with me."

"She comes with me," said Rishin.

"She is my daughter."

"And she is the only one of us who cannot be called." Rishin’s hand stayed on the sword. "Every piece has somebody in it who can be. Mine has the two most likely to answer."

"Two?"

"Garen, who will have his wife and his daughter below him by then." The old man paused. "And me."

Garen frowned. He started to argue, and he stopped.

"The last time I stood on that lip, the two of them were still up on the bowl behind me," Rishin said. "They were waiting for their turn to come over. This time they are somewhere below it."

He looked down at Stay.

"When that thing calls me in their voices, I do not know that I will stand still."

Vina had been listening to all of it from against his side. She sat up.

"I will hold you," she said. "I held Teska, and she was pulling much harder than you."

"I know you did."

"She did not even know I was there. I held on anyway."

"That is exactly what I need." Rishin put his hand on top of her head. "Somebody who does not let go, even when the one she is holding has forgotten she is there."

Helen got up off the floor.

She crossed the little room and knelt down in front of her daughter on the stone. She took Vina’s face in both hands, very gently, and she looked at her for as long as it took Logan to look away.

"You hold on to him," Helen said. "Whatever he says. Whatever anybody says."

"I will, Mom."

"And when you reach the bottom, you find your brother."

"I know."

Helen kissed her forehead. Then she looked up at the old man over Vina’s head, and Logan could not see her face.

"Bring her down to him," she said.

"Yes," said Rishin.

Garen broke the quiet that followed.

"So," he said. "I am to cross a hole in the ground without my wife. I am to do it holding the hand of an old man who has just told me he might walk into it."

"You will be holding the hand of a girl who will not let him," said Isolde.

"That is a comfort."

"It was meant to be one."

Garen turned to Rishin. "That is twenty-five faces on one thing, Senior."

"Then you and I will be busy," said Rishin. "She will not be cutting. She will be holding."

Garen looked back at his wife across the beads. Logan had never seen the Tier-9 so plainly at a loss.

"I have never once gone through a door ahead of you," Garen said. "In all our years. Not once."

"Then you will not start now." Isolde reached over and straightened his collar, where Draventh’s blue mark sat. "I am going before you. I will be standing at the bottom when you come down, and I will want to know what kept you."

Daniel had been quiet through all of it. Now he looked at Isolde with his big hands hanging between his knees.

"I will try not to slow you down," he said.

"You will not slow me down, Daniel. You will stand still and let it come to you. You are better at that than anyone I know."

Daniel thought about it. Then he nodded, as though he had been handed a job he understood.

Logan spoke into his collar.

"All of you on the stair. Listen."

He told them. He kept it short, because Rishin was watching him and he had been warned about chatter.

Most of the units would go where their owners went. Halden would walk with Logan, with Tinkerbell on his shoulder, and Billy and Terry would follow her spark. Pebble would go down with them and set a cairn at the bottom of the Sink.

"Then every piece that comes after me knows the way," Logan said. "Pebble, every one of them."

"Every one of them, boss," said the sigil.

The builders were the exception, and they would stay with the last piece. Xairon and Vulkarn would raise a house at every flood until the last of the family had gone over, with Draventh on the seams and Skyveil at the door.

The Seed Courier would move its root into every one of those houses.

Sonic and Whistle would keep watch from the air, and Nyriel would watch from the ground.

There was a short pause on the other end of the sigil.

"Boss," said Billy. "I go first?"

"You go first."

"I always go first." Billy sounded deeply satisfied. "Into the hole that nobody comes back out of. Good. That is where I like to be."

"Billy," said Rishin. "The thing in that hole cannot touch you. Nor you it. You will be a wheel standing in a doorway."

The sigil was silent while Billy thought about this.

"I do not like that as much," he admitted.

Ansel came back near the top of the flood, as he had promised. By then the Silver had climbed most of the way up the column again.

He stooped through the low doorway with his staff in his hand. His eyes found Vina before they found anything else, and he smiled before he could stop himself.

"I told you I would come," he said.

"You did!" Vina scrambled up. "Did Saba make the list?"

"Saba made the list. It is three names long, and mine is not on it." He did not sound sorry. He turned to Logan. "And she has said that I may walk you to the lip."

"To the lip," Logan repeated.

"To the lip. Not onto it. I will stop where my one candle cannot be counted with yours." Ansel leaned on his staff.

"I know the line from here to the Sink better than any man on this stone. With one candle over my head, I would rather walk it inside your ring than alone."

Vina was looking up at him.

"Will you come down after us?" she asked. "When we are at the bottom?"

Ansel turned the hooked staff once in his hands before he answered.

"My year is spent, little one," he said at last. "There is no door at the bottom of the Abyss for me anymore. There is only more of the Abyss."

"You could still come."

"I could." The corners of his pale eyes creased. "Ask me again at the lip."

Somewhere among the coral trees, the pot began to ring.

Its flat, tinny note went across the top of the column, and outside the doorway the people of Bide began to move toward the far side of the stone. Ansel turned his head toward the sound.

"Saba is watching at this flood," Logan said. "She told us."

"I know. I am going to sit on the lip beside her."

"I thought you had nothing to watch," said Alice.

Ansel looked at Vina. Then he looked down at the floor between his boots, as if he could see straight through it to the Silver.

"I do now," he said, and he went out.

They did not go to the Watch. They lay down in the empty house instead, with the beads glowing beside the cold hearth, and they listened to the footsteps of Bide going away under the trees.

Vina fell asleep with her fist around the stone at her collar. Logan lay awake longer than she did.

’Seven faces,’ he thought. ’Then three ebbs of waiting. Then seven people come down a hole to me, a few at a time.’

Alice’s back was against his chest. He knew from the way she was breathing that she was awake too.

[ Time remaining: 355 days ]

The ebb was already running when they came out of the house.

Bide had gathered at the head of the stair to see them go. Logan saw the boy with the shaved head at the front, and Tobin leaning on a crutch made from a pike’s long jaw.

Saba stood a little apart from the rest with her stick planted in the dust.

The woman who carved combs came forward out of the crowd. She held out a comb of clear pike bone to Vina, finished and polished.

"For your hair," she said. "It wants combing."

Vina took it in both hands.

"Thank you," she said. "It is beautiful. I will not lose it."

Saba was looking at Ansel.

"You are walking to the lip," she said. "And then you are walking back up this stair."

"I am walking to the lip," said Ansel.

Saba’s mouth thinned, and she turned to Logan instead. She gave him a short, hard nod.

"Cut them quickly," she said. "Do not look at them first."

The units were waiting for them on the steps.

Billy rolled up two steps to meet Logan, rim to his knee. Terry stood behind him, and Halden behind Terry, with Tinkerbell already sitting on his shoulder plate. Solveig fell in beside Vina without a word. Link lifted his torch.

Further down the stair, Logan could see the rest of them filing on toward the Silver. Martha and Winsmoke went with their pots strapped on their backs. Xairon slid between shapes as it went.

The Silver lay across the column a few steps below them, white and gleaming, already sliding away.

Logan went down into it first.

It closed over his boots and then his knees. Seven flames came up over his head and leaned out around him.

He stopped with the Silver at his waist and turned to look back up the stair. Their heads were all still in clear air, so he could see every candle on the stair without trying.

The family came down in a line, and ring after ring lit as they entered. Alice came first, close enough to touch. His mother and father came after her, and then Garen and Isolde side by side.

Vina came down with her hand in Rishin’s. The flames lit over her braids, and she tipped her head back to count them, the way she always did.

"Nine," she said.

The ninth was new. It leaned back and to one side, toward the tall pale man who had come down into the Silver behind her.

Over Ansel’s ragged hair, a single small flame had come up. It leaned toward Vina.

He did not look at it. He looked out across the Silver toward the low place, and he set the hook of his staff on the step below him.

Then he walked down into the white with every hunter on that layer able to see him, and he was smiling.