Chapter 824: A Second Weight

Orla did not waste time.

She walked once around the dead Husher and looked hard at the cuts. Then she came back to the fire and crouched beside it, with her five scouts standing watch at her back.

"I’ll tell you what you need to live through tonight," she said. "The rest can wait until you’re behind a line."

"Go on," Almond said.

"First. How many are you?"

Marcus had the number ready. He had counted on the road, and again in the field.

"Ananta Regalon is thirty-one thousand, four hundred and six," he said. "Skytheum brought nine thousand and twelve."

Orla looked at John, who was sitting a little apart with his people. The dark behind him was full of shapes, large and small. None of them were quite the shape of a person.

"And you?" she asked.

"Enough," John said pleasantly.

Orla stared at him. Then she decided, very sensibly, not to ask again.

"Forty thousand," she said. "Greywatch has stood for three hundred years. In all that time, the most new souls a Door ever sent us in one night was nineteen."

She drew in the dirt with the butt of her spear.

"This is a sanctuary," she said, and scratched a circle. "There’s a line around it. White stones, set in the ground. No Ender will cross that line. Not the small ones, and not the big ones."

"Why not?" Rudra asked.

"Nobody knows. We didn’t build the lines. Nobody alive did. We just live inside them." She tapped the circle. "Greywatch’s line holds two thousand people. Fourteen hundred live there now."

"So there’s room for six hundred," Marcus said.

"There’s room for six hundred."

Nobody spoke for a moment. Six hundred out of forty thousand.

"What happens to people outside the line?" Lily asked.

Orla looked at her steadily.

"They get hunted," she said. "Every night. The Enders in this region are mostly small. You met one. But they come in numbers, and they don’t get tired, and sooner or later one of the big ones comes to see what the noise is."

"How long does anyone last out there?"

"A hunting party of D ranks can stay out five or six nights, if they’re good." Orla glanced around the field. "Forty thousand people at F? I don’t know. Nobody’s ever tried it."

"Tell us about the ranks," Almond said.

"F is where everyone starts. Then E, D, C, B, A." Orla held up her hand, and a few lines of light showed above it.

[Name: Orla]

[Life Rank: D]

[Soul Weight: 910]

"I’m a D," she said. "It took me eleven years. Our warden is a C, and she’s the only one within ten days’ walk. I’ve never met a B. I’ve heard of two A ranks in my whole life, and I couldn’t swear either of them is real."

Rudra was looking at the number under her rank.

"Nine hundred and ten," he said slowly.

"That’s heavy," Orla said, with a trace of pride. "Most people come through a Door at two or three hundred. The warden is twelve hundred, and people walk across the region just to say they’ve seen her."

Nobody said anything.

Orla noticed the silence. She looked from face to face, and her eyes narrowed.

"What?" she said. "What’s yours?"

Almond held up his hand.

Orla read the third line. She read it again. Then she sat back on her heels, and for a moment she seemed to forget about the dawn.

"Five thousand," she said faintly.

"Is that a lot?" Ainen asked. He was holding up his own.

Orla looked at it. She looked at Lily’s, and Rudra’s. She looked at Big D, who had not bothered to show his and was simply watching her.

"The voice told you that you’d be noticed," she said. "Didn’t it?"

"It did," Almond said.

"It says that to maybe one in a thousand." She got to her feet. Her face had gone careful. "I’d close those, if I were you. And I wouldn’t open them again in front of anyone you don’t trust."

"One more thing, and then we walk," Orla said.

She pointed at Rudra.

"I watched you from the dark before I came in. You stopped that thing’s leg with nothing but an imprint. Then you fell on your face."

"I remember," Rudra said sourly.

"That’s what an imprint is. It’s what you are. Using it raw is like lifting a cart with your bare back. You can do it once, and then you’re finished." She nodded at Lily. "An orb is a handle on the cart. Same strength, but now you can lift it all day. That’s why we hunt. A person with no orbs is a person who can do one thing and then lie down."

Lily looked at her palms. She had not tried Hush yet.

"How many orbs do you hold?" she asked.

"Two," Orla said. "I have room for two. I’ve met people with three." She paused. "What does yours say?"

"Ten," Lily said.

Orla closed her eyes for a moment.

"Of course it does," she said.

They decided quickly, because there was no time to do it any other way.

Big D laid it out. "Six hundred places. They go to the ones who can’t walk, the ones who can’t fight, and the children. Kayla picks the wounded. Liam and Ruyi take the young ones and stay with them."

"And the rest of us?" Silvester asked. He was upright again, more or less.

"The rest of us camp outside the line and don’t die," Big D said.

"That’s the whole plan?"

"That’s tonight’s plan. Tomorrow’s can be better."

The Empress of Skytheum had listened to all of it without a word.

"Skytheum takes none of the six hundred," she said. "You have more wounded than we do. We’ll camp beside you."

Almond looked at her. She looked back, quite calm.

"I told you why I came," she said. "I did not come to stand behind you."

Ainen, meanwhile, had gone back to the fire at the foot of the great door.

"You have to put it out," Orla told him. "I’m sorry. I can see it means something."

"I made a promise," Ainen said.

"Then you promised to feed whoever comes next to the Enders."

Ainen thought about that. Then he knelt and began to pile stones around the flames. He built them up on three sides, high and close, until the fire could not be seen from the grassland at all.

He left the fourth side open. It faced the Door.

"There," he said. "Nothing out there can see it. But anyone who walks through will find it first thing."

He held his palm over the coals.

Hearth.

The fire settled low and steady. It was the kind of fire that could burn for a very long time.

Orla watched him do it. She did not say anything, but she did not argue again.

Big D found the seed while they were forming up.

He had put his hand in his coat for the list of names. The list was not there. Something small and smooth was there instead.

He took it out. It was a seed, about the size of a walnut, and it shone faintly with a hundred colors.

Natalia saw it and stopped walking.

"That’s the Tree," she said. "Isn’t it? That’s the whole pocket world. The fields and the tables and the stone with the names."

"It was a power," Big D said slowly. "Same as the decks. So it didn’t come through. But the gatekeeper said what we carried, we’d keep." He turned the seed over. "I suppose this is how the layer kept its word."

"What does it do?"

"I don’t know." He closed his fist around it, very carefully. "It’s warm, though."

"And the names?" Natalia asked quietly. "The four hundred and twelve?"

Big D tapped the side of his head with one thick finger.

"Remember," he said. "I don’t need the stone."

He put the seed back inside his coat, on the left side, and they moved on.

The column set out an hour before midnight.

Forty thousand people walked east across the dark grass, with no lights and as little noise as they could manage. Orla’s scouts ranged ahead. Rudra walked at the front, because he had always walked at the front.

Almond and Lily walked a little way back.

Neither of them had said much since the Husher. Almond’s ribs ached with every step. Lily was quiet, but it was not her usual quiet.

"What is it?" he asked at last.

"I wanted to look at Hush," she said. "I wanted to see what it cost before I had to use it. So I opened my status."

"And?"

Lily held up her hand.

The lines of light were soft in the dark. Her name. Her rank, which now said E. Her weight. Her four imprints. Her one orb.

"Look underneath," she said.

Almond looked.

He had not seen it in the field. Neither had she. It was so faint that it could have been a trick of the eye, a little smear of light under the last line.

It was not a smear. It was writing.

[Name: not yet given]

[Soul Weight: 1]

Almond stopped walking.

People flowed around him in the dark. Someone murmured an apology. He did not hear it.

"That wasn’t there before," he said.

"I think it was. I think it’s been there since the voice. I only read down to the orbs." Lily’s voice was very steady. He knew what that cost her. "This place weighs souls, Almond. I don’t think it waits for anything else."

"Two nights," he said. "It’s only been two nights since the Shelf."

"Three, now."

He stared at the small, faint line. The number one.

Then something else came to him, and he felt his knees go weak.

"The crossing," he said. "You told the gatekeeper you’d carry someone we hadn’t met yet."

"Yes."

"And it said that in the crossing, we’d carry whatever we named."

"I know." Lily’s steadiness finally cracked. A laugh came out of her, and it was half a sob. "I thought I meant later. I walked the whole road thinking I meant later. And the whole time, I was already doing it."

She stopped. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.

Almond put both arms around her and held on. They stood there in the middle of the marching column, in the dark, on the first night of a new world.

"You fought a Husher," he said into her hair. His voice shook. "Tonight. You stood in front of that thing and you didn’t step back."

"I didn’t know."

"You know now."

Lily pulled back far enough to look at him. Her eyes were wet, and they were also very clear.

"Don’t," she said. "I can hear what you’re about to say. There are six hundred places behind that line, and you want me in one of them."

Almond said nothing. It was exactly what he had been about to say.

"I’m not taking a place from someone who can’t walk," Lily said. "And I’m the only person here who is above F. You need me out there." She took his hand and pressed it flat against her stomach, where there was nothing at all to feel yet. "I’ll be careful. I’ll be more careful than I have ever been. But I won’t be put away."

Almond let out a long, unsteady breath.

"Kayla has to know," he said. "Tonight. That part isn’t a question."

"Kayla can know."

"And you tell me the second anything feels wrong."

"I will."

He looked down at her hand over his. Then he looked at the little line of light, still hanging in the dark between them.

"One," he said softly. "It weighs one."

"It hasn’t done anything yet," Lily said. "Give it time."

They started walking again, because the column could not wait. Almond did not let go of her hand.

Far ahead of them, at the front of the line, Rudra had stopped. He was turning in a slow circle with a frown on his face.

He had walked due east for an hour. He was sure of it.

So he could not understand why the great door was in front of him again.