Reclamation

14—Aboard the U-Kenai, Hour 14:23:45, Ship’s Time

As it turned out, they didn’t even feel the collision. There should have been a long, slow, grinding crash, but there wasn’t. There should have been the sound of straining metals and ceramics, but there wasn’t. One minute the screens were full of filthy ice, the next minute they were black.

Adu felt the smooth surface of the control boards under his hands and for a moment wished Dorias hadn’t decided to house him in the android. It was convenient, but it was isolating. If he had been loaded into the ship itself, then he would have been able to know where the hull stresses were as soon as the ice touched the ship. He could have compensated for them instantly and monitored them where compensation wasn’t needed yet. He would have known everything, without needing to call up the data, or turn his head, or wait while his mind processed what his eyes saw.

Next to him, Eric Born and Aria Stone blinked at the blank screens.

Eric looked down at Aria in the communications chair. “Now what?” he asked her.

“Now, we push it toward the Realm. What’s supposed to happen is the heat exhaust melts the ice as we push and we slide father into the shell. When we get to the Realm, we head to ground looking like a great, hulking lump of ice.” She frowned. “Did I say that right?” Her hand fell onto her pouch of stones and she jerked it away.

“I, for one, hope you did,” said Adu. “Although what they’ll think when they see a lump of ice going this fast, I don’t know.”

“We’ll just have to hope the satellites don’t think.” Eric stretched his arms over his head until his joints popped.

“They’re Vitae satellites,” Adu reminded him. “How can we be sure what they do?”

Eric swung his arms down. “Adu, that’s not really helpful.”

“My apologies, Sar Born.”

Eric nodded and, almost absently, stroked the curve of Aria’s shoulder. “Let us know when we have to strap down,” he said, and he left the bridge. Aria stood. Her concentration focused on Adu, but she said nothing. She just followed Eric Born out of the chamber.

Adu shifted himself to make room for the work being done inside his skull. Most of the processing right now was actually being done by the Cam programs. It was able to calculate the angles and bursts of thrust needed to push them around the binary, keeping their “tail” angled away from the suns. They would fly into the system between the satellites, and get just a little too close to the planet. Its gravity would grab hold of them and drag them down. Nothing surprising. Nothing unnatural. Nothing to rise from the ashes and craters.

Adu tried to be content. He tried to draw comfort from the fact that he would be able to fulfill his parent’s first instructions. Down in the Realm of the Nameless Powers he’d be able to find out the origin of the Vitae’s plans.

But there was nothing down there. He tried to tell himself that he’d eventually be able to find an open line, or a satellite transmission, or something that would allow him to get a message through to his parent. As it was, though, the only networks existed in the android body and in the shell of the ship, and the ship would soon be gone, even if its passengers survived.

Survive, yes, but for what? To pace the ground carrying the useless Cam routines around with him, until something was found for him to do? What would it be? There was nothing down there but stone and water and vegetation. He’d checked as soon as they’d entered the system. The only life was the uninterpretable Vitae transmissions, flitting between their ships.

“You will stand by them.” Dorias had sunk deep into him. “Eric Born will find a way to get you back out once we know what is happening.” A pause. “Do you think I want you lost? You’ll be carrying everything I need to know.”

The memory was warm and firm and a part of him, but it was still not enough to silence the fear of diving straight into nothingness.

What made it worse was that there was a way out. He’d spotted it. Between the plotting strategies Dorias had poured into him and the equipment list he had read in Cam, he knew how to get out of this android and this shell of a ship.

Cam twitched, suddenly alert on new levels. Adu fastened his attention fully on its activities. The monitors were picking up localized increases in hull temperature, pinpricks of heat. Cam didn’t understand. Adu prodded it and opened up part of its memory to remind it they were in a hostile space. Now it had it. The pinpricks were targeting lasers. The Vitae satellites had spotted them.

Adu waited, listening to the comm lines with Cam’s ears. There was nothing but unintelligible Vitae noise. The pinpricks stayed where they were, tracking the comet they had become a part of.

Did the satellites think? Were they trying to decide what to do? Had the Vitae in their ships been notified, or was this just standard operating procedure? Track every bit of junk and rock that floated into the system and wait for it to do something stupid?

Adu knew his questions were useless. There wasn’t even any way to tell if the satellites themselves were armed. The comet’s cloud of crystals and dust made too much interference for the U-Kenai to get a detailed picture. The ship could tell where the satellites were, but that was all.

There was nothing Adu could do. The course was laid in and plotted. Changing it under the satellites’ gazes would definitely cause an alert to be sent to the Vitae’s flesh-and-blood watchers. The U-Kenai was built for running away, not for fighting, and halfway buried in ice and dirt, it wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. They were already in the trap. All of them.

Cam wanted to move, to recalibrate the monitors and make sure it was seeing what it thought it was seeing. It wanted to summon Eric Born to the bridge and alert him to the situation and get orders, even if it was just to stay on course, because the situation had changed.

Adu forced Cam to hold still. The trap’s lid wasn’t closed yet. Nothingness didn’t surround him quite yet. He could still get out.

And if he did, what would Dorias do?

Send him back to Eric Born? Impossible. Reabsorb his identity? Perhaps, but then at least he’d be part of something. He wouldn’t be alone in the middle of a silent world.

Cam was shoving at him, seeking a way to get to the circuits that ruled the android body. Adu leaned all his weight against it until it stopped struggling.

“Sar Born!” Adu called. “Strap in!”

The monitor on the common room showed the pair of them moving with admirable dispatch. Aria Stone laid herself flat in the lowest alcove and let Eric draw the webbing over her. He closed the catches while explaining how they worked. Then Eric climbed into the second bunk and fastened himself in.

Adu, giving Cam just enough room so that it could stay alert for any changes in the ship’s monitors, moved the android.

The U-Kenai’s emergency beacon, once retrieved from its storage hatch beneath the bridge’s deck, proved to be an old unit that had been only peripherally kept in repair. When Adu had been required to set it up in dock at Abassyd Station, he had siphoned its specifications from Cam. The beacon was supposed to carry warnings or distress messages from a ship. It had an extraordinary amount of redundant memory and it could travel long distances, albeit slowly. It could take him back to where there would be voices he could hear and room to stretch out. In the meantime, there would be a little spare room in there, where he could keep himself busy by building his own tools. In a year or three or five, he would be found and his box would be opened and he’d go on from there.

The pinpricks still hung on the ship’s skin. The transmissions from the satellites had picked up slightly, but they hadn’t changed direction, and the satellites themselves hadn’t moved. They watched closely, but they just watched.

So far.

Cam’s main processes huddled in the corner where Adu had left them. Adu encompassed Cam and pried into its insides. He heightened its perception of the task at hand; to get the U-Kenai safely down, unseen, if possible. Cam thought more slowly than Adu, and had less capacity for memory, but it knew the ship and had years of experience stored in itself. The ship could still maneuver a little, and it could still brake a little. The comet ice packed around its skin would absorb the extra heat of the accelerated re-entry and Cam could surely steer it more accurately than Adu, because it had special subroutines for flying under reduced capacity. It would all be enough, with a little added urgency. Adu had to make sure it would be enough, because there was every chance he would contact Dorias again. Dorias would know Adu had defied him, but at least he wouldn’t be able to say his child had done it carelessly.

Besides, Adu carried copies of everything Eric had learned from the Vitae datastores. Dorias wanted them back.

That is my real purpose. Not sending myself into emptiness.

Cam did not try to duck out as Adu laid the new orders in. Accepting orders was part of what Cam was carefully designed to do. When Adu was satisfied that the first thing Cam would do when left to its own devices was launch the beacon, he let it retreat to its corner.

The beacon would trail along behind the ship in the “comet’s” tail as just another piece of junk until the final descent began. Then it would break free and fly off on its own, like at least two dozen other pieces of rock would be doing at that point.

The monitors registered a rise in temperature from three of the pinpricks. Adu froze. The temperature leveled off. Maybe it was only a fluctuation. Maybe some lensing had been caused by the ice coating the ship’s side. There was no way to tell.

Adu opened a hatch on the beacon. Then he flicked back the cover for the hardwire jack on the android’s wrist. He plugged the biggest unused cable on the bridge between the two sockets. He made the android glance at the monitor again. Eric and Aria lay in their alcoves with their gazes fastened on the view wall, trying to see what was happening, and doubtlessly wondering how long it would be before they landed.

Cam will get them down, Adu told himself as he reached down the new opening that the cable provided. It will. They don’t need me. Not down there in the emptiness.

Carefully, he eased himself into the beacon.

Aria knew the ship was performing a delicate dance, skirting around the edge of the Servant’s Eyes, but it felt like nothing at all. To her, the U-Kenai was standing still while the universe churned around it Light bent into bows and knots. It was like watching fireworks recorded through a distorting tens. It was silent, and beautiful, and utterly strange. Aria wanted to touch the backs of her hands in salute to the Nameless and the Servant, but the webbing held her hands down. She just hoped her thoughts would count and that there was somebody watching closely enough to acknowledge them.

All at once the morass of color and darkness was gone. The bare back of the Realm filled the screen.

“Too low,” gasped Eric. “Adu! Too low!”

Aria forced herself to keep her eyes open. If I’m going to die, I’m at least going to see it coming.

Rock rilled the screen, silver and black, pitted, gouged, bare. Bells and chimes, mechanical shrieks filled the air and the light flashed wildly.

It’s the World’s Wall. Nameless Powers Preserve me. We’re going to hit the World’s Wall!

The ship rolled sideways and a scream cut loose from Aria’s throat. They were upright in the next breath, she had time to be embarrassed, then to realize that she was alive to be embarrassed, and then to realize she hadn’t made the only noise.

Outside the ship blurred beige, brown, and green. Total darkness hit. Dim light returned and the screen flickered back to life. Green chaos swallowed up everything else and a sharp jolt bounced her up and down until the webbing creaked in protest.

They stopped and stayed still, doing nothing but breathe.

After a while, Aria was able to notice that the room was crooked. She lay with her knees pointed toward the ceiling and her left ear pressed against the side of the alcove. A single alarm bell rang tiredly for a few more seconds before it hushed itself from exhaustion.

“We’re here,” said Eric in a hollow voice.

“We’re home.” Aria fumbled with the catches and shoved the webbing aside. She planted her feet carefully on the tilted floor, resting her hand against the wall for balance. The dim lights threw a half dozen hazy shadows of her across the room.

Eric was on his feet a split second after her, trudging up the slope toward the bridge.

“Adu!” he called. “Are you all right?”

There was no answer.

“Adu?” Eric stumbled forward before his feet found purchase on the sloping floor. Aria followed Eric onto the bridge. They entered the cabin, but Adu didn’t even look up.

“Adu?” said Eric again. The android stayed motionless, hands on the control boards, seemingly oblivious to the drunken angle of its chair.

Then Eric said “Cam?”

The android turned its head. “Yes, Sar?”

Eric swallowed hard. “What’s happened to Adu?”

“He’s left us,” Aria said. “Run away.”

“That’s insane,” snapped Eric. “Dorias would never have…”

Aria laid her hand against the threshold for balance. “That…person was not Dorias, and he was scared to death of coming here. Even more scared than you, I think.” She eyed the blank monitors. “I also think, Eric, we had better get out of here and see where we are.”

But Eric was not moving. “Cam,” he said again, “what is the disposition of the process Adudorias?”

“Adudorias transferred to U-Kenai emergency beacon. The beacon was launched fifteen-four-ten, ship’s time.”

For a moment, Aria thought Eric was going to fall over. He was counting on that creature, she realized. As long as Adu was around there was a touchstone to the outside, a tangible chance he might find a way out again. Now he’s as stuck as…A new beeping piped up from the control boards, and another joined it as the alarms began to recover from their own shock. As this ship of his.

“If I may presume.” She laid her hand on his forearm. “I think we are not safe in here.”

Eric looked at her for a moment like he didn’t understand what she said. Then he lurched towards the airlock. “Cam. Come outside.”

The android got up and obediently teetered after its master. Eric palmed the reader on the airlock, and nothing happened. He cursed through clenched teeth and undid a latch beside the door. A small compartment came open and he pulled a lever down. “Cam. Manual release procedures. Go.”

The android gripped a pair of handles on the airlock’s inner door and pulled. Reluctantly, the door gave way and Cam dragged it up the slope of the floor and latched it into place. A draft of warm air caressed Aria.

Eric and Cam repeated their actions for the outer door. His hands seemed inordinately clumsy as he worked the controls. Aria felt her patience strain.

Try to remember, it’s been ten years for him, Aria told herself, and he never wanted to come back.

The outer door opened and air rushed in, warm, rich, thick air.

Acrid, black, smoke and a billow of heat came with it. Aria coughed harshly. She couldn’t see anything except a curving wall of smoking ash. She undid her head cloth and pressed a strip of material over her mouth before she started out the door.

“Wait…” started Eric.

She ignored him. She felt as though she had walked into a furnace. Coughing despite her makeshift face mask, Aria waded up the ashy slope, waving her free hand both to keep her balance and to keep her bare hand from touching the burned ground.

Finally, she scrambled onto a patch of unburned, white sand. Forgetting pride altogether, Aria dropped onto her knees. A fresh wind caught her right cheek and Aria breathed deeply. When her lungs cleared of the stinging smoke, she stood up and looked around to see what part of the world they had come to rest in. Joints and head seemed to sigh with relief. The world wrapped around her like a blanket.

They’d come down on the shore of the Dead Sea. Whitened sand crunched under the sole of Aria’s boots and the distinctive tang of salt filled the air. Shading her eyes with her hand, she squinted toward the waterline. Fingers of steam rose from the surface. A gust of wind blew hard, sending a long, shimmering ripple across the mineral green surface of the water. No waves broke. Aside from the lichens clinging to the rocks, nothing grew. The lifeless water sprawled out a good eight or nine miles to either side, where it reached the bases of cliffs so white with salt rime that they showed even through the mists. Aria tilted her gaze to the tops but couldn’t make out any buildings.

Well, that’s something anyway. If we’d come down on the First City shore, we’d probably be dead.

Aria turned her attention inland. The white sand beach turned to stone-peppered dunes about ten yards away from them. She scanned the distant walls, searching for familiar shapes. The salty wind was free of rain and the clouds were solid overhead. That was something else. The last thing they needed right now was rough weather, but she had no idea when sunshowing had been or which wall the light was slanting over. Her orientation was gone. Without a prominent mark, they were solidly lost.

There was the Pinnacle, though, marking Red Walls. She gauged its size compared to the lower walls. They were close to the lowlands, then. She turned. The closest wall to her left glinted gold in the light. Broken Canyon. There was the gentle ripple of ground rising toward the cleft of Narroways road.

Aria felt herself smile. All they had to do was follow the shoreline to the Eel Back River. The river would lead them into the Lif marsh. Once inside the Lif, help and, maybe, family couldn’t be more than a few hours away.

“Whoever landed us had excellent aim,” she said, bringing her gaze back down to Eric.

Eric was staring at his ship. It lolled in the crater its impact had made. Its nose was buried in a wall of ash and smoking coals. Water seeped into the depression it made. Behind it a trail of ash and seared sand added its steam to the hazy air. The U-Kenai’s wings were streaked with black, pitted by tiny craters and scarred with long grooves. Then she saw that the U-Kenai’s whole smooth skin was scarred. Seams of white foam ran in jagged lines around its back and sides. It looked like the ship had been declared Notouch and marked accordingly.

Eric stood like a statue beside his ruined ship. He stared at it. His cheeks were wet and the look on his face was one of fear.

Aria wished she knew something to say. She remembered the Bad Night, when her father had hauled her and her sisters bodily off their mats before the mudslide washed their house down to the Dead Sea. She remembered the boiling, grinding roar and the horror as her home was torn to pieces by the mindless force. Security and sense washed away with it.

She wished she could tell him about that, but her mind wouldn’t hand across the words. It just kept bringing up pictures of Storm Water and Little Eye. Her children were maybe a day away. Maybe only hours, and maybe she hadn’t been gone that long. Maybe Nail had waited for her. Maybe she was still his wife and could still call her children her own. Maybe Eric would understand that what had happened on the ship could not take the place of her being mother to her children.

The strength of that wish made her suck in a breath and Eric must have heard. He tore his gaze away from the hulk of the U-Kenai and swept it across the Walls.

“You know where we are? I’ve lost all my geography.”

You lie, Eric. You’re staring straight at the route to First City.

She didn’t say that either. “We’re on the Narroways side of the Dead Sea. That means the Lif marshes are only a few hours off. There’ll be people about. Notouch,” she added, waiting for his reaction.

He looked down at his naked hands. “Well, it should be an interesting time, considering that I’m as bare as a two-day-old baby.”

“It may be for the best,” Aria said. “It’ll mean less outcry, especially if we can find my people. My mother is a force in the clan.” She laughed once. “Some say she’s a force of nature.”

“I can believe that.” There was a trace of humor in his voice, but none in his face. He was looking at his ship again.

“We’d better get going, Eric,” she said as gently as she could manage. “Is it not true that if the Vitae come looking for us, they’ll head straight for the U-Kenai?"

“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “Cam. Stabilize the ship’s condition as much as possible. Repair the comm lines and monitor transmissions. And"—he ran his hand through his hair—"wait until you hear from me.”

“Yes, Sar,” said the android. Its feet made swishing noises in the damp sand as it climbed back into the crater and aboard the fallen U-Kenai and released the catch holding the outer door back.

The door slid down and clanged shut

Eric turned quickly away. “I’m ready.”

“Very well.” Aria checked her pouch of stones to see that it was firmly knotted. She glanced at the walls again to pick her direction. “Let’s go.”

Side by side they tramped up the beach. They passed salt-crusted hollows filled with miniature versions of the sea. Nothing else broke up the landscape between the dunes and the waterline until Aria heard the faint gurgle of a running river.

Smiling with quiet satisfaction, she angled her path inland until they climbed over a stony dune. On the other side, the Eel Back ran swift and shallow into the Dead Sea. Its winding path cut a swath through the dunes and would, Aria knew, open into the sprawl of the Lif marshes.

She glanced over at Eric, who hadn’t said a word since they’d started. She’d been content to let him be quiet, thinking he needed time to adjust to the fact that he had returned. Now she saw that his eyes seemed to be sunken, looking inside rather than out.

He’s closed himself up as far as he can, she thought.

She touched his arm wordlessly and he gripped her hand. For a moment they stood like that. He didn’t even look at her, he just took what strength she had to give. Did he know that her heart was wringing inside her? She did not want to be divorced, she did not want to lose her children, and yet she did not want to leave him.

At last, he let her go and she was able to shove her torn emotions down under a layer of practical considerations. She led him down the dune to the side of the Eel Back and they started walking in silence again.

With the influx of fresh water that the river provided, the landscape changed drastically. Before an hour had passed, they were wading through a mix of brown reeds and knee-high grass. When they stopped to share a packet of ration squares, they were able to rest in the shade of a cluster of Crooker trees. Aria gauged the spread of the river and the slant of the land.

“Past the next rise, we’ll hit the marshes,” she said, more to see if Eric would answer her than because she thought he needed her to tell him that. “Wish I knew how far into the season it was. We could be hitting Late Summer. The squatters shift around. Still, where there’s fishing"—she nodded toward the river, now a broad, sluggish swath of green water between the reeds—"there’ll be a clan.”

“Aria.” Eric spoke her name toward the river. “What did you mean when you said there would be less outcry from the Notouch because I had no hand marks?”

Aria felt her mouth twist. She searched for the words to explain.

“Since Narroways started making deals with the Skymen, the Teachers and the Royals have gotten…scared. They got this idea into their heads that the Skymen and the Heretics were using the Notouch to run their messages, hide them in the marshes, get them supplies and information, and the tike. It’s true, of course, but they were paying for all of it with food and cloth, some coinage. We’ll do anything for pay, everybody knows that…” She bit her tongue.

It’s the air. Breathe the old comfortable air and get back the old comfortable thoughts.

“So,” she went on, keeping her gaze on the way in front of her, “as the law says, what one Notouch does, all Notouch are responsible for. The Teachers have been laying down that law and exacting flesh-and-blood fines from us. It’s made us wary. Almost nobody will go out of their way to do a Teacher a service now. Especially around Narroways.

“It’s also true that around Narroways a Teacher or an upper rank might…become lost in a night storm more easily than in other places.”

Eric said nothing and this time Aria felt no urge to break the silence. She just got to her feet and started walking again.

It turned out she’d read the landscape right. They topped the final hill and saw the vast, bowllike valley that held the Lif marshes. Aria had heard it speculated that, except for the Dead Sea, this was the largest stretch of open ground in the Realm. Even here, though, she could see the dark, comforting bulk of the World’s Wall on every side.

She sighted on a cluster of Crooker trees. They’d need walking sticks for finding solid ground. She wished she still had her knife, or an ax would have been even better. However, there should be deadwood that hadn’t floated off yet.

She picked up a stick and handed it across to Eric.

“Thank you,” he said, and Aria decided that would be enough for now.

The day must have been a fairly dry one. Green flies and splinter-chasers glided low over the ponds. The earth under the grasses only squished a little. Aria smiled. One thing about the Skymen you had to like—their boots kept a person’s feet good and dry.

They continued on. Eric seemed to be having trouble with his footing. He splashed and stumbled along behind her. Aria made herself ignore him. She had a feeling he would not welcome too much attention right now. Maybe it was nothing more complex than his having gotten used to the unnaturally straight and even flooring the Skymen had. Maybe it had nothing to do with the shattered look she had seen when she handed him the walking stick. But then, even before he’d left, he couldn’t have done much stomping about in raw marsh. The Nobles were used to cobbled roads and wagons and ox-backs. Well, he’d have to get used to this. They wouldn’t be within reach of such luxuries for a while.

Her harsh thoughts startled her a bit. Something was slipping from her. She was a Notouch again, low as she could be. As soon as they hit company, she’d have to fall back into the endless bent-back playacting and wheedling language. She realized she did not want Eric to see her like that.

Despite her gloomy thoughts, part of her could not help but relax. The air was warm enough. Her head sat firmly on her shoulders and her eyes could see clearly without burning in harsh, bare lights. She was using her own legs to get somewhere and, even better, she knew where she was going.

She started whistling.

In a couple of days, she might even see Reed and Trail again, and Mother.

What’s she going to think of what I’ve done? I haven’t got any idea. And my children? Her breath caught. Except, I’ve surely been divorced and so they won’t be my children and Nail in the Beam won’t be…there. She shoved the thought aside. Maybe not. Maybe he’ll have held out. Even if he didn’t, I know it must make sense. With what I’m doing what kind of wife could I be? She glanced at Eric.

I know my children are my children and they know it, too, and the Teachers’ law can go drown itself. She shook her head ruefully. Right back into it, aren’t I? Keep on like this and I might as well have never left at all.

Eric tripped, splashed, and swore.

“Use your stick,” she prompted. “Swing it in front of you, watch the ground. We may have a long way to go.” She looked for the slant of the shadows. There was maybe half the day left. “And we need to do some serious traveling unless you want to spend the night in a tree.”

“Aria?”

“Hmm?” She cocked one eye toward him. He had stopped dead. Brown-tipped reeds waved around his knees. A small hillock of muck rose at his feet. Aria looked again. It wasn’t muck. It was a shoulder, and a head.

“Nameless Powers preserve…” Aria moved closer. The corpse lay facedown in a pool. It was pale and bloated with water and had been picked at by eels. She swallowed her gorge and laid her hand over her mouth, grateful for once for Lifs ever-present smell. It covered the corpse stench.

It was a woman, she decided. A Bondless tattoo still showed against her greying hands. Eric, showing no signs of nausea, crouched beside the body. Aria was surprised for a moment, then remembered as a Teacher he had surely dealt with his share of unpleasant corpses. He braced himself and levered the body over onto its back. It splashed into the water and Aria got a look at the face. She gasped.

“Do you know her?” asked Eric.

Aria nodded. “She’s a Skyman. She’s…her name is Cor. She’s the one who took me to…who…” She swallowed hard again. “What did the Servant’s Eyes see here?” she whispered.

“I don’t know.” Eric fingered the waterlogged pouch at Cor’s waist. He gave an experimental yank. The cord snapped and he stood up. “It happened at least a day ago, whatever it was.” He tore the mouth of the pouch open and shook it.

Several coins fell into his palm, along with a translator disk, and a polished piece of pinkish quartz.

Aria’s chest tightened like she’d been hit. She snatched the quartz up. It was a long, ragged chip, carved and polished until it looked like a fat lightning bolt the length of her little finger.

“Trail,” she croaked.

“What?” Eric asked.

“This is my sister’s namestone. My sister, Broken Trail.” She stared at the corpse and the horror inside her redoubled. “Eric, what was she doing with my sister’s namestone!”

She was shaking. She couldn’t help it. The Notouch did not let go of their namestones. Not until they were dead or, at the very least, dying.

Eric laid his hands on on her shoulders. “We won’t know until we find your clan, Aria,” said Eric. “She can tell us nothing.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” Aria pressed her empty palm against her forehead. “Of course you’re right.” She gripped the stone and pressed her fist against her own pouch, forcing the shaking in her limbs to stop. I’ve been gone too long. Servant forgive, Powers preserve, I never, ever should have left!

“Aria,” said Eric again, “could…could the Notouch have done this?” He turned her so she could look at him without having to see the body.

Aria shook her head. “No. If we’d killed her, the body would have been properly sunken, and no one would have left Trail’s namestone with her.”

He moved closer to her, and suddenly, she was very aware of his touch. His power-gifted hands, his chest, his arms, his concerned, confused face, all close to her. Too close.

This shouldn’t be, this shouldn’t be, cried out a part of her. Not with Trail’s namestone in her hand and the Lif marshes all around them. They were back. He shouldn’t be touching her. She shouldn’t be touched. She pulled away and something inside her cried out as she did.

His hands fell to his sides and they stood there, doing nothing but stare at each other for a moment, both knowing too well they were back under the World’s Wall.

He picked his stick up again. “Let’s get where we’re going. I don’t think either of us is carrying what we need to sleep in the trees.”

Aria took the lead and they kept on going.

Finally, Aria spotted a smooth, stout stick of wood sticking straight up out of the middle of a pond. A scrap of dirty cloth fluttered in the wind.

“Trap marker,” she said, pointing it out to Eric. “That’s what I’ve been looking for. All we have to do is wait here. Somebody’ll be along to check the catch before dark.” She surveyed the sky again. It was still smooth and even. “We might even stay dry until we get under cover, for a wonder.”

She swung herself up onto the bent trunk of the Crooker tree and tucked her hands under her poncho, getting ready to wait.

Eric began poking the ground restlessly with his stick. Insects rose in tiny clouds around his knees and ankles. Aria watched, absurdly glad for the distance between them.

The reeds rustled and bent. From between the thickest trees glided a light raft, steered by a boy with a pole. Aria jumped to the ground and raised both hands high in the air.

“Oy-ai! Hello, Little Brother!”

The boy’s head jerked up and the pole came all the way out of the water.

“Aunt Stone?” he cried, and she knew the voice.

“Iron Keeper!” She clapped her hands together over her head. “Little Nephew! Come show your aunt your face, boy!”

Iron Keeper poled forward so furiously, he almost upset his raft. He leapt ashore and ran up to her. He pummeled her on the back and shoulders, friendly, greeting blows as she held his face in both hands.

“Garismit’s Eyes! You’ve grown a foot and a half! Tell your aunt, quick, how long has she been gone?”

“My aunt doesn’t know?”

“It’s been a strange journey, Nephew. You’ll hear all about it later. Now, speak up or your aunt will have you across her knee.” She let him go and stepped back. “And then you tell me what you’re doing fishing all the way out here.”

“You…left six months ago, on the Turn Day. The Skymen came. We had to move out. We’re staying with the Rising Water…” His gaze drifted across to Eric, who turned his face away. She noticed he was now wearing gloves.

“He’s a Skyman, Nephew,” Aria told him. “His name is Eric Born. You call him Sar Born. He’s helped your aunt and he’s here to help more. There’s a lot in the wind, Nephew.” She smiled. “Including nighttime. What say you, will Aunt Stone be welcomed by her old clan in their new homes?”

“Iron Keeper says it’ll be so!” He grinned all over his little boy face. “He’ll take you there in a good hurry.” He glanced to the water. The raft was four yards away and drifting farther yet in the marsh’s unseen current. “As soon as he catches his raft.”

The boy scampered off and Aria suppressed a laugh. “This is good. I hadn’t thought to find my family for another couple of days, at least.”

“Thank you for giving me good welcome among your people,” said Eric softly.

“And what else was I to do?” Aria kept her attention on Iron Keeper as he waded hip deep in the pond to retrieve the raft he clean forgot to anchor. He hopped up on its back and poled it toward them.

“I don’t know,” said Eric before Iron Keeper came back within earshot. “I really don’t.”

They didn’t say another word as they clambered aboard the raft.

Iron Keeper was a good hand with the pole, if a little slow. Aria let the boy keep charge. It was his raft, after all, and the last thing she needed to do right now was tread on anybody’s pride, even if it was only her half-grown nephew. His assurances of the tone of her welcome were very nice to have, and she was sure Reed had a place at the hearth for her and a loaf to spare, fairly sure anyway. Although Reed might be out in the city, since it was late summer. Well, Reed’s husband, Iron Keeper’s father, would do in her place. And Mother should still acknowledge her as long as Aria still had the stones in her hands.

But there were other people in the clan, and who knew what the Skymen and the Teachers had done before the clan had moved out here?

Who knew what they’d done to her children. To her hus…to Nail in the Beam. Iron Keeper didn’t seem sad or upset, which meant…she laid her hand across her pouch. It meant no one might know yet about Trail.

She stopped herself from asking him to hurry it along.

Iron Keeper kept stealing glances at Eric, who stood in the middle of the raft with his hands shoved firmly into his pockets.

“Stop staring, Nephew,” Aria said lightly. “He’s not going to fly away with you watching him.”

Iron Keeper blushed. “Iron didn’t mean…he meant, I, umm…No disrespect, Sar Born.”

Eric nodded gravely. “None seen, Young Man. None seen.”

Garismit’s Eyes, he’s remembered two or three of his manners anyway.

They drifted through groves of Crookers and Droopers and straight-backed evergreens until finally they came out into a channel that had been chopped clear of reeds and saplings. Cabins on supports of bamboo poles squatted above the channel, and everywhere were faces she knew.

“Oy-ai!” called Iron Keeper. “Father!”

Iron Shaper, the smith and clay-baker and the most important man in the clan looked up from his makeshift hearth. Aria raised her hands so he could see her marks. Here was the test. If Iron Shaper didn’t even welcome her…

“Sister!” he bellowed, dropping his tongs into the coals and leaping to his feet.

Aria was on the shore almost before Keeper brought the raft to a halt. Her brother-in-law gathered her up into his ropy smith’s arms and swung her around. “Knew you’d be back! Told the wife, I did. Knew it!”

The world was full of voices, friendly slaps, and her name. Stone in the Wall. Stone in the Wall! Aria. Auntie. Little sister. Hands to clasp, and faces, and laughter. Home, all of it home.

She barely even noticed the ones who stayed in the shadows and the doorways and just watched her.

Then came the special name.

“Mother!”

Aria spun and all at once her arms were full of children. Storm Water, big and burly as an ox for his age, like his father. Roof Beam, wiry little bundle, and tough Hill Shadow and beautiful, beautiful Aienai-Arla. Little Eye. The daughter she’d been afraid she’d never bear, stood strong and solid on her little round legs.

“My own!” She kissed them and hugged them over and over. “Oh, my own! My own!”

“Stone in the Wall.”

Aria looked up and knew what she’d see.

Nail in the Beam. Nameless Powers preserve me. Aria swallowed. So many memories came with seeing his square face and thick, work-toughened body. They’d grown up side by side. There’d been no surprise at all when her parents had marched her to the Temple to meet him and his parents there. He’d built their house, she’d built their stove and laid out their mats. They’d fought over this thing and that, when she’d been home. They’d even blackened each other’s eyes, but he’d cradled her head through seven births and listened in silence when she told him what truth she knew about the namestones. He’d had other women, and she’d had other men, but the children had all been his, no matter what the Teacher had said.

“You said you might not be back.” His voice hadn’t changed. It grumbled like thunder in the distance.

“I was wrong. Nothing new in that, you’d say, I know.”

“If you weren’t always speaking for me, I would.”

They stared at each other. Aria found her throat had closed up tight.

Her silence made Nail shift his weight. “Your place is elsewhere than my home. Your blood will be no more part of mine.”

The words of divorce and disinheritance.

“It’s better this way.” She said it. She knew it was true, but for a long, aching moment, she wished it wasn’t.

“These are my wife’s children,” he said.

Oh, no. It’s only been six months…"Who?” she croaked.

“Branch in the River.”

Of course. She bowed her head. After her family and the smith’s, Branch was the loudest voice in the village. Nail wasn’t one to give up rank if he could help it.

“No!” howled Little Eye, clutching Aria’s pant leg. “Mother!”

No! Aria wanted to howl, too. These are mine! But Nail had stayed while she had gone. She had broken the law, been cursed by the Teachers, committed heresy, oh, her list of crimes was a long one. She had lost the right to her children before she had even gone over the World’s Wall.

Better this way. There was still so much to do. She couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t be their mother. Couldn’t ever be. She’d known that when she left. Known that for a long time.

“Come home, children,” said Nail. His voice didn’t change. It was level and grumbling, like nothing was ever quite good enough. Nameless Powers, how that endless discontented note had driven her so crazy, even after she’d learned to read it like the signs in the weather.

She could read it now. What he really meant to say was that he also wished it wasn’t better this way.

“No!” wailed Little Eye.

“Shush.” Aria laid a hand on her daughter’s…Branch’s daughter’s shoulder. “Your father is right,” she said. “Go home now, all of you, or do you want to look like a bunch of disobedient oxen in front of everybody? Go on.”

One by one, they left her side, and the comfort of coming home left with them. Storm Water kept his steady gaze on her the whole time while he scooped Little Eye into his arms easily. Nail put his back to her and marshaled them all through the houses and the weeds until she couldn’t see them anymore.

“Everyone knows whose children they are,” said Shaper at her side.

“They are Nail in the Beam’s and Branch in the River’s,” she answered him. “Which house is my mother’s, Shaper? She’s sure to have heard the ruckus.”

“She’s with Cups and Torch.” He pointed toward one of the cabins farther up the rise.

“You’ll want to see her alone.” Eric’s voice almost jumped her out of her skin. She’d forgotten he was there at all.

“Shaper, this is Eric Born. Eric to you. He’s a Skyman and I’m vouchsafing him. Give him a spot by the fire, will you?” She spread her hands and her voice wobbled. “I’ve got nowhere to welcome him to.”

“You’re welcome, Skyman, in my sister’s name, my wife’s, and mine.” Shaper held out his hand. Eric stared at the scars for a moment and then shook it. Shaper glanced at Eric’s gloves, and then at Aria.

“He’s embarrassed, Shaper. Skymen have no hand marks, and he think’s it’ll wound his dignity if everyone sees him naked as a baby.” She was tired, something inside her ached horribly, and she still had to face Mother. “Just take care of him, will you?”

She pressed through the bamboo until the cabin came into sight. It was no different from the others with its wicker walls, thatch roof, clay chinking, and bamboo legs. In the doorway hunched her mother, Eyes Above the Walls. She was wrinkled, mostly blind, and bent in as many different ways as a Crooker tree. She could barely walk without help. The joke among the clan was that the Nameless Powers had forgotten her name and couldn’t call her away to die, so she just lived on.

“Hello, Mother.” Aria crouched down beside the stoop.

“Thought I heard your voice,” Eyes Above said. Her own voice creaked like tree branches in the wind. “Well?”

“I…well, what, Mother?”

“Are they still with you?” she said impatiently.

“Yes.” I should have known.

Eyes Above leaned forward eagerly. “And still answer you? Still alive in your hands, are they?”

“Yes.”

She let out a long sigh. “Then welcome home, Daughter.”

Relief washed over Aria. She gripped her mother’s wrinkled hands and felt the strength that was still in them as Eyes Above squeezed her in greeting. “I wasn’t sure…”

“Well, you should have been.” Eyes Above let go of her hand. “As long as the stones stay alive for you, then you are working the will of the Nameless, no matter what the Teachers say. The stones would not permit themselves to be used for the Aunorante Sangh. And as long as you serve the Nameless, you are my daughter.”

Aria shook her head. Eyes Above’s faith was as solid as the World’s Wall and as all encompassing. There was no shaking it or getting around it. Even if Aria had the words to explain all the new things she had learned about the nature of the Realm and the Nameless, Mother would just become selectively idiotic. She might hear, she might even comprehend, but it would all roll off her like water off oiled skin.

“The Aunorante Sangh have come, Daughter,” Eyes Above said. “They are masquerading as the Nameless and the fools in the upper ranks and the Temples are falling at their feet.”

Aria listened with growing horror as her mother described the arrival of the Rhudolant Vitae.

“Nameless Powers preserve me,” Aria whispered. “I didn’t think they’d come down like that. I thought they’d be taken for the Aunorante Sangh.” Her tired shoulders slumped. “I didn’t think we’d have to take on the Temples and First City with them!”

Eyes Above patted her hand. “Now then, Daughter, it’s never too late. We only need to wait for the Nameless to send their Servant to us, as they did to our ancestress.”

Aria bit her lip and debated about whether to speak the thought she’d kept from Eric. It wouldn’t actually be lying. Mother saw everything in terms of the Words anyway, and it was absurdly appropriate.

Besides, in the bizarre twisted logic of this time, when the Words were turning into reality, it might even be true.

But may the Servant forbid he ever find out that I said it.

“Mother, your daughter thinks they already have.” As best she could, she explained about Eric Born.

Mother drank it all in, rearranged it to suit, and nodded. “Yes. Yes. It is so. Well then, you must be guided by him.”

Well, I don’t know if I’ll go that far.

Then Aria bowed her head and rubbed the backs of her hands.

“Mother,” she said. “What…where’s Trail?”

“I sent her to the Skymen,” Mother told her. “We were hoping she could find you.” Her blind eyes gazed across the marsh. “She will not be pleased that you came home before she did.”

Aria fumbled with the mouth of her pouch and, trembling, pressed Trail’s namestone into her mother’s hand. Eyes Above ran her fingers around the edges and, with each motion, the lines in her face deepened a little farther.

In halting phrases, Aria told her how they had found it.

“Stone in the Wall dena Aria Born of the Black Wall,” said Mother. “I lay on you this charge. You will find out how your sister lost her name.”

“Mother…I don’t know if I can…”

“You will,” Eyes Above said firmly. “I must know whether I can still call Broken Trail dena Rift in the Clouds my daughter.”

“Mother!” cried Aria. “Trail is probably dead! Our home is being invaded by Skymen who want to use our children, our CHILDREN, as experiments or livestock and all you care about is did Trail hold to the Words when they killed her!”

“You speak as if this was a small thing. Does my daughter doubt her place?”

Yes! Yes, I doubt! I’ve seen beyond the World’s Wall! I’ve heard the words of the Skymen! There’s so much else out there! It can’t matter that much how Trail died! It can’t!

“No, Mother.” Aria stood up and climbed down the ladder. “Your daughter does not doubt.”

“My daughter should get some rest for herself,” said Mother. “She is weary from her service, and more will be required of her.”

“Yes, Mother.”

Aria turned away and shouldered her way through the bamboo, so lost in thought, she didn’t even see the form that blocked her path.

“Stone in the Wall.”

She looked up automatically. Branch in the River stood foursquare on the path in front of her, folding her skinny arms across her bosom and glowering.

“Good greeting, Cousin,” said Aria wearily. Please get out of my way, woman. I don’t have any patience left.

“I have no greeting for you,” Branch said darkly. “How dare you try to claim my children? And in front of the clan? I should have your namestones and your head for this insult!”

Aria turned her face away. “I have tried to claim nothing. Ask anyone.”

“Then why do my children cry that their real mother has returned?” Branch shouted. “You are not their mother! You are childless and without husband! You are nothing! I am the wife of Nail in the Beam and the mother of four living children! You would be thief of mine! You will give me apology! You will do it now, in daylight!”

Aria’s hand cracked across Branch’s cheek before she could even think to stop it.

“You dare call me thief!” Aria cried. “You are the one who stole from me! Stole my husband, stole my children! You barren, useless, bloodless…” She couldn’t see. She couldn’t think. Anger roared through her mind blocking out everything else. Let the whole clan hear, she didn’t care. “You are unfit to have even a Notouch’s scars on your cold hands!”

Aria marched past Branch, blundering through the Crookers, blind as her mother. She fell against the corner of a house and slid into the mud.

A man’s hands caught her. She still couldn’t see, but with a shock, she recognized the touch. Eric Born raised her to her feet. “Come on, Aria,” he said in the Skymen’s own language. “You’ve gone too far today.”

No, her mind whispered. I haven’t gone anywhere near far enough.

Branch watched the Skyman and Iron Shaper lead Stone in the Wall away. Her cheek stung painfully from the blow.

There was no end to the woman’s heresy. Her family held a set of shiny baubles to which they had no right, and so all the clan bowed and scraped to them as if they were Kings. Branch had married Nail in the Beam in front of the Teachers and the Nameless, and all four of the children had become her own blood, but still people whispered behind her back and gave ground grudgingly when she spoke. She was the mother of four children! Four healthy children! But because she didn’t hold those pretty stones, because she was not Aria Born of the Black Wall with her heresies and her idiocies, she was not heeded.

Now the Skymen had taken over Narroways and the Nameless only knew what they would do next. Surely they’d come to claim their own. Who knew what damage this woman, this heretic, could do if she were allowed to remain here, ruling over her bamboo and clay city? Who knew what it would mean to the children?

But if she were returned to her masters, they might be grateful. They might even be lenient. They were the power now, until the Nameless came. Branch touched the backs of her hands. There was less risk with Stone in the Wall in their hands than there was with her among the clan. Less risk to the children, certainly.

Branch drew the laces on her poncho closed and sighted along the Walls toward Narroways.

The Skymen will take Stone in the Wall away again, and this time they will not give her back. This time my children will remain my children.