Field-Keepers

They waited until night.

They hid the cart in the shadow of the hill, looked down over the field, and counted. It was Roslyn who counted.

“Four hundred and twenty rows, as far as I can see. About fifty people to a row. More than twenty thousand.”

“Twenty thousand.”

“As far as I can see, that is. The field goes on past the horizon.”

Roslyn looked at the paper with the number on it for a while.

“…I do not want to write this number. But if I do not write it, it disappears. So I will write it.”

People were walking through the field.

Slowly, between the rows of sleeping bodies. Carrying lanterns. Bending over each face, checking how the tubes were seated, moving on to the next.

There was something familiar about the way they walked.

No hurry. No hesitation. Every one of them bent his head at the same angle.

“…Those ones turned too?”

“Field-keepers,” said Yuran, who had turned around. “They look after the sleepers. They only do what they're told. That's what makes them the best fit.”

＊

The twins explained how the field worked.

Yuran did most of the talking. Jorun added a short word here and there.

“Two tubes run into each one. One goes from the grass to the person. It feeds them the sap and grows them while they sleep. Instead of food.”

“And the other one,” Marlow said.

“Person to grass. It draws the blood out a little at a time. That's what the grass grows on.”

“Ordinary blood only works once, doesn't it.”

“It ends. So the people here are people until they end.”

Yuran's voice was flat. It was the voice of a man who couldn't speak at all unless he kept it flat.

“You grow them, you fatten them, and at the end you put them in the converter. One grain per person.”

Willa tightened her grip on Marlow's sleeve.

“…That's the same as cows.”

“Same as cows, girl,” said Jorun, facing front. “The Republic doesn't keep cows. People do what they're told better.”

＊

“Then what about One,” Marlow said. “One's blood doesn't end.”

“That's why that's the only place still shining.”

Yuran jerked his chin at the ground just below the hill.

Marlow looked.

It was true. That one place was bright.

The grass around One glowed many times stronger than any other row. The white veins in the stems were thick, and they pulsed fast. The light spread in a circle with One's body at the center. Thirty meters across, at least.

Thirty meters of grass, growing on one man's blood.

“They're testing it,” Yuran said. “How much grass god's blood can grow in one night. General's orders. They measure it here before they take him to the capital.”

“When do they take him.”

“When the sky-ship comes back. Four days. Five.”

＊

They decided who would go.

Marlow. Mirabel. Drag. Yuran and Jorun.

Roslyn stood up, clutching her stack of paper.

“I am going too.”

“Don't come,” Drag said.

“I am going. It is a row of twenty thousand people. If no one sees it and writes it down, this place will never have existed.”

“You'll die.”

“If I die, Captain, you write my line.”

Drag started to say something, then shut his mouth.

Then he stood beside Roslyn without a word. He didn't say don't go again.

Willa was on her feet before anyone told her anything.

“Stay here.”

“No.”

“I need a favor.”

Willa's face changed a little. It was the first time in three years Marlow had said he needed a favor.

“Stay up on the hill and watch the whole field,” he said. “If anything that isn't a field-keeper moves, swing the lantern three times. Down there we can't see what's around us.”

“…Only I can do it?”

“You've got the best eyes. Third fastest in the market wasn't just your legs.”

Willa took the lantern in both hands.

“…Fine. Three times. If I swing three times, you come straight back.”

Silas was polishing his glasses beside the cart.

“I shall remain. If both recordkeepers die, no record remains.”

This time no one said anything.

＊

Before they went down, Marlow took three grains out of the pouch.

He held them out to Mirabel.

“Oh? For me? Three of them?”

“You got drained. Top yourself up.”

“Awww. Awww, so sweet. Hey, did you hear that? Did you hear? My kiddo's being sweet.”

“Don't call me yours.”

“No-o-ope.”

Mirabel tossed all three into her mouth and chewed. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

The black flow at her side stopped, and her metal fingers opened and closed smoothly.

“There. Full. Not a hundred percent, but eighty.”

There were seventy-six left in the pouch.

＊

They went down into the field.

Up close, the sleeping faces were all peaceful. None of them looked like they were suffering. That was the worst part of it.

A stake stood at the end of each row. A small tag was nailed to each stake.

Roslyn crouched and read the first tag.

“A number, the date they went in, and a weight.”

“A name?”

“There is none.”

Roslyn read the next tag. She read the one after that.

As she read, she wrote on her paper. The numbers. One tag at a time.

“Scribe. Hurry,” Drag said, low.

“I am hurrying.”

“You can't write all of it. It's twenty thousand.”

“I know that. Because I know it, I am writing as much as I can.”

Roslyn's pen stopped there.

One of the tags had writing on it besides the number.

One more line, under the number.

From the Empire. Imperial Year 307. Calva.

Roslyn's lips moved without any sound. It was the way lips move doing subtraction.

Forty-one years ago.

Roslyn looked up.

An old man lay on the other side of the tag.

His hair was pure white and his cheeks were hollow. Two tubes went into his chest. His ribs were a little out of shape. Out of shape the way ribs are when three of them broke long ago and healed badly.

“…Garry Knotts.”

Roslyn's voice was shaking.

“The ninth in the Black Book. He fell from the Sea Wall at Calva and turned on the eleventh day. Forty-one years ago.”

Marlow remembered what the seamstress in the southern port town had said.

Nineteen. Called for his mother. I stitched that one myself.

＊

“…The Empire sold him here?”

“They sold him,” Yuran said. “The turned aren't much use in the Empire. In the Republic they make field-keepers, or they make field. They show up now and then, traded for grain.”

“Aren't the Empire and the Republic enemies?”

“They're enemies. That's why they trade. The one holding what you want is always the enemy, isn't it.”

Drag's face didn't move.

It didn't move, but the knuckles of his clenched fist had gone white.

“…I kept the watch on the wall for fourteen years.”

Drag's voice was low.

“I read the names of the ones who came back from the far side in the Black Book, over and over. After I read them, I never once thought about where they went.”

Roslyn took hold of Drag's sleeve, just barely.

She let go right away.

The old man opened his eyes.

He looked at Roslyn.

Then, slowly and politely, he spoke.

“…Welcome, ma'am. Is there something you require?”

Roslyn could not answer.

Still unable to answer, she wrote a name on the paper, beside the number.

Garry Knotts.

For the first time in forty-one years, this man's name was written down somewhere.

＊

It was thirty meters more to where One lay.

Inside the edge of the ring of light, the grass came up over their knees. Twice the height of the other rows. The white light lit them from their feet to their faces.

One lay on his back.

His eyes were closed. Two tubes in his chest. One from the grass to One. The other from One to the grass. The tube running from One to the grass was the thicker one.

“Hey.”

No answer.

“Hey. Get up. A man who spread his arms out in the wind after nine years doesn't lie around in a place like this.”

One's eyelids moved.

They opened.

He looked at Marlow. He looked at him for a while.

“…Same face.”

“That's right.”

“The same face came to get me. Came to get me, he did.”

One laughed. The laugh of a man who had forgotten how to laugh. This time he didn't stop partway.

Mirabel put out her blade.

“Hold still, old man. I'm cutting the tubes.”

The tip of the blade cut both tubes at once, just short of his chest.

Nothing leaked from the cuts. The blade was so fast that what was inside hadn't noticed it had been cut.

In that instant, the field went dark.

Not only the thirty meters around One.

Every glowing blade of grass in the whole field, as far as they could see, went dim all at once. As if the white veins inside tens of thousands of stems had all held their breath at the same moment.

One second.

Then it lit again. Weak. Half as bright as before.

“…What was that.”

Yuran's face had gone white.

“He was connected. To the whole field. This man's blood was running through the roots, all the way to the far end.”

“The far end.”

“Twenty thousand people's worth of field, and this one man was lighting all of it.”

＊

Up on the hill, a light swung.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

It was Willa's lantern.

Marlow looked out across the field.

Out where the darkened field met the horizon. Shadows that didn't walk like field-keepers were coming this way in a column.

He started to count.

Before he could, a single wing spread open above the column of shadows.

End of Chapter 31