Nobody else knelt.
It went through the crowd like a gust of wind through grass. Some of them stared at the old woman. Others stared at One. A few of the younger ones took a step back. Nobody else went down on their knees. After a moment, two of Hessan’s guards came forward and lifted the old woman by her arms.
"Old Hesk is confused," Hessan said in his pipe-thin voice. "She is very old. She is the last of us who served the master, and she sees him everywhere."
The old woman didn’t fight the guards. But as they led her away, she turned her head and looked back at Mav. Her eyes were bright and wet, and she didn’t look confused at all.
Mav pulled his scarf back over One and tied it tight. His hands were shaking a little. Beside him, Tamsin had gone very pale, and Ronald had stepped closer to them both without seeming to think about it. He stood the way he stood in front of his boars, with his feet wide.
’She served him,’ he thought. ’She knew what he looked like. And when she saw One, she thought that I was him.’
He didn’t know what to do with that, so he did nothing. He waited.
Then the doors of the hall opened, and the Speaker came out.
-----
He was the oldest of the winged people whom Mav had seen, except for Hesk. He was very tall and very thin, so thin that his gray skin seemed stretched over his bones. His wings were folded behind him like a cloak, streaked with white. He carried a staff of pale bone and wore a long robe the color of cloud. His eyes were black, with no white in them at all.
Hessan had said that the oldest of his people were rank C. The Speaker was clearly one of them. Mav could see it in the way the guards moved out of his path without looking at him.
"Welcome," the Speaker said. "I am the Speaker of the Stone. Come inside and eat. Then I will tell you where you are."
They ate in a long room at the top of the hall, with a window that looked out over the cloud. The food was strange. There was white bread made from some kind of seed, a sweet, sticky fruit and the meat of a bird. Ronald ate everything that was put in front of him, and he asked for more of the fruit. The thin girl who served them looked at his plate with an expression that Mav couldn’t read. Tamsin ate a little. Mav ate because he knew that he needed to.
The Speaker didn’t eat. He sat across the table from them with his staff across his knees, waiting until they had finished.
Then he asked his own questions first. He asked where they came from, and how they had fallen. He asked what their Worlds were like, and what their Subjects were. Tamsin answered most of them, carefully, the way she answered teachers. Ronald told him about his hills. Mav said that he had a sea, and fish, and very little else.
The Speaker looked at his scarf while he said it. His face showed nothing, but his long fingers had stopped moving on his staff.
"Old Hesk saw something around your neck," he said. "A green collar."
"It’s a plant from my World," Mav said. "I wear it because it helps me breathe under water."
That was almost true, so he said it easily. The Speaker looked at him for a moment longer. Then he nodded, as if it didn’t matter. Mav wasn’t sure whether he had believed it.
"Our World has no name," he said. "Our master never gave it one. We call it the Drift, because everything in it drifts." He spread one long hand toward the window. "You have seen the islands and the cloud. You have not yet seen what lives in the cloud, and I hope that you never do."
"The door on the forest island says that your master went into the cloud," Tamsin said. "In the 204th year."
The Speaker turned his black eyes on her. He seemed a little surprised that she could read, but he didn’t seem displeased.
"Yes. He went down to hunt something, and he did not come back. He left no liege, so we knew what would happen. Our World would break in one year, and all of us would die with it."
"But it didn’t," Mav said.
"No. It didn’t, because we would not let it."
-----
The Speaker stood up. He took them down a long stair, into the heart of the mountain, until they came to a round hall with a high ceiling.
In the middle of the hall stood a Heartstone.
It was larger than Mav’s. It was a block of white crystal as tall as a man, set into the floor, beating very slowly. Its light was dim, like a lamp running out of oil. Around it, there was a ring of iron bars, and the stone floor inside the bars was stained dark.
Against the wall, there was a cage. It was empty.
"You know the rule," the Speaker said. "A creature that dies while it touches a Heartstone gives its Essence to the stone, and not to its killer. Our master taught it to us. When he died, we remembered it."
Mav felt cold all over. He knew that rule better than anyone. He had used it on four bears, not long ago.
"For 200 years, we fed our stone with beasts," the Speaker said. "We hunted them on the near islands and brought them here alive, to die on the stone. That was enough to keep our World alive. But the near islands are empty now. The last beasts near the city were gone a hundred years ago. The far islands are full of serpents and worse. We are builders, not hunters, so we cannot bring back enough."
He looked at the stained floor inside the bars. His voice didn’t change at all.
"So, for a hundred years, we have fed it with ourselves. One of us goes to the stone every month. We choose by lot, and nobody refuses. It is an honor to keep the World alive."
"What if someone refuses?" Tamsin asked. Her voice came out very small.
The Speaker looked at her as if she had asked whether the wind might stop.
"Then the World breaks," he said. "Then all of us die, the children first, because they cannot fly far. It is one life each month, against all of them. Nobody refuses, girl. They understand."
Mav understood it too, which frightened him. It was a terrible kind of sum, but it was a sum, and the Speaker believed every word of it.
Nobody spoke. Mav could hear Tamsin breathing very fast beside him.
He looked at the cage, and for a moment, he wasn’t in the hall at all. He was 10 years old, standing in the doorway of a burned house, looking at what the fire had left of his sister’s room. Wren had been six. She had never done anything to anyone.
His hands had closed into fists. He made them open again, because the Speaker was watching him, and because there were guards at the door. But it was one of the hardest things that he had ever done.
Ronald was the one who finally asked it. His voice was rough with anger.
"Who’s next?"
The Speaker turned to the empty cage.
"The lot fell on a girl of 10, from the lower terraces. She is with her family tonight. It is the custom." He looked back at them, calm and patient. "Tomorrow, it is her turn."