The gravel had been clean off his boots before he came in, but the floor he was standing on was the planed plank floor at the elevator's lower hall, and the planed plank floor read the smallest pieces of dust off a boot the way clean floors did, and Gunnar's boots had left two pale half-rings of dust at the place his weight had been set when Pruitt had brought him in to stand against the south wall. He had not moved his weight since. He was at the wall the way the wall wanted him to be at it — shoulders squared, hands loose at the seams of his trousers, the line of him a line a visitor's eye could read at one glance and file. The coffee at Pruitt's desk smelled the way Pruitt's coffee smelled at the elevator office, brewed harder than the cookhouse brewed because Pruitt liked it harder. The doors to the yard had been left half-open for the morning air. The smoke off Walt's forge came in at the seam at the floor in a thin warm line and crossed the room at the level of his knees.
Gao Lin was at the eastern wall reading the map Pruitt kept pinned to it.
He had been at the map for the better part of the last few minutes, not asking questions, the dry attention of a man who had decided the map would tell him what the map would tell him and that questions would not improve the telling. Pruitt was at the desk with his palms flat on the wood and his eye on Gao Lin's back at the angle Pruitt's eye held when he was reading whether the visitor's attention to the map was the attention of a man learning the country or the attention of a man checking whether the country had been mapped the way the visitor had been told the country had been mapped. Two of Gao Lin's mercenaries were one pace inside the doors with their hands at their belts and their eyes on nothing.
Brynhyld was at the south wall with him, one pace to his right.
She had been brought in for the same reason he had been brought in, which was that Gao Lin's morning required a viewing of Pruitt's principal household pieces and a viewing required the pieces to be at the wall. She had not moved her weight either. She was standing the way she stood at the eastern strip's corner between sequences — heels even, the practice blade gone from her hand, her hands at the seams of her trousers the same as his, the long even register her body wore when her body had been instructed to wait.
Gunnar was waiting too.
The wool of his collar was damp at the throat where the morning's run at the corded posts had left a thin layer of sweat under it before he had been called in, and the dampness of the wool against his throat had a small grain to it that his throat had been reading without his permission since he had taken his place at the wall, and the grain was the grain of a damp wool. Damp wool had its own way of finding the skin at the throat. He had felt the way damp wool found the skin at the throat under another collar before he had ever found this collar.
The map on Pruitt's east wall ran the corridor from the Black Hills west to the elevator at Cutter's Bend and from Cutter's Bend east toward the dark line at the far margin where the old country opened. He had heard the route described at every supply meeting Pruitt had brought him to since he had been brought into supply meetings. The line of buses that had come out of the east during the long cold had emptied into the eastern settlements the way water emptied into a low place, and the place had filled and filled and there had not been room for any more of it, and the maps that had been pinned to the walls of the stations through the cold had warned travelers of the filling and had marked the alternate route through the Black Hills with a small notation that promised the early settlement, fewer crowds, food and bread at the gate.
His mother had read the small notation at the station outside what had been Buffalo.
She had read it with him at her hip and Brynhyld at her other hip, with Brynhyld's hand wound into the wool at the side of the coat the way Brynhyld's hand had wound there since the bus had left the Adirondack pass without Brynhyld's father and mother at it. His mother had read the small notation twice because his mother had been the kind of woman who read a thing twice before deciding to do the thing the reading described. The promise of fewer crowds had been the promise. The bread at the gate had been the promise. He remembered the small white notation against the brown of the map, the lettering done at a hand because the printing of maps had not yet come back to the stations along the route. The lettering had said the Black Hills station. The lettering had said the early settlement at the elevator. The lettering had said the smaller crowds.
His mother had chosen the Black Hills.
That was the choice that had brought him to the south wall of the room he was standing in, and the choice ran underneath everything he had been doing at the corded posts since he had been old enough to be set in front of the posts. He had not been to the eastern settlements. He would not be to them. He had seen their line on every map at every supply meeting and the line had been the line he would not cross, because his mother had chosen the Black Hills.
The smoke at the floor caught the wool of his collar at the damp place, and the wool at the damp place gave back the small grain it gave back when wool was damp, and his throat went past the wool to the wool that had been damp under another throat a long route ago, and he was not at the south wall for a beat.
He was at the back of the second bus.
Brynhyld was inside his mother's coat. The coat was damp at the shoulder where the snow had not yet shaken off it from the loading of the bus, and the damp came through his cheek at the place his cheek was pressed against the shoulder, and the smell of the coat was the smell of the coat — his mother's hair oil and the road and the inside of a wool that had been keeping two small bodies alive across a stretch of bus-stops. Brynhyld's hand was inside the coat at the other side of the wool from his mother's heart and his hand was inside the coat at his side of the wool from his mother's heart, and the two hands were not touching across the wool but the heat coming through the wool from his mother's body went the same direction through both of them. He had not yet, on the bus, understood that Brynhyld's mother and father were not on the bus. He had understood that Brynhyld's mother had not gotten back on the bus at the Adirondack pass, the way he had understood the things adults had not yet told him, by reading the absence of the regular smell of Brynhyld's mother from the coat. The rest he had understood later.
The bus had reached the dome at some hour he had not been awake for.
He had been awake for the temperature at the window glass changing. The bite that had been at the wool of his hood whenever he had pressed his face to the glass had gone out of the glass without anyone at the driver's seat announcing it. The cold that had been pulling at the door seals at every stop along the eastern route had eased back from the seals the way a tide eased back from a shore. The light through the glass had come up to a color he had not seen on the eastern route and had not seen since, and the color did not have a name in any language his mother had told him stories in. He had pressed his palm against the glass at the seat in front of him and the glass had been the temperature of his palm.
The bus had run for days inside the warmth.
The gate at Cutter's Bend had been the first gate at any structure on the route.
Pruitt had been at the gate at the inside of the wall when the bus had come up the gravel road at the end of the route. He had not been waiting for the bus. He had been the man who was at the gate when the buses came in, and the bus had come in, and his mother had come down the bus's step with Brynhyld at her hip and Gunnar at her other hip, and Pruitt at the gate had taken the long even view of a politician reading what the bus had brought. The reading had taken a beat. The beat had concluded. Pruitt had gone to the cab of the bus and had brought back a cup of broth in a tin cup and had given the cup to his mother before he had said anything to her at all. His mother had taken the cup. Her hand on the tin had been the hand of a woman who had walked across the long cold without a cup of broth in her hand, and the hand of the woman had wrapped the cup the long full way, and Pruitt at the gate had counted the wrapping with the same even eye he had counted everything since the bus had come up the gravel.
That had been the catching.
It had not been romance. He had not been small enough to mistake it for romance. The catching had been the kind of catching a politician's eye did when a woman came down the step of a bus with two living children at her hip and wrapped a tin cup of broth the long full way. The catching had been transactional in the way the catching at the gate had always been transactional. He had figured this out at the time and had not figured it out completely until later, but the catching at the time had registered as a piece of the route ending, and the piece of the route ending had been all his mother had needed from a catching at the gate.
The bed had been at the back of the cookhouse. The room had been off the cookhouse the next morning. The marriage had been at the elevator within the season. Gudrun had been inside his mother before the winter and had been the round at his mother's middle through the cold months and had been the second round at his mother's middle through the early spring, and the bed at the back of the cookhouse had been the bed in which the blood had been on the sheets.
The blood had been on the sheets.
He had been at the doorway. He had been at the doorway because the cookhouse foreman had not gotten him out of the doorway in time, and the cookhouse foreman had been at the bed because the cookhouse foreman had been the closest woman in the settlement who had any skill at a bed of that kind. The bed at the back of the cookhouse had been the only bed of the kind that had any of the cookhouse's heat, and the heat had not been enough, and the blood on the sheets had been the small red rounds the cloth had taken before the small rounds had become the larger round and the larger round had become the only round. The cookhouse foreman had not gotten him out of the doorway because the cookhouse foreman had been holding his mother's hand at the time, and the holding had been the holding the cookhouse foreman had needed both her hands for.
The room had gone quiet across one long breath. Gudrun had not gone quiet. The cookhouse foreman had wrapped Gudrun in the cloth and had set Gudrun against the wall on the bench and had gone back to his mother and had pulled the sheet up to his mother's chin, and the sheet had taken the wet from the bench under his mother's middle and had darkened along the length of it and had darkened further, and the darkening had been the way the cookhouse foreman had told him without saying it that his mother had finished.
He had been at the doorway when Pruitt had come in.
Pruitt had come in through the cookhouse door at the unhurried pace and had stopped at the doorway and had stood at the doorway beside him without putting a hand on him, and the not-putting-a-hand-on-him had been the gesture by which Gunnar had understood what he was at the gate after that. Pruitt had crossed to the bed and had pulled the sheet down at his mother's face for the long beat a politician needed to read whether his wife was finished, and the reading had taken the beat, and Pruitt had pulled the sheet back up to his mother's chin and had turned to the cookhouse foreman and had asked about the cradle for the daughter. The cookhouse foreman had answered. Pruitt had given the cookhouse foreman instructions about the daughter. Pruitt had not given the cookhouse foreman instructions about the boy at the doorway. Pruitt had passed him at the doorway on the way out and had laid a hand on his shoulder the small dry beat a politician laid a hand on a boy at a doorway when the politician had decided the boy at the doorway was a piece in the column and had no further opinion about the piece, and Pruitt had gone out into the yard.
The hand on the shoulder had been the hand on the back of a chair at a man's desk.
That was the thing he had figured out across the seasons after. The hand had been the hand a man laid on the back of a chair he had decided he was going to use more often. He had been the chair. Brynhyld had been the other chair. The chairs had stayed in the room because the room used the chairs. The chairs had not been family.
He let the wool of his collar release his throat.
The room at the south wall of which he was standing had Pruitt at the desk and Gao Lin at the map and Brynhyld at the wall and two mercenaries one pace inside the doors and a thin line of forge smoke at the floor, and Gunnar at the south wall had his boots planted on the planed plank floor in the two pale half-rings of dust and the wool of his collar damp at the throat with the morning's sweat, and the room moved on without him. Pruitt asked Gao Lin a question about the eastern grain rotation in the voice Pruitt used at the desk when Pruitt was performing administration for an audience of one. Gao Lin answered with the dry register that came out of him when he was at a map. The mercenaries shifted their weight by an inch and did not shift it back. Brynhyld did not move.
He set his eye on her without turning his head.
She was at the wall the way she had been at the wall through the start of the meeting — heels even, hands at the seams, the long even register. He had been at the wall beside her for as long as he had been at any wall. He had been at her side under his mother's coat. He had been at her side in the cookhouse bench beside the cradle when Pruitt had set them on the bench and told the cookhouse foreman to feed them. He had been at her side at the security man's strip from the morning the security man had decided she was useful in a category the security man had not expected, and he had been at the corded posts beside her strip from that morning forward, and he had been the strongest fighter at the yard since the second-best had stopped being relevant to the comparison.
She had never turned to him the way Pruitt now had her at the wall and had not asked her to turn to anything.
She was not turned to him now either. He had taught himself a long time ago not to mind the part of her attention that did not come to him. He had taught himself by reading the even register of her face and by understanding that the register was the same register her face wore at the strip and at the table and at the cookhouse and that the register was not a register that was offered to anyone, and that what he had been getting from her was the same nothing she gave the rest of the compound, which was a fair share of nothing and was not, in any way, a withholding aimed at him.
That had been true.
It had been true until the part of the year when it had stopped being true.
He had figured out across the last stretch of mornings at the yard that she had begun to give a smaller portion of her attention to a place at the south edge of the yard where his hammer at the corded posts had not been, and the place was the open mouth of the forge. He had clocked it the way he clocked anything at the yard. He had not understood it. He had told himself for a stretch of mornings that her eye was on the smoke for the smoke and that the smoke was at the south edge and that the south edge happened to be where the smoke was, and the telling-himself had held until it had not held, and at some point the telling-himself had become a wall he could no longer keep his weight against, and he had let it go.
She was turning that way now.
He could read it without turning his head. He could read it through the corner of his eye at the place his peripheral picked up the line of her throat, and the line of her throat went one degree to her left at intervals, and the intervals were the intervals at which the forge doorway across the yard would have a figure at it if a figure was crossing in and out of it for water. He did not turn his head. He did not need to. Sigurd was at the doorway. He had been at the doorway with the yoke at the start of the morning and he had been at the doorway with the empty skins at the middle of the morning and he had been at the doorway with the full skins on the carry back, and the line of her throat went one degree to her left at every crossing of the doorway, and the line of her throat had been going that way since before Gunnar had begun to clock the going.
He did not like it.
He let himself not like it for the half-beat his face could afford and he set his face back to the even register the south wall asked of his face. He had not yet developed the language for it. He was at the south wall in the two pale half-rings of his own dust and the woman beside him had her throat at one degree to her left at the regular interval, and the throat at one degree was directed at a forge boy with a yoke across the yard, and the forge boy was a few seasons younger than he was and had nothing the second-ring sons had and had not yet learned how to hold a hammer at the corded posts and had not been the front of any room since he had been small enough to fit inside a coat the way Brynhyld had been small enough to fit inside his mother's coat at the bus.
The thing that came up at the back of his chest was the kind of thing that came up at the back of a chest when the chest had been standing at a wall for years and had decided that the wall was, in fact, the wall it had been standing at. He let the thing come up. He did not give the thing his face.
He thought about the catalog his mother had run for him before she had finished. The catalog had been the small stories his mother had told him at the bus and at the bench and at the back of the cookhouse before the night the bed had been at the back, and the catalog had been the small list of the things he had been to her. He had been her son. He had been the strong one. He had been the one she had told the long story of the Allfather to. He had been the one she had given the last piece of her cracker to at the Adirondack pass when she had handed her crackers to him under the wool of her hood. He had been the named one in his mother's stories. He had been the named one at her hip at the gate.
He had not been the named one since.
He had been the heir. He had been the asset. He had been the front of every room he had walked into since Pruitt had passed him at the doorway with the hand on his shoulder, and the front of every room he had walked into had been a place he had been put because the column needed a front, and the column had needed a front because the column had been Pruitt's, and the column had been Pruitt's because his mother had finished on the bed at the back of the cookhouse and Pruitt had decided what to do with the chairs the room used.
He wanted, for once, to be the named one.
He wanted Brynhyld's throat to go one degree to her right.
He wanted the room to read his name. Not his column. His name. The name his mother had called him under the coat. The name the cookhouse foreman had used to feed him at the bench beside the cradle. The name that had not been Pruitt's name and that had not been an asset's name and that had been the name on the bus.
He set the want down.
He was at the south wall.
The eye he had been carrying without turning his head had been on Brynhyld and on the corner of the doorway across the yard, and the eye picked up, at the edge of its sweep, a thing the eye had not been carrying for. The thing was attention. The attention was not at the map. The attention was at him.
He brought the eye in slowly. He did not turn his head. He moved the eye through the room the way a man at a south wall moved an eye through a room when the man at the south wall did not want to be read as moving an eye through the room, and he found the source of the attention at the eastern wall.
Gao Lin had turned from the map.
He was holding the map's edge under his right hand at the corner he had pulled back to read the corridor's southern line, and the right hand had not let the corner go, and the right hand was the hand the Draupnir was on, and the hand had the corner of the map a fraction back from the wall the way a man held a map a fraction back from the wall when the man's attention had moved off the map. The attention had moved off the map and onto the south wall. The attention was on Gunnar.
It was not the attention Gunnar had been waiting for.
He had read the attention at the eastern strip earlier. He had read it because he had been at the corded posts when Gao Lin had brought his eye onto Brynhyld at the corner, and he had felt the eye through the air the way a boy at the corded posts felt the eye of any visitor on a yard. The eye on Brynhyld had had a thing in it. The thing had been the thing a man's eye carried when a man's eye was reading a thing the man's eye had decided was worth a column in the man's ledger. It had been the eye of a man who wanted to acquire.
The eye on him was different.
He read it the way he read what came at him at the corded posts when an opponent came at him. The eye was not reading him as a column to acquire. The eye was reading him as a thing in the way of the column. The eye was the eye of an opponent at the far edge of a yard taking the long even read of the boy at the front of the corded posts to figure out whether the boy at the front was a boy to be gone around or a boy to be gone through, and the read had not yet concluded, and the not-yet of the conclusion was the part of the read Gunnar's chest was registering.
The eye held.
He held the eye. He held it the way he held an opponent's eye at the corded posts. He did not let any line of his body advertise the holding. The wool at his throat had gone the rest of the way damp. The dust under his boots had settled.
He was the heir. He was the asset. He was the front of the column his mother's coat had carried him to the gate inside of. He was the boy at the corded posts. He was the obstacle.
The eye released him after the beat.
It went back to the map. The right hand let the corner of the map come back to the wall. The voice came out of him at the dry register that came out at a map.
"Your eastern grain rotation runs at the rate your records show, Mr. Pruitt. The numbers are clean. Your son carries the corded posts at the front of his yard. Your champion runs the strip at the front of her strip. The column is the column you have laid out."
"Yes, sir," Pruitt said.
"We will discuss your delivery schedule at the office."
"Yes, sir."
The mercenaries at the doors did not shift. Brynhyld at the wall did not shift. Gunnar at the wall did not shift. The forge smoke at the floor ran east at the seam.
He was the front of the column.
He held the wall.
He did not turn his head.