Scarecrow

The ears heard it first.

Not Ilka. Not Vessa. Not the eldest queen. The ears. The strands of Hearth’s silver Asha had sent out through Kyria’s new arches and Ilka had pushed into the rock of every moon and stone at the edge of Root’s sky, in the eleven days since the Watch was signed.

They’d heard footsteps. Small things on moons. The wind. Rock cooling at night. And past all of it, very far, the breathing.

On the twelfth morning, they heard something else.

Engines, said the eldest queen.

Through the ground. Through the arch on the north field. Into every one of us with silver in us, all at once, before dawn.

Not the hungry. Not breathing. Engines. Many. Going the same way.

A pause.

Together.

I was on the porch when it came. With Mother, and her tea. And Vessa on Andraste’s chest at the end of the rail, facing out.

Vessa turned her head.

Not out. Sideways. Toward something nearer than the edge.

Andraste went very still.

”She hears it too,” she said. ”Not the breathing.” She put her hand on Vessa’s back. ”Something else.”

Tally came down the road from the long ward in her nightgown.

Not running. Tally doesn’t run. Walking very fast, with her notebook against her chest and her bare feet on the cold stones.

She stopped at the bottom of the steps.

”The houses are talking,” she said.

”They always talk.”

”Not like this,” said Tally. ”Not to each other. Not through the voice the way they talk to the towers.” She opened the notebook. ”They are talking to something that is not the voice. Something outside it. Something that answers.” She looked up. ”The houses have never talked to anyone who answers. Not in all the time I have listened.”

The Overseer was already in the map room when I got there.

In the doorway. With the dog. It hadn’t gone home through the arch from Root. It never sleeps much. It said things made at the middle aren’t made to.

Okafor was at the wall.

”There is a new line,” said the Overseer. Before anyone asked.

Okafor turned round.

In the ledger, said the Overseer. I hear it. The middle hears everything that passes. Its long grey hands were very still. For a thousand thousand years there have been two lines. Ours. And lost. Nothing else. No world was ever anything but one or the other.

Since the night before last, there is a third.

”What does it say?”

The Overseer was quiet for a long time.

There is no word for it in what you speak, it said. The nearest is with.

Nobody in the map room said anything.

”With who?” said Okafor.

The Overseer didn’t answer.

It didn’t need to.

Dinraal came through the courtyard arch with two faces at that moment, with the First Weapon and Tiamat behind him, and his face told us before he said anything.

”The Ashen,” said Dinraal.

Tiamat had a picture.

Not one line at a time. A picture. Whole. From her orbital stations, the nine round Hearth, held together with silver that holds its own shape. One of them had been looking outward, the way she’d set them all to look since the Watch. And it had seen something at the edge of Hearth’s sky.

She put it on the big screen in the map room. Ruan did it for her.

A Hand.

A Sorn Hand, the way they always look. Five fingers. A palm. Dark and seamless. Folded, the way they fold when they’re travelling.

And round it, very close, like a swarm of dark seeds round a hand that’s scattering them, ships.

Not Sorn. Long and narrow and black, with no light on them anywhere. Hundreds. Moving with the Hand. Not fighting it. Not running from it. Keeping pace with it.

”Ashen ships,” said Dinraal.

He was very calm. The way Okafor is calm. The way you’re calm when the thing you were afraid of has finally happened and there’s nothing left to be afraid of except what comes next.

”I have fought those ships since I was old enough to stand beside my father’s people,” he said. ”They have never once travelled with anyone. Not in all the years. Not in Bahamut’s years. They do not ally. They do not trade. They come, and we stop them, or we do not.” He looked at the screen. ”They are travelling with a Hand.”

”Why?” said Okafor.

Nobody answered.

Then Crane spoke. From the table. With his spanner.

”Because of what Dinraal saw,” he said.

Everyone looked at him.

”The distress call,” said Crane. ”At Hearth’s edge. The Ashen fighting the Hungry for three days. Four.” He turned the spanner over. ”The Ashen lost. But they fought for four days. Against a swarm.” He looked up. ”How long did the Sorn last on Vessa’s world?”

Nobody answered.

”Not four days,” said Crane. ”The correctors were hollowed out. The towers were eaten. The black did nothing.” He put the spanner down. ”The houses have one weapon. It doesn’t work on the Hungry. And somewhere out past the ring, they found out the Ashen have one that does.”

”It does,” said Dinraal. Very quietly.

He held up his wrist. And his silver came off it, very thin, and made a shape in the air over the table. The way Asha draws in light, sometimes, when the dictionary isn’t enough.

Not a picture of a ship. A picture of what he’d seen. At Hearth’s edge. On the fourth day. From his ship, watching.

A line of Ashen. Tall and thin and dark, the way Garnet drew them. And something coming from them, toward the Hungry. Not fire. Not light. Something dark. A shape he couldn’t draw properly, that went out from them in a long low wave across the ground.

And where it touched the Hungry, the Hungry stopped.

Not burned. Not broken. Stopped. Went grey, the way the Sorn black greys a forest. And didn’t move again. And didn’t get eaten afterward, either. The swarm went round them.

”Fire burns them,” said Dinraal. ”Lucas has seen it. Sera’s fire. The Hands’ fire. It burns them, and more come out of the heap, and the heap eats the burned ones.” He let the silver go back to his wrist. ”The Ashen weapon doesn’t burn them. It ends them. And the swarm won’t touch what’s left.”

He looked at the screen. At the Hand, and the dark ships round it.

”The Ashen lost anyway,” he said. ”There were too many.” He was quiet. ”But the houses would have seen that. Four days. And the swarm going round what the Ashen left.”

”So the houses went to the Ashen,” said Okafor.

”Or the Ashen went to the houses,” said Dinraal. ”I don’t know which. I don’t know what they talked about. I don’t know how they talked at all.”

”What do the Ashen get?” said Okafor.

Nobody knew.

I’ve thought about that question every day since.

So has everyone. Crane says nobody ever gives a weapon away for nothing; he says it with the face of a man who signed for thirty years of somebody else’s children. Konrad says the houses always keep the terms, and that whatever the terms are, the Ashen will get exactly what they were promised and not one thing more. The Overseer says the middle has heard the third line and nothing under it. Dinraal says the Ashen have wanted Hearth for as long as there’s been a Hearth, and that he doesn’t think it’s that, and that he doesn’t know what else it could be.

The eldest queen says nothing at all.

When I asked her, in the hall under the house, through the ground, she was quiet for a very long time.

Then she said: I do not know what they are. I have never been able to hear them.

That frightened me more than anything else anyone said.

We found out what it meant on Vantle.

Konrad had chosen it at the dawn count, the day before. Forty-fourth on the sheet. Coded outbound five tithes running. Nearest to the far yard of anything left. Crane had checked it and nodded. The Overseer had said the middle had heard Vantle three times in a week. Tally had counted towers on it: nine. Nine pieces of queens, singing.

”They’ll be first,” Konrad had said. ”Whatever comes.”

So we went.

Not thin. Never one person. Me up the thread. Kyria’s cutters. The Mom Squad. My wives, all but Risa, who stood at the arch with both clouds and commanded, and Andraste, who stayed with Vessa. Forty thousand Hyrrani. The walking engines. The wing, with Ingrid first. Brock and Saska. Okafor. Hana’s father’s miners, for the hollows if there was time. Odra’s smiths. Tally, for the towers, with a bag for the pieces.

And Hearth. For the first time. Dinraal and the First Weapon and forty of Tiamat’s people in silver armour, through the arch with two faces and the courtyard arch and onto Vantle’s grey plains.

Vantle’s a grey world. Flat. Cold. With low cities of stone in long lines across the plains and a sky that’s always overcast. A million and two hundred thousand people. The council said yes before Ysolt had finished.

We had them coming through the arch inside an hour.

Tally went for the towers. Nine of them. With Sigmund, because Sigmund can hold the hearts of anyone near a tower who’s gone grey from the note, and Okafor’s people, and a bag.

She got four.

Then the pods came down.

I’d seen it on Merrow. Long pale ribbed things the size of the Steady, coming out of the dark the way seed comes off a tree in autumn, splitting as they fell.

On Vantle there were more.

They came down over the cities on the far side of the plains. The ones furthest from the arch. Thousands of pods. And out of them, the Hungry. Bone-coloured. Winged. Mouths four ways.

More.

”Faster,” said Mother. At the bottom of the arch. Not loud. ”Faster now, loves.”

And then the Hands came.

Twelve of them. Out of the overcast, low, over the far cities, with their palms opening.

And with them, round them, dark seeds round a hand, the Ashen.

I watched it from the arch. With my hand on the stone, holding the place. With a million people of Vantle going past me on both sides, walking fast, holding on.

The Hands burned.

Sheets of fire. White and yellow and the colour with no name. Down onto the far cities. Onto the Hungry coming out of the pods. Onto the people who hadn’t reached the plains yet.

And the Ashen ships went low over the plains between the cities. And something came out of them. Dark. Low. A long wave across the ground.

And the Hungry it touched went grey.

And stopped.

And didn’t get up.

They were winning.

That’s the thing I have to write down. Because it’s true. For one breath, on the grey plains of Vantle, the Hands and the Ashen together were doing what nothing had done in millions of years. The Hungry came down out of the sky and the Hands burned them and the Ashen ended them, and the swarm went round. Round the grey ones. Round the burned cities. Slowing. Turning. Confused.

I heard it in my head. The one sound. More.

And under it, for the first time, something else.

Not there.

And then the Ashen turned toward the arch.

I felt them do it.

Not with the silver. I can’t feel the Ashen with the silver. Neither can the eldest queen. I felt them the way you feel anything else. The way you feel a draught when a door opens behind you. Hundreds of dark ships, low over the plains, turning. All at once. Away from the Hungry.

Toward us.

Toward the arch. And the line of a million people walking toward it. And the Hyrrani round it in iron. And Hearth, in silver.

”Dinraal,” said Okafor.

”I see them.”

The Hands turned too.

Six of them. Away from the far cities. Away from the Hungry, still coming down out of the overcast. Toward the plains. Toward us.

With their palms opening.

I’ll write it the way I wrote Merrow. Fast.

Because it was fast. And because I still don’t like to think about it slowly.

Okafor made two Hands heavy. At once. With both hands up. And they came down on the plain between the far cities and the arch, palms first, and the fire came out of them sideways into the swarm. And the Hungry turned on them, the way they turned on the Hands at Merrow, and ate them.

Ingrid hushed two more. From high. Very high. Risa talking her through it from the arch with her eyes shut. And Ingrid didn’t fall this time, because Rowan and Callum were under her, side by side, and caught her between their wings.

Sera burned the fire of the last two back into them. All of it. Living flame. As hot as a dying star. Until the palms went white and then went nothing.

The Ashen didn’t burn.

The Ashen came in low over the plains in their hundreds, with no light on them anywhere, and the dark wave went out ahead of them across the grey ground. Toward the line of people. Toward the arch.

And Dinraal went to meet it.

He’d been fighting the Ashen all his life. His father had. His father’s father. He didn’t hesitate.

He went out onto the plain in front of the line of people with the First Weapon beside him and forty of Tiamat’s people behind him in silver armour. And put his hands down. Flat. On the grey ground.

And the silver went into it.

Wide. Very wide. Out from his hands across the plain in every direction, under the feet of a million people. Not listening this time.

Holding.

The dark wave hit it.

And the silver held.

It went black where the wave touched it. All along the front of the line. A long black line across the grey plain where Dinraal’s silver met whatever the Ashen do. Smoking. And holding. And Dinraal on his knees at the middle of it with his hands flat on the ground and his face white and his bracelets so bright you couldn’t look at them.

And the First Weapon standing over him.

Not a corgi, now. I’d never seen him do it. His silver collar went out over all of him at once, the way Dinraal’s armour does, and grew. Bigger. And bigger. Four armoured legs. Wings. Claws. A tail of silver light. Until the small serious dog who lies across doorways was a beast the size of the long barn, standing over the man on his knees, with something on his back I didn’t understand until it fired, and an Ashen ship coming in low came apart in the air.

Filling precisely the part of the plain where anything coming for Dinraal would have needed to stand.

Then the Hungry came for the Ashen.

They’d been confused. Turning. Not there. And then the Hands had come down among them, eaten. And now the Ashen had turned their dark wave away from the swarm and toward us.

And the swarm stopped being confused.

They came down off the far cities. All of them. Out of the overcast and off the burned stone and up out of the pods still splitting. Over the plains. Toward the Ashen ships, low over the ground, with their weapon pointed the wrong way.

There.

The Ashen turned back.

Not all of them. Not fast enough. I saw the first of the Hungry reach the nearest ship. And close on it. And spit. And the black hull smoked, the way the Sorn iron smoked on Vessa’s world.

And the Ashen ship came apart.

Nobody won on Vantle.

I want to write that down plainly. Not us. Not the houses. Not the Ashen. Not the Hungry.

Everybody lost something.

VANTLE. 1,200,000.

Through: 1,031,882.

Kwame Osei counted them down the shafts on Avalon. A million and thirty-one thousand. The rest were in the far cities when the Hands came. Or on the plains when the pods split. Or in the long line, near the back, when the Ashen turned.

Two hundred and twelve Hyrrani didn’t come home. Kyria said their names on the north field that night. All of them. One at a time.

Six of the wing. Risa said theirs. At the arch. With her eyes open.

Nine of Tiamat’s people. Dinraal said theirs. On his knees. In the courtyard. With the First Weapon, small again, in his lap, and Isolde’s arms round him, and Tiamat standing behind him with her hand on his head the way Mother puts hers on mine and his bracelets gone dark, very dark, the darkest I’d ever seen them, for hours, before they came back.

Four pieces of queen, out of nine. Tally put them on the floor of the long ward beside the Merrow queen. She didn’t make a mark for the other five. She left a space.

The red glass, that afternoon, was the worst I’d ever seen it.

Not the numbers. The numbers came after, from Kwame Osei’s slate. I mean what it looked like. A million people from Vantle coming down off the arch onto the glass and being walked, very fast, holding on, to the shafts and the north field and the long road to Thera. Grey with ash, most of them. Carrying bags. Carrying each other.

And then the Hyrrani coming back.

Last. After everyone. Through the arch in iron that wasn’t bright any more. Walking in rows, the way they walk off a ridge. Carrying their dead between them on shields.

Two hundred and twelve shields.

They didn’t stop on the red glass. They walked straight through the crowd, which opened for them without anyone asking, and on toward the courtyard arch, and home to Hyrran. Kyria walked at the front. She didn’t look at anyone. Teshka walked beside her.

Maura was at the foot of the arch with a basket.

She’d been there all day. Giving out bread. Holding hands. Warming the ones who’d been on the plains too long and had gone cold to the bone, the way she warms the black out of an arm, very quickly, one after another, without stopping.

There was a little girl beside her. From Vantle. Very small. Grey with ash from her hair to her shoes. Holding Maura’s skirt with one hand and a piece of bread she hadn’t eaten with the other.

She watched the Hyrrani go past with their shields.

Then she looked up at Maura.

”Are those the heroes?” she said.

Dot gave it to Maura. Maura didn’t need it. She knelt down. Slowly, because her knees aren’t what they were. On the red glass. In front of the girl.

”Yes, love,” said Maura. ”They are.”

The girl looked at the shields for a long time.

”Is that what happens to heroes?”

Maura didn’t answer straight away.

Then she took the girl’s hand. The one with the bread in it. And held it, very warm.

”Sometimes,” she said. ”Not always.” She swallowed. ”That’s why there have to be so many of us. So it isn’t always the same ones.”

The girl looked at her.

Then she put the bread in Maura’s hand. And walked to the end of the line of Hyrrani with their shields. And walked beside the last one. All the way to the courtyard arch.

Nobody stopped her.

The Hyrrani woman carrying the last shield looked down at her once. And didn’t say anything. And slowed her step, very slightly, so the girl could keep up.

Garnet drew it.

From the porch. Very fast. A line of women in iron. Shields between them. And at the back, very small, a little girl, grey with ash, walking.

She wrote under it, very small: The heroes.

That was where the name came from. Not a little girl asking. A little girl walking.

Okafor found me on the red glass, before the long table.

I was sitting by the arch. The one we’d come back through. Hesk had brought it down behind the last of us, the way she always does, and it was rubble now, and smoke, and a cup of tea on the stone beside it that nobody had drunk.

Okafor sat down beside me. She doesn’t, often. She stands.

”Say it,” she said.

I didn’t want to.

”I could have,” I said. ”On the plain. When the Ashen turned.” I looked at my hands. ”I could have gone down. To the heart of Vantle. And asked.” I swallowed. ”The Hands. The Ashen. The swarm. All of it. At once.”

”Yes,” said Okafor.

”A hundred and sixty thousand people didn’t come home.”

”Yes.”

”I could have—”

”You could have killed a million and two hundred thousand,” said Okafor. Very quietly. ”Instead of a hundred and sixty.” She didn’t look at me. ”And two hundred and twelve Hyrrani. And six of the wing. And nine of Tiamat’s. And Dinraal, on his knees in the middle of the plain. And your mother, at the bottom of the arch. And every one of the Hungry and every one of the Ashen and every Hand.” She was quiet. ”The houses asked you to do that on Merrow, Dask. In your head. Make it white.”

I didn’t say anything.

”They’ll ask again,” said Okafor. ”Every world. Every time it goes wrong. Because it’s going to go wrong a great deal now.” She stood up. ”And every time, you’re going to sit on the red glass by a broken arch and do that sum.”

”I know.”

”Good,” said Okafor. ”Keep doing it. The day you stop doing it is the day I’ll worry.”

She held out her hand.

I took it. And she pulled me up off the glass. She’s very strong, for someone who only makes things heavy.

Then she picked up the cold cup of tea from beside the broken arch, and drank it, because she said somebody should, and walked up the hill to the map room without looking back.

Okafor stood at the wall in the map room that night for a long time.

Everyone was there. Everyone always is. The long table, forty-one worlds, through every arch. Root, through the arch on the north field, with the eldest queen listening through the ground. Hearth, through the arch with two faces. The queens. The Overseer in the doorway.

She’d taken down Garnet’s drawing of the ring.

And on the bare wall, in chalk, she’d drawn three circles.

The first one she’d labelled with a list. Very small. In her square letters.

Avalon. The forty-one. Hyrran. The four. Ammaru. Thera. Hearth. Root. The queens.

And over all of it, one word, that Garnet had written for her, because Garnet said the map needed a name for us and nobody else was going to give it one.

I’ll write it the way Garnet wrote it.

Not us. Not Scarecrow. Not the Watch.

She wrote what the children call us. What the children in the town under the garden wall and in Thera and on the porches of Imber and Orrin call anyone who comes through an arch in the night and says we’re from a world that burned, come now, don’t pack.

The heroes.

Garnet said she’d heard a little girl from Vantle say it on the red glass that afternoon. Holding Maura’s hand. Looking at the Hyrrani coming back through the arch, grey with ash, carrying their dead.

Are those the heroes?

And Maura had said: Yes, love. They are.

The second circle said THE HOUSES. And beside it, very small: and the Ashen. With.

And under it, smaller still, the question nobody could answer: What for?

The third circle had no label at all.

Okafor had just drawn it. Very large. Bigger than the other two together. Round the outside of everything, so that the other two circles were inside it.

And in it, over and over, all round the edge, in her small square letters, the one word.

More.

Okafor turned round.

”Here’s where we are,” she said.

Nobody said anything.

”The houses are losing a war,” said Okafor. ”They’ve been losing it since before any of us were born. They found someone with a weapon that works. They’re not going to be losing it so fast now.” She put her finger on the second circle. ”And they’re going to use that weapon on us, too. They did today. The Ashen turned the wave on a million people walking toward an arch.” She looked at Dinraal. ”Because whatever they were promised, it includes us.”

Dinraal didn’t say anything.

”The Hungry are coming,” said Okafor. ”Faster. More. They felt Vantle. They felt the Ashen end some of them, and they felt the Hands come down among them, and they felt us.” She put her finger on the third circle. On the edge of it. Where More went round and round. ”And they’re still looking for her.”

She looked at the floor. At the eldest queen, through the arch, through the ground.

”And there are forty-three worlds left on Konrad’s sheet,” said Okafor. ”With nine pieces of queen on some of them and none on others and people on all of them. And every one of them is going to be where the Hands and the Ashen meet the Hungry.” She put the chalk down. ”And we’re going to be there first. Or we’re going to be late.”

Nobody said anything for a long time.

”Then it’s started,” said the General.

From the end of the table. In his old uniform. With every medal. And his watch.

”The war,” said the General. ”Not the tithe. Not the rescues. Not the Hedge.” He looked at the three circles. ”The war. All of it. All at once. Everyone.” He put the watch on the table. ”I’ve seen one start before. On the northern front. It looks like this. A wall with three circles on it and nobody knowing what the second one wants.”

He looked at Okafor.

”What do you want to do, Marshal?”

Okafor looked at the wall for a long time.

At the first circle. At the heroes, in Garnet’s hand.

Then she wiped the slate she’d been holding all day. All of it. TAKE UP THE ROAD. THE WALL. EARS. FOUR MINUTES. SHE SINGS THEM WRONG. Gone.

And wrote, very large, the only thing on it:

EVERYONE. NOW.

She turned the slate round so the whole long table could see.

”Not one world at a time,” she said. ”Not one rescue at a time. Not Konrad choosing a name at the dawn count.” She looked at Konrad. ”You’ll choose ten names. Tomorrow. And the day after, ten more.”

Konrad looked at the sheet.

”Ten,” he said.

”Ten,” said Okafor. ”Every arch. Every queen singing. Every cutter Kyria’s got. Every one of Odra’s smiths. Every pilot. Every Hyrrani. Every one of Tiamat’s people Dinraal can spare. Every grandmother on Avalon who can carry a pot.” She looked at Mother. ”Every Mom Squad.”

”There’s only one,” said Mother.

”Then start more,” said Okafor.

Mother looked at her for a long time.

Then she looked at Maura and Ingrid and Kyria and Teshka. And Rhiannon, beside her at the table, who’d come through the arch with two faces that evening with her basket and didn’t understand a word and understood all of it.

”Well,” said Mother. ”We’d better recruit, then.”

Dinraal sat on the porch steps after.

On the bottom one. With the First Weapon across his feet. His bracelets had come back to silver by then, but not all the way. They were dull, the way a blade is dull when it’s been used for a long time without anyone to sharpen it.

I sat down on the step above him.

He didn’t say anything for a long time.

”Nine,” he said eventually. Through Dot. ”Tiamat’s people. I chose them. I chose the ones who’d stood with me at the edge before. Who knew the Ashen.” He looked at his hands. ”They knew what the wave does. They stood in front of it anyway. Behind me. So the silver would hold wider.”

I didn’t say anything.

”My father lost his people to the Ashen,” said Dinraal. ”All his life. One line at a time, in the records. Every one rubbed out after.” He put his hand on the First Weapon’s head. ”I swore I would never let anyone rub mine out.”

He took something out of his coat. Isolde’s notebook. The thick one. She’d given it to him.

And on the first empty page, in his own script, nine names.

”Will you say them,” he said. ”On the porch. Tonight. With the others.”

”Yes.”

”Out loud,” said Dinraal. ”So that it is said.”

The eldest queen spoke to me once more that night. Very late. Through the arch on the north field. Through the ground.

They came for my children, she said. The Ashen. On Vantle. They turned toward the arch where my children were standing in their silver.

”Yes.”

I could not hear them coming, said the eldest queen. I have heard everything that has ever moved in the dark for longer than there have been stars to name it by. Except them. A long pause. I am frightened, Lucas who asks. I have not been frightened since the first of the hungry came out of the dark.

”I know.”

And they were winning. For one breath. The houses and the Ashen together. The swarm went round them. The ground was very cool. I have never seen the swarm go round anything.

I didn’t know what to say to that.

If they win, said the eldest queen, the houses and the Ashen. If they end the hungry. All of them. Everywhere. A pause. Then they will turn round. And there will be nobody left between them and my children but you.

Vessa was awake when I came in.

On Andraste’s chest. In the big chair. Facing out.

No. Not out.

Sideways. The way she turned on the porch that morning, when the ears heard the engines. Toward something nearer than the edge. Not the breathing.

Andraste didn’t say anything. She was looking at her daughter.

”What is it?” I said.

Andraste didn’t answer for a long time.

”She’s listening to the Ashen,” she said.

”The eldest can’t hear them.”

”I know,” said Andraste. Very quietly. She put her scarred hand on Vessa’s back. ”She can.”

I said it that night.

On the long porch. In order. Down the rail and off the steps and onto the grass, where there were more people than there’d ever been. Vantle, a million of them, on the red glass and the north field and every road to Thera.

I said all of their names that I knew. And Kyria’s two hundred and twelve, and Risa’s six, and Tiamat’s nine. And the four pieces of queen.

And the five spaces.

Days 4516–4519. Three Sides.

The ears heard engines, together. Tally: the houses are talking to something that answers. The Overseer: a third line in the ledger: with. Dinraal: the Ashen. Tiamat’s station saw a Hand with Ashen ships round it. Crane: the Ashen fought the Hungry four days; the houses’ black never worked; they found someone whose weapon does. The Ashen wave doesn’t burn them; it ends them, and the swarm goes round. What do the Ashen get? Nobody knows. The eldest: I have never been able to hear them. Vantle: pods, then Hands and Ashen, and for one breath they were winning. Then the Ashen turned on the arch. Dinraal’s silver held the wave, black and smoking; the First Weapon stood over him. The Hungry came for the Ashen. Nobody won. 1,031,882 of 1,200,000. 212 Hyrrani, six of the wing, nine of Tiamat’s. Four pieces of queen; five spaces. Maura: sometimes, not always; that’s why there have to be so many of us. A little girl from Vantle walked beside the last shield. Three circles. Garnet named us: the heroes. The General: it’s started. Okafor: everyone, now. Ten worlds a day. Mother: we’d better recruit. The eldest: if they win, there’ll be nobody left between them and my children but you. Vessa can hear the Ashen.