Ember Legion

After nights of it, the whole city was worn through.

The mouth of the main junction stayed manned, the way Zhou Zhengting had ordered: one squad of the garrison, four shifts, gabions wired down to the stone blocks with the wire ends twisted off on the dry side, where nobody would step on them. Torches stood every five paces behind the sandbag course, and steel rods lay at the sentries’ feet. Shift change had no call names—a hand pressed on the next man’s shoulder, and that was the handover. The north wall was quiet by day; only the rail kept sounding every so often, two short and one long, a sound that settled people’s nerves.

Wen Heng’s water ban had spread through the shelter district by midmorning, and three stoves went up against the granary wall. The aunties lined up to boil water, one clay jar each, the line running till the sun leaned west. Somebody always stayed by the fires, and the one staying put her own jar in the deepest corner of the stovebox, where it was hottest. When someone asked whether ditch water counted as safe once it was boiled, she didn’t look up. ”If the med officer says no, it’s no. There’s plenty of firewood.”

Nobody ordered the city to sleep; it did that on its own. Sentries went to two-hour rotations. Men nodded off where they sat with their rifles by the well. The aunties, having moved every sack of grain they owned, slept a full night through for the first time—bedrolls in rows inside and outside the granary, snoring going up and down the line.

Snaptooth hadn’t come in force since the night he hit three walls at once. The swarm had pulled back across the moat—no movement day or night, nothing but the rail on the north wall sounding around the clock, and the odd probe after dark. Nobody treated the quiet as good news. Zhou Zhengting said his piece at the council: it’s picking its day. Picking which day, nobody could answer.

Chen Jin got back from the drain lip meaning to lie down for an hour, and lay there listening to the snoring on all sides, more awake by the minute. His voice was still wrecked from the water he’d swallowed, the back of his neck stiff with the moat cold that had sat in it all night. He listened a while—a city this quiet, you could hear some kid smacking her lips in her dreams—then got up and went back out on the rounds.

The first thing off was in the small hours.

An auntie on the west end of the granary started talking in her sleep, running the same count over and over. ”Forty-one sacks. Forty-two…” Somewhere past fifty she’d start over. Chen Jin passed close enough to hear and didn’t stop—that was the woman who’d moved the last sack out of her shelter just that day, with half a lane of neighbors hauling on the rope. Counting in her sleep was normal.

The second one to start talking wasn’t counting.

A man on the east end cursed under his breath in his dream, fast and splintered, no telling at whom. At the med station, someone said ”sorry” over and over, dozens of times, a voice with no rise or fall in it. By the wall, a half-grown kid barked half a shout—”don’t you step on our ground”—then rolled over and kept sleeping. On two bedrolls side by side, one voice snapped in its sleep, what’s it to you, and the other came back, you opened the door first. Chen Jin knew that pair. They’d squared off over half a bucket of water that very day. In the dreams, the tempers ran hotter than they had awake.

The night voices ran together, a pot just about to boil, bubbling up from every direction at once.

Chen Jin stood at the barracks door and listened a long time. The hair on the back of his neck came up.

Last time, the voices had been in unison. That night at first light, the whole city had said one word in its sleep, the same tune everywhere, wrong in a way that stuck to him. This time it was scattered—each dream to itself, each grudge to its own, hundreds of dreams that never touched one another, all of it drifting the same way. The voice had changed its tune. Same throat, same way of walking through sleep, but last time it wanted a door opened; this time it was going house to house, turning over whatever grudges it found. His fingertips went numb. The same numb as that night.

He pulled up the panel. Embers: 1071. The numbers were all there, and none of them were moving. The system could see the bugs beyond the wall, could see the water in the drains. It could not see what the city was dreaming tonight. He killed the panel.

A runner came in from the main junction: two sleepwalkers. One had been climbing the sandbag course when the mouth team sat on him. The other walked straight for the water, tripped over a gabion, woke up, and sat on the ground crying. The garrison stopped them with a steel rod held crosswise—never touched either one. The man on watch had been the one to say it: a dreaming man doesn’t know pain, so no rough handling. Nobody was hurt. Chen Jin said, got it. Neither of those went on the books—the hands hadn’t been his.

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Wen Heng came over from the med station with her lamp, going bedroll to bedroll. Three days without a real sleep—shadows under her eyes dark as bruises—and her hands not one beat slower. Eyelids up, check the pupils. Two fingers on the wrist. Lean in, listen to the breathing. One line in the little book for each. Chen Jin followed her through two of them. In the med station a wounded man clenched his fist in his dream until blood wicked through the bandage; Wen Heng pried his fingers open one at a time, rolled a cloth into the palm, and wrote another line.

She didn’t worry over the barracks. All twelve Ember Guard talked in their sleep too, and all twelve talked drill: present, reload, muzzle down, one after another, neat as a parade. Three hours of instruction, worn so deep that even their dreams kept the rule. She listened at a couple of them and wrote nothing more.

”The pulses are identical.” She took her hand back. ”Breathing too. I’ve seen shared hysteria in the med halls—a roomful of people, and the pulses still race and lag. This—” She paused. ”This is as if one person were asleep and everyone else was turning over for them.”

They reached the granary in the deepest part of the small hours. The voices were thickest here: hundreds pressed in and around the granary, counting, cursing, crying, saying sorry, layer over layer going up. The stove water sat warm, throwing off a red glow. Wen Heng worked where the people were densest—the well, the stoves, the bedrolls—one line running toward the granary’s east end, and the sound of her little book turning pages got heavier the closer she came.

Xiaosui’s bedroll was at the east end, next to the children she watched over.

The voices stopped at her.

No fade, no tail. One step, thick as a wall; the next, a quiet that left the ears ringing. Chen Jin stopped. Wen Heng came up with the lamp and stopped too.

The two of them stood in that quiet for a while, and neither said anything. The lamp wick crackled once. Far off, the rail kept on, two short and one long. Wen Heng’s sole ground a bit of dry straw under it. None of those sounds broke the quiet—the quiet was empty from the inside, a patch of it carved out of the middle of all that noise.

Xiaosui slept hard, one hand on the back of the smallest child, same as that night. The children around her slept sound too. Not one of them talked in their sleep.

Wen Heng crouched and set two fingers on her wrist. Chen Jin didn’t stop her—taking a pulse was the med officer’s job, and it didn’t wake anyone.

The pulse was even too. A deep sleeper’s pulse, slow, level, one beat at a time.

Wen Heng kept the fingers there a good ten breaths before she drew back. She opened the little book and wrote by lamplight: a line for the pulse, a line for the breathing. For the location, four words—granary, east end.

She folded a corner of the page.

”This child,” Wen Heng said, book closed, voice dropped low, ”is there anything about her that’s different from the others?”

”No.”

He heard how fast the answer came only after it was out.

Wen Heng held his eyes for two breaths, the lamp between them, the flame wavering. She didn’t push. The little book went back inside her coat, and she stood and moved on to check the smallest child. When she was done, she handed the lamp to the militia man on granary watch and gave him two instructions: anyone calling out bad in their sleep tonight—don’t shake them, watch that they don’t stand up. If one gets up and heads for the water, take them around the waist. Don’t pull an arm. The man agreed to each. She left, and at the granary door she looked back at the bedrolls one more time.

The wind swung around before first light.

The voices drained away the same way they’d come, without reason. One place went quiet, then patch after patch, hundreds of dreams letting go at once—no tails, no fade. From start to finish, a quarter of an hour, no more, and the shelter district went still enough to hear the fire in the stovebox. Chen Jin stood and listened. Nothing was left behind. Nothing he could name.

The runner brought Lei Changgeng’s slip, the handwriting still crooked: Three men on the wall called out all night. Tied them. Nobody hurt, wall’s fine. At the bottom, half a line more: That thing didn’t come.

That thing didn’t come. Chen Jin read the line twice. The whole city’s dreams had run mad for a night, and the one outside hadn’t spent a single bug. It didn’t come. It was waiting, or it was listening.

Xiaosui woke at first gray light and went straight down the line of clay jars, touching each one, and found him. ”Brother, the water’s boiled. Your throat—you swallowed ditch water, right? Drink.” She pushed the jar into his hands and crouched to tuck the smallest child’s blanket, one pat, the exact motion her brother used. He asked how she’d slept. ”Dead asleep. Didn’t hear a thing.” A pause. ”Did anything happen in the district?”

”Nothing.” The water was scalding. He held it anyway.

Right then, the long howl came from beyond the wall. Three short, one long, rolling in low along the ground, and the rail’s knocking thinned under it.

The howl died. The rail kept on, two short and one long, round after round, not one missed.

All night, one voice talking in the city, one calling outside it. The city woke one person at a time, yawning through water-hauling and sandbag shifts, nobody knowing the thing out there had listened the whole night through.

It finished listening, and called once.