This is what it is to live in the cosmos that is the Jaspers. The world changes here, but here there is not one world, there are many, and we only see the others when they tread upon our toes.

They made it to the docks and slowed as they pushed through the press of bodies. Cruxer acted as a wedge, and Big Leo went second, clearing a path for the rest of them. In their inductees’ grays, no one resisted them.

There was a tall carven pedestal just wide enough for a crier to stand on, and a man was clambering up the ladder to stand there. He reached into a pouch he wore and pulled out a scroll. He cracked the seal, and the crowd quieted, then he allowed the scroll to unfurl.

Murmurs shot through the crowd as they saw the scroll unroll past his feet. But they quieted again as the man began reading, his voice a clear, cutting tenor that carried easily over the murmurs and the sounds of sailors unloading their ships, wagons creaking past on old wheels. “This is the list of those dead or missing and believed to be dead who hail from Big Jasper or the Chromeria, from the end of the skirmish at Ruic Neck until the end of the Battle of Ox Ford. This list is complete and truthful to the best of my knowledge, so swears Lord Commander of the Unified Armies of the Satrapies, Caul Azmith.”

And then he began reading names. Noblewomen first, then noblemen. Scant few though there were of either. Then female drafters, then male drafters. As slaves—despite being drafters—the Blackguards came next, barely before the commoners.

“Of the Blackguard: Elessia, Laya, Tugertent, Ahhanen, Djur, Norl Jumper, and Pan Harl.”

And then he read on, as if those were but a few names of the hundreds or thousands he had yet to read this day, as if this was simply his work. Which of course it was.

“Norl Jumber, Orholam damn you. Jumber,” Big Leo said under his breath.

It was Ben-hadad, the smart one, who said the dumbest thing. “They could just be missing, right? I mean, this doesn’t mean they’re dead. Not all of them. It’s a list of the dead and missing. Right?”

Cruxer didn’t even turn his head. “There’s a hope that empowers, and a hope that enfeebles. Don’t confuse them.”

Someone down the line choked, strangling a sob. Ferkudi? Kip wondered why he wasn’t feeling anything at all, except awkward that he wasn’t feeling what he was supposed to feel. What was wrong with him? What if someone else in the squad looked at him and could tell that while they stood and grieved, he was just standing?

He remembered Elessia. She was small, crooked grin, crooked teeth, light-skinned for a Blackguard, got duty with the White a lot. Laya: she was a red, older. Kip could remember her weeping on the barges as they came back from Garriston. Oh, that was it. She’d had to kill her partner, who’d broken the halo in the middle of the battle. Tugertent was a literal archer, and the best in the Blackguard at that. People swore they’d seen her hit targets around corners, which she’d never denied. Ahhanen Kip could only remember in that he always looked like he’d just drunk wine gone to vinegar. His partner was Djur, who had a trick of juggling two pistols and knife in dizzying patterns to amuse his comrades. Liked to gamble, and was bad at it, from what Kip had heard. Norl Jumber was small and eager, none too bright, but always infectiously happy. Pan Harl had been an inductee, like Kip and his squad. He shouldn’t even have been there.

They couldn’t just be gone. Not just like that. A name read aloud in a square, and that was it? What had happened to them? Had they died heroically, or were they merely in the wrong place and their card had been pulled?

Someone started keening, not ten paces away. She threw herself forward, as if to attack the crier, and several women grabbed her, held her back. Kip realized he’d lost some time. The crier had been reading name upon name, by satrapy and lord of allegiance. There had to be over a thousand names on his list.

A thousand names, and he was only reading the dead who hailed from the Jaspers. Someone said that the Ruthgari armies had taken the most grievous losses by far.

Orholam have mercy, how many people had died?

The squads stood at attention for fifteen minutes as the names were read. Name after name after name. As each lord’s dead was read, some would sob or shriek or collapse, while others tried not to let too much relief show. But as the list continued relentlessly, the balance shifted. The mood darkened. The brightly shining sun glistened in mockery, as if Orholam didn’t see.

In some distant corner, a fight had broken out among the bereaved. Furious, flailing against the truth, punishing the innocent. The bitter aggrieved and the guiltily relieved, fighting.

When the crier finished, there was only silence and sobs, the broken being led away by stunned friends.

Kip wanted to shout at them. You thought this was a game?! When Tyreans were dying it was exciting, but now, now it’s serious?! He hated them for a moment, but the moment passed, and he saw their sorrow and was moved.

That they have learned to weep at war is no victory. That they know loss is no gain.

Then the crier announced where the names of each satrapy’s dead would be posted around the plaza, and got down from his pedestal. There was no other word. No update.

They hadn’t announced the battle as a victory, or even as holding off the enemy. That lack, as much as the number of names read did, told Kip there had been only crushing defeat.

“This is why,” Cruxer said. The squad looked at him. “This is why we have to be the best.”

Chapter 49

Teia was following Murder Sharp again, to a different neighborhood. The winter night was cold, but at least this time there was no fog. It didn’t make her feel much better.

“So, this lightsplitter thing…” Teia said. That was what tonight was about, and Teia was worrying at the knotted rope of anxieties in her gut.

“Was that a question?”

“I don’t get it. I mean, I get it. A Prism doesn’t need spectacles. Handy for him, I’m sure, but I’m a monochrome and paryl doesn’t require spectacles. So even if I were a lightsplitter, that would be like … what? Like being the best juggler in the satrapies, only I don’t have any arms?”

“Exactly like that.”

“Really?”

“No.”

They arrived at a dark-windowed home in Weasel Rock, were handed their hooded robes and ushered in to darkness.

“Strip naked.” The voice was gruff, deliberately altered, the figure hooded, a splotch of black against the darkness.

The room was almost pitch black, a tiny thread of light let in under the door, and pants-wettingly scary, but Teia wasn’t anyone’s slave, not anymore. Not Aglaia Crassos’s, not Kip’s, not Andross Guile’s, and certainly not Fear’s.

“Well, that answers one question,” Teia said to the heavily cloaked figure. “You’re definitely male.” Her voice was snide, superior, anything but terrified. That knot in her guts wasn’t fear, it was apprehension, anxiety, animus, bitterness, bile, belligerence, contempt, contumely … cravenness.

Fuck.

No, fuck him.

“Strip.” Definitely male, definitely irritated, definitely not very good at disguising his voice when vexed. A bit of a haze smoker, if she didn’t miss her guess, from the rough edges on that voice.

“That’s not going to happen,” she said. Fucking amateurs. She cursed mentally when she was trying to convince herself of her own toughness. Her knees weren’t trembling from fear. It was fucking cold in this fucking place.