CHAPTER 674: THE RIVER YOU STILL CARRY (3)

"Show me."

It lifted one clean orb and one faintly green. He held them both. Pure felt like a river under ice—a steady push behind a hard shell. Tainted felt like a smile with too many teeth. He gave the tainted one back and it vanished into a silk jar with a prim little flick. The pure he rolled along the skeleton of his palm until it hummed; he handed it to a lich, who bowed its crown just a fraction before investing it. Five new archers stood from nothing in a whisper of dust.

"Good taste," he said. "Keep it boring."

He moved on, checked straps, tightened slings, and adjusted angles. He tapped the side of a quiver. He made a tiny circle with his finger that meant loft two then walk, don’t spam. The archer’s skull dipped an obedient millimeter.

A pair of Silk Guards stood shoulder to shoulder, touching forearms. They plucked the same thread and watched vibration travel down. When the wave reached the knot, one clicked its mandibles twice and retied a single loop. The thread’s music changed. It pleased them. They chittered a private, smug note. Mikhailis’s eyebrows went up.

"Don’t get cocky," he said under his breath. Proud silk tears first, he thought.

He found one skeleton too far forward, the toe of its spear foot past the line. He nudged the ankle with the side of his boot and looked up at Thalatha at the same time. She had already noticed. She gave a two-finger gesture—a soldier’s sign for weight back—and the skeleton settled the way a dog does when a hand rests on its head.

Mikhailis felt a warm, odd spark of liking for the way she didn’t announce correction with a voice. She simply placed the world a little truer, one small fix at a time.

"What do your rules taste like to them?" she asked after a moment. "To the liches."

"Salt," he said. "And paper." He smiled. "They don’t like either. That helps."

She huffed something that might have been laughter if it had any softness in it. It didn’t. It was fine that it didn’t.

He turned as a Tanglebeetle presented its spool for inspection like a soldier opening a kit. The thread lay in neat layers, oiled and ready. He pinched a length, found the tack in it—sticky enough to grab, slick enough to return. "Good," he said. "No heroics. You’re yo-yos today, not glory hounds."

The beetle bobbed, truly pleased.

He walked the back line of archers again and tapped drum points with his finger on a forearm bone—one, two—loft—three—walk. The archer’s skulls angled in sync, and the bows creaked a little as if testing that rhythm with wood. He liked that sound. He had liked it when it was living wood too, in another life.

"Rodion," he murmured, not moving his mouth much. "If we split the archers into two stacks and give them staggered cadence, what’s our overlap time on suppressing volleys?"

Assuming present bow tension and arrow mass: six heartbeats of near-continuous sky. Ten if you accept a drop in accuracy. Additional suggestion: pair two Silk Guards to each stack for immediate curtain resets.

"You heard the man," he said to the air, which only Thalatha might find strange. She didn’t. Maybe she was choosing not to.

He put two fingers to his lips and whistled softly through his teeth. It wasn’t a tune. It was a code. Silk Guards drifted, paired off, and laid their first curtains light as breath.

A spear skeleton’s grip had rolled half a finger to the wrong spot. Mikhailis put his hand over the bony knuckles without a word and curled them down until the haft sat in the notch where power wants to live. The skeleton didn’t thank him. It stood a hair more alive than before. He stepped back.

He took out a small brush and lacquered the edge of one shield with neutral gel. It dried invisible. He wrote a single word along the rim with it—hold—and then smudged it out with his thumb so no one would call it superstition. His heart didn’t care. His heart had needed to write it.

Thalatha watched him work. "You act like you’re dressing them for winter."

"I am," he said. "A very sharp winter with bad manners."

"And you still send them first."

"They don’t bruise," he said. "They don’t bleed. We keep the living behind the line that doesn’t need bandages."

She said, carefully, "And if the living want to stand in front?"

He shrugged a shoulder. "Then they do. And then I nag them." He looked at her from the corner of his eye. "Relentlessly."

"I have noticed," she said.

He let himself grin at that, quick and small.

The Myco-Archivist clicked a rhythm that meant next batch prepared. The pure pile had gone down; the tainted pile had grown by two. The Archivist had put those two off to the side with a strip of silk between them like a thin fence. It did not look at them again.

"No nibbling the green ones," Mikhailis said. "I don’t care if they smell like candy floss. They bite back."

A lich’s hand paused over the fence. Its crown dimmed a fraction more, not shame, but a kind of stillness that meant decision. It turned, selected a clean heart, and went on. The choice pleased him more than it should have.

"Good librarian," he said softly.

He walked among the new-risen archers, lifting bows by the middle and setting them down again so each learned the same weight. "Loft, don’t chase," he told them as if they could hear him the way he meant it. "Make them duck. That’s your job. Not glory."

A bowstring whispered against a forearm wrap and stopped when he adjusted the knot. He twisted it a quarter turn and the whisper became a clean thrum. He nodded once. He touched the arm again, lighter, like signing a receipt.

He looked up and across the ranks at the liches. Their motions had no greed in them. They moved like people stacking books after a long evening, thinking about the order more than the weight. He felt something in his chest loosen by a notch.

He turned slightly. "Thalatha."

She was already at his shoulder.

"When I say ’no names,’" he said quietly, "I mean it. If you see a plaque on a chest—if you see script—if there is anything that says someone—you tell me. We leave it. We do not touch. If we must break it, I break it."

"I will tell you," she said.

"If a crown flares," he said, "as if it’s full and wants more—tell me that too."

"I will tell you," she repeated. There was something under the words. A memory. He did not ask. He did not need to. He could hear the steel in it.

He gave her a nod that meant thank you without making it soft.

He took a breath through his nose. The air tasted of polished bone, old silk, a smear of mushroom. Under it all, the Whiteways’ slow breath.

"Rodion. Count again. Quietly," he said.

Confirmed: one hundred and fifty. Shield wall: sixty-four. Spear block: forty-two. Archer line: forty-four. Reserve potential: twelve, if you will accept thin bones. Additional annotation: Thalatha’s corrections improve shield cohesion by nine percent.

Mikhailis let himself enjoy that. "I told you," he said under his breath, "formation is kindness."

You said that. You also said we would be quick and then spent three minutes retieing bow knots.

"Both things can be true."

Noted.

He raised his voice a little. "Scurabons, wrists then knees." Four of the blade-runners slid forward and held their sickles low, testing the reach of their own arms. They made a soft flicking sound as if tasting air with the edge. "Don’t carve. Tap. Make their joints remember to be weak."

The Scurabons tilted their heads in that small, unnerving way that said we understand the poetry of this.

He turned to the Silk Guards. "We’re done with dress rehearsal," he said. "I want three cones ready to drop at a blink. Don’t throw the first at the first bad dog. Make it earn your attention."

A Silk Guard vibrated its abdomen in a short, scolding buzz that meant we are not wasteful. He grinned. "I know, I know."

He clapped again. Not loud. Enough to make the ranks draw in a single breath that wasn’t a breath.

"Alright," he said. "Listen to your feet."