bChapter /bb176 /b

    39

    55 Vouchers

    At noon the square filled because it wanted to and because messengers know how to pitch their voices so you think you meant toe anyway.

    We climbed the low stone step that once carried edicts and now held bread baskets and small boys who insisted on standing exactly where they were told not to.

    Francesco didn’t mount anything taller; he never does when the truth will be heavy enough.

    “We have sent two we love toward a life they chose,” I said, and the murmur that rolled back at me was the sound you hear when a flock shifts, not in fear, but to adjust to weather they recognize. “Sofia and Lucien will be safe, because they will make each other so. If you are asked, you tell this: that the Moon Goddess writes in ink that doesn’t care who reads it. That we don’t sharpen knives on her words.”

    Francesco spoke then, voice lower, carrying because it refused to strain. “Alpha Dorian spreads ba /bstory that makes a father look like a victim and a daughter look like a door he owns. We do not open doors that way here.” His gaze went from face to face, not skipping the ones that had learned to look down under Henri. “If hees–and he will–we meet him with our backs straight and our work still in our hands. I will not ask you to shout for me. I will ask you to stand for yourselves.”

    Bethany squeezed my arm until the bones protested and then spoke her small piece–clear, practical, disruptive in the way truth always is when it turns the obvious inside out.

    Children tugged on sleeves and asked too–loud questions at bad times and were shushed and then not shushed because it is good for leaders to remember how life insists on itself.

    After, Monica and the women fed everyone who came and three who swore they hadn’t intended to. The gossip restarted, because gossip is just themunity checking itself for holes. But it changed the key, and that matters: fewer “did you hear” and more “did you see.” Things seen stand longer than things said.

    In the afternoon I took a letter to the messenger roost myself because sometimes a Luna needs to put her hands on the string that ties her words to other people’s doors.

    The letter to Renaud was short and careful, reeds sketched in the margin where only she would know to look:

    We honor the Charter. The Keeper has been told. Alpha Dorian wille sooner than he is wise enough to dy. If your scouts wish to verify that our kitchens still have soup and our walls still stand, they will be greeted, not glorified. Come if you choose. We will not make a spectacle of our truth; we will let it be seen.

    I sealed it with wax and rosemary oil and watched the raven hop from glove to air.

    On my way back I found Luc (our Luc) at the north wall with a line of men and two women who swung hammers like they were born knowing sound was something you could make behave.

    He lifted a hand and the whole line paused, adjusted, resumed. The rhythm tightened. I let my mouth be proud for a second and then put the expression away;pliments can knock concentration off a scaffold.

    In the training yard, Marlow had the first ring in motion. Shields rose, shields fell, a ripple when he called left, a ripple when he called right, until the ripples began to look like a nk that had decided water was a trick it could do as well as rivers. Audrey prowled the second ring with a cane she swore she would return

    b12:44 /bbMon/bb, /bbSep /bb15 /b

    “tomorrow,” which is a date she has learned to keep at arm’s length.

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    355 voucherse

    In the infirmary, Monica scolded a boy into drinking something that could clean rust. “If you don’t like bthe /btaste, tell the taste to like you,” she said, and the boy believed her because Monica says nouns as if they owe

    her rent.

    Byte afternoon, the ns had edges, not just outlines.

    That’s when the fear slips in–not the wild kind, but the ounting kind. I took it to the only ce that softens edges without dulling them: our room.

    Francesco came a minuteter because the bond is a door we don’t know how to close and don’t want to.

    He sat on the foot of the bed the same way he had before dawn, but now the line of his mouth had resolved itself into something that could cut or cradle depending on what touched it.

    “If hees with twenty,” I said, “you will want to shame him by sending ten to meet him.”

    “I will want to,” he agreed, “and I will send twelve with instructions to look like ten and act like thirty.”

    “If hees with four,” I said, “he will expect you to think him honorable.”

    “I will set him a chair and take the one without armrests,” he said, “and I will not drink anything he pours.”

    “If he calls me by a name that isn’t mine,” I said, “I will decide whether to teach him or let him show himself a student.”

    His eyes softened then, the dark going to warmth. “You teach by breathing,” he said. “It is irritating and very effective.”

    “And you guard byughing at the wrong moment,” I said. “It is terrifying and also effective.”

    He caught my hand and pressed his mouth to the pulse.

    The small intimacy unwound a knot I hadn’t named yet. “We are very good at this,” he whispered.

    “At what?b” /bI asked.

    “Being two people who insist on being one strategy,” he said, a smile made of tired and true.

    We did not kiss because sometimes tenderness is quieter.

    We sat until the light turned the room into a painting that thinks it might like to be a window and then the world knocked again.

    This time it wasn’t a hand on wood.

    It was a horn.

    Not the rm–no one ran. The horn that means eyes to the east. Conversation in the courtyard fled to its corners and then peered out again.

    b12:45 /bbMon/bb, /bbSep /bb15 /b

    b393 /b

    55 Vouchers

    Marlow’s voice rose below our window, carrying as if the air were volunteer enough to help: “Scouts back!”

    We moved without deciding to.

    Down the hall, the stairs, into the square that had already learned where to stand when news needs room.

    Two riders came hard and clean, horses blowing, sweat dark in the ces that tell you the distance more than the speed. They swung down before their hooves had quite made up their minds to stop and saluted in one motion because training likes to show off when it’s been given a chance.

    “Report,” Marlow said, and it wasn’t a bark because he doesn’t bark at our own anymore.

    “Valois banner,” the first said between breaths. “Thirty riders. Two wagons. Crest visible a mile out–he wants to be seen.”

    “Distance?” Alfonso asked, already pulling a te from his pocket.

    “From the east ridge to the ash grove now,” the second answered. “Camp by dusk if he wants his entrance with sun. If he press, he hits the lower field at moonrise.”

    “If he presses,” Audrey said quietly, “he wants a show, not a talk.”

    Francesco’s gaze tracked east, as if he could see over hill and river and the polite lies men tell their own fear.

    The bond between us went very still–not empty, not cold–still the way a drawn bow is still.

    “Then we give him both,” he said. “A show he can’t twist. And a talk he can’t win.”

    I felt thend lean in, just a fraction.

    The way fields do before weather.

    The way wolves do before truth.

    We had said our goodbyes at dawn. We would stage our wee by dusk. In between, the world held its breath and counted our ns like prayer beads.

    At the edge of the square, a boy tugged his mother’s sleeve and asked, too loud, “Is the bad Alpha going to take our Luna?” His mother shushed him, mortified, but the question had already sprouted.

    Forty pairs of eyes swiveled to me and then away, as if politeness could un–ask a child’s courage.

    I went to the boy because fear is an animal that shrinks when you look it in the faceb. /bI crouched so we were eye to eye. “No,” I said simply. “No one takes what we stand for.”

    He considered, then nodded, satisfied with a logic adults find too blunt to adopt.

    He ran off to tell five other children something they’d repeat wrong and remember right.

    Francesco’s hand found mine again. “We hold the line,” he said.

    b12:45 /bbMon/bb, /bbSep /bb15 /b

    “tomorrow,” which is ba /bdate she has learned to keep at arm’s length.

    239

    55 vouchers

    In the infirmary, Monica scolded a boy into drinking something that could clean rust. “If you don’t like the taste, tell the taste to like you,” she said, and the boy believed her because Monica says nouns bas /bif they owe

    her rent.

    Byte afternoon, the ns had edges, not just outlines.

    That’s when the fear slips in–not the wild kind, but the ounting kind. I took it to the only ce that softens edges without dulling them: our room.

    Francesco came a minuteter because the bond is a door we don’t know how to close and don’t want ito/ii. /i

    He sat on the foot of the bed the same way he had before dawn, but now the line of his mouth had resolved itself into something that could cut or cradle depending on what touched it.

    “If hees with twenty,” I said, “you will want to shame him by sending ten to meet him.”

    “I will want to,” he agreed, “and I will send twelve with instructions to look like ten and act like thirty.”

    “If hees with four,” I said, “he will expect you to think him honorable.”

    “I will set him a chair and take the one without armrests,” he said, “and I will not drink anything he pours.”

    “If he calls me by a name that isn’t mine,” I said, “I will decide whether to teach him or let him show himself ia /i

    student.”

    His eyes softened then, the dark going to warmth. “You teach by breathing,” he said. “It is irritating and very effective.”

    “And you guard byughing at the wrong moment,” I said. “It is terrifying and also effective.”

    He caught my hand and pressed his mouth to the pulse.

    The small intimacy unwound a knot I hadn’t named yet. “We are very good at this,” he whispered.

    “At what?” I asked.

    “Being two people who insist on being one strategy,” he said, a smile made of tired and true.

    We did not kiss because sometimes tenderness is quieter.

    We sat until the light turned the room into a painting that thinks it might like to be a window and then the world knocked again.

    This time it wasn’t a hand on wood.

    It was a horn.

    Not the rm–no one ran. The horn that means eyes to the east. Conversation in the courtyard fled to its corners and then peered out again.

    b12:45 /bbMon/bb, /bbSep /bb15 /b

    1399

    55 voucher

    Marlow’s voice rose below our window, carrying as if the air were volunteer enough to help: “Scouts bback/b!”

    We moved without deciding to.

    Down the hall, the stairs, into the square that had already learned where to stand when news needs room.

    Two riders came hard and clean, horses blowing, sweat dark in the ces that tell you the distance more than the speed. They swung down before their hooves had quite made up their minds to stop and saluted in one motion because training likes to show off when it’s been given a chance.

    “Report,” Marlow said, and it wasn’t a bark because he doesn’t bark at our own anymore.

    “Valois banner,” the first said between breaths. “Thirty riders. Two wagons. Crest visible a mile out–he wants to be seen.”

    “Distance?” Alfonso asked, already pulling a te from his pocket.

    “From the east ridge to the ash grove now,” the second answered. “Camp by dusk if he wants his entrance with sun. If he press, he hits the lower field at moonrise.”

    “If he presses,” Audrey said quietly, “he wants a show, not a talk.”

    Francesco’s gaze tracked east, as if he could see over hill and river and the polite lies men tell their own fear.

    The bond between us went very still–not empty, not cold–still the way a drawn bow is still.

    “Then we give him both,” he said. “A show he can’t twist. And a talk he can’t win.”

    I felt thend lean in, just a fraction.

    The way fields do before weather.

    The way wolves do before truth.

    We had said our goodbyes at dawn. We would stage our wee by dusk. In between, the world held its breath and counted our ns like prayer beads.

    At the edge of the square, a boy tugged his mother’s sleeve and asked, too loud, “Is the bad Alpha going to take our Luna?” His mother shushed him, mortified, but the question had already sprouted.

    Forty pairs of eyes swiveled to me and then away, as if politeness could un–ask a child’s courage.

    I went to the boy because fear is an animal that shrinks when you look it in the face. I crouched so we were eye to eye. “No,” I said simply. “No one takes what we stand for.”

    He considered, then nodded, satisfied with a logic adults find too blunt to adopt.

    He ran off to tell five other children something they’d repeat wrong and remember right.

    Francesco’s hand found mine again. “We hold the line,” he said.

    b12:45 /bbMon/bb, /bbSep /bb15 /b

    “We keep,” I answered.

    65 voucherh

    The horn sounded once more, this time from the cast watchtower–the long, low note that says movement on the ridge. Men and women flowed to their ces, not in panic; like water remembering a bedrock bpath/b.

    I looked toward the horizon, where the sky had put on its theater colors–rose, silver, that thin dangerous gold that makes truth look like a de.

    “Let hime,” I whispered to the wind and the walls and the Goddess who lets us walk into our own stories even when they scare her. “We are ready.”

    And far away, beyond the ash grove, a line of riders lifted dust that would reach us with the dark.

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    continue reading tomorrow, everyone!