yr (n.) a very specific kind of rainfall with tiny, almost floating raindrops drifting over the fjords.

The day dawned reluctantly, as though it, too, wished for the night to remain a little longer. In the shroud of midnight, one could remain hidden a little longer; one could avoid staring truth in the face for a few hours more. The stars had faded, and the sun had not risen; for many hours the vast swathe of blighted land that had once been Aizsaule was absolutely dark and utterly, utterly, without light. It should not have been this comforting; it should have been full of snapping teeth and snarling maws, the shuddering shadows of monsters in the gloom just beyond. But, no – it was nicer this way, Åsmund Falk thought, nicer not to look upon the utter waste that had been lain to the once-beautiful city.

Sunrise had been joined by the ignition of the pyres, as the tagma began to do right by the bodies left behind. Illéa was too small a space to bury corpses; druj and soldiers alike were heaped in piles, and doused in gasoline, and set alight until even those bearing sentry on the wall could smell nothing but burning wood and burning hair and burning flesh. Åsmund had stared down, and watched the fire swallow up whole worlds. It crept along a street and devoured all: lovingly spun wool jumpers and beloved stacks of ancient books and tools long-worn by long-use and long-need.

There were still druj moving to the east and north, but they had been successfully repelled from the wall which separated Aizsaule from Vanth, and Vanth from Kass, and Kass from Ganzir. Setting fires here – the closer to the wall, the better – that could only help. That could only drive them away; that could only help. The rest of the city would be all the safer, if the world outside of it burned, and burned hot. It was purifying, in a way; it was a kind of sacrament. wasn't it, to watch the fire scour all that required scouring, leaving only ash and bone and stone in its wake.

As dawn broke, so had the rain; it had held back as long as it could, and it could hold back no longer. This was no true release: the rain wafted down in the gentlest of flurries, floating and drifting and dancing on the light breeze ghosting over the town. That felt like a kind of baptism as well; beside him, Maryam Yakhin tilted her head upwards, and let out a sigh that had been long in the holding. It sounded a little bit like a scream, when it was released all at once like that; it sounded like an animal tearing free of her throat. Her headscarf had been red-and-white when the day began, matching their coats; it was black now, black with ichor and ash and blood. Streaks of that black were running down her face now, like so many tears; she drew in deep breaths, like she had never tasted rain-scented air before.

She said, "I used to go to the bakery here."

Åsmund blinked. His voice came slow. He could hear it: he still sounded like he was in shock. Around them, fires blazed and smoke rose and rain, slowly, fell. "Kivi?"

"They made good öçpoçmaq."

Rare indeed. Maryam was right to grieve. The poor widow Hämäläinen – she had worked hard to make a home here, she and Zuzu Hämäläinen both. Did their bodies lie among the thousands burning now?

Maryam kicked over what might have once been a piece of a stone oven as they moved through the ruins of the shop. A green tagma coat laid abandoned in what might have once been a garden; there was no sign of the soldier who might have once worn it. They moved slowly, in search of bodies, in search of druj, in search. Constantly searching, even as the fire roared in their ears and swallowed all else. Maryam had bound a damp piece of cloth over her mouth, so that only her eyes were visible, dark and kohl-lined and angry. Åsmund had pulled his red scarf over his mouth, and screwed his eyes tight against the potent blend of smoke and rain that drifted over the ruins of the town. White and black, fragmented, hung crystallised in the air; it felt like they were moving slowly through a world which had been petrified into place, frozen in a tableau of perfect destruction.

A little further down the road, walking between the fires like they were running a gauntlet, so hot and humid that Åsmund's skin itched hot with the scald beneath his scarf. The rain was doing little to stem the pyres; there, he could see Euphrasie Bardin hauling the body of an excubitor, dark-skinned like herself, into the fire, with a grim expression of dour solemnity marring a face already swollen by the large keloid scar underneath her eye. Maryam and Åsmund both gave her the approximation of a respectful nod that was all they could manage in this dawn-strewn smog; she saw them, and her eyes drew tight sympathetically, and she returned the gesture as best she could.

All around them, brave men burned.

Oroitz Txori was waiting on the mouth of Ne Street, looking cool and collected – as though he ever looked otherwise. Their superiors had never understood why he had chosen to become a watcher rather than an excubitor; his comrades had never understood why he had chosen to remain at a relatively low-level second class rank. His curly hair was burnished by the breeze, laced dark with tiny flecks of cinder. Behind him, sitting in the dust on what pieces of stone and wood had survived the druj onslaught, were long lines of the injured – those whose bodies had broken in service of their kingdom – and the insane – those whose minds had broken in service of their kingdom. The long lines of invalids swayed and leaned against one another, like sunflowers in the field.

Oroitz said, "any survivors?" and Åsmund watched how his face paled and tightened as Maryam shook her head no, shook her head no, none, shook her head no, none, all dead. It had always been a long shot. Åsmund found himself staring directly into the fire, at the papers curling as the carpenter Czarnecki's books burned. So many of them. So died the hopes of an intellectual. He had to be pitied, this man who had believed that life in Illéa could be anything but this.

"None," Maryam said. That wasn't true; there had been many survivors of Aizsaule, blessedly many. But no more. All who had lived had crossed the walls; any who had remained within the district had surely perished. Oroitz had known that would be the case, but even so, disappointment clouded his dark eyes. "All have been delivered."

"Very well. And the druj?"

Driven east, Åsmund thought, driven east and north. Even those which had forged this far south – the roiling wheel of eyes the enormous stone golem, that awful flying thing of teeth and claws – they were gone now, fled or disappeared, and fled was so much more comforting than disappeared in that context. But he did not say this much. Instead, Maryam said, "cleared from the wall."

"Good. Have you eaten?"

"Yes," Maryam said. She was lying.

"The princess will be arriving shortly," Oroitz said, "and it is best that all is safe before she does."

That was true; that was fair. Åsmund's father had loved the royal family like they were his own blood; Åsmund himself liked to think that he was a little more rational about it all, but there was no denying that the life of Asenath Schreave was worth the lives of many more, if only for how much she was valued by the city, how much morale she accorded them all, the symbolism of her continued life and bravery and survival. She was their voice in the faraway stronghold of Ganzir; she descended, as though from heaven, and carried back pleas for clemency when time came to ascend once more.

And the Selection was about to begin; the Selected girl would have to work hard, not only to earn the heart of the king of druj, but to have any hope of outshining their soon-to-be-sister. Åsmund pitied the girls who had been chosen for such a task. Surpassing Princess Asenath was an impossible labour that even Queen Kasimira had long ago abandoned in favour of a lonely mystique. There was little doubt that the dawn itself would pale once she appeared. But would even the princess of the provinces dare to visit here, an active warzone, where the druj still stalked, and bodies still burned?

Somewhere far away, the bells had begun to peal her arrival; the gates of Wall Schreave were shrieking in protest as they were hauled open enough to admit the princess. Some unreadable emotion danced in Oroitz's eyes; Maryam said, "it is good of her to come, when it still smells so," and Oroitz said, "yes, good of her."

The smoke, the rain and the wind took his words from him almost as soon as they were spoken.

His gaze fixed upon the place where the enormous stone golem had once stood; Oroitz said, "the winged druj, the stone druj, the…?"

"Fled," Maryam said. Åsmund had the sense that she was avoiding the alternative word: disappeared. She was a tactful girl, his Maryam, tactful when honesty was stolen from her.

And when she said that – yes, Oroitz looked cool and collected, but a little less aloof for hearing this. Behind him, the red-haired man, missing his arm, stared in the direction of the bells like he could see Asenath's approach, and the dark haired soldier with no eyes tilted their head back towards the sky as though searching for stars, and the blond man with torn clothes turned his face away from the rising sun, like it hurt to look at. "I see," Oroitz said, and he turned away, and Maryam and Åsmund watched him go.

The bells were still ringing out the arrival of the princess, many miles away; it sounded a little like a celebration, and a lot like a dirge.