ailyak (n.) the art of doing everything calmly, and without rushing, even as things go badly wrong around you.

The war room had accumulated its cargo very gradually: the surviving tagma had arrived first, a ragged rainbow coalition – red and blue, not so many green – and then what was left of the palace guard, grey of face and cloak, and finally the princess. She had exchanged her pastel gowns for the long-ago garb of a Kur ashavan on which the uniforms of the tagma had been modelled. Her cloak was the white of salt; her vambraces might as well have been made of ceramic, so bright did they shine. It harkened to a faraway era; it sang war. He was not alone to balk at the sight of it.

They were, by the end, a group of some ninety people – perhaps one hundred. There would be others not present: those whose wounds had been too great to allow for a journey into the palace, those who could not cope with the prospect of more, and those over whom great penalties still hung, gallows-like. Princess Asenath usually pled clemency for deserters, but her usual thread of mercy had snapped. Sixteen men and women had swung from the ramparts of Wall Schreave that morning.

It had been only seven days since that final Fall.

So one hundred assembled troops, maybe one-ten. It left the Walls unguarded. Lorencio, personally, had spoken against it, but Lorencio, personally, was as much a suspect as any who had commanded the human druj behind the Walls. Well, what good had the Walls done? And this was a large chamber, but not so large that this was not an overwhelming crowd: Lorencio had arrived late from an audience with the princess about the Tower of Kur, and entering the war room from the king's study, he was struck with the overwhelming impression of an animal mart: people pressed up against one another, all smelling of dirt and sweat, eyes darting, sclera showing. He was gratified to recognise the number of blue coats that had congregated nearest the wall-length windows at the east end of the room: the Scholars had their reputation, but they did not sway.

His lieutenant, Tzeitel, caught his eye as he entered, and nodded. Her hand, resting by her pocket, twisted into three quick shapes: two, and five, and four. He smoothed his moustache in acknowledgement.

So some Scholars had swayed. Not so many. He rather imagined they would be the largest contingent of the tagma still standing. Hardly the bravest.

The largest part of the room was occupied by an enormous wooden table, onto which the three walls had been carved, and labelled, and each district named in turn. There was his beloved Voras; there was his adopted Nav. He followed the princess to the head of this table, where the generals of the excubitors and the Watchers both waited. Princess Asenath stood before them, for a moment, and stared, for a moment, at the kingdom that had once been. She was made up immaculately, and she stood with her shoulders and hair thrown back, and there were little crescent-shaped marks in her palms where she had dug her nails deep.

She murmured, "tell them, general, Lorencio," and he cleared his throat.

"As you'll know," he said, and then, almost distractedly, "Vsevolod, the map..."

His aide-de-camp darted to the map, black discs in hand.

"Every wall has been breached," Lorencio said.

Vsevolod silently set a marker on each of the places the wall had been broken open. Lorencio watched the faces of the assembled soldiers turn ashen with the click, click, click of each token as it was placed, over and again: thrice on Wall Schreave, six places on Wall Szymanska, eight places on Wall Alliette.

"Four provinces have passed the threshold to be considered fallen."

And there went Nav, and Txori, and Kelch, and Arali, which meant that they had lost the place Tejal was buried, which should not have caused such an ache in Lorencio's chest. There was an orphaned gasp from a member of the corps who might have been from one of those places as well; otherwise, the room was silent.

"We have several more on the brink. Nearly all units will be reassigned to salvage and extermination while we patch as much of the walls as we can."

He took a breath, which was not easy: all the air had gone out of the room. He seemed to be the only man breathing in the room.

"Wall Alliette will be abandoned. All of the outer ring will be evacuated to the two remaining walls. This is inclusive of the remaining Alliette and Szymanska exclaves: Miecz and Mag Mell."

He paused. There weren't so many walls, he thought, where they were going. They weren't so high.

"Is that clear?"

There was an explosion of disbelief from a man in red: "but that's millions of people."

He couldn't tell who had spoken; he did not look up from the map. He said, "not any more."

One could draw a straight line through the worst of the destruction: a clean swathe of death to the west. It had been collateral. They had only wanted to escape. Khalore had only wanted to escape. God save the Illéans if they ever decided they wanted to do worse. His was one life on a doomed island.

"This is the duty to which the majority shall be assigned."

No one had to ask about the rest; he must have worn it on him like a coat. He was not the only one staring at the line of black markers that led west, and off the map, towards wild druj territory and the cursed forests of Mainyu, and whatever laid beyond. What did the kingdom of the druj look like? How much of the world unfolded still beyond the Walls?

"We're looking for volunteers for the rest," he said, "and volunteers only." Evanne Chae should not have been in this meeting, but she had wormed her way into the room and had already stood straight, shakily, face composed in a pale masque of guilt and grief. She raised her hand. The black straps of her new harness shone inky in the dim light; he had damned her with them. He continued, doggedly, as though had had not seen her: "this isn't the Selection, and this isn't conscription."

"What is it, then?" Reiko was still wearing a thin layer of dust, having come straight from the recovery efforts beneath Wall Szymanska to which she had been relegated while adjudications were made. It was indignity in the extreme for a soldier so adept, and she was making a point of making eye contact with every member of the army council – or, at least, trying to, for Lorencio avoided her gaze quite practicedly. She did not seem to realise that Kane Hijikata had slipped into the room just after Lorencio, and was hovering by the door to the king's study, looking exhausted. "What would you call it?"

Lorencio had been interrupted in the midst of answering – the princess's voice carried across the room, sharp enough to wound her favoured guard. As though poor Reiko had not suffered enough already – though, at least, a little colour had returned to her face since the druj had departed. Asenath's voice was cracking ice. "Duty, beloved."

"It's all duty," said Sanav Mahesar.

He was standing in the tangle of excubitors and Watchers which made up the smallest group. Their losses on the Wall had been considerable. Their grief was veritably branded on their faces: what would they do if Lorencio let slip that they had two enemy druj secreted away in the arteries of the palace, in the places where, only recently, dead girls had been hung like meat on hooks? Lorencio found that his skin crawled to be so near the princess when he thought of it: the dead girls, and the things that had been carved into them, and the state they had been left in afterwards.

Sanav said, "it always has been."

There was a moment where everyone who knew him held their breath.

The princess smiled in the end. "We'll consider you a volunteer, then," she said, and Sanav Mahesar set his jaw and nodded.

"Yes," he said, and then, belatedly, "your highness." He cast a gaze about the room, and looked irritated when others averted their eyes from his. "I'll volunteer, and gladly."

Evanne Chae shot him a narrow, assessing look, which he did not seem to notice.

Reiko Morozova and Kane Hijikata were utterly alike in this sense: Lorencio did not even have to look at them to know that they would be united in their decision. Three people per captive druj, he thought, which were not their finest odds ever.

But this was a start.

He had found reason to speak to her again in short order. It was only a day later, but it felt like less. He could not remember the last time he had slept.

"Evanne," he had said, and she had clearly startled to hear her name spoken so familiarly by a general. She had snapped to attention beside her chaperone. She was still not wearing her prosthetic leg.

"Sir," she said. She was in better shape than she had been, the last time he had seen her: her eyes were dry, at least, even if her hands were trembling. She looked guilty – she looked tremendously guilty – which was why Lorencio put his arm around her and steered her from the main body of the Selected assembled in the viceroy's foyer before she could incriminate herself much further. She said, "did something…?"

"No," he said, and it was not relief but disappointment which darkened her eyes. She would have to watch herself. "Nothing. All ran smoothly."

"Good," she said, rather sounding like she was persuading herself of it. She was wearing a dark jacket over her shoulders, which she had taken from the room of the imposter Eun Byeol but which had belonged to Silas Schreave originally: his family crest was embroidered over the heart. She seemed, as she seemed perpetually, stranded between the two worlds: on one side, the abandoned Selection, who still did not know that the prince had been taken; on the other, the decimated tagma, who had come so very close to saving him.

This assembly had been called six days too late, if you asked Lorencio, and no one had, but at least it had been called. The Selection was, at last, over. It was ignoble end to a messy affair, and Lorencio was glad to spare Evanne from it.

He guided her into one of the guardrooms off the main corridor, and said, "I noticed you had damaged your leg."

She said, with just a little spark of sardonicism to it, "that was some years ago now."

"I meant your prosthetic."

"Oh. Yes. During the chase."

"I made you a new one," he said, as casually as he could manage. "It's a little different to the one you had – which is why I wanted to talk to you about it, before I gifted it over."

He put the wooden case on the table. Evanne stared at it, a little apprehensively.

Lorencio said, "I was working on a version of this for my assistant, before I had to let her go." Those words were barbed, so he distracted himself by easing the lid off the case. "The harnesses that the tagma use depend totally on balance and equilibrium, which makes it very difficult for amputees to use them – to navigate accurately and to gauge the force you need."

Evanne said, "I think I did myself more damage than the druj last week." She stepped a little closer. "So this would solve that issue?"

"Alleviates it," Lorencio said. "You'd need to practice – you'd need to retrain into it, essentially – but it would be possible. The prosthetic is a little more advanced as well – functional knee and ankle joints, a precise joint mold, improved suspension system – so if you have no interest, then it should still be a..."

There was still that bite of anger to her voice when she said, "this is how desperate the tagma has become?"

Lorencio said, "it's pretty pathetic, isn't it?"

"Very." She reached in, and hefted up the prosthetic, closely studying its shiny surface and the black harness straps that hung from it. Her mouth twisted. "This is my reward," she said. "My bounty. Am I right?"

Lorencio said, "you did something very difficult, and you did it because you cared very much."

She turned the prosthetic leg over, and did not look at him.

Lorencio said, "we're going to get Silas Schreave back."

Evanne Chae's face betrayed no reaction, but her eyes flickered in his direction.

Lorencio said, "we're going to get him back – and I'd prefer to have a soldier who cared about him as much as you do when that happens."

There was, for a moment, silence in the room, which only amplified the sounds all around them: there were people milling about on the floor above them, and refugees moving about in the courtyard, and Selected ladies passing by in the corridor, whispering to one another about what might have happened.

"His sister. Asenath. She's leaving with you. That's the rumour."

"Yes," Lorencio said. "That's true."

"So," Evanne said. "You don't need me for Silas." She smiled. "Which means you need me for something else."

Need was a strong word, but Lorencio did not tell her so. This was but one way – simplest. If she refused him, they would find another. He almost hoped that she would refuse him. She was older than Khalore had been, but only a little.

"You think I can control it," she said. "You think I have some sway over him. I don't. I don't. Especially not now that I've – I don't."

"I don't expect you to."

"Yes," she said. "You do. That's not –"

He said, "you know that no one will hesitate to do what they must. If it comes to it."

She stared at him. She exhaled. She said, "isn't that what you'd prefer? One less danger?"

He shook his head. Is it a good world?

Was any?

"You've rather cornered me, then."

"The choice is yours."

"It isn't," she said. "It isn't a choice at all."

It had been the other way around from what he had expected: she had come to him.

He had been in a borrowed office and it had been five days since the prince had been taken. It had felt a futile gesture, to sit at a desk when the world was falling to pieces, but he had been sitting at a borrowed desk and making notes about the apocalypse when she had knocked, and put her head around the door, and said, "general – a moment?"

"You can have several," he said, and set his pen aside. "Chae, wasn't it?"

"Evanne."

Third-class excubitor – former. Obušek corps. One of Shae Txori's girls, rest her soul.

He set down his pen.

"What can I do for you," he said. "Evanne?"

She hesitated at the threshold and then entered, leaning heavily on a crutch. He could not imagine that this had made ascending the stairs of the School all that very easy. She was not wearing her prosthetic, so one leg of her trousers had been neatly folded up and pinned at the knee. She had eschewed a hood or bandages, so that he could see what the stone druj had done to her face: it was not so bad as it had seemed in the first few days following the explosion, though he suspected her lip would always be twisted thus, so that her words came out very slightly slurred. Her eye was intact – he knew that had been a concern of the Scholar who had treated her – and the rest was all torn and twisted skin, cheekbone and jawbone, and that would heal or it would not and she would have resigned herself to that by now. All tagma had their scars, but the excubitors rather relished in accumulating a trove. She had added a new one to her collection: a long wound along her shoulder, a memento from the chase across the rooftops.

She said, "isn't it distracting?"

"Distracting?"

She said, "you can see the gallows from here."

Lorencio smiled. "Ah." He turned over the page of notes, so that she could not see what he had been writing. "Well," he said, "I usually sit with my back to the window."

She must have been staring right at the hanged men now, for she made it sound like a deathbed confession when she said, "I have to talk to you about something."

He rose, and gestured that she should take the assistant's seat in front of the desk, as he went to the corridor, and checked for errant eavesdroppers, and shut the door decisively behind him.

"What sort," he said, "of something?"

As he eased himself back into his place behind the desk, he realised that Evanne must have been the same height as Khalore: there was something unerringly familiar, therefore, about the angle from which she addressed him, the way she set her hands on his desk, although of course his assistant had never been so openly plaintive in front of him in all the time he had known her.

Evanne said, "you must let me explain."

"Of course."

"Please. I can't..."

He reached forward for the little blue tin he kept beneath the lamp on his desk, and Evanne Chae practically leapt from her chair.

He flipped open the lid, and gestured that she should help herself to the biscuits within.

"I will listen," he said, "in full."

Evanne took a biscuit, and seemed to wonder why she had, and put it down flat on the desk, and then picked it up again, scattering crumbs every which way. "Okay," she said.

He nodded, and folded his hands, and stared her very hard in the face. Kane would have scolded him, to know that he was sitting here so peaceably and listening so very agreeably to another human druj – for it was enormously possible that Evanne had been among their number. Hadn't they suspected her first, and deepest? She might have been, hapless, their cover – as Lorencio had been Khalore's, and Kane Kinga's, and Reiko the grey man's – or she might have been their advance scout – advanced indeed, for Evanne Chae had begun her training some four years before the first trace of the stone druj – and either way, if she was druj, then Lorencio didn't fancy his chances of making it to the door before she did.

She said, "I would ask for some guarantee," and here she laughed, "but I know you can offer none."

"You would be surprised."

Åsmund Falk had asked for the same. Lorencio had managed to protect him little, in the end. He had done a little better for Khalore, though he wondered if he should have. At least she had spared him, in turn, and the druj with her had spared him for the love it bore Khalore.

Were all druj so?

What did Khalore and Inanna Hämäläinen look like, when their druj natures overtook them?

He said, "what is it, Evanne?"

Evanne said, "Pjotr. The stone druj. I know where he is."

He did not correct her. He copied her: "where is he?"

She was silent for a moment.

Then –

"He's..."

Her hands twisted, almost involuntarily, and the cookie snapped, scattering crumbs all over the desk and floor. "Shit," she said, and then, again, more tearfully, "shit."

Her entire mouth twisted. She looked furious.

Lorencio said nothing.

She had put back her head; her eyes darted from one corner of the ceiling to another, welling up with frustrated tears. She said, "I've never been…"

"Your loyalty commends you."

"I've told you now," she said. "You know I know. There's no walking it back."

"I would offer," Lorencio said, "to pretend this conversation never happened. But..."

He smiled wanly.

She said, "you're right. You're right."

She put her sleeve to the corner of her eye, and caught her breath, and went on catching it. He waited, quite patiently.

"I didn't hide him," she said. "I didn't help him."

Lorencio said, "I will make that very clear, Evanne."

"I don't want to die," she said. "And I want Silas and Eun Byeol back safe. And I know… I know he was… but he…"

She sighed.

"This is treason, isn't it?"

"It's the opposite," he said, "the very opposite. This is true loyalty. And you have done very well to tell me."

The sound escaped her, a furious accusation. "You're going to hurt him."

"Yes," he said, very softly. "I'm afraid that they will."