Chapter 98: The Names We Keep

The rain had stopped during the night.

By morning, Hearth smelled of wet earth, cut timber, and the bread Rhiannon had decided everyone working on the coastal road required in unreasonable quantities.

Dinraal stood in the kitchen with a loaf under one arm, trying to find his other glove.

Isolde watched him from the table.

“You’re holding it.”

He looked down.

His left hand contained the glove, two messages from the workshop, and a spoon.

“The spoon is unexpected,” he admitted.

“You were stirring your tea.”

“Was I?”

“You haven’t drunk it.”

He glanced toward the cup beside the sink.

Behind him, the First Weapon pushed the kitchen door open with his head and immediately discovered that the available space between Dinraal and the table was insufficient.

He went through anyway.

Dinraal staggered sideways.

Isolde caught the loaf before it fell.

“Excellent,” she said. “At least one of you understands priorities.”

The First Weapon settled beneath the table, his bulk pressing against both their chairs.

Outside, someone wheeled a handcart past the garden wall. Its damaged wheel clicked every third turn. A woman called from farther down the road, asking whether the workshop had any hinges left.

For a little while, Dinraal listened.

The ordinary sounds had become familiar enough that he noticed when one was missing.

No children on the way to lessons yet.

No hammering from the second shelter.

No warning from the fleet.

He sat down and drank his tea.

Isolde slid a small packet across the table.

“What’s this?”

“Your lunch.”

“Rhiannon gave us bread.”

“Which you will distribute among everyone within reach.”

“That’s an accusation.”

“It’s an observation.”

He opened the packet.

Bread, cheese, two small apples.

A second packet rested beside her elbow.

“You’re coming?”

“Meret asked me to help check the camp stores against the household lists. Some belongings went into the equipment containers during the evacuation.”

Dinraal nodded.

The coastal camp had been empty since the storm. Everyone had reached Hearth safely, but much of what they owned remained behind the damaged road.

People had begun asking for things.

Medication. Clothing. Tools.

A child’s blanket.

A box that one woman had described three different ways before finally saying that it contained everything she had left of her brother.

The requests had accumulated on Dinraal’s desk until Isolde took them away and put them into an order someone could actually use.

“We’re bringing back what we can carry safely,” she said.

“I know.”

“And leaving the heavy instruments until the road is ready.”

“I know that too.”

She studied him for another moment.

Then she reached across and straightened the edge of his collar.

He caught her hand before she could withdraw it.

Her ring was warm against his fingers.

“Thank you.”

“For the lunch?”

“For knowing I’d forget it.”

She leaned over the corner of the table and kissed him.

Underneath them, the First Weapon sighed with the deep dissatisfaction of someone who had received neither cheese nor an invitation.

The first message arrived before they left the house.

It came through Dinraal’s communicator as a request from Eve.

Not an alarm.

That distinction had become important enough that she always made it clear.

Come to the relay room before you go down to the vehicles.

Isolde read it over his shoulder.

They looked at each other.

Then she folded the lunch packets into her bag.

The relay room was already occupied when they arrived. Eve stood beside the table, Asha at the receiver, Arcturus on the wall display from orbit. Aurelius had come in carrying a cup he seemed to have forgotten.

A single word had been written at the top of the slate.

ORRIN.

Dinraal stopped just inside the door.

For a moment, he remembered the earlier report too clearly: every child taken, four hundred thousand, the ships heading outward.

He had imagined too many endings since then.

Eve saw his face.

“They’ve been heard,” she said.

Isolde’s hand tightened on his.

“Alive?”

“There are children alive. We don’t have a count.”

Eve waited while they absorbed that.

Then she continued.

“A queen is carrying their song. Tally heard it. Avalon has identified the place as Merrow.”

Asha brought up a sparse diagram. Most of it was empty.

Dinraal looked for familiar reference points and found almost none.

“Where?”

“Farther out than the worlds they’ve been evacuating.”

“Can they reach it?”

“They’re preparing to.”

Arcturus leaned closer to his display.

“There’s more.”

Eve nodded.

“The transmission is deliberate. Their assessment is that the children are being used to draw Lucas there.”

Silence settled around the table.

Dinraal looked back at the word on the slate.

“Just Lucas?”

“The Hungry too,” Eve said.

Aurelius lowered his cup.

Isolde pulled out a chair and sat down slowly.

“The same place,” she said.

“Yes.”

Dinraal could picture the intention without needing the diagram.

Children who could not leave.

Lucas, who would try to bring them home.

The Hungry descending on both.

His silver stirred against his wrist.

He made himself loosen his hand.

“What are they asking from us?”

“Nothing operational,” Arcturus said. “They’re informing us before they go.”

There was no route from Hearth that could put their fleet over Merrow in time. No arch between their homes. No useful order Dinraal could give that would change those facts.

He hated how quickly he understood that.

“Who’s going?”

“A large force,” Eve answered. “Okafor is leading the operation. They intend to evacuate the children and withdraw.”

Asha looked up.

“They aren’t going to destroy the world.”

Dinraal held her gaze.

Then he nodded.

“All right.”

It was not enough of a response for what he felt.

It was the one he could offer.

Aurelius moved beside Isolde’s chair.

“Who knows here?”

“This room,” Eve said. “Alexander and Julius will receive the same briefing.”

Isolde looked toward the window.

Across the road, Nessa was unlocking the school.

“Then we wait until there’s something we can tell people clearly.”

Eve nodded.

Dinraal remained beside the table for another few seconds.

Finally, he asked, “Will you call us?”

“The moment we have news.”

He looked at Isolde.

She rose and picked up her bag.

The camp still held a child’s blanket.

They went to get it.

Meret refused to let the first vehicle cross the damaged approach.

She stood in the road with her boots sunk into mud, one hand raised, while the driver leaned out of his window.

“We crossed here yesterday.”

“On foot.”

“The surface looks firmer.”

“The surface is lying.”

Gilgamesh, standing beside the vehicle, considered that.

“I dislike dishonest roads.”

“You’ll dislike this one more from the bottom.”

Meret pointed toward a cluster of marker stakes farther uphill. The work crew had laid a temporary route along firmer ground, narrow enough that the larger vehicle would have to remain on Hearth’s side.

Dinraal examined the slope.

The storm had stripped away more soil than they had realized. Beneath the mud lay a shallow shelf of stone, exposed in places and fractured in others.

He could have covered the gap with silver.

He could have made it look easy.

Meret handed him a measuring rod.

“Start there.”

He took it.

Gilgamesh smiled.

“Your promotion has been delayed.”

By midday they had a working line across the upper slope, wide enough for a small carrier and two people walking beside it. Enna checked the carrier’s brakes herself, then made the driver test them while loaded.

Isolde watched the test before allowing the first empty containers through.

Only then did they head down toward the abandoned camp.

Without its people, the place seemed much smaller.

A row of temporary buildings stood above the inlet. One had lost part of its roof. Rainwater shone in the hollows between them. Beyond the lower cliffs, the sea moved under a pale sky.

Someone had left a mug on an outside table.

It was full of rain.

Isolde stopped beside it.

Dinraal followed her gaze.

“There wasn’t time,” he said.

“I know.”

She turned the mug over so it could drain, then continued toward the storehouse.

Inside, everything smelled damp.

The camp manager had returned with them. He unlocked the inner room and began apologizing before the door was fully open.

“Some of the household boxes were moved when we brought the electrical equipment in. I thought keeping them dry—”

“Show me where they went,” Isolde said.

He did.

There were more boxes than her list suggested.

For the first half hour, they worked quietly. Dinraal moved the heavier containers. Gilgamesh brought down the stack near the wall. Two workers opened lids while Isolde checked names and descriptions.

A blue coat.

A small medicine case.

Three bundles of clothing tied together with cord.

Then Isolde found a wooden box with a split lid.

She crouched beside it.

The description on her page was brief.

Brown wood. Brass clasp missing. Letters inside.

Water had seeped through one corner.

She did not open it immediately.

“Dinraal.”

He knelt beside her.

“Can you keep the lid from moving?”

A thin support of silver slid beneath the damaged wood.

Carefully, Isolde lifted the box into a shallow tray. The letters inside were bundled in cloth. One edge was wet.

“Can you dry them?” the manager asked.

Dinraal looked at Isolde.

She shook her head.

“We’ll take them to Sella. Slowly is better.”

The manager rubbed a hand over his face.

“I should have put those higher.”

“Yes,” Isolde said gently. “Help us find the rest.”

He nodded and went back to the shelves.

Dinraal held the tray while she wrapped it.

His communicator remained silent.

They found the blanket in the wrong container.

It had been packed beside a survey instrument, beneath a coil of cable and a folded weather cover.

Isolde lifted it out.

The fabric was faded green, patched in three places. One corner had been rubbed almost smooth.

Gilgamesh inspected it with grave attention.

“A valuable strategic recovery.”

“The owner agrees.”

“How old?”

“Six.”

“Then we should move quickly. Six-year-olds have limited patience.”

“Unlike you?”

“I have waited nearly an hour for lunch.”

Dinraal looked up from the case he was fastening.

“You ate half a loaf on the way down.”

“That was travel food.”

Isolde handed him his packet.

He opened it, discovered the contents, and looked at Dinraal with sudden approval.

“Marriage suits you.”

“It’s her lunch.”

Gilgamesh paused.

Isolde took the packet back.

“That explains the portion,” he said.

They ate outside, sitting on a low wall above the inlet.

For a while, nobody mentioned Avalon.

Meret discussed the road with Enna. The camp manager marked the locations of drainage pipes on a plan that was already beginning to come apart at the folds. Far below, waves broke against a shelf of black rock.

Dinraal took one bite of his apple, then looked at his communicator.

Isolde noticed.

“They’ll call.”

“I know.”

He set it down.

A minute later, he looked again.

She did not tell him to stop.

Instead, she moved closer until their shoulders touched.

“You’re thinking about going.”

He stared at the sea.

“There isn’t a way.”

“That wasn’t what I said.”

He turned the apple between his hands.

“Yes.”

She waited.

“I know we can’t reach them. I know going out there blindly wouldn’t help. I still keep trying to find something I’ve missed.”

“A route?”

“Anything.”

Isolde looked toward the open door of the storehouse.

Inside, the workers were making stacks of belongings beside the empty carriers.

“When we left the camp,” she said, “I thought that woman might stay on the road.”

He knew which woman she meant.

The one who had stopped at the temporary crossing and could not make herself move.

“I remember.”

“I kept telling her where to put her foot. I thought if I said it clearly enough, she’d be able to do it.”

“She did.”

“Eventually. Because you came back, and we gave her something solid to hold.”

Dinraal looked at her.

Isolde’s voice remained quiet.

“I can still feel how frightened she was. I don’t know how to stop thinking about children being that frightened somewhere I can’t reach.”

He put down the apple and took her hand.

For several moments, neither spoke.

Then his communicator sounded.

They both moved at once.

But it was Halen.

He needed approval to shift a delivery from the lower road to the workshop entrance.

Dinraal answered him, listened, agreed.

When the call ended, he sat staring at the silent device.

Isolde leaned her forehead briefly against his shoulder.

Then she stood.

“Come on.”

He looked up.

“We’ve still got three rooms to check.”

The last room belonged to no one.

That was how the camp inventory described it.

A spare sleeping cabin, used for storage between visits.

Inside, Isolde found a pair of small shoes beneath one bed.

She stood in the doorway with them in her hands.

“Who slept here?”

The manager checked his list.

“No assigned resident.”

“There are shoes.”

“One of the visitors, perhaps.”

“Which one?”

He looked at the list again.

Dinraal watched the man’s expression change.

After the evacuation, the difference between thirty-one recorded residents and thirty-four actual people had become something none of them wanted to discover twice.

“The technician used the end cabin,” the manager said. “The woman visiting her sister stayed with her. The child—”

He stopped.

Isolde waited.

“The child was moved here the night before the storm. Her aunt’s roof was leaking.”

“Was anyone else moved?”

“I don’t think so.”

Dinraal stepped past him into the cabin.

Two beds. One narrow shelf. A cupboard with a broken catch.

He opened it.

Empty.

Isolde checked behind the door and beneath the second bed. Then she took out her pencil.

“Show us every place that could have been slept in,” she said.

The manager’s shoulders dropped.

“We counted everyone.”

“Yes. Now we check the places.”

They found no one.

They found a scarf, a small bag of washing things, and a carved piece of wood the child had evidently kept beneath her pillow.

The search added an hour to their work.

Nobody complained.

When they returned to the carriers, Meret had another problem waiting.

A loaded container was too heavy for the temporary route.

The manager looked at the label.

“Those are the deep-water instruments.”

“They stay,” Dinraal said.

“We could remove the inner mounts.”

“Would that bring the weight under?”

The man calculated.

“No.”

“Then they stay.”

For a moment, Dinraal expected an argument.

Instead, the manager nodded.

“All right.”

He wrote it down himself.

Isolde came to stand beside Dinraal while the last household boxes were secured.

“You didn’t offer to carry it.”

He glanced toward the container.

“I considered it.”

“I know.”

“The shelf beside the upper turn is weaker than it looks. If I slip with that much weight, everyone below me has a problem.”

She smiled faintly.

“Meret has been teaching you.”

“She’s very persuasive with a measuring rod.”

They made the return crossing in pairs.

Gilgamesh walked beside the heaviest carrier. Isolde accompanied the tray of wet letters. Dinraal remained at the upper turn until the final worker had passed.

Only when Meret lifted the temporary barrier back into place did he follow.

By then, the sky had begun to clear.

Still no message.

Hearth had continued without them.

The second shelter’s entrance had a roof frame now. Two workers argued over a door fitting. Someone had set a pot of yellow flowers on an unfinished windowsill, to the intense displeasure of the carpenter who needed to remove it every time he reached for his tools.

At the receiving room, Rhiannon took one look at the damp boxes and began issuing instructions.

“Dry table. Clean cloth. Not there, that’s where the food goes. Gilgamesh, if you’re going to stand in the doorway, at least hold something.”

He accepted three bundles without protest.

Aurelius sat beside a little girl with a slate on her knees.

She looked up when Isolde came in.

Then she saw the blanket.

The slate fell to the floor.

Isolde knelt before the child reached her, and the girl took the blanket with both hands, pulling it against her face.

Dinraal stopped carrying his box.

For a moment, all he could see was the child’s shoulders moving.

Her aunt came over quickly.

“We washed the other one,” she said, as if an explanation was necessary. “It was warm enough. She just—”

“I know,” Isolde said.

The woman’s eyes filled.

The little girl did not let go.

Aurelius bent to retrieve the slate.

On it, in uncertain letters, someone had written a name three times.

He wiped a smear from the edge with his thumb.

Dinraal watched him set it carefully on the table.

Then Eve appeared in the doorway.

No tablet tucked under her arm this time.

She was holding it in both hands.

Dinraal knew before she spoke that the waiting had ended.

“Can you come upstairs?”

Isolde looked at him.

He nodded.

She stayed until the little girl was ready to release one arm from around her neck.

Then she rose.

Aurelius followed them.

The number appeared first.

398,941.

Dinraal read it once.

Then again.

Eve had placed it in the center of the display with the name of the world above it.

ORRIN.

“On Avalon,” she said. “That’s the surviving count.”

Isolde sat down.

Aurelius put a hand on the back of her chair.

Dinraal remained standing.

For so long, the number had been four hundred thousand.

A single terrible quantity, too large to picture, impossible to separate into faces.

Now there was another number.

And a difference between them.

“Were the others still there?” he asked.

“No,” Eve said softly. “Some were already dead when the walls came down. Others didn’t survive long enough after they were brought through.”

Dinraal closed his eyes.

Beside him, Isolde drew a slow breath.

Eve let the silence remain.

Then Arcturus’s image appeared beside the count.

“The force withdrew. The arch was destroyed after they returned.”

“The Hungry?” Dinraal asked.

“Reached Merrow during the evacuation.”

Eve brought up the rest of the report.

Children held in rings around a tower.

Devices sending heat upward.

The queen forced to carry a song that would draw rescuers and predators to the same place.

Dinraal listened without interrupting.

When Eve described Risa and Ingrid silencing the tower together, Isolde lifted her head.

“The children could move after that?”

“Yes. They began coming toward the arch.”

Then the pods.

The swarm.

The Hands waiting above them.

Dinraal rested his palm against the table.

He knew the shape of a trap that allowed its victim to choose only between outcomes already prepared.

He had spent too long inside the Questioner’s reach not to recognize the intention.

But this report did not end there.

“Okafor brought the Hands down into the swarm,” Eve said.

Gilgamesh had arrived quietly behind them.

For once, he said nothing.

Arcturus watched the same brief sequence of observations.

“Thirty,” he said.

Dinraal looked up.

“All thirty?”

“That’s the report.”

For a moment, the room held a different kind of silence.

Not relief.

Not yet.

The scale of it needed room.

Then Eve continued through the final evacuation.

The last children brought up the ice road.

The defenders withdrawing.

Lucas reaching into the tower before it fell.

Isolde’s eyes narrowed.

“The queen.”

“He brought out the pieces he could find.”

Aurelius pulled out a chair and sat down.

His hand had begun to tremble slightly.

Dinraal noticed.

So did Isolde.

She reached across the space between them and took it.

Eve finished with the last confirmed information: the surviving children sheltered on Avalon, the queen’s fragments in the long ward, the enemy force badly damaged.

No claim that the Hungry were gone.

No claim that the danger had ended.

Dinraal looked at the number again.

“Can we send a reply?”

“Yes.”

He opened his mouth.

Nothing came.

Isolde squeezed Aurelius’s hand, then released it and stood beside her husband.

“Give us a minute,” she said.

They went downstairs together.

The receiving room had grown louder while they were away.

Someone had found the owner of the blue coat. Sella was examining the wet letters under a lamp. The little girl sat with her blanket wrapped around her shoulders, watching Rhiannon cut bread.

Dinraal stopped beside the stairs.

Isolde turned toward him.

“What?”

He looked at the girl.

“I don’t know how to say it.”

“The message?”

He nodded.

There were phrases he had used after battles.

Formal ones.

Grateful ones.

Things that could be spoken across a bridge while everyone remained standing and nobody had to look too closely at anyone else.

None of them belonged here.

Isolde considered.

“Then don’t try to speak for all of them.”

He looked at her.

“Speak for us.”

Aurelius had continued across the room to help a man untie a stubborn cord around a bundle of clothes.

Dinraal watched him bend over the knot.

Then he went to the small table by the window and sat down.

Isolde brought paper.

They wrote slowly.

They had heard the count.

They were grateful the children were being cared for.

They were grateful everyone who had gone from Avalon had returned.

They would remember those who had not survived.

Dinraal paused over the last sentence, then crossed out three words that sounded like something from a report.

Isolde leaned against his shoulder while he rewrote it.

Finally, he added a line for Lucas.

We’re glad you brought her out.

He did not know whether the queen could read it, or whether words would reach her in any form she understood.

He hoped someone would tell her.

Isolde added her name beside his.

Then, after a moment, she wrote beneath them:

There’s food on our table when the way opens.

Dinraal looked at the sentence.

No promise of a date.

No claim that the way already existed.

Just a place held.

He touched her wrist.

“Leave that.”

“I intended to.”

They carried the message upstairs.

Eve read it once and nodded.

“I’ll send it with the next exchange.”

Asha sat beside the receiver, staring at the report.

“Cut,” she said.

Dinraal looked toward her.

“The queen. Tally says the rest of her may still be somewhere. Other towers. Other uses.”

She rubbed her eyes.

“Cut, not eaten.”

Dinraal looked at the silver around his wrist.

For years, he had understood it through what it could do.

Protect.

Repair.

Reach.

Become a blade or a handhold or a seal against empty space.

Now he kept discovering how much history could exist inside something he had once thought of as his.

Isolde stood close enough that her bracelet touched his wrist.

Neither silver moved.

Eve folded their message into the outgoing record.

Downstairs, the little girl began laughing at something Gilgamesh had said.

The sound reached them through the open door.

That evening, Julius found Dinraal in the records room.

Aramaeis had already claimed half the central table.

“You were supposed to be resting,” Julius said.

Dinraal looked up from a sheet.

“I’m sitting down.”

“An argument frequently used by people who are working.”

Aramaeis made a quiet sound of agreement without lifting his head.

Dinraal pointed at him.

“He’s doing it too.”

“He has been doing it for hours. I’ve already lost that argument.”

The room contained the history of people who had spent too long being reduced to cargo counts.

Passenger lists.

Transfer orders.

Names recovered from damaged systems.

Names supplied by someone who remembered a face when the record no longer did.

Aramaeis had been working through one of the older discrepancies.

A woman marked as transferred.

A transport that had never arrived.

A later account from someone who had seen her repairing a generator during an evacuation.

Beside the official entry, he had written a question.

Dinraal looked at it.

“Does it ever stop?”

His uncle set down his pen.

“The mistakes?”

“The feeling that if we read one more page, someone will still be there.”

Aramaeis considered before answering.

“Sometimes someone is.”

“And when they aren’t?”

“Then I try to find out what happened.”

Dinraal leaned back.

On the opposite wall, Julius had pinned the corrected register from the coastal camp. Thirty-four people, each accounted for. Three temporary visitors included in the same record as everyone else.

No one missing.

Such a small number compared with Orrin.

He would have defended any one of them with everything he had.

Aramaeis followed his gaze.

“You heard good news today.”

“Yes.”

“And terrible news.”

Dinraal nodded.

His uncle pulled a clean sheet toward him.

“You don’t have to settle on one.”

For a while, they worked without speaking.

Julius checked the camp’s recovered property against Isolde’s list. Aramaeis returned to the disputed transfer. Dinraal copied names from a damaged manifest into a clearer record, stopping whenever he was uncertain.

He left those spaces open.

After several minutes, Julius said, “We should change this form.”

Dinraal looked across.

The camp document had one space for a person’s name and one for a household.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It assumes everyone arrives with the people they belong with.”

Dinraal thought of Avalon’s hollows.

Children under blankets.

Parents still somewhere else.

Julius turned the page and began again.

A name.

A preferred name.

People to find.

Information offered by the person themselves.

No requirement that a child remember an address accurately before someone believed they had a home.

Aramaeis watched him work.

“Leave more room,” he said.

Julius moved the next line down.

“More than that.”

He moved it again.

Dinraal took another clean sheet.

They worked until Isolde arrived to collect all three of them.

She looked at the table, then at their faces.

“Have any of you eaten?”

Nobody answered quickly enough.

“I see.”

Julius began to explain.

Isolde held up a hand.

“The papers will still be here after supper.”

Dinraal rose first.

Aramaeis smiled at him.

He chose not to comment.

Aurelius was already at their house.

He had brought back a book Isolde wanted and been persuaded to stay by the smell of cooking.

At least, that was his account.

Tiamat’s version, delivered from the kitchen, involved finding him trying to turn an apple and a piece of bread into an adequate evening meal.

“You are all remarkably difficult to feed,” she said.

Rhiannon had sent a pot large enough for visitors.

Apparently, she had expected them.

By the time everyone sat down, the kitchen chairs had been supplemented by two stools and a bench borrowed from the garden. Gilgamesh arrived with the bench on one shoulder and a loaf in the other hand.

“Travel food?” Isolde asked.

He looked impressed.

“You understand me.”

The First Weapon stationed himself where the most crumbs were likely to fall.

For the first few minutes, the conversation stayed with Hearth.

The road would require drainage work before permanent rebuilding.

The camp’s instruments could wait.

The second shelter’s door frame had finally been fitted.

Adela wanted to know whether the gardening lessons would continue during the colder weather, and had apparently informed Nessa that she expected the answer to be yes.

Then Tiamat looked at Dinraal.

“The children?”

He set down his spoon.

“On Avalon.”

“All the ones who survived?”

“Yes.”

She nodded once.

Rhiannon’s hands remained still around her bowl.

Aurelius looked toward the window.

Outside, the garden had gone dark. The beans had been harvested, leaving thin stalks against their supports.

For a while, they listened to the small sounds of the meal.

Then Aramaeis said, “And their parents?”

Dinraal looked at Isolde.

She had read the final addition to the report with him.

“Still on Orrin,” she said.

Gilgamesh lowered the bread.

“How many?”

“About one million six hundred thousand.”

Rhiannon closed her eyes.

“They’re going for them,” Dinraal said.

“Already?” Tiamat asked.

“They were preparing when the message ended.”

Nobody asked why.

Nobody suggested that the rescue of the children ought to have been enough for one day.

Aurelius rubbed his thumb along the side of his cup.

“Those houses,” he said quietly.

Dinraal knew he meant the empty homes on Orrin.

The beds no one had slept in.

The food someone had not known how to stop preparing.

Aurelius looked up.

“They need to know.”

“Yes.”

“That somebody found them.”

“Yes.”

Tiamat reached across the table and covered his hand.

He let her.

After supper, the clearing took longer than necessary.

Nobody seemed eager to leave.

Aramaeis repaired the catch on the back door while insisting he had noticed it before tonight. Gilgamesh washed dishes under Rhiannon’s supervision and complained that the largest pot had clearly been designed by an enemy.

Tiamat folded the borrowed cloths.

Aurelius read beside the kitchen lamp.

Dinraal stood drying a plate, watching them all.

Isolde nudged him with her elbow.

“You’ve done that one.”

He looked down.

The plate was very dry.

She took it from him.

Then she handed him another.

When the house finally quieted, Isolde found him at the desk.

The folded plan lay open beside her notebook.

He had not changed anything.

She sat on the edge of the bed.

“Thinking?”

He nodded.

She waited.

Dinraal looked toward the guest-room door. Aurelius had accepted the offer to stay, though it had taken everyone pretending the weather might turn again.

“I kept looking at that number,” he said.

“On the report?”

“Yes.”

He rubbed his hands together.

“I was glad. So glad I could hardly breathe. Then I thought about the difference, and it felt wrong to be glad.”

Isolde crossed the room.

She stood behind his chair and rested her hands on his shoulders.

“I know.”

“And then I saw that little girl with her blanket.”

His voice caught unexpectedly.

He stopped.

Isolde bent and kissed the side of his head.

They stayed like that until he could continue.

“I want this,” he said, looking down at the drawing.

“I know.”

“I wanted it yesterday. I still want it.”

“So do I.”

He turned in the chair.

“Does that frighten you?”

“Yes.”

Her answer came without hesitation.

Dinraal searched her face.

Isolde moved the drawing aside and sat on the edge of the desk, facing him.

“It frightened me before we heard about Orrin. There will always be something I can’t promise a child.”

He lowered his gaze to her hands.

She waited until he looked back.

“But I can promise that we will want them. That we’ll listen. That there are people in this house who will love them before they know what to do with all that love.”

A faint smile touched his mouth.

“Rhiannon will be unbearable.”

“Rhiannon will be magnificent.”

“Both?”

“Certainly.”

He laughed softly.

Then she took his hand and placed it over the little room on the drawing.

“We don’t have to decide everything tonight.”

“I know.”

“And we don’t have to put the drawing away every time something terrible happens.”

His fingers rested on the paper.

After a moment, he nodded.

Isolde opened her notebook.

She wrote for a while, then turned it so he could read.

Today we brought a blanket home.

Below that:

Orrin’s children are on Avalon. The people who love them still need to be found.

Dinraal read the lines twice.

Then he looked at her.

“You’ll write the rest when we know?”

“Yes.”

He passed the notebook back.

Outside, a cart rolled along the road toward the workshop. Someone called good night to the watch. Farther away, the second shelter’s lights shone against the hillside.

Dinraal folded the house plan along its old creases.

He left it on top of the desk.

Then he stood, took Isolde’s hand, and went with her to bed.