The Governor Sought Counsel, Sheen Took the Reins

Milo stood among the crowd. After the mass evacuation from Coldwater Fief, he had joined the Grasshawk forces and fought in several more battles. His outstanding performance had earned him a place at this prayer ceremony as one of their representatives.

His lips moved, but no complete words came out. He remembered the broken bridge in Coldwater Fief.

He remembered the final volley from the North Marsh gun emplacement, Todd pressing a hand to his wound, and Hake raising his shield against the corrosive Frost Mist.

He also remembered the craftsmen, recorders, junior clerics, and transport auxiliaries whose names he had never learned.

Tears slipped down Milo's cheeks before he knew it.

Beside him, another soldier from Coldwater bowed his head. A third took off his helmet and rested his forehead against its iron rim.

Among the survivors from the Ashen Fief gun emplacements, a loader looked at his empty left sleeve, then raised his right hand to his chest.

A gunner beside him murmured a name. The wind carried it away.

In the Grasshawk courier ranks, someone took a fallen comrade's badge from his coat, laid it in his palm, and slowly rubbed it with his thumb.

Blackpine Workshop apprentices stood at the rear. Several were young and had never attended a prayer like this, but they connected the parts they had labored day and night to make with the names on the ritual altar.

Sheen's eulogy carried from the ritual altar, and the crowd below the heights gradually fell silent.

Blackpine soldiers, the remnants of the Tear Knight forces, reinforcements from the Holy City, and knights from every nation all listened.

It was as though he had brought the dead back before their eyes.

Comrades fallen in the trenches, brothers-in-arms lost on the broken bridge, figures who had