“There was an agreement between the Germans and us not to involve magic,” said Nightingale. “We sat that one out.”

“I bet that made you popular,” I said.

Nightingale floated his werelight along to reveal the honored dead of World War II.

“You see, there’s Horace,” said Nightingale, illuminating the inscription: HORACE GREENWAY, KASTELLI, MAY 21, 1941. “And there’s Sandy and Champers and Pascal.” The werelight darted across the serried ranks of names, listed as fallen at Tobruk and Arnhem and other places that I dimly remembered from history. But most of them were listed as having died at a place called Ettersberg on January 19, 1945.

I put the garbage bag down and made a werelight bright enough to see the whole of the room—the memorial covered two whole walls from top to bottom. There must have been thousands of names.

“There’s Donny Shanks who made it through the siege of Leningrad without a scratch and then got himself torpedoed, and Smithy at Dieppe and Rupert Dance, Lazy Arse Dance we used to call him …” Nightingale trailed off. I turned to see tears glinting on his cheeks, so I looked away.

“Some days it seems so long ago and some days …”

“How many?” I asked before I could stop myself.

“Two thousand three hundred and ninety-six,” said Nightingale. “Three out of five of every British wizard of military age. Many of those who survived were wounded or in such bad shape mentally that they never practiced again.” He gestured and his werelight snapped back to hover over his hand. “I think we’ve spent enough time in the past.”

I let my light die away and hefted the garbage bag over my shoulder and followed. As we were leaving I asked him who’d carved the names.

“I did it myself,” said Nightingale. “The hospital encouraged us to take up a hobby; I chose woodcarving. I didn’t tell them why.”

“Why not?”

We ducked back into the service corridors. “The doctors were already worried that I was too morbid.”

“Why did you carve the names?”

“Oh,” he said. “Somebody had to do it and as far as I could tell I was the only one still active. I also had this ridiculous notion that it might help.”

“Did it?”

“No,” he said. “Not really.”

We stepped out through the night gate and blinked in the evening light. I’d forgotten that it was still daytime outside the school. Nightingale pulled the gate closed behind us and followed me up the steps. Toby had gone to sleep on the sun-warmed hood of the Jag. You could see where he’d tracked mud across the bonnet. Nightingale frowned.

“Why do we have this dog?” he asked.