“What don’t I know?”

Sirach leans forward. “What is Siccluna?”

Evie only blinks at her at first, the question finding no purchase among the peaks of her mind.

“It’s… your nation. This country we’re in now, what’s left of it.”

Sirach shakes her head. “Siccluna isn’t a place, my dear. It’s a word in a language scarcely spoken anymore, because those who spoke it scarcely exist anymore. The word ‘siccluna’ means ‘last home.’ ”

“I don’t understand.”

Sirach laughs. “I know you don’t. That’s the point. My dear… every city in Crache was once its own kingdom, its own realm, its own lands with its own people and language and customs. One by one, they all fell. It began with your Capitol.”

“The Renewal,” Evie whispers.

Sirach nods. “I don’t know how it began or who was usurped or how it happened. No one outside the Capitol does anymore, I imagine. But it started there. Then it spread. They consumed everything they conquered to build their well-fed, well-kept paradise of marvels and wonders. It was never enough, and it still isn’t. They just kept taking and taking and taking.”

Her words spark a recent memory for Evie, something Mother Manai said to her about the Sicclunan war not being a war at all. Mother Manai told Evie that Crache was expanding, something even more dangerous than war, and now, hearing what Sirach has said, Evie finally understands what that means. Crache isn’t growing, it’s eating, consuming everything it touches to grow fat. The fatter it grows, the more Crache must consume to sustain itself.

That’s what this entire bloody campaign is about. That’s what it has always been about.

“Why didn’t any of these kingdoms fight them?” Evie asks almost helplessly, although she suspects she already knows the answer.

Sirach shrugs. “They did, once the siege began, but before that they all thought they wouldn’t be next, that Crache would be satisfied. They made treaties, drew up new maps, new borders. Crache burned all of it. My people built what you call the Tenth City. They all had eyes like mine. Crache conquered them and worked them to death in the mines. I haven’t seen another person with these eyes since I was a little girl.”

Evie says nothing. Her head almost refuses to hold the truth in Sirach’s words.

“Siccluna is what we call the remnants of all those realms, those people. We banded together and retreated to wilds of the east. We have no cities, no castles, just villages of sticks lashed together in trees, mostly.”

“But… your armies… armored soldiers—”