Two golden-robed readers walk away from the hall of remembrance, their heads down and their steps unsteady. Their robes are even more flame-like tonight, with ash and scorches at their hems. The hall itself is quiet and the doors are open, not because the building is in use as it has been day and night since the town’s memory began, but because the huge wooden doors have been torn from their hinges like broken teeth in a beautiful face. The boiled-sweet glass panes that blinked rainbows on to the town square have been smashed, and I realize why the townspeople are not here – there is nothing left for them to fight for. The town is dead because one of the chambers of its heart has been destroyed.

Mel stands with me at the entrance, but when I step forward she takes my hand.

Tears stream down her face and she shakes her head. “I can’t,” she whispers, and I nod.

“I must,” I reply.

We hold on to each other for a long time, our bodies shaking together in fear and anguished sobs. Before she goes, Mel whispers to me: “Leora, go and see your mother. They lied to you about her.” Away she whips into the darkness and I am alone.

I look all around to check that I am not being watched or followed, but only silence crouches behind the corners of buildings. I walk in freely.

Some of the seats have scorch marks over them – burned but not destroyed. Lucky, I think for a second, but then I wonder whether it would have been better if the whole building had been lost to fire because this sight is agony.

The quiet is the worst thing: the alien silence in a space that has always, always held the whispers of the names of the worthy. The only pause was at the brief beat of a breath taken – a pause readying the next wave of words. But the readers have gone, and their voices have been silenced, and now who will say the names of the long dead who deserve to be remembered for eternity? They did well, Sana’s riders – they have taken the ceremony of remembrance from us, and without memory we are nothing.

I walk slowly towards the front of the building and almost trip over burned ropes. I shudder when I wonder whether the readers were tied up and made to watch the destruction of this sacred space. Their howls almost echo in the silence of the broken hall. The book of the dead has been destroyed, and if they were made to watch, it must have been like watching a murder. I should know.

When I reach the dais I stop, feeling as though I should kneel or pray or at the very least, weep, but I am silent. Glass crackles under my feet and my nostrils fill with the scent of burned wood and spilled incense.

“A risky move, coming here.”