A few moments later we are ordered to fall in for inspection. Silichieh has transferred his engineer’s band and stripes to his sweater. I scan the ranks.

No women.

I say as much to Silichieh.

“It’s that divorce. He doesn’t want to know women exist.”

A few moments later, Makemin is staring me in the eye.

“What’s become of your hat?”

“I wasn’t issued a hat, sir. The dispatcher—”

“Acchhh,” he says, disgusted.

We’ve both been put upon by the incompetence of the dispatcher.

“Those idiots,” he goes on. “You did well to provide for yourself.”

Under clenched brows, his eyes have dropped from my face and wander, clawing their way through black storm clouds. He moves on to the next man.

Silichieh’s sweater doesn’t seem to register, but further down the line Makemin is beet red, barking with no small dispensation of froth into the face of a wincing pockmarked man. Evidently his cartridge belt is not regulation.

We break ranks, and as we mill aimlessly around the air is split again by Makemin’s voice.

“You!”

He is pointing at Jil Punkinflake, and the Edek is at his side. My friend is marched away by a corporal. When Jil Punkinflake turns his eyes to me, there’s something fragile in his look, and my heart goes out to him. I’ve had time to get used to the idea, but it’s more than the shock I’m seeing.

Why in the world would he have come here? Here is all the fresh enlivening haste of setting forth.

A tug at my elbow, and Jil Punkinflake smiles ruefully at me. They’ve left him most of his clothes, but swapped his tail coat for a jacket like mine, and given him a skimpy kepi. He’s criss-crossed with straps and a harness, and a light lever action rifle sticks up like a chimney from his back.

“They got me,” he says.

Makemin, now wearing his goggles and a stovepipe helmet plated in brass and draped in a white canvas havelock, mounts his horse and gives the order for us to assemble in march formation. Nikhinoch comes scrambling up with the company standard, a triangular pennant on a flimsy bamboo pole—the design is extremely complicated with a great many interlocking figures and much badly-rendered writing. It is presented with outstretched fist to Makemin, who takes it as his horse shifts its feet.

“Drums!”

Nothing.

“Well?”

Tabliq Quibli slouches past saying “The drummer boy is—” and he flips his hand in a gesture that plainly means away, run off. The familiar expression of disgust on Makemin’s face screws a notch tighter.

“Piglets, move up!”