I won’t write down a word of this. It’s not history. Just nonsense, that comes and goes like this fire here. Although it’s history that gives light and heat. So I pass the time in the evening, before, as I know will happen before it does happen, Jil Punkinflake claps me on the shoulder, and we go bottle-hunting as before, in a place where I can watch as a flame as before becomes a million flames through ranks and files of essentially similar bottles. If I were a poet I would say something about fire in the bottles, bottled fire, time is fire as before, bottled time, time is sand, sand in fire is glass made into bottles, hourglasses, fire burns time in me as I get drunk as before and forgetful; and I drink, and the drink burns my throat and slakes my thirst somehow at once, and I get dizzy and forgetful, and now—empty bottles. Splatter of vomit in the street.

*

I hear Jil Punkinflake’s sharply intaken breath.

“That old woman there!”

He points to a bald old woman in a shapeless, colorless linen gown, emerging from the rubble that borders our little camp. A white band swaddles her neck up to the ears, and her intent, falcon face swivels this way and that, face cool and keen as a biting, weightless wind. Jil Punkinflake’s face wears an awestruck expression.

“That’s Nardac!” he exclaims. “She was executioner for the whole district!”

He makes a sweeping arc with his finger. He’s almost forgotten to be pale and ashamed now.

The woman is making her way toward Makemin, taking long, back-crooked strides, slightly fragile, pushing her knees down from time to time with her fibrous hands.

“Did she come with us from the asylum?” he wonders aloud.

Thrushchurl shakes his head, “No. I saw her there once, but she was always free to go.”

Makemin is fuming; we are stuck again. There are no boats that will take us to Meqhasset, not for a time and perhaps not at all. The transport he had been assured would be here isn’t, and isn’t expected. Diverted, maybe even. Plus, no additional troops. No additional supplies. Nothing.

Nardac and Makemin retire to his tent, and he waves Nikhinoch up to take her arm. I see her give him something. Then she’s gone.

Jil Punkinflake puts his hand to his lapel, where the death’s head moth had once hung—it must have abandoned him during the fighting. He has his dog now, instead.

I feel his hand in the crook of my elbow.

“Do you think—? ... Listen, I have nothing to give you ... but, couldn’t you make another of those rolls for me, Low?”

“I suppose so, if I could find the right sort of books.”

“Let’s look!”

There’s a wan, sad hopefulness about him.