Three days had passed without dreams.

  Lilith didn't miss them exactly — the forest and the waterfall and the women who never quite explained themselves were not what most people would call restful — but their absence was noticeable in the way silence was noticeable after something had been making noise for a long time. She slept deeper without them. Woke up without the feeling of carrying something she hadn't unpacked yet.

  She didn't mind. There was enough to carry already.

  The lesson was fractions.

  The tech-priest assigned to the orphanage's education delivered everything in the same flat, unhurried tone regardless of subject — the same tone for prayers, for history, for basic arithmetic, for fractions, for everything — which had the effect of making all knowledge feel equally important and equally dull. Several of the younger children had already lost the thread. Lilith was following along with the portion of her mind that handled things automatically while the rest of her sat quietly with the week's countdown.

  Four days left.

  Three, after tonight.

  She was thinking about Lysander's list — seven things, carefully memorized, presented to her the evening after their Promise with the gravity of someone submitting an official document — when the alarm went off.

  It was loud. Not the bell that marked morning prayers or meals or the end of lessons. This was different — sharper, sustained, cutting through the building with a quality that made the younger children freeze in their seats and look at each other with wide eyes.

  Lilith had never heard it before.

  Neither had Eve, judging by the way she'd gone still at the desk beside her, head up, eyes moving immediately to the door.

  Sister Mercy's expression had already changed. The warmth she wore as a default had pulled back into something focused and clear, a version of her face Lilith had seen only once or twice before.

  "Children," she said, and her voice was calm in the deliberate way of someone choosing calm carefully. "Stand up. Stay together. Follow me quickly, please."

  The children stood. Some of them started asking questions. Sister Mercy was already moving and the questions didn't slow her down — she answered it's alright, stay together, quickly please in steady rotation as she moved them into the corridor and toward the back of the building.

  Lilith held Eve's hand without deciding to. Eve's fingers closed around hers without being asked.

  They moved with the group, the corridor filling with the shuffling, murmuring press of children being moved somewhere fast, and Lilith was trying to read the building around her — the sound of it, the feel of it — when a figure appeared at the far end of the corridor and her eyes found him immediately.

  Ha'ken.

  He was in full armor, which was not unusual, but he was carrying his weapons, which was. He moved toward them against the flow and Sister Mercy fell back slightly to let him reach Lilith and Eve.

  "Stay with the others," he said. Direct, no preamble. "Go to the shelter with the children."

  "What's happening?" Lilith asked.

  He looked at her. A brief hesitation — the kind Ha'ken rarely showed, which made it more noticeable.

  "Orks," he said. "They've hit the outer district. Stay with the children."

  He was already moving again.

  Lilith stood with the word for a second. Orks. She'd read about them. Everyone in the Imperium had read about them in some form or another — the green tide, the Waaagh, the blunt and enormous fact of them rolling over things and breaking whatever didn't move fast enough. She'd read about them the way you read about disasters that happened to other people in other places.

  Right, she thought. This place.

  She tightened her hand around Eve's and moved.

  The shelter was beneath the orphanage — a low, wide room with stone walls and rows of benches and the smell of old air that hadn't been disturbed in a long time. Lanterns hung from iron hooks. The children filed in and the sisters counted heads with quick, practiced movements, and the door was heavy and Lilith heard it bar from the outside.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  She found a spot on one of the benches and sat, and Eve sat beside her, and around them the children settled into the uneasy quiet of people waiting for something they didn't have enough information about.

  Lilith's eyes moved across the room.

  She counted faces without meaning to. The children she recognized — the ones she'd eaten meals near, passed in corridors, occasionally shared a lesson with. The faces she knew and the ones she'd only half-noted and the ones that were just shapes in the background of the past months.

  Lysander was not there.

  She counted again.

  Still not there.

  She looked at Eve, and Eve was already scanning the room with the same focused sweep, because Eve had noticed too — of course she had — and when their eyes met Eve gave a very small, very slight shake of her head.

  He's not here.

  Lilith's chest did something tight and unpleasant.

  Where is he? He should be here. He was in the building, he had lessons this morning, he should have been in the group—

  Maybe he was with a different group. Maybe he was in another part of the shelter she couldn't see from here. Maybe—

  The whisper came without warning.

  Not loud. Not dramatic. Just there, the way it had been there before — quiet and close, like someone speaking carefully into a space right beside her ear.

  He's outside.

  Lilith's jaw tightened.

  She knew that voice. She'd heard it once before, when it had told her to look carefully at a man who wasn't who he claimed to be, and it had been right then.

  He's outside.

  She bit her lip.

  What can I do? she thought. What can I actually do? I'm five years old. There are Orks out there. I can't fight anything. I can't run fast enough. I can barely—

  She looked at Eve.

  Eve was looking back at her already, and her expression was the one she got when she'd already read the situation and was waiting to see what Lilith decided.

  I don't want to risk her, Lilith thought immediately. I don't want to put her in the way of—

  But even as she thought it she knew how that sentence ended, and she knew Eve knew it too, and she knew exactly what Eve would say if she tried to finish it out loud.

  She's strong enough, the honest part of her brain said. She's the strongest thing in this building. Possibly on this street.

  That doesn't mean I want to point her at Orks.

  Lysander is outside.

  She looked at Eve again and said her name. Just her name, quiet, under the noise of the room.

  Eve's eyes sharpened. She leaned in slightly.

  She didn't need Lilith to explain. She never did, not really — she'd known what this was about from the moment Lilith had started scanning faces. She gave one small nod.

  Yes. I understand. Let's go.

  They stood up together.

  Getting out of the main press of children was easy enough — move slow, don't draw attention, find the edges of the room. It was the far end of the shelter that was the problem, because that was where Sister Prudence was standing.

  And Sister Marian beside her.

  Sister Prudence saw them before they were halfway across the room. She always saw things early. Her eyes tracked them through the crowd with the calm, unhurried certainty of someone who had already worked out where they were going and why.

  She waited until they reached her.

  "No," she said.

  Lilith stopped. "Lysander isn't here."

  "I'm aware."

  "He's outside."

  "I'm aware of that too." Sister Prudence's voice was even. Not unkind. Just immovable. "Which is why you are going to stay here."

  "Sister Prudence—"

  "There are Orks in the outer district." She said it plainly. "You are a child. You are not going outside."

  Lilith looked at her and thought carefully and quickly.

  Don't argue about me, she thought. She's right about me. Argue about Eve.

  "You know what Eve is," Lilith said, keeping her voice low so it didn't carry to the children nearby. "You've known since the medicae ward. You know what she can do."

  Sister Prudence's expression didn't change.

  "She can find him," Lilith said. "She's faster than anything out there. She's stronger than anything out there. If anyone can get to him and bring him back safely it's her and you know it."

  "And you," Sister Prudence said. "You would be doing what, exactly, while Eve was finding him."

  "Staying close to Eve."

  "You would be a liability."

  "Yes," Lilith said, without flinching. "Probably. But I'm not sending her out there alone and she won't go without me so this is what we have."

  Silence.

  Sister Prudence looked at her steadily. Then at Eve. Eve looked back, quiet and entirely serious, and there was something in the look that was impossible to argue with — not a threat, just a fact. I will go. This is what I am for.

  Sister Marian had been quiet through all of this, standing slightly back, her hands folded. Now she made a short sound — not quite a word, more the sound of a decision landing — and she stepped forward.

  "I'm going with them," she said.

  Sister Prudence turned to look at her.

  "Don't," Sister Marian said, before Sister Prudence could speak. "I know what you're going to say. I'm an old woman and I'm not built for this and it's dangerous." She adjusted her medicae bag on her shoulder — and Lilith noticed she was already wearing it, which meant she'd picked it up before they'd even approached her. "If that boy is outside and something has happened to him, he will need someone who can help him. That is what I do. That is what I am for." She looked at Sister Prudence very calmly. "Don't."

  Sister Prudence was quiet.

  The alarm was still going, muffled by stone but present. The children behind them murmured in the lantern light.

  Sister Prudence looked at Lilith. Then at Eve. Then at Sister Marian, who was standing with the particular stillness of someone who had made up their mind completely and was simply waiting for the conversation to catch up.

  "If you don't come back," Sister Prudence said, slowly and deliberately, "I will be very displeased."

  It was not permission exactly. But it wasn't a no.

  Lilith held it for half a second.

  "Understood," she said.

  Sister Prudence stepped aside.