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Mandate knew the count of those who had died exactly; knew it the way stone-crafts could tell granite and marble apart without their eyes and the way a blaze-dancer knew a candle from a torch from miles off, in a way he'd never known anything in his life.
Mandate wondered if there would be any humans left to bury in a year.
"Touch the tree here. Listen." There was nothing at first, just the early breezes rustling a few tattered leaves. Then the blood rushing in my ears, my breath in and out. These sounds faded with concentration. Beyond them there was a very faint groaning, as of wood straining in a wind, but nothing more. "They still sleep," Sister Mauro whispered.
When I opened my eyes again, the moon had indeed come to roost in the branches of my oaks.
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I raised the cairnskill feather, looked at the peregrinator through it. He became that shimmer again, indistinct but present.
From the Archives:
As I set foot on the plaza, I saw that it was one huge mass of butterflies.