Irritation warred with eagerness. “It was in the trees. A… creature.”
The towel stilled; he let it drop around his neck. “Do go on. I’m dying to hear more about thiscreature.”
“It was bipedal,” I said. “I couldn’t make it out—it was in shadow, but it walked on two legs. And…”
His sparse eyebrows rose, glinting in the early sun. “Yes?”
“It moved faster than a human.”
“Imagine that.” His arms folded, slabs of decades’-old muscle pressing against his loose skin. “And was this creature of shadow so remarkable that your sighting of it outweighs breaking the line?”
Surprise and confusion broke in. “The line, Commander?”
His eyes lifted to the night guard running laps, their footfalls in the dirt sounding not ten feet behind us. Their heavy breaths neared and then evaporated as they passed by. “The line’s not been broken in twenty years. I was there the night it began.”
The commander pressed his lips together until they turned white. With a movement of his Adam’s apple, he let out a three-note trill, a perfect approximation of a night bird.
It was exactly the noise Theo had made for me last night, which I had heard echoed around the wall. Except the commander’s whistle was more confident, almost beautiful in its depth.
It was a whistle he had practiced a thousand times.
I stared at the regiment commander. He bore a soft, far-eyed look, like the part of him that lived inside his body wasn’t here at all. Then those eyes sharpened on me. “Until you, of course.”
I hardly knew what to say. This was beside the point. Ridiculous. “Commander, I’m trying to tell you?—”
His gaze shut my mouth. “I know what you’re trying to tell me. Do you know how humans stay sane, Waters?”
I sought for an answer. The right answer. Finally, I settled on there not being one. I shook my head.
His voice lowered, as though we were conspirators. “It’s not because we build a tall wall. It’s not because we guard it from creatures of shadow. They’ve not been seen in two generations. Do you know how long a generation is?”
I didn’t move. Didn’t take my eyes off his.
“No,” he said, “you don’t. And you won’t for some time, and by then perhaps you’ll understand what I’ve said to you on this day.”
He stepped closer. “Our sanity depends on one crucial thing. And it is not made of stone or steel.” His chin lowered, green eyes boring into mine. “It depends on each other.”
He was right—I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand why he cared more about a night bird’s call than a threat on the plains. But as he turned away from me, two things became clear:
The regiment commander would never believe me. And for him—for the guard running laps behind me—the true danger lay in the interruption of ritual. The three-note trill. The connection to one another, the trust.
I had broken that.
On her first night, Eurydice Waters had proven to him—to Theo, to the whole night guard—exactly why a woman should not stand on the wall.
“Run,” the regiment commander said. “You’re twelve laps behind.”
CHAPTER THREE
You ranuntil you were told to stop. Or until you dropped.
That day, I dropped.
I had done sixty-one laps. The others were told to stop at thirty—“but not you, Waters,” the regiment commander called out. Then he’d closed his door and not opened it again.
The sun was high when I finally fell down. It wasn’t my lungs that gave—those were trained to run forever. It was my muscles, crying with fatigue under my leathers. And my cottony throat.
I didn’t pass out. I turned onto my side in the yard, jammed an elbow under me, and retched up acid.
