By midmorning, the entire settlement had gathered wherever there was a view of the sky. People stood on rooftops, along the inner wall, in the central lanes, outside the ash-house, around the crash ledger hall. Children were lifted onto shoulders. Elders shaded their eyes with trembling hands. The watch stood in full gear along the battlements.
Rohan stood beside Maerin on the eastern wall.
Liora stood on his other side. Pell and his mother were below in the lane, though Pell kept trying to climb high enough to see until his mother hauled him back by the collar.
At first, the object looked like a star moving wrong.
Then it grew.
A silver-white shape descended through the upper clouds, too far to show detail, but bright enough that every lens along Veyrhold's wall caught its reflection. It did not fall like wreckage. It moved with terrifying control, sliding through the violet sky as if the planet's gravity were a suggestion it had politely acknowledged and chosen to negotiate.
