It wasn't about us being included. This time, we were what it was built around.
Out of nowhere, pieces came together because of Ysse. Her method never changed - soft steps, deep work, silence till the moment arrived. Two days passed while she wandered the camp's back channels. That is where loose details collect before they're shaped into something less honest. Paper trails showed up: supply logs, transfer papers. She remembered how bodies were counted in the valley - some included, others left out. Near a torn tent flap, behind where maps were drawn, one sketch caught her eye - a half-ripped layout from before fighting started. Orren knew it at once.
That night, the third one, she told them everything. Down on the floor inside the barracks. Most of the others were sleeping by then - or nearly gone into sleep. She spoke while the air stayed heavy and still around them.
Fronting the push east were their own units - Low Quarter draftees, farm recruits, port laborers, factory men - not because they were toughest. Because they'd meet resistance first. Their role? Step right into enemy defenses, find where the main wall stood. A sharp method when troops are already counted as lost. Hence the bloated rolls: expect bodies to vanish, so list extras from the start.
Winning that opening clash was never their job. Their role? To take the hit. Behind them moved the real strike group - fresher troops, stronger gear, pulled from elite coalition units - stepping forward just as the eastern recruits softened up the enemy's edge.
What mattered wasn't the clash those eastern troops endured. Instead, it revealed a way to weigh things. Not combat, but scale.
Bren, who had been listening without speaking, said: "They used us to find out where the arrows came from."
"Yes," Ysse said.
"And the supply corruption. The extra names on the manifests."
"Buffer for expected losses. If you plan to lose forty men from a unit, you can redirect forty men's worth of rations without anyone in the official count noticing."
Silence.
Staring at the map, Kael saw tiny symbols showing where the eastern troops stood - exposed, on flat land, nothing to hide behind. Behind those, bigger markers waited: the main group, kept in reserve. Movement plans pointed forward, lines drawn to show who moves when. The layout unfolded before him, silent but loud in meaning.
Someone put them there. Not by accident, but because that person understood exactly where they needed to be. A long time ago - before any of them were even taken - a name was scribbled in a book, followed by a short code only a few would recognize.
"The record book," he said. "My name. The others on that list."
"Pre-selected for front line assignment," Ysse said. "I think the designations indicate specific roles. Yours is different from the others on the page."
"Different how?"
For just a second, her stillness had that familiar weight - like air before speech. Not quite hesitation, more like stepping through glass.
"The others are marked for assignment," she said. "Yours looks more like - observation. As if someone wanted you in a specific place, for a specific purpose, that has nothing to do with the battle."
Kael stayed quiet, holding it longer than expected.
A sharp point dug into his skin, cold metal marked by an emblem. Behind him, the weapon stayed firm.
He found himself in this place because another person placed him there. His presence served a purpose different from the others around him. That purpose wasn't shared with anyone else who'd been brought in.
What he failed to grasp hadn't grown smaller. Yet each item stood clearer now.