Before Mara could begin, the relay chimed again, and this time it was a voice.
Eshel patched it to the yard’s horn. He did it without being asked, because he had seen the address: the same school relay on Lorn’s Reach. The horn on the forge’s eave crackled, and then a woman’s voice came out of it across the yard, clear, steady, a voice that was used to carrying across a room full of children who would rather not listen.
“This is Nemi Dain,” it said. “I teach at the Founders’ Quarter school on Lorn’s Reach. I’m speaking from my classroom.”
The crowd in the yard went quiet.
Mara knew the voice. She had heard it at the landing ring, and on the Tern, and on the gate bay at Lorn, the day after the heart, when Nemi had come down from the school with a line of children to see the people who had built it. Sera’s sister. Taller than Sera, softer in the face, with the same flat way of saying a thing once and not repeating it.
“The children are here,” Nemi said. “Behind me. They’re sitting on crates, because the benches haven’t come back yet since the cold. They have their hands in their laps. They’re listening. I wanted Cinder to know that. They’re listening to you.”
