Chapter 5: The Ember Septa's First Sermon

The sermon had been going for twenty minutes before Mara found a position she trusted.

She had come because Osric mentioned it with too little emphasis — the way he mentioned things he considered either beneath notice or beyond it, the register that had no bottom she could find. "Some woman's been gathering the ash-walkers in the eastern fields," he'd said, pressing a thumb along the corner of a supply crate as though testing its integrity. "Septa type. Good voice." He'd moved on. Mara had not.

She stood now at the crowd's eastern edge, where the ash-field ran into the remains of what had been a tannery — the foundation stones were still here, still discolored by something older than the wildfire — and she could see both the speaker and the sea of backs arrayed before her. Four hundred was a conservative estimate. There were people standing on the tannery's low remnant wall to her left, and more arriving in twos and threes from the northern paths.