“And they didn’t choose to sacrifice themselves to the Lottery—not my father, certainly, nor my mother, who, I am given to understand, died shortly after my own selection. Enough. I leave you to Valdus or the conscripts— whomever gets to you first.”
He dropped him to the ash-strewn gangplank and strode back to the platform, and Dravidian was able to lift his head just long enough to say, “The woman ... who called out our names ... She ... is your mother come again.”
Sihadi had hardly had time to turn to back around when the entire deck erupted into chaos—for wide swaths of conscripts had begun falling all about—and when Dravidian at last focused he saw the blades of tens of scythes cresting the crowd like threshes of pure light, and knew the ferrymen had begun their counterattack. What’s
