A Correction: Levy, Unraised

aka the conscript strike

A crystal correction that still expects conscripts from a village the Sundering erased — marking them absent, and expecting them again tomorrow.

This crystal rings higher and angrier than the grain one, the way a count runs when it is chasing men and not measures. LEVY: Coldfen township, third muster. REQUIRED: eleven able men, arms and a season's bread. PRESENT: none. ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVE: eleven. RE-MUSTER: dawn. RE-MUSTER: dawn. RE-MUSTER: dawn. The line repeats down the crystal's length, every dawn for four hundred years, eleven men marked absent from a township that is a bog with a bell-tower sticking out of it. The engine does not desert and does not despair. It simply expects them, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and it will strike the same absence at the same dawn until someone stills the note. Coldfen's eleven are not coming. Nobody has told the count. Nobody, you begin to suspect, can.

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