A Leaf of the Skyblamer's Tally

a bought copy of Coss's tally-sheet, creased from a pocket

One copied page from Ellery Coss's beast-ledgers, sold for a copper at his Highbridge stall and dropped by half the frontier that buys it — a plain column of kills and a plainer question at the foot of it: where are the young?

Nineteen years of the count, set plain, judge for yourself:

— Of every beast the bounties bring in, not ONE has ever been a young one. No cubs. No hatchlings. No dam heavy with them. No nest, no den with litter, no old one grey and toothless with age. I have paid out on four thousand kills and never once on a mother or a child. Animals have both.

— They come always farther out and higher than the last. Plot the kills on a map and the line walks toward the Rampart and the old sky-ruins, year on year, as a spill spreads from where it was poured.

— The worst of them — the ones stitched wrong, a thing's head on another thing's frame, parts that never grew together — are found NEAREST the high ruins. The farther from the sky, the more they look like honest beasts. The nearer, the more they look MADE.

I am not asking you to believe a story. I have no story. I have a column of numbers and one question the College will not answer and the Ledger laughs at: animals come from animals. These come from somewhere. Count it yourself if you don't trust me. That is all I have ever asked anyone to do. — E.C.