I could hear.
That was the first wrong thing. I was standing eight feet from the source of it with a dead werebat in my hands, and I could hear my own breath, and the scrape of grit under my boot, and the small dry rustle of a wing folding when I set the body down.
Meanwhile, thirty paces back in the dark, Ilse was screaming and nothing was coming out of her.
'It's not a field,' I thought. 'It's a list.'
Say that again.
'The quiet isn't everywhere. It's on them. I'm off the list, so I get my ears back. They're on it, so they get nothing.'
Which means it can do that to whoever it likes.
'Which means it can do that to whoever it likes.'
I set the fourth body down in line, because I had absolutely no intention of getting back on that list, and then I turned around and walked into the black toward the place where I'd heard armour scrape.
I found her by feel. Boot, then greave, then the cold curve of a pauldron, then her arm.
