His mother's name hung in the vault, spoken by the one man who should never have known it.
Hajin crossed the broken Rampart in two strides, the Chain whipping around the old man's wrist to drag him close. The child clung to his neck in a silent knot of bones, her burned horns pressed hard against his jaw.
He held the old man's eyes, his voice dropping low, "Say it again."
"You cannot be here," the Patriarch whispered, staring at the gold throbbing in the links, "you will wake the others."
"What others?"
"Every one of them sleeps under your feet, boy," Duke Flint rasped, his lips still moving after the words stopped.
He remembered a warm hand tucking a blanket beneath his chin, a voice humming off key, then nothing else. That faint hum was all he owned, while a stranger carried her name like a coin in his pocket.
Hajin tightened the Chain around the trembling wrist, "Where the hell did you hear my mother's name?"
