The warden of Greywatch came out to the line at midmorning.
She did not cross it. She stood just inside the ring of white stones with her hands folded behind her back, and she looked at the camp that had grown up outside her walls overnight.
It went on for a long way. Thirty-nine thousand people take up a great deal of grass.
She was a tall woman, older than Orla, with gray hair cut short and a face that did not move much. When Almond, Big D, Theo and Paloma came up to meet her, she looked at each of them for a long moment before she spoke.
"My name is Hessa," she said. "I keep this place. Orla tells me you killed a Husher and a Strayer on your first night."
"We did," Almond said.
"And that two of you are already at E."
"Three, now," Almond said. "Lily, Rudra, and as of an hour ago, Natalia. She found a small one in the grass at dawn."
Hessa's face did not change. But she was quiet for a moment longer than she needed to be.
