Wren had been eleven for two hundred years, and tonight he was breaking into the hall of the dead to steal their names. He crouched on the stone sill above the great door, barefoot, silver hair pushed under his hood. His coat hung heavy on his shoulders. He had stitched it himself from the cloaks of every home that had outlived him, or that he had outlived. He could not remember which anymore. Inside, the registry stretched up in tiers of glowing alcoves. Each alcove held a plaque. Each plaque held a soul. Somewhere in that wall were the names of children like him: ageless, scattered, hiding in cellars and market stalls across the Netherworld. He had already found a place for them. A dry cave under a dead orchard, three cots, a stove he had dragged there himself. What he did not have was a way to find the children to fill it. A black cat slipped through the door beside him and sat on his foot. Pippa had followed him for forty years. She never aged either, and she never explained herself. She yawned at the alcoves. "The living plaques are the ones still lit," Wren whispered. "Ageless souls never darken. That's how we find them." Pippa flicked her tail once. He took it as agreement. He dropped to the floor. The guards walked the lower cloister on a slow count. He had watched them for a week. He had six minutes. He went to the third tier and started reading. Most plaques dimmed and flared, dimmed and flared, the way a life should. He was looking for the ones that only shone. He found one. Then another. Then eleven more. He pressed his thumb to each and the name burned briefly onto the pad of his hand, then faded under the skin. On the twelfth plaque, an alarm bead cracked open above the door. A sound like breaking glass filled the hall. From the seam of the bead, a cluster of raindrops spilled out, each one round and shining, each one with a small startled face. They hung in the air and began to shout. "Intruder!" one squeaked. "Third tier!" cried another. "Barefoot boy!" Pippa hissed. Wren swept his coat open and caught the whole cluster inside a fold of stolen wool. He clamped the fabric shut. The muffled voices kept arguing about him in there. Boots hit stone below. He ran. He cleared the sill, dropped into the alley, and did not stop until the orchard swallowed him. In the cave, he opened his hand. Thirteen names sat under his skin, faint as bruises. Thirteen children he could now find. The coat squirmed. He had forgotten the raindrops. He loosened the fold and they tumbled out onto his cot, blinking at the empty cots beside them. "Where are the others?" the biggest one asked. Wren looked at the thirteen names on his hand. "I have to go get them," he said. "And you just told the whole city where I live."

The raindrops were still shouting inside Wren's coat. He stood in the cave under the dead orchard, thirteen stolen names bruised faint on his hand, and knew he could not stay. Every soaked seam of his coat was a small mouth telling the city where he stood. The cots behind him would be worthless if the guards followed the noise here. He spread the coat on the stove-warm stone and pinned back the fold. The drops rolled out in a wet cluster, each one round as a marble, each one wearing a small startled face. They argued at once. "Barefoot boy!" "Third tier!" "Orchard, orchard, orchard!" Their voices were thin but they carried, and he could feel the carry in his teeth. The black cat jumped down from the highest cot. She had a white patch on her chest like spilled milk. She sat between Wren and the drops and stared. She had followed him for forty years and had never once been wrong about a threat. "I can't drown them," Wren said. "They'd shout underwater. I've tried before." The cat flicked her tail at the shelf above the stove. A faceted crystal sat there, long as his hand, striped with pale rainbows. He had pried it from a dry riverbed years ago because it caught light like nothing else. He had never found a use for it. He picked it up. The drops went quiet for one breath, drawn to the shine. That breath told him enough. He held the crystal over the stove and turned it slowly. Light bent through it and stretched into a thin road across the cave floor, out past the cots, toward the mouth of the tunnel. The drops leaned. Their small faces followed the light the way flowers follow sun. "Go on," Wren said. He walked the crystal toward the tunnel. The drops rolled after him, chattering now to the light instead of to the city. "Third tier! Third tier!" they told the beam, and the beam did not care. At the tunnel mouth he stopped. He tilted the crystal so the road of light poured out across the orchard, away from the cave, away from the cots, straight toward the far ridge where the city guards were already coming. He gave the drops one hard push with his bare foot. They rolled off shouting, following the light, and the light led them wrong. Wren watched until the last drop cleared the roots of the dead trees. Then he pocketed the crystal. His coat hung lighter on his shoulders. The cave was quiet again. The cots were still empty. The cat brushed his ankle. He looked at the thirteen names on his hand. The guards would chase the noise for an hour, maybe two. That was all the time he had bought. "We go tonight," he told the cat. "All thirteen. Before the drops stop lying for us."

Wren left the cave with the cat at his heel and the thirteen names still faint on his hand. Names alone would not walk. Names alone would not sleep in cots. He needed bodies for them, and the only place that filed bodies to names was the Soul-Registry Hall in the city he had just tricked. He pulled his coat tight and went anyway. He went in through a service door behind the kitchens. The hall smelled of paper and cold lamp oil. Shelves climbed higher than he could see. Somewhere above, a red glow pulsed and a thin voice screamed a number over and over. Then another voice joined it. Then a third. He found her at a low desk under a leaning tower of files. The clerk who had drawn the whole backlog onto herself. Her blue cloak was smudged with ink at both cuffs. She did not look up when he stopped in front of her. She slid one entry left, tapped it, and three folders above her head flared red and began to wail. "Don't touch the shelves," she said. "They bite back." "I need thirteen bodies filed to thirteen names," Wren said. He turned his hand so she could see the faint marks. "Ageless. Stuck somewhere in your queue." She looked at his hand. She looked at his face. She did not ask how he had gotten the names onto his skin. "Show me," she said. He read them off. She pulled a ledger from the base of her tower without dislodging the tower. She ran a finger down a column. Her finger stopped, moved, stopped again. "All thirteen are here," she said. "Filed wrong. No bodies attached. They've been screaming for years. No one volunteered." "Can you attach them?" "Yes." She did not soften it. "It takes a signature. Mine counts." She drew a fresh sheet. He held out his hand and she copied each name across, careful, in a small hand. As each name left his skin the mark faded. As each name touched her page a small warm shape lifted out of the ledger like breath on cold glass. Thirteen shapes. Child-sized. They hung above her desk and waited. Above her, four new folders lit red and screamed. She did not look up. "They'll follow you now," she said. "Once. To wherever you take them. After that they belong to that place." "Why help me," Wren said. She pulled the pen back and set it down straight. "Forty-three years ago I filed a girl under the name she used before. I kept her there. I know what a queue does to a child." She looked at him for the first time. "Go. Fast. My signature is on your line now. When the guards read the log they'll come for both of us." Wren pulled his coat around the thirteen shapes and ran.

Wren ran with the thirteen shapes bundled under his coat until the city fell behind him. The shapes were warm and light, like held breath. They did not speak. They did not move on their own. When he set them down on the cold grass at the edge of a wood, they stayed exactly where he put them. He knelt in front of the nearest one. It had the outline of a small boy. Its eyes were open. Its hands lay in its lap. "Stand up," Wren said. It did not stand. It did not know how. He lifted its wrist. The arm moved where he put it and stayed there. He set the foot flat on the ground. He guided the knee. The child slid sideways and folded down like cloth. Wren caught it before its head hit a root. He counted the others. Twelve more, sitting where he had placed them. Twelve more who did not know a mouth from an ear. Dawn was maybe four hours off. The cave was still hours of walking north, and none of them could walk. He tried the next one. He tried the one after that. He got one to close its hand around his finger. He got another to blink when he tapped its cheek. It was not enough. Thirteen bodies, and only one of him. A hoof cracked a twig behind him. He turned. A white doe stood between two trees. Her coat caught what little light there was. She watched him with the flat, patient look animals give a thing they have already decided about. She stepped forward. She lowered her head and pressed her nose to the forehead of the nearest child. The child breathed in. Then breathed out. Then reached up and touched the doe's ear. Wren did not move. The doe went to the next one. She nosed its cheek. The child's mouth opened and closed. A small sound came out. Not a word. A sound a throat learns before words. One by one, she went down the row. Each child she touched began to do something small. Lift a hand. Turn a head. Try weight on a foot. They were not fixed. They were started. On the wet grass beside his knee, a single raindrop caught the doe's light and held it. Clear. Silent. Not one of the screaming ones. Just water. Wren pressed his palm flat over it anyway, until it soaked into his skin, in case. By the time the sky began to gray, thirteen children stood in a loose line behind the doe. They walked the way new colts walk. They fell often. They got up. The doe moved north through the trees at a pace slow enough for the smallest one to keep. Wren followed at the back and counted heads. Thirteen. Still thirteen. Walking.