~Are those the knucklebones?~

The knucklebones were silver knobs, backed by a pin, which would be fixed over Sethlan’s shoulder claws as soon as he stopped staring at them and got to business.

The seamstress asked, “Problem, sar?”

Sethlan shook his head, and the old woman wrote up the bill of sale. Sethlan noted her writing, but his interest flagged almost immediately. A minimum of literacy would be required to understand the terse legalese of the promotion chits, and to provide the right cluster or jawbone out of the thousands of designations on the eternal front. And then some organizational skill would be required to report the promotion as filled to the proper authority—which could be any one of hundreds of offices and bureaus, with more being added yearly as essentially the war’s only creative act. The old seamstress, with her clawed fingers wrapped around the pencil, could well be a bureaucratic savant.

Eponymous again tried to jog him awake. ~Shall we put it on and give it a test run?~

Them. We put them on, there are two in the envelope. I never quite feel like I deserve a promotion whenever they come my way. I’ve had seven now.

“Twelve hundred seventy bone, twelve dime, for a new Haut Captain,” said the woman, taking his note with a belated smile. “Near the value of a full squad!”

Sorry if I’m slow. My mind feels full.

~It’s empty enough from where I’m standing. You’re tripping over the only chair in the room.~

What chair is that?

~Love.~

“Love?” Sethlan said.

“Love!” The woman produced his receipt, and a little bow. Sensitive to distracted, mumbling front-line officers, she guided him quickly to the door. “Come back to sell them when you get busted down or killed.”

~Nana has you in a knot,~ Eponymous said. The voice’s thoughts had a flavor Sethlan couldn’t recognize. ~I’m gloating.~

Why are you gloating over Nana?

~I got you a girlfriend. They said it couldn’t be done.~

She’s hardly a girl, nor merely a friend. And who said it couldn’t be—

~Never mind. I’m just tired, talking out of my own head and not translating for you. Call it a clash of cultures.~

Later, then, Sethlan thought, and Eponymous knew she had a session of explaining ahead, because the man never forgot the open loops.

…

On the sidewalk, Sethlan finally affixed the knucklebones. They gleamed in his peripheral vision as the sunlight hit them.

~What’s going on?~

Sethlan glanced up. Soldiers passing on the sidewalk noted his bright metal and issued snappy salutes. They will salute a new insignia, as a kind of congratulations.

~Oh, that chokes me up,~ Eponymous began. Then she paused. ~You’re choked up!~

Sethlan glared ahead, his thoughts turning impermeable under tight control, but not before Eponymous glimpsed a crowd of faces, unblemished with the passage of time, beaming proudly at the boy in Sethlan’s past.