The last child is a girl with eyes as deep and blue as a shadowed lake. She’s snuggled under a white-feather blanket, squealing with glee when her father pokes his head in before bedtime. By the light of a holocandle, he reads her the tale of the Knight’s War on old Earth—four hundred years gone and with five billion dead in its wake—and outside the girl’s window, there is only black space and silver stars and a great green planet with a white silica storm rotating slowly across its face. She dreams of great honor, and she will have it. But then she will lose it all.
