"He was someone," Alistair said. "He was a real person, and Cain decided he was a liability, and—" He stopped. "And the archive is built for him. All of it. Five years of it."
"Yes," Tav said.
"I understand that better now." He turned to Tav. "I understood it before — the grief motivation, the archive as monument. But now I understand it as — he did what grief sometimes makes you do, He made something."
Tav watched him.
"Yes," he said.
Alistair held the look.
"Thank you," he said.
"For what?"
"For being here," he said. "In the way that you're here."
Tav studied his coffee.
"I told you," he said. "I don't leave."
Alistair's expression did the warm honest thing.
"I know," he said. "I know you don't."
They were quiet.
Outside, the city at three in the morning. The darkness of that hour — not the late-night city, not yet the early-morning city. The depth of it.
"He's going to be all right," Alistair said. It was not quite a question.
"Lucien?"
"Yes."
Tav thought about what he knew of the person who had spent five years alone with an archive and a grief and a surviving love. The person who had arranged for Evelyn to stage a death and had managed to remain undetected in proximity to an Ablation operation for three months.
"Yes," he said. "He's going to be all right."
Alistair exhaled.
"Okay," he said.
"Go back to sleep," Tav said.
"I won't sleep," Alistair said.
"Try anyway."
A pause. Alistair looked at him with the expression that meant he was considering whether to argue.
"Come with me," he said.
Tav studied the operational notes on the table.
He studied Alistair.
"Yes," he said.
