“Yes.”
No hesitation. No performance. I hate it less than I should.
“And one City guide,” Rosalind says.
No.My pulse kicks.No, no, no.
Adran’s eyes turn to me. Virn’s, too. Even Ila looks my way, lips pressed into a thin line. I wish the fever row would open and swallow me whole.
“I’m not the only guide,” I say.
“No,” Ila says. “You’re the one who knows the eastern lower approaches best.”
I stare at her. Betrayal apparently has many faces and most of them are elderly.
“So does Penr,” I say.
“Penr is limping,” Dannel says. “He hid it badly this morning.”
“Then Lysa.”
“Lysa has two children under fever watch,” Ila says.
“Send Marut,” I say.
Marut’s eyebrows lift, but I don’t care. A tiny vicious part of me enjoys it. Kavor looks at Marut once. Only once.
“No.”
“I know the eastern gates,” Marut says, bristling with pride.
“You know doors,” Kavor says. “She knows where heat goes after the doors.”
The chamber quiets. My skin prickles. That is too specific. Far too specific.
“You don’t know that,” I say, looking at him.
His bronze-gold eyes meet mine. Calm. Steady. Heat rushes over my skin.
“I watched you enter.”
My mouth goes dry. Not because the words are tender. They aren’t. They’re worse. They’re precise.
“You came from the lower bend,” he says. “You kept left against the cooler wall until the last turn. You paused before the arch where the stone carries night chill longest. You were dizzy, but you did not lean where others would. You chose the mineral seam instead.”
My breath goes shallow.I don’t like being seen. Not like that. Not in pieces I thought belonged only to me.
“That doesn’t make me qualified to chase a worm,” I say.
“No,” Kavor says. “It makes you qualified to survive the path to its tunnel.”
No one says survive like that. Not in the City.
In the City, survival is assumed until the body proves otherwise. It is expected, extracted, used up. No one talks about it like a skill. No one looks at the act of continuing and calls it skill. My throat tightens, and I hate him for putting that there, whatever it is.
“Sera,” Adran says. He’s watching me closely. Too closely.
“No.”
