“I listened.”
“That does not look like listening.”
“You wanted the records in the room. They are in the room.”
“I wanted to carry them.”
“That was the part I refused.”
Color rises in her cheeks. Not much. Her body cannot spare much.
“You don’t get to refuse parts of me.”
The words strike deeper than she means them to. My wings tighten and her gaze flicks to the movement. She sees too much.
“I refused the waste,” I say.
“I am not waste.”
The anger in her voice cracks through the hollow. I go still and so does she. There. The true wound beneath the smaller one.
I choose the next words with care, because careless words can collapse a chamber faster than bad stone.
“No,” I say. “You are not.”
She looks away first, but this feels nothing like triumph.
Silence stretches between us, thin as dried root fiber. The passage outside carries distant sounds from the City. Feet. Low voices. A child coughing, then being hushed. The City trying to continue around the fact that something beneath it has begun to turn back.
Sera reaches for one of the slates. I let her. She notices that too. Her fingers hesitate on the edge before she drags it closer.
“Eastern sinkline reports,” she says, reading the mark etched at the top. “Last ten cycles.”
Her voice settles into function. Safer ground for her. I understand that.
I stand across the table and unroll the map tube. The reed binding is dry enough to crack under my claws, so I use the side of my knuckle instead. Old charcoal lines spread across pale hide: City gates, outer flats, sinklines, heat pockets, ruin shadows, shelter marks, death marks.
Many death marks.
Sera’s gaze catches on them. The muscles in her jaw tighten.
“You asked for names,” I say.
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Because numbers lie when people want them to.”
I look at her, but she does not look back.
“A death mark tells me someone died there,” she says. “A name tells me who sent them. What route they used. Whether they were fevered, injured, carrying water, carrying food, alone, with children, with a hunting party, under orders, or desperate enough to ignore them.”
Her finger touches one mark near the outer curve of the eastern flats.
“Names tell me which mistakes were human.” Then another, closer to the sinkline. “And which ones were leadership.”
There it is. The refusal to waste a life. My chest tightens, not with pity. Respect is heavier.
