“You read the dead,” I say.
Her mouth twists. “Someone should.”
Yes. Someone should.
The stone beneath my feet pulses. Not a tremor. The memory of one. Sera feels this one. Her eyes drop to the floor. I see the moment fear touches her. I see the moment she crushes it into usefulness.
“What did that mean?” she asks.
“Distant movement.”
“How distant?”
“Too far to break the City,” I say.
“For now?”
“For now.”
She nods as if the words are another column added to a slate.
For now.
How humans survive with such fragile phrases, I do not know. Sera turns another slate toward me.
“If we leave before first heat, we need the lower east exit, not the main gate.”
“Why?”
“The main gate opens over stone flats. Good for groups. Bad for two people trying not to be seen.”
“We are avoiding zemlja, not watchers.”
Her finger stops. Only for a breath. Then it moves again.
“Are we?”
Good. She has been listening too. Not only to words. To the shape around them. To what Rosalind did not say. To what Virn and Syin did not deny.
“You think the tremor means something beyond zemlja,” she says.
“I think the zemlja is behaving incorrectly.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” I agree.
Her eyes lift. Dry. Tired. Sharp enough to draw blood.
“You do that a lot,” she says.
“What?”
“Answer without answering.”
“I answer what I know,” I say.
“And hide what you suspect?”
