“Penr. Three days ago.”
“The limping guide.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Her face closes. There. A door. I dislike doors. They are too often placed where wounds should breathe. “Sera.”
She taps the mark harder.
“Because a child went missing.”
The archive hollow seems to tighten.
“Found?” I ask.
“Yes.”
The word comes too quickly.
“Alive?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
Too much lies in the space before that answer. I wait. Her fingers press flat to the map.
“She followed a cooling draft. Children do that when they’re thirsty. Air tastes wet near old tunnels.”
“And Penr found her.”
“Yes.”
“But?” I ask, hearing what she does not say.
“But there was another sound,” she says, her jaw working once. “He told Marut it was stone settling.”
“You do not believe that.”
“Penr lies badly when he’s afraid.”
I look at the circle mark again. Sound goes wrong. Old tunnel beneath. Missing child. Recent tremors. The zemlja has turned back. Too many separate things are pointing east. That is not a path. It is a hand.
“We go around,” I say, setting one claw beside the mark, not touching the map.
“That adds time.”
“We go around.”
“You haven’t heard the place,” she says.
“You have.”
She stills.
Slowly, her eyes lift to mine. There it is again. That raw discomfort when I treat her knowledge as weight-bearing. As real. Who taught this female that being believed should feel like a trap?
“The old basin will cost more time,” she says.
