My fingers close around it. It’s lighter than I expected. Somehow, that makes it worse.
“Updated?” I ask.
“As much as records allow.”
As much as records allow. Another phrase that means less than it pretends to. I tuck the slate into my pack with the others. Names against my spine. Dead weight. Useful weight.
“You ate?” Ila asks, her gaze flicking over me too fast to be gentle, too sharp to be pity.
Heat crawls up my throat. Marut looks at me. Kavor goes still. I bare my teeth in something too dry to be a smile.
“Do we need to call the Council back together to discuss my stomach?”
Ila doesn’t blink. “That is not an answer.”
This woman is becoming a problem.
“I ate.”
Her eyes cut to Kavor. Traitorous old bones.
“She ate,” he says.
I glare at him. He doesn’t look at me. Somehow, that is worse.
“How much?” Ila asks, looking at him.
“I’m standing right here.”
“And yet the question remains difficult,” Ila says.
“I ate enough.”
Kavor finally looks at me. The morning is too dim to make his eyes glow, but they catch what little light exists and hold it in bronze-gold stillness.
“Enough to think,” he says.
I hate that the words settle something in Ila’s expression. I hate even more that some quiet part of me settles too.
Enough to think.
The ration sits in my stomach like a stone I do not know how to carry. Not sickness. Not regret. Something stranger. Fuel. My body keeps reaching for it, turning it into steadier fingers, clearer edges, and a pulse that does not flutter as hard when I shift my pack. I have spent so long calling hunger normal, food feels like an accusation.
I step past Ila before the thought can show on my face. The arch stone is cool where my shoulder nearly brushes it. I slow despite myself, letting the chill touch the repaired seam of my sleeve. One breath. Two.
Kavor notices. He notices everything except when he should not. His gaze moves from my shoulder to the stone, then out to the flats. The open land waits. I won’t.
I step beyond the arch. The City ends under my boot. No bell sounds. No gate groans closed. No dramatic line draws itself in the sand. Still, I feel it. Inside, I am one more moving piece in a starving machine. Outside, I am meat with a map.
Dawn wind slips under my veil, dry and thin, carrying mineral dust and the faint bitter scent of old heat. It tugs at the loose threads on my sleeve. It touches the sweat at my neck and steals it before it can cool my skin.
Kavor steps beside me. Not ahead. Beside. I notice that too.
“Lower east arch to broken retaining wall,” I say, pointing toward the first line of shadow. “Twenty-seven breaths.”
“You said twenty-nine if slow.”
“I’m not slow.”
