Blue-purple. Life in the dark. Food that isn’t food. Hope small enough to carry in both hands. I don’t let myself picture it too clearly. Wanting makes a fool of the mind.
“We’re close?” I ask.
“To old sign.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It is what I know.”
I make a sound too small to be called a laugh.
“There is that pattern again.”
“Yes.”
We keep moving. The rim slopes down, then up again, forcing us into a narrow break between two ruin slabs. The moment stone rises on both sides, Kavor changes. Subtle, but I’m watching for it.
His wings loosen a finger-width. His shoulders lower. His gaze stops cutting the sky into pieces and settles on the stone, the dust, the narrow passage ahead. He puts one claw against the slab as he passes, not leaning. Listening. Or greeting. Or remembering how to breathe.
Interesting. Dangerous word. I keep walking.
The passage between slabs is cooler. Not cool, but less openly hateful. Shadow clings to the stone in ragged strips. I slow to use it, letting the angle of the ruin protect the left side of my body from the first sun. Kavor matches the adjustment.
“You see it?” I ask.
“The shadow?”
“The useful shadow.”
“There are useless shadows?”
“Plenty.”
He waits. Of course he does. Fine.
“Dead shadow sits where it is and dies before you reach the next piece. Useful shadow leans. It tells you where it will be three breaths from now. Five. Ten. Follow the lean, and you spend less water.”
Kavor studies the shadow line as if I have handed him a weapon. Not a child’s trick. Not human fussing. A weapon. That look does something to me, and I do not approve.
“You survived here by reading light,” he says.
“I survived here by reading what kills people.”
“Light kills people.”
“Everything kills people.”
“That is a grim rule.”
“It’s a City rule.”
He’s quiet after that. The passage narrows further. Broken stone shoulders inward on both sides, and for a few breaths, the sky becomes a jagged strip instead of a mouth. Kavor breathes easier.
I hear it. A softer draw of air. A loosening that would mean nothing if I had not spent years noticing who was limping, who was lying, who was saving half a ration under their tongue for someone smaller.
Cavern Zmaj.
The words press against the back of my thoughts. I don’t ask, yet.
