I blink. “What?”
“The sample.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No.”
“Then don’t answer things I didn’t say.”
“You looked.”
“I look at lots of things.”
“Yes.”
He reaches for the pouch, and my breath catches. Then he stops, remembering not to hand me something dangerous just because I want it.
His hand lowers. “When we are not moving through unstable stone.”
I want to argue, but I don’t. Annoying, how often he makes sense when I’d prefer he didn’t. We continue.
The passage widens gradually. The ceiling rises enough for me to stand without ducking, though he still moves with his head low. The walls smooth out into long curves. Not carved by tools. Pressure-smoothed, heat-scarred, then cracked again by something underneath.
Old-world bones. Zemlja breathways. A structure buried inside both. I run my fingers along a groove in the wall. It’s not natural. Too straight.
“Kavor.”
He stops and I point. His claws trace the groove without touching mine.
“Cut stone.”
“Human?”
“No.”
“Zmaj?”
“No.”
“Comforting list.”
“Old Tajss.”
I look at him. He keeps his gaze on the wall.
Something in the way he says it makes me think of the council chamber. Of Virn and Syin going still when Rosalind said “epis.” Of secrets powerful enough to keep armies away. Of a world that burned itself around a plant.
Old Tajss. Not ruins above. Ruins below.
The wrong rhythm comes again. Once. Pause. Again. This time, the cut line doesn’t glow blue, but white-gray. A thin vein of light running through the straight groove, then dying at the edge of a black smear.
Kavor bares his teeth. The expression is so quick, I almost miss it. Almost.
“That’s new,” I say.
“Yes.”
“New bad?”
