THE UPPER ROOM WAS ONE SPACE — low-beamed, the ceiling following the pitch of the roof, a bed under the eave and a window at each end. The eastern window faced the lighthouse. The western window faced open water, and when Mailah stood in front of it the sea was immediate and enormous, black and moving, the horizon invisible in the pre-dawn dark.
She heard him on the stairs — not footsteps, just the particular change in air pressure that announced him — and he came to stand beside her at the window.
They stood looking at the water.
"The previous version," she said, after a while. "The one who came here." She kept her eyes on the sea. "I think he was already changing. Before me. The exile had already done something to him and he was trying to understand what."
Grayson said nothing.
"And then he met me," she said, "and whatever was already happening accelerated past the point where he could manage it."
A long pause.
"That would explain the protocol," Grayson said.
