The cave held the night longer than the valley did. Cold sat in the stone, thin and stubborn. The ward-lines set into the rock hummed like distant power lines, a steady current that made the air feel full. At the center of the inner chamber, the stone lotus cupped the girl it had been waiting for. Petals taller than a person leaned in, each one etched with old sigils that looked like clean cuts in ice. The glow inside them was pale, almost white, and not from any torch.
Mira lay still within the lotus bowl. Her skin had gone to that strange new color—unshaded white, almost glass-smooth, bright where anyone else would be dull in the low light. Her hair looked the same, white from root to tip, and her lashes matched it. Eyes closed, chest rising slow. A fine thread ran from the base of her throat to a copper disc on the petal rim—only a monitor that did not send anything to any clinic. It read pulse. It read heat. It did not read her secrets.
Kael had not slept. He sat cross-legged at the edge of the circle, coat off, sleeves pushed to his forearms, palms resting on his knees. He watched the rise and fall, counted every fiftieth beat, and let the count anchor him to the floor. Selina moved around the room with a pace that matched the hum of the wards. She checked the seal lines. She checked the channel that carried water from the spring. She checked the packs at the wall, the rope, the spare clothes, the food. She checked the small clay jar and then pushed it farther back into the storage niche.
"Leave the jar," Kael said without looking away from the lotus. His voice stayed low so his words would not reach the girl as sound.
"I already did," Selina answered. "We are done with that."
"Say it plain."
"We are done with the nectar." She did not soften it. "Her body is doing the work on its own now. More will do harm."
Kael breathed out once and let the breath go. "Good."
The hum under the stone changed. Not louder. Not softer. A different pitch, thin and high. Kael's head turned toward the ceiling as if the sound were a draft he could feel. Selina's hand was already on the wall. The wards trembled, then settled again.
"Something outside," Kael said.
"Not human," Selina said. "Not yet."
They both looked back at Mira when the copper disc gave a short chirp. The pulse had stepped up two marks, then steadied. Her fingers twitched, a small movement like a hand testing that it was still there.
Selina leaned in. "Mira, it's morning," she said, no frills, words like rails on a step. "Do you hear me?"
Mira did not answer. Her mouth parted and closed again. Her throat worked. Her eyes stayed shut. The copper disc chirped once more. The lotus veins took a little light into themselves and held it under their surfaces.
"Her pulse is interacting with the lines," Selina said.
"Let it," Kael said. "The lines were written for that."
He stood, went to the mouth of the inner chamber, and listened. The outer tunnel carried a sound the valley did not make yesterday. A long, low groan from the direction of the ridge, as if something heavy had shifted where no road ran. He looked at Selina. She was already looking back at him.
"It's early," he said.
"It was always going to be early for us," she said. "We move when she does."
Mira moved again, more than a twitch. Her hand lifted a finger's width and fell. Her lips shaped a slow word that did not come. The disc chirped a third time. The lotus answered.
It happened in a breath. The sigils along the inner rim took a bright white and threw it across the bowl in a short, flat wave. The wave met the ward-lines in the floor. The floor lines flashed and sent the light uphill to the arch stones. For a single second the room went to clean daylight with no sun. The light collapsed back into the cuts and left the air colder.
Kael had one hand on the stone, ready for a second flare. Selina kept her stance wide, one foot already braced toward Mira. Neither of them spoke until the copper disc gave a softer tone and dropped to its earlier beat.
"White," Selina said. "You saw it."
Kael nodded. "She touched the ward-grid."
Selina wiped the edge of her thumb across her cheek without noticing. "We should warn the outer lines. If her pulse keeps climbing, the mouth stones will broadcast. We will not be the only ones to notice."
"We are not the only ones now," Kael said, heading down the tunnel.
The cold air in the outer cave carried breath that did not belong to the mountain. Someone had been at the mouth before dawn. Older ashes had been pushed aside by a boot. He crouched, touched the scatter, stood again, and went to the last bend where a narrow slit let the valley show itself.
Three vehicles sat in the gravel wash below the brush line. One had council markings. One was plain but new. The third was a red pickup with a body kit and a driver who could not stop lighting and relighting the same cigarette. Down by the bridge, two more figures stood with their backs to the stream and their eyes up to the ridge. He did not need a scope to know who sent them.
He went back in.
"Red Clan vanguard," he said. "And two from the thieves' circle by the bridge. They are already talking to each other."
"They will stop talking when they see the sky," Selina said. "How many minutes do you want?"
"Fifteen," he said. "Thirty if the ridge holds."
Selina nodded once. "I will take ten."
They went to the lotus together. The girl's face had more color than it should in a cave. Not flush. Not fever. Light under the skin like a low lamp. Her lashes moved once and stilled.
"Mira," Selina said again, clear and slow. "Listen to me. You are safe. You are in a mountain chamber. There is stone all around. You cannot fall. We are here. If you can hear me, breathe in and out and hold the breath one count before you let it go."
Mira's chest answered the count. Kael pressed two fingers to the air above her pulse point and counted with her, quiet. The copper disc kept up. The lotus veins took a second low glow and set it to the same tempo.
Selina glanced toward the arch. "Tell me when you go."
"I will say it," Kael said. He went again to the outer tunnel.
The morning had not burned the frost off the brush yet, but heat pressed up from the wash as if the stream had turned to a vent. The sound from the ridge came again—longer now, with a dull pop inside it, like rock cracking under a hammer you could not see. He looked to the north sky and found a thin pale line where there had been unbroken blue yesterday. The line widened while he watched it. He felt how it pulled on the pressure in his ears. He raised one hand briefly, as if to cover a child's ears, and then dropped it. There was no covering this.
He called down the tunnel. "It starts."
Selina did not step back from the lotus. She lowered her mouth close to the girl's ear. "Mira, do not be afraid. There will be sound. There will be a pressure change. Breathe. Count. Keep your jaw loose so your ears can clear. We will move when I tell you. Not before."
Mira's fingers curled lightly against the inner curve of the bowl. Not a fist. A ready hand.
Outside, the red pickup spat gravel and moved closer to the switchback foot. Two figures hopped down and looked up, hands on the fence line, trying to stare through brush that did not want to be stared through. Farther down, by the bridge, a woman lifted a phone to her ear and turned away from the water.
Nora did not like the way her hand shook. She told herself it was the cold. She told herself it was the bridge rail biting her palm. She told herself it was not guilt. She kept her voice low because the man in the plain car had the look of someone who listened for a living.
"It's me," she said into the phone. "They are still up there. I saw the tall one at the mouth at first light. The woman did not come out. The girl has not come out. The ridge is—" She talked around the impossible thing she could see forming in the sky. "The ridge is unstable. You should come now."
The voice on the other end stayed smooth. "You were told to confirm, not to push us. You confirm. We move when we move."
Nora swallowed. "I am not pushing. I am telling you the window is closing."
"Then keep the window open," the voice said.
"I am one person with a cat and a loud mouth," she said. "I do not hold ridges with either." She made herself breathe. "Listen. I saw her yesterday. In the corridor. At the clinic. For a second the light hit her wrong or right, I don't know which. She did not look normal. She looked like—" She stopped short of the word she had always used with herself. She knew better than to put faith into air where the wrong ear could catch it. "She looked like she is the one you keep talking about in rooms I am not supposed to be in."
The voice did not raise or lower. "You are sure."
"I am not sure," Nora said. "That is why I am calling before I say it to anyone who can move men with guns. I am calling you first, like I promised. If I am wrong, you lose nothing. If I am right and you make me wait while they drive her out a back tunnel, you will not be the one who has to live with it. I will."
A second voice came on the line—older, flatter, used to being obeyed because it spoke when it chose and not before. "Where are their cars."
"Hidden," Nora said. "They walked in late, after dark. I did not hear an engine. A friend saw them carry bags two nights ago. I believe they moved a stash up over weeks. They have food. They can hold."
"Numbers."
"Two with the girl. The tall boy who does not blink. The woman with the braid who makes the room feel like the room belongs to her. There may be one more inside—an old man, maybe—because the spring run-off has been cleared and I did not see either of those two carry a shovel recently."
"Any sign of the doctor?"
"Not this morning," Nora said. "He is busy keeping his mask on somewhere else." She watched the plain car on the wash. "The thieves sent two. They pretend they came for a walk. They pretend badly."
"Hold position," the older voice said. "A field team is on the way. If the ridge opens, we pull to meet the Master. The child is secondary to the gate."
Nora closed her eyes. She had expected that and still felt the small burn of it. "Understood."
"Keep your phone open," the older voice said. The line went dead.
Nora lowered the phone and stared up at the brush line. She wanted to climb. She also wanted to throw the phone into the stream. She did neither. She walked back to the plain-clothes pair, told them in a bored voice that the path was blocked by a landslip, and watched one of them try to decide if her accent meant she was a fool or a trap. She smiled like a woman with errands to run and kept her place.
In the cave, the air went tight. It felt like the pressure before a storm, but it came from the wrong direction. The ward-lines buzzed at a frequency just below pain. Mira's pulse lifted and would not settle back. The lotus veins brightened again and this time the white crept across the inner bowl in a slow wash that held instead of flashing and fading.
Selina put one palm flat to the petal and spoke into the low glow. "Mira. Count five breaths and open your eyes on the fifth. Do not try to sit. Just open."
Mira counted. On the fifth breath she obeyed. Her eyes opened a fraction. No color showed; iris and white had both gone to that pale shade that did not reflect anything around it. Even so, she looked toward the sound of Selina's voice without wandering.
"I hear you," she said. Her voice sounded used, not new. "My mouth is dry."
Selina took a damp cloth, pressed it to her lips. "We are in the mountain chamber. It is safe for now. There are people in the wash with bad timing. We will move before they see us."
Mira swallowed once. "I can move?"
"You will not move yourself," Selina said. "We will carry you. It will feel strange at first and then steady. You do not need to speak once we start. Save your breath."
Mira took another breath. "Do we have a plan if they block the mouth?"
"We do," Kael said from the arch. "We go up, not out. The ridge is opening. There will be a shelf. They will be busy looking at the sky."
Mira let that sit. "What is happening outside?"
Selina watched her face for any sign she was pushing too hard. "The world is changing. The sky is opening in lines. Land from somewhere else is pushing into ours. There will be things in it. Some will be dangerous. Some will look like people. Some will be people."
"That is clear," Mira said. She closed her eyes again and opened them a second later. "Will I be able to see?"
"Not yet," Selina said. "The air will pull at you. Your head will feel full. It will pass."
"Then tell me where we are when we move," Mira said. "Tell me what my body cannot tell me and I will do what you ask."
Selina nodded. "I will."
The mountain answered for them. The first hard sound came like a crack on sheet metal and rolled down the ridge in a wave that made the water at the spring jump in the stone channel. Dust fell from the seam above the arch. The ward-lines hissed and then took the noise into themselves and turned it into a low hum again.
Kael was already at the lotus. He slid his arms under the girl and lifted like a person who had done this too many times to make it look heroic. Her weight was nearly nothing. The light under her skin came up stronger where his forearms touched it; for a second his hands looked washed in white. The white ran toward the ward-lines and sparked. The copper disc chirped hard and then reset to a slower count, as if the system had recognized new authority.
Selina guided his step with simple words. "Stand still. Right foot to the mark. Turn your left shoulder. Now step. The floor is clear. We go to the arch."
Mira hid her face against Kael's shoulder and kept her jaw loose so her ears could clear like she had been told. The air at the arch mouth pushed against them, damp and cold, now with a thread of heat in it as if a forge had sprung up in the wash without a smith. The smell changed. There was the clean metal of broken stone. There was something green in it, sharp. There was something that had slept a long time and had not woken up kind.
"Keep her head low," Selina said. "If the light comes again, you shield her eyes."
Kael moved into the outer tunnel. The mouth of the cave was a tall slit with rough shoulders. Brush hid half the opening and made the rest look like dark shadow to anyone who did not know where to look. He paused behind the brush and watched the wash for a full ten count. Two Red enforcers had made it up to the path at the first bend. They stood with their hands on the rock face like they were about to push the mountain over. Down below, Nora had moved to the bridge again. Her head was tipped back, not at the cave, not at the men, but at the sky.
The sky had a wound. It ran from the northeast to the southwest and looked like clear glass that had been cut and did not know it yet. Inside the cut, not blue. Not cloud. Something paler that moved like fast mist across stone. The edges of the cut bled light and the light fell to the valley like fine lines of rain. Where the lines touched the slope, the brush sank three inches and came up different. Leaves went from this year's green to a sharper shade with a wax edge. Rocks by the stream went smooth the way a river makes them, but the river did not run there. A low shape under the bridge put a paw on the bank that was not a paw any dog should own.
"We go now," Kael said.
Selina moved ahead, pushed the brush back, and stepped out onto the narrow ledge. "Step high," she said to Kael. "There is a lip. I am here. My hand is on the stone."
Mira did not try to look. She kept her breath slow. She felt the cold on her cheeks, the damp in her hairline, the thickness of the air. She heard the stream and then the stream sounded wrong for a second and then sounded normal again. She heard a shout from below and did not turn her head to it. She heard Nora's voice say something to someone with authority in it and did not let the content matter.
They took six steps along the ledge. The mountain made a sound like old wood letting go of a nail. A crack ran from the brush line up into the grey rock and split a slab the size of a door. The slab tipped forward and fell, slow, gentle, and then fast. It did not hit them. It hit the path below and broke it into uneven teeth. Dust came up and caught in the morning light.
"Up," Selina said. "Left. There is a toe-hold. It is a reach. I have your elbow. Take it."
Kael took it. He went up one step, then two. He kept the girl tight against his chest. Her hand had found the run of his collar and held it, not because she meant to pull but because her body wanted one true thing to fix on and the cloth would do.
Below, the Red enforcers shouted again. They could not decide between running back down the switchbacks to get a better angle or charging forward on broken stone. One tried forward and slid a foot, grabbed brush, swore. The other called him a fool and turned to go down and call for rope. Then the sky answered for them.
The cut opened. It did not rip wide. It stepped. One second a line. The next a hand's width. The next a span. Light poured out from the sides, not warm light, not cold light, just light that carried a pressure in it. Sound followed. Not thunder. Not metal. A low, long tone that you could feel in your teeth before you could hear it. The stream went quiet for that second as if it had been told to listen.
Something came out of the opening. Not a person. Not a plane. A section of a hillside that did not belong in this county dropped into the upper valley like a table set down by someone strong who cared about level ground. It touched the slope, rested, settled. Dirt ran from its edges like water. Trees on it shivered and then rooted into the new ground as if they had been grown there the whole time. The air took a smell like crushed herbs where no herb had been crushed.
Kael and Selina did not stop to watch. They went to the next shelf, and the next. When they reached the inner spur that had always been a dry tooth with no reason to climb, it was no longer dry. The new slab had pushed up against it and made a small saddle where none had been. The saddle looked like a path that had waited under weather for a century and had only been revealed by luck this morning.
"She will not like the drop on the left," Selina said.
"She will not look," Kael said. He went first, sideways, feet placed flat, knees bent to hold the weight close, arms tight to his ribs. Selina blocked the outer edge with her body until his back pressed against the higher wall. Then she moved and went past him and did the same on the other side so he could step behind her and not think about the fall.
Below, Nora put her hand over her heart and did not realize she had done it. She had wanted a sign for years that she had not wasted her loyalty on a vision. She had wanted a hand on the back of her neck telling her to stand straighter. She had wanted something clean. This was not clean. This was not kind. It was real. Her eyes were wet and she did not want to call that emotion by any soft name. She pulled out her phone and called again.
"They are moving up," she said. "They are going to the upper saddle. They will be out of sight in thirty seconds. If you want them, you go to the north face and climb. If you want something bigger, look up. The gate is open. The land is crossing."
"We see it," the older voice said. No awe in it. Only hunger. "Hold your place. Pull the others back from the mouth. We will meet the Master. We will take what we can later."
Nora lowered the phone and let her hand fall to her side. She felt sick and did not know if it was fear or relief. She waved the plain-clothes pair back from the broken path and told the Red driver in a flat voice that the council would write him a ticket if he did not move the truck. He swore at her. She swore back, louder. The truck moved.
Kael reached the saddle and found a line of flat stones set into the new ground like a path laid yesterday. He did not waste breath on the strangeness. He took it for what it was: a route. Selina went ahead and checked each stone before she told him to place his foot. They climbed into air that did not belong to their century.
Mira felt the change first in her ears and then in her skin. The air thickened, then eased. The pressure in her head rose and did not hurt. It made her feel like she had been holding her breath for months and was only now allowed to let part of it out.
"Where are we," she said into Kael's shoulder.
"On a new shelf," he said. "The mountain put a stair here. The sky is open. We are below it."
"Is anyone close," she said.
"Behind us at the mouth," Selina said. "They will not follow now. They are busy with their own gate."
"What gate," Mira said.
"Their master," Selina said. "It will take their time and their eyes."
They went on. Ten steps. Twenty. A small stand of trees that had not grown here last week waited at the next turn. The leaves were narrow and dark. The bark was smooth, almost red. The air under them smelled like cold tea. Beyond the trees, the rock opened into a ledge that held a piece of wall that was not from any cottage in the valley. It had high joints, tight, barely visible, and a corner shaped not with a builder's level but with a craftsman's sense of how weight wants to sit.
Selina stopped. Her hand went out to the stone. She did not put her palm flat against it. She left her fingers a finger's width away and let the heat from it cross to her skin.
"We are here," she said. Her voice lost its fight and found something else. "Kael. Look."
He looked and did not need to look a second time. He knew the way this corner was cut. He knew the way the lintel above the open arch took its own load so the stones under it did not have to. He knew the mark on the inner face where a hand had touched it every day for a very long time.
They did not speak over that for a breath. Then Selina moved again. "Inside," she said. "There will be a second chamber. The ward will accept her. It was written to."
They passed under the arch. The space beyond was not large. It had no furniture. It had a floor set with the same thin lines as the cave below, only cleaner, only newer, only more exact. The lines lit from the far wall to the near as Kael crossed the threshold with the girl in his arms. The light was not bright. It was thin and white. It ran ahead and drew a path toward a circle cut into the center of the room.
"Put her down there," Selina said. "Head to the north. Feet to the south. Do not cross the circle yourself."
Kael set his foot to the line and stepped over like a man stepping a shallow stream. He went to his knee and lowered the girl to the set mark. The stone under her back was warm in a way the cave floor had not been. It was not heat from fire. It was heat from a line that had not been broken for a long time.
Mira held still and let the slab take her weight. She listened for the others. She heard Selina not stepping onto the circle. She heard Kael not leaving it. He had one hand near her shoulder but not on it. The white under her skin answered what lay below her.
A voice rang in the entry we had not seen. Not a shout. A plain calling. "Hold."
Selina turned. A man in traveling clothes stood at the inner arch. He wore no badge. He did not need one. The cut of the cloth and the cut of his hair both said he had left a proper room in a hurry. Two more stood behind him. One old, one young. The older one carried a staff that had more purpose than walk support.
Selina did not take a step forward. "State yourself," she said.
The man nodded once, a short bow. "You know my voice. We met beyond the falls when the lines were still only lines. I carried the message on paper because speaking it would have woken what should not have been woken yet."
"Yun," Kael said. He did not smile. He did not need to. "You were late."
"The mountain was late for all of us," Yun said. He looked past them to the girl on the slab. He did not let any surprise show. He did not pretend not to feel it either. "So it is true."
"It is not for your mouth," Selina said.
"I will keep it off my tongue," Yun said. "Your wards are set. The outer path is clean. The southern post signaled. The Red pulled back from the switchbacks and went to the road. They heard a call. We think it is their call to gather. That buys you time."
"How much time," Kael said.
"Enough to move along the inner ledge to the clan gate," Yun said. "Not enough to rest."
"The lower cave is compromised," Selina said. "We cannot go back for anything we left there."
"Nothing there matters if you keep her breathing," Yun said. He said it as if he were talking about a knife or a good horse. It made the sentence easier to carry.
Mira opened her eyes again. "Who is speaking."
"An old friend," Selina said. "He owes us three favors. He will pay two now and hold one for an insult later."
"That is accurate," Yun said, and did not dispute the insult. He knelt by the line without crossing it. "Lady, there is an old door ahead. It will open for you. Walk with their words. Do not look up when the light goes strong. Look at the ground and keep your teeth apart so the pressure does not hurt your head."
"I will do it," Mira said.
He stood. "I will take the left. My junior will take the rear. The old man will go ahead and speak to the stones in case they behave like people and want to be asked nicely."
"Stones rarely want anything else," Selina said. "We go."
They moved. Kael lifted her again. The white under her skin pulsed once, twice, and the circle gave a short response like a doorchain unhooking. The hum in the floor took a lower tone and held. The inner arch opened into a corridor cut through new old rock, clean, dustless, as if someone had finished it this morning and then left before leaving footprints.
Outside, the wound in the sky widened again. A shape not like any plane crossed above the valley without engine noise. It moved by refusing to fall. On the lower road, the Red convoy turned around and threw dust. At the bridge, Nora watched her phone light up with orders and did not move for five seconds. She put the phone in her pocket, turned on her heel, and walked toward the north gate with the men who had the most guns. She did not look up because she wanted to keep her distance from the thing she had wanted for years. If she looked too long, she would throw all the small parts of herself she kept for daily life into the fire of it and there would be nothing left to go home.
In the corridor, Mira's pulse climbed again. The lines in the wall took the same white and held it a little longer than before. She had kept her end of the bargain and not asked for tea or truth. She had only asked to be told what her body could not tell her.
"We are in a passage," Selina said, steady as a metronome. "The floor is even. The walls are close but not touching your shoulders. The air is thicker ahead. That means the door is sealed and keeping the wrong things out. We will open it before we go through."
"What is behind the door," Mira asked.
"Family," Kael said. "And land that will not sell itself to the first bidder."
Mira thought about that and found a smile that did not break anything. "Good."
Selina slowed them at the next turn. The old man with the staff stood before a blank slab with thin lines cut into it. He put the end of the staff to one line and spoke a word that was not in any clinic file. The slab did not swing. It did not drop. It did what the passage had done. It stepped from closed to open the way a person steps from silence to speech. Air rolled in. It tasted like old wood and water in shadow. It tasted like the back of the library she had loved before everything had turned to doctors and devices. She did not say that out loud. The rule was no metaphors in their mouths when they needed to move.
They crossed the threshold. The space beyond was wider, a long gallery with a view cut to the north where the world had gone wrong on purpose. Set into the far wall hung a banner she had not seen and yet knew by how the people with her stood up straighter when they saw it. Black field. White emblem. A circle with a small mark at the top like a drop about to fall.
Yun did not waste time on ceremony. "The lower gate is five minutes ahead," he said. "After that you are above the line of any road. No wheels can follow you there. They would have to walk. They will not walk when the sky calls."
The floor shivered. Not much. Enough for dust to lift and settle. Selina looked up for the first time since they had left the lower cave. The wound had made a small sister to itself above the northern shoulder. From that smaller cut, something like a pavilion roof came through and set itself down clean on the upper shelf. People walked on it. Their clothes were not from any city store. Some of them flew. No wings. No engines. Just people and air and old rules.
The Red driver down in the wash saw that, cursed, and slammed his truck door. He did not want to be the one on the wrong ridge when his masters wanted a show.
"Move," Selina said. "We go while eyes go there."
They went. The passage narrowed. The light in the lines steadied. The pressure in the air eased for a minute and then came back heavier, like a hand on a door that was not a door at all.
Mira felt the change and asked, "Will it hurt."
"It will press you," Kael said. "You will not break."
"If I faint," she said, "do not stop."
"We will not stop," Selina said. "We promised to carry you. We carry you."
They reached the lower gate. It was smaller than the last, not because the builders were stingy but because the groove it had to slide into would not take a taller stone. The old man did not use his staff this time. He used his hands. He touched three points on the line and then pushed with the heel of his palm. The stone stepped aside and stayed aside. No grind. No complaint.
A beast screamed out on the ridge. It was not close. It sounded close because the ridge threw it back at them. Kael and Selina did not flinch. Mira did not ask what it was. Yun looked at the junior on his right and said, "Make the second circle ready," and the boy ran and ran fast and did not trip once.
They took the last turn. The clan gate lay ahead. It was no longer a thought or a plan on paper. It stood open, inner edge bright white for a second and then soft. The earth beyond it was not the valley's earth. It had a different color, a different grain. Flags stood on poles. People stood below them. Some held blades. Some held nothing. All of them watched the group at the mouth of the gallery like people watching a child walk in from a long storm.
Selina let the breath she had been holding out. "Home," she said. It was not poetry. It was a checkmark on a list. It sounded like a small door closing on a row of errors.
"Inside," Yun said.
They stepped through.
The pressure dropped the way it does when a plane lands, only faster, only kinder. The air wrapped around them and the lines underfoot hummed like the ones in the cave, but cleaner. The people at the poles did not cheer. They did not need to. One stepped forward and put two fingers to his eyebrow in the old sign. He looked at the girl in Kael's arms and then away because he had been raised well.
"Circle three is set," someone called. "Seal the outer latch."
Selina turned back in time to see the slab slide into place behind them. The bright white faded to a dull line. The hum underfoot took the lower tone that meant closed. She stood still for the space of one slow breath and then turned to the people who had not seen her in a lifetime that had been measured in another world.
"We need a room," she said. "Warm. Quiet. Water that runs. I want a healer who does not ask about machines. I want a scribe who can write down everything we say without changing it."
"You have all of that," the man at the pole said. He did not ask whom she had brought. He did not ask why her hair had silver in it when her face had none. He only raised his hand and pointed to the door at the left. "There. And then the inner hall. The elders request your presence when the girl is sleeping."
"She will not sleep," Kael said. "Not yet. The air will keep her between one thing and another."
"Then the elders will wait," the man said. He stepped aside.
They carried Mira into the room that had been kept ready for no one and for her. The bed was low and set on the same lines as the circle in the gallery. The water from the jar on the shelf ran when they tipped it. It tasted like stone that remembered rain. Selina wiped the girl's face. Kael set his coat around her legs. He did not leave her on the bed alone until the lines under it gave a small answering tone that meant it recognized her and would hold steady without his hands.
Nora reached the north gate and stood under the red banners with the people who had raised her up and taught her the hand signals that could stop a man at twenty paces. The Master had not come through yet. The sky made that low pressure sound again. The Red sang their piece under their breath. Nora did not sing. She stared at the far ridge where she knew the other door would be, and for the first time since she had taken the first coin from the first hand that wore the ring with the red stone, she did not know if she had chosen the right side of the mountain.
Back on the clan grounds, Yun took Kael aside. He spoke in a voice made for walls. "You will not be able to hide her long."
"We do not need long," Kael said.
"You need until the world finishes its first roll and the rest learn how to stand," Yun said. "You have hours. You do not have days."
Kael looked past him to the room where Selina had pulled a blanket over the girl's knees. "We have what we have."
"Then use it," Yun said. "The elders will speak soon. Some will ask for her name. Some will say we must keep her from the outer eyes. Some will say we should show her to our people so they remember why they are here. Hold your ground."
Kael nodded.
Selina came out and stood with them in the hall. "She asked me a question. I told her I would ask you both before I answered."
"What did she ask," Kael said.
"She asked if she is a person to us or a duty," Selina said. "She asked me to tell her the truth now so she will not have to hear it later from a stranger."
Kael did not make her wait. "She is a person. Duty follows."
Selina looked into the room again and nodded once. "Then we begin with that."
Out beyond the walls, a shape like a lion with too many joints hit the lower road and ran east, ignoring trucks and men. A woman in a robe the color of late leaves walked out of a tear in the air and did not look left or right before she rose into the thin cloud. A child in a council flat two towns away put his hands to his ears and told his mother there was singing in the radiator and the song knew his name. Sirens failed to mean what they used to mean. Dogs barked and then lay down and slept. The first newsreader of the day looked at a camera and said the word "anomaly" five times without breathing.
Mira lay very still and counted ten breaths. On the tenth she opened her eyes and looked at nothing the way a person looks when the old rules do not fit and the new ones have not yet been listed on the wall. Selina sat beside her, close enough to be reached, far enough to let the lines do their work.
"Tell me straight," Mira said. "Do you know who I am."
"Yes," Selina said.
"Say it."
"You are the one our lines were written for," Selina said. "You are the one your enemies want to hold. You are also a girl who wants a cup of water and a room with quiet. I will give you both truths. I will not hide one behind the other."
Mira took that in. She closed her eyes and let the words settle where they fit. She did not ask for a story. She did not ask for a promise. She put her white lashes down against her white cheeks and said, "Stay where I can hear you," and Selina said, "I am here," and Kael said from the door, "I will answer the elders," and outside on the ridge the rift widened another hand's width and the world did not break; it changed.