The island, it turned out, had been holding things back.
Lily found the first of the hidden stores in the fourth hour, and she found it because of a sound that was not there. The Unheard Absolute let her hear the note at the core of everything now, the low quiet hum that all existing things carried, and as she moved through the island's high caves she caught a patch of ground where the hum simply stopped.
"Nothing is silent," she said to the empty cave, crouching over the dead patch. "Not naturally. Silence this clean is a lid."
Under the lid, once she peeled the concealment working apart, was a cache. Sealed clay vessels of golden sap, stacked in the dark by hands long gone, and when she brought a sample down to Almond, his eyes went sharp the moment he read it.
