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In Thea's fold of rock, the old woman second opened one eye without moving anything else. "The wind's wrong," she whispered.
"It knows me," Thea said. "Or someone else with my habits." She flicked two fingers — the sign for spider-net. Her fifty ghosted into positions a storyteller would later make dramatic and a soldier would call common sense: high net with iron dust strung between two rock knobs; low net camouflaged with a thin brush of sand; a dragline of salt woven into a thread to turn a roar heavy if it came; pockets ready with talc to blind whatever thinks eyes are a right not a privilege. She did not know who was coming. She knew someone might. That was enough.
Serit went to his belly for the last span and slid forward until his eyes had just enough horizon. He did not say oh. He did not say there. He breathed in and let the breath go.
Two of the assassins breathed with him, their lungs matching his out of sympathy or mockery; even they could not have told you which.
