---
The white robe was simple to the point of austerity, yet something about the line of it and the way she moved made the room feel different, like a chapel after someone had sung inside it.
Sera stopped, taking in his stillness, and looked down at the floor as if to apologize for the fact of her own face.
"Where are Fizz and Gael," she asked, keeping her tone strictly ordinary because nothing in her posture was ordinary at all.
"In the side room," John said. "Eating. Watching the back door in case the merchant's coin grows legs and tries to leave."
"That would be a trick," she said. She came to the bench and sat beside him, leaving enough space between them for decorum and not enough to pretend they were strangers. Her damp hair smelled faintly of herbs and something clean that reminded him of a morning that had not happened yet.
