Cang looked at him.
Not the full look. The sidelong acknowledgment — the specific, casual, unhurried noting of the man at the tree, the copper on his face, the hands on the bark, the wrong response and the right grief both visible from twelve meters in the breakthrough light.
The smirk.
The specific, small, one-corner, internal-amusement smirk of a man who had found the situation exactly as predictable as he had predicted it would be.
Then — still smirking — Cang looked back at his wife.
PAAH.
He drove.
His wife's voice:
"—AAAHNN~!!!—"
And then Cang's hand came to her hair.
The grip the mortal had seen used on his wife in the cedar room — the root-grip, the specific, absolute grip that the body followed — and it pulled, and his wife's head came back, and Cang bent his mouth to her ear, and from twelve meters the mortal could hear every word:
"Look at the water," Cang said.
She looked at the water.
At her reflection.
