Sael looked at him from the floor. Still chained. Still sitting the way he had been sitting for a month — knees up, back against the wall, the specific posture of someone who had decided this was their default position in the world.
"Now let's get out of here," Ishiki repeated.
"No."
'This kid.'
"Get up."
"I told you," Sael replied, without moving. "I bring bad luck. Everyone who has ever been near me for long enough has paid for it." He said it without drama, the way someone stated a pattern they had observed many times and stopped finding surprising. "The people who hid me in the market — two of them are gone. The family that sheltered me before the city — gone. The man who gave me water on the road—" He stopped. "You are an Awakened. You have tools I don't understand. You might actually get out of here."
