The guard Sable had sent toward the bathhouse loft had barely vanished into the west corridor before Cassian turned to her.
"You stay inside the inner line."
It was not a suggestion, and under any other pressure she might have answered it with something sharp enough to cut. There was no space for that now. The hall still held Rowan under witness. Oda had been pulled from the smokehouse and Mara was still somewhere inside the service spine Rowan had built into a blade. Every heartbeat that passed without motion mattered.
"I am staying inside it," Sable said. "I'm not standing here while you search blind."
