They left at dawn.
Smaller formation than the Crestfall run — Kael had thought about it carefully the night before and decided that arriving at an unknown meeting with twenty minions and a full combat configuration sent a message he didn't intend. The formation he brought was the original one. The people who had been there from the beginning.
Daren. Thresh. The Commander. The two wraiths.
Maren.
Sera.
Calder, because Calder read the script and nobody else did and that was the kind of practical consideration that overrode most other factors.
His mother stood at the clinic door in the pre-dawn grey and looked at the reduced formation with the expression of someone who had done the same calculation and reached the same conclusion.
"The message sender," she said.
"Unknown," Kael said. "Probably not hostile. The Observer has been at the edge of my range for four days without approaching."
"Probably," she said.
"Yes."
