The first thing Azel did was work out where her core sat.
It was not a decision. It was the way the room arrived in his head now: the vines, the mud, the broken second board on the left, the woman in the lane, the small steady warmth behind her breastbone, a little left of centre. He noted it in passing, the way you note a door, and moved on to the problem.
The problem was that she knew.
"Lyra," he said. "Put the bow down."
"You were in the tomb." Her voice had gone flat and even. "That's what it was. You didn't come from a village. Colwyn didn't recruit you on the road, he took you out of the tomb of Aeolus, and then he had somebody go into my head so I'd stop knowing it."
So she had it. Not all of it. She was building it in front of him, out loud, from one recovered sentence and a pair of eyes, but she had enough, and the rest would take her about as long as the walk to the fortress.
Azel began, calmly, to count.
