Surya had the scout carried onto a makeshift litter before he gave a single other order, two soldiers assigned to walk him back to the capital at whatever pace kept him breathing. "Tell the palace physicians everything he said," Surya told them, low enough that the rest of the column wouldn't hear it repeated and start their own quiet panic. "Word for word. Don't soften it for them and don't soften it for yourselves either."
Sekar wiped her hands on a cloth already gone dark with someone else's blood and looked up at Rama, her expression settling into the stillness she reserved for problems she hadn't yet found the shape of. "An eye," she said quietly, once the litter bearers were out of easy earshot. "Not eyes. He said one eye. That's not a manner of speaking, Rama, that's an observation from a man who was looking directly at something and counted."
