Chapter 22: Sable Chooses a Side

The voicemail arrived at 6:42 in the morning, while Sable was still assembling the archive in reverse order, pulling documents from the crate by date and stacking them on the floor in three columns that she had labelled, in her own shorthand, K, V, and E.

She had been awake for twenty-two hours. She knew this the way she knew all quantifiable things about herself — neutrally, as data rather than complaint.

Aldric's voice was warm. It was always warm at this hour, the warmth of a man who had never been made to feel the specific indignity of having stayed up all night for someone else's reasons.