Chapter 18: What the Chorus Is Retrieving

The first thing Ysolde did was move Pip's archive copies to one end of the worktable and Karev's Voss Line notebook to the other. She did not ask permission. She did not announce what she was doing. She simply created space in the center, the way a surgeon clears a field, and then she stood in front of the blank space for a moment with her hands loose at her sides.

"I need your signal maps," she said. Not to Karev specifically. To the room.

Karev pulled the notebook toward her. She did not take it. She looked at him until he understood she wanted the pages flat and open, not handed over, and he opened it to the first Voss Line transcription and spread it on the worktable without comment.