Chapter 16: Cael Tells Maren About His Brother

The water came up four centimeters in the night.

Maren knew before she checked the wall. She knew from the sound of it — the acoustic quality of the second floor had changed, the echo tighter, the slap against concrete where yesterday there had been only seep. She pressed her thumbnail into the east wall six inches above the old mark and held it there a moment, the way Lumen had taught her to hold thread under tension before measuring. Then she moved away and did not look at it again. The mark was there. The number was there. The number was four.

The catwalk to the northeast buildings was going to become necessary sooner than she had calculated.