Chapter 25: The Weight of Being Right for Thirty Years

The council ran four hours and twenty minutes, which Percy knew because he counted the light changing on the amphitheater's western wall and because he had developed, over the past several weeks, an involuntary precision about duration. Time had started behaving differently around Edmund — not slower, exactly, but more legible, the way certain maps were legible where others were merely accurate.

Chiron had arranged chairs rather than the usual standing assembly, which was either a concession to the gravity of the situation or to the fact that approximately half the camp's population had not slept in thirty-six hours. Both things were true and neither fully accounted for it. The chairs were in a rough circle. Chiron stood at its edge rather than its center. Percy did not miss the significance of this.

Edmund sat three chairs to Percy's left and did not speak for the first forty minutes. He had the particular stillness of someone who has said the important things and is now waiting to see what structure grows up around them. When he did speak, it was in response to a direct question from Miranda Gardiner about the timeline — what did geological epochs actually mean in terms of what any of them should be doing on Tuesday — and his answer was characteristically precise and, to Percy's ear, kind in its precision. He said: it means the immediate emergency has a long horizon, which is uncomfortable, but the discomfort is useful information. Then he said nothing else for another hour.