Chapter 22: Mira Ashwood's Argument for Living

The meeting with Marcus lasts forty-one minutes.

Hamlet knows this because the arena's artificial light shifts twice during it — a dimming and a brightening the Capitol probably intends as atmosphere, theatrical punctuation for what Seraphine Voss imagines is her central confrontation — and he has learned to read those shifts as marking quarter-hours the way a court musician marks time. He does not think about what was said during those forty-one minutes. Not yet. He files it in the place where he puts things that require more room than the present moment affords, seals it carefully, and walks back through the corridor system with Mira at his left shoulder and the sound of his own breathing the only thing he is willing to attend to.

They do not speak until they reach the catwalk.