Chapter 3: The First Ambush at Duskhollow Crossing

The afternoon light was thinning when Cassian stopped walking.

He did not raise his hand or call back. He simply stopped, forty feet ahead of the convoy, and the quality of his stillness was so complete and so different from the ordinary stillness of a man at rest that I noticed it before Dara did, which surprised me. She was twenty feet closer to him than I was, and she had known him considerably longer. But I was watching, which was the only thing I was reliably good at, and so I saw his shoulders settle in a way that was not relaxation but its opposite — the contained readiness of something that has already decided what it will do next.

I had my hand on the carrying case before I understood why.