Chapter 23: Tomas Tells Cassian Everything

Cassian took the first watch without being asked, which I had expected. He was a man who needed darkness and solitude the way other men needed food — not for pleasure, but for maintenance. I let him have an hour of it before I wrapped my coat around the Shard and walked out of the depression where the others slept.

The volcanic plain was extraordinary at night. The haze that had oppressed us all afternoon had thinned to a luminous grey, lit from below by distant fissure-glow, and the ash-pale ground gave back a weak, sourceless light that made everything look like the inside of a very old dream. I could see Cassian from thirty yards — a stillness in the stillness, seated on a low volcanic slab with his back to a rise that gave him a clear line of sight east and west. He was not watching me approach. He was watching everything else.

I sat down beside him without preamble. He did not look at me.