Chapter 6: Cassian's Unmapped Detour

Morning arrived the way mornings do after sleepless nights — without apology, and slightly too bright.

I had dozed eventually, sometime in the grey hour before dawn, and woke to find Breck already on his feet and redistributing the fire's remnants with the brisk efficiency of a man who considers lying in bed a form of moral failure. Morvaine sat against the eastern wall with his hands folded and his eyes closed, though whether he was praying or simply resting in the practised stillness of the very old, I couldn't say. Seraphine's satchel was buckled, positioned between her hip and the wall, apparently untouched since the previous night. She was awake and looking at nothing in particular with the composed expression of someone thinking very hard about something quite specific.

Aldric was cheerful. He was, I had begun to notice, reliably cheerful in the mornings — a constitutional sunniness that read as good breeding and probably was, at least in part. He helped repack the supply bags with the competent ease of a man who has travelled before, and he offered Dara a piece of dried apple from his personal stores, which she accepted with a short nod and ate without ceremony.