Chapter 25: What the Keeper Keeps

Two days after the new moon, the flame was still burning.

Mara had checked three times that morning — once at seven when she woke, once at half past nine when she brought tea, once at eleven when she had no particular reason to check and did it anyway. It held steady each time, neither brighter nor diminished, with the quality of attention of something that knew it was being watched and didn't mind. She had stopped apologising for the checking.

She sat now with her back against the north wall and her coat on because the temple was November-cold away from the flame's immediate radius, the self-rewriting map open across her knees. It had been behaving since Friday — no new routes appearing, the existing ones settled, as though the city were catching its breath. She was doing the same. The brass lamp sat to her left beside the tea caddy, both of them slightly absurd in the ancient space, both of them hers. Brekke occupied the nearest column, a silhouette of apparent indifference with the complete attentiveness of something that had been watching things for longer than the columns had stood.