Chapter 6: Perenthia Lectures on the Shard's Origins

The rain arrived without the courtesy of a warning.

One moment the Greywood sat in its customary silver-grey stillness, shadows pooling in the wrong directions with the practiced indifference of a place that has long since ceased to feel obligated to behave like anywhere else; the next, the sky opened with the particular conviction of weather that has been saving itself up. Within thirty seconds, the path had become a study in liquid geography. Within a minute, the distinction between air and water had grown academic.

Caelen, who had apparently been expecting this or something like it, said simply, "Waystation," and altered course without breaking stride. The rest of us followed with varying degrees of composure. Bryndis treated the rain as she treated most things that presented themselves as obstacles: she walked directly through it with her chin down and her axe-hand free, as though daring it to try something. Perenthia, caught mid-sentence about elemental boundary conditions and their implications for archived materials, made a sound like a scholarly hen and bundled her notes beneath her cloak. Siovhan put her hood up in one unhurried motion and became, in the grey wash of the downpour, almost entirely invisible. Rook pulled his collar up and walked, as was his habit, as though the weather were someone else's problem.