Chapter 12: Sera Mistakes Intensity for Strategy

Elias did not carry the Pell correction slip back to his dormitory. He processed it the same afternoon, with his left hand, and filed it correctly, and said nothing, and the act of doing so settled into the lengthening inventory he kept of such acts the way a stone settles into silt — with very little disturbance to the surface.

The dead drop in the library came three days later. Volume sixty-two, seventh shelf from the left, and the message inside was not coded — Sera had either judged the blind spot reliable enough or had not thought to be careful, and he had not yet determined which. It said: meeting, usual room, Thursday after nine. He ate the paper before he left the aisle.

Thursday evening was cold and still. He reached the sub-basement at nine fourteen, having walked two circuits of the ground-floor corridor to clear the four-minute relay interval before descending, and found Brennan already there with the lamp lit and a half-eaten biscuit on the table, and Maret's piece of mirror glass propped against a textbook stack in the corner where it always sat. There was no reflection in it yet. Brennan looked up when Elias entered and said, immediately, "She's going to want to move the date," and Elias said, "When did you find out," and Brennan said, "Just now, from the way you came through the door," which was imprecise but not, Elias thought, entirely wrong.