The common room was already bright when they came through the arch — morning light slanting in from the high slit windows, thick with dust and the smell of something cooking, and the walls pulsing that slow, steady blue. Satisfied blue. Malik had learned the difference overnight. The walls didn't have to say anything. They just glowed, and everyone in the room could read them like a page.

He felt it against his bare feet first — the stone floor, warm from the fire beneath it, fired clay under his soles with a grain he could feel through every step. Someone kept this floor hot all night. He hadn't thought about that until now. The whole ring was kept warm, kept lit, kept alive, and he was walking across it in last night's jeans with his shirt still hanging open.

Lyra's hand found his forearm before they were three steps in. Her fingers curled around the muscle there, light but certain, and she stayed close, closer than the width of the doorway required. Her blue hair caught the light and threw it back, streaking the wall behind her with a moving shimmer. She hadn't said a word since she came out of the washroom. She didn't need to. Her hand said enough.

Four of them were in the room. He counted without meaning to — a habit from job sites, from rooms where you needed to know how many ways out there were.

Zara sat at the head of the long table, a clay cup cupped in both scarred hands, steam rising past her face. She didn't look up when they entered. She'd heard them. She'd heard them the whole way down the ring, probably. She just didn't look up.

Korena stood at the window with her arms crossed, backlit, her lip already curled before she opened her mouth.

"You took your time," she said.

Malik didn't answer. He walked to the bench and sat, and the wood creaked under him — a small protest, like the room itself had an opinion. Lyra slid onto the bench beside him, close, her thigh pressed to his, her hand finally leaving his arm only to rest flat on the tabletop next to his.

Zara's eyes lifted then. Flat. Unreadable. The same eyes that had told him he was doing well, the same eyes that had given him until first bell, the same eyes that had watched him across the nursery and decided what he was for.

"Sit. Eat." She didn't look at Lyra. "Sefa, pour him water."

A woman he hadn't met yet rose from the far end of the table — quiet, precise, a clay jug already in her hands. Sefa. She was younger than Zara by decades and older than Lyra by a few years, and she moved like someone who had spent a lot of time being careful. She filled a cup and set it in front of him without a word, then sat back down and folded her hands.

Malik picked up the cup. The water was cold and tasted of minerals, like it had come up through rock. He drank half of it before he realized how thirsty he was.

Talla was already seated at the table, her plate untouched in front of her, bread and something pale and soft next to it, cooling. She watched him with a stillness that felt like a held breath — the kind of stillness that had a question sitting inside it, waiting.

She let him eat two bites before she asked it.

"The walls are bright this morning."

Her voice was quiet. Precise. She said it the way a person reads out a number from a page, not the way a person accuses. That made it worse.

"They say Lyra stayed. They say she asked for more." Talla tilted her head, and her green eyes didn't move off his face. "Is that what you want, Malik? Or is it just what the contract requires?"

The room went quiet.

Not the quiet of nobody having anything to say. The quiet of everybody having something to say and waiting to see who'd say it first. Malik could hear the fire under the floor. He could hear Korena breathe through her nose, hard, by the window. He could hear his own cup settle back onto the clay when he set it down.

Zara's cup clicked against the table.

That was all. One small sound, and the room held it.

Malik chewed the bread slow. He'd learned a long time ago that the man who answers fast is the man who gets pushed. He looked at Talla across the table — twenty-four, he remembered, born the year their males died, which meant she'd never seen one, never touched one, never known a world where this wasn't the arrangement. She'd been waiting her whole life for a question like him, and she was going to make him answer it right.

"Both," he said.

Talla's fingers, flat on the table's edge, didn't move. "Both."

"She asked. I answered." He picked up the bread again, tore it, didn't eat it yet. "That's what you're asking, right? Whether I'm here because of the paper, or because of her."

"I'm asking which one you'd pick if the paper weren't there."

Lyra's hand closed on his forearm again. He felt her nails, short and blunt, press just enough to be felt. She hadn't said a word since they walked in. She was letting him carry it. He didn't know yet whether that was trust or a test.

"The paper's there," Malik said. "So's she. I don't get to pick a world where one of them isn't."

Korena laughed — short, sharp, from the window. "That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I've got."

"It's the answer of a man who's already been paid." She turned from the window and walked to the table, and she didn't sit. She stood over him, arms still crossed, and looked down the way you look at something you're deciding whether to step on. "You came up here on a contract. You slept in her room on a contract. You'll sleep in mine on a contract, and Mira's, and Sefa's, and Talla's, and you'll do it because you signed something and because there's a door you can't open. Don't dress it up."

Malik set the bread down. He looked up at her, and he didn't stand, and he didn't flinch. "You're the one who was at the door last night."

Korena's jaw tightened. Just a fraction. Just enough that he caught it.

"Yeah," he said. "I heard you. Through the wall. You came to open it and Zara stopped you."

"Don't—"

"I'm not saying anything about it. I'm saying you already know what happened in there, and you're standing here asking me to deny it, and I'm not going to." He picked up the cup and drank, and the mineral water was cold going down. "If you want to be angry, be angry at the person who made the schedule. Not at me."

Korena's mouth opened. Zara spoke before it could.

"Enough."

One word, and Korena's mouth closed. She stood there a second longer, breathing, and then she turned and went back to the window, and this time she didn't cross her arms. She just stood with her back to the room and her hands at her sides, and the light coming through the slit made a hard line down her spine.

Zara hadn't raised her voice. She hadn't moved. Her scarred hands were still wrapped around the cup, and the steam was still rising, and her eyes were still flat. But the room had turned when she spoke, the way a room turns when someone in it is used to being obeyed.

Sefa poured him more water without being asked. She set the jug down and sat back and folded her hands again, and her eyes — amber, behind the round glasses — moved from Malik to Lyra and back, cataloguing. She was the one who read. He could see it in her. She was reading him right now, the way she'd read everything from before the war, and filing him somewhere.

"Why did you stay?" Sefa asked. Quiet. Not an accusation. A question from a person who wanted the actual answer.

Lyra's hand tightened on his arm.

Malik looked at the table. At the bread he'd torn and not eaten. At the grain of the clay under his palms, warm from the fire beneath.

"Because she asked me not to go," he said.

Sefa's glasses caught the light and hid her eyes for a second. "That's not what I asked."

"It's what you're going to get."

Talla made a small sound — not a laugh, not quite. Her plate was still untouched. The bread was going cold in front of her and she hadn't picked it up once, not since he walked in. She was watching him the way she'd watch a door she wasn't sure was locked.

"You understand what happens if she doesn't take," Talla said.

Malik looked at her.

"If her body doesn't catch," Talla said, "then it's my turn. Then Mira's. Then Korena's. Then Sefa's. One of us has to take, or the clan ends with us, and the walls will tell every one of us the morning after whether you did your part." She let that sit. "You should know that before you decide what to feel about last night."

Lyra's hand left his arm. She put both hands flat on the table and leaned forward, and her voice came out smaller than he'd ever heard it.

"Talla."

"It's true."

"I know it's true." Lyra's hair moved with her, the blue catching the light and throwing it across the table. "You don't have to say it like that."

"Somebody does." Talla finally picked up her bread, broke it, and set it back down without eating any of it. "Zara won't. So I will."

Zara's cup clicked against the table again. The same small sound. The same silence after it.

Malik sat with it. The fire under the floor. The blue pulse on the walls, steady as a heartbeat. The steam off Zara's cup, still rising. Four women around him who had grown up in a room with twelve empty cribs and a wall that told them everything they did, and one of them had just spent the night in his bed and asked him not to stop, and every one of them knew it.

He picked up the bread and ate it. Slowly. He finished the cup of water and set it down and Sefa filled it again without a word.

"You want to know what I want," he said, to the table, to all of them. "I want to know what happens to her if it doesn't take."

Nobody answered.

Zara's hands moved on the cup — the first movement she'd made since they walked in. Her scarred thumb traced the rim, once, and stopped.

And the walls kept pulsing. Steady blue. Satisfied blue. The room held its silence, and nobody had said yet whether the contract meant nothing or everything.

He waited for the answer.

Zara's thumb stopped on the rim of her cup. Steam kept rising off the clay, thinning into the cold air off the slit windows. She didn't look at him. She looked at Talla.

Talla looked back.

Something crossed between them without words — the kind of thing that happens between two people who have had the same fight a hundred times and know exactly where it ends. Then Talla reached across the table, took her plate by the edge, and pushed it aside. Cold bread, soft pale mash, untouched. The clay scraped against the wood and stopped.

She leaned forward on both forearms.

"You want to know what happens to her if it doesn't take," she said. "Fine. I'll tell you what happens to all of us."

Korena turned from the window. Sefa's hands came apart on the table, then folded again. Lyra went still beside him, her thigh pressed against his and not moving, not even breathing loud.

Talla kept her eyes on Malik. Green, steady, no heat in them at all.

"The archive," she said. "The genetic archive. Our mothers' line, our grandmothers' line, going back before the war. It's held in a cold room down the spine of the ring. Veth maintains it. She's the only one who understands the machine that reads it." She paused. "It's degrading. Has been for years. Every clone we make from it comes out a little further from the source — thinner, sicker, shorter-lived. You've seen the cribs. Twelve of them. Do you know how many we've filled in the last decade?"

Malik didn't answer.

"None," Talla said. "We stopped trying. It was cruel to keep making children who'd be born old."

Lyra's hand found his under the table. He hadn't seen her move it. Her fingers slid between his and closed, and her palm was cold.

"Veth ran the projections again last season," Talla said. "Same numbers she got the season before. The archive holds viable material for eight more years. Eight. After that, the strands won't hold a pregnancy at all — not with a Xylari mother, not with a human father, not with anything we've got on this station. The line ends. Not with a war. Not with a plague. It just runs out, quiet, in a cold room, while we're all still standing."

She picked up her cup. Drank. Set it down.

"So when Zara scanned you—" Talla's jaw worked once, "—and the machine lit up, she wasn't being careful. She was being desperate. Nineteen years, Malik. Nineteen years of scans, of freight crews and dockhands and men who came through the embassy ring and never knew why a Xylari woman was watching them from across the concourse. Every one of them came back negative. You came back positive. You're not a preference. You're the last door."

The fire under the floor hummed. Somewhere down the ring a door opened and closed, and a draft moved through the common room and lifted the edge of Zara's tunic.

"And if Lyra doesn't take," Talla said, "it's not just that we try again with me. It's that we try again with me, and Mira, and Korena, and Sefa, and if none of us take—" she spread her hands flat on the table, "—then the eight years run out anyway. The archive goes dark. Veth seals the cold room. And the five of us sit in this ring and wait for the last of us to die, and the walls go dark with us, and nobody ever reads them again."

She said it the way she'd said the numbers. Flat. Precise. Like she'd already read the ending in something written down.

Malik set his cup down. The clay rang once against the wood and went quiet.

"Eight years," he said.

"Eight years."

"And you've known that the whole time."

"Since I was sixteen." Talla's eyes didn't move. "Zara told me the season I came of age. She sat me down at this table, in this chair, and she told me what the archive was doing, and what it meant, and she asked me to be patient. That was eight years ago." A corner of her mouth moved, not quite a smile. "I've been patient."

Korena made a sound by the window — low, in her throat, cut off before it became a word. She had her arms crossed again. She was looking at the floor.

"So you understand," Talla said, "why I'm not going to sit here and pretend last night was about you and her." She nodded at Lyra without looking at her. "It wasn't. It was about the cribs. It was about the cold room. It was about the eight years. Whatever happened in that room, whatever the walls saw, it happened because we're running out of time, and Zara put you in there because you're the only thing we've got."

Lyra's fingers tightened around his. Hard, now. Her nails bit.

"That's not—" Lyra started.

"It's true," Talla said.

"It's not all of it."

"It's the part that matters." Talla finally looked at her — the first time she'd turned her eyes off Malik since he sat down. "You can feel whatever you feel. I'm not telling you not to. I'm telling you what it costs if you're wrong."

Lyra's throat moved. She didn't say anything else.

Zara hadn't spoken since enough. She sat at the head of the table with her scarred hands wrapped around the cup and her eyes on the middle distance, past all of them, at the wall behind the far bench where the blue pulse ran slow and even. She looked like a woman waiting for a storm she'd already seen the shape of.

Sefa reached for the jug. Poured. Her hand was steady. The water hit the cup and rose, and she stopped at exactly the right line, and set the jug down, and folded her hands, and looked at Malik over the rim of her glasses with an expression he couldn't read.

"You asked what happens to her," Talla said. "That's what happens. To her, to me, to all of us. If she doesn't take, we keep going down the line until somebody does, or until the eight years run out and there's nobody left to try." She picked up her bread again, looked at it, and set it back down without taking a bite. "Now you know what you signed."

Malik looked at the bread going cold on her plate. At the pale mash beside it, congealing at the edges. At the small crescent of water his cup had left on the wood, drying already in the heat from the floor.

"Why are you telling me this?" he said.

"Because Zara won't." Talla's voice had dropped — lower now, quieter, but the room was quiet enough that every word carried to every corner of it. "She'll tell you you're doing well. She'll tell you to eat. She'll send Sefa with water and a clean tunic and she'll let you think this is a job with a schedule. It's not a job. It's a countdown. And I've watched her do this to every one of us — keep the numbers soft, keep the edges off it, so we don't have to feel the floor moving under us." She leaned in. "You're not one of us. You never will be. So I'm going to tell you the truth straight, because you're the only person at this table who gets to walk out of this ring someday, and I want you to know exactly what you're walking out on."

She took a breath.

"Eight years," she said. "That's all. Then we're just five women in a stone ring, waiting for the walls to go dark."

Her voice had gone to almost nothing — a whisper, but the room was so still that it landed on every ear in it, and nobody moved.

Zara's cup came down on the table. Not a click this time. A knock, hard enough that the water jumped in it and a drop ran down the outside of the clay and soaked into the wood.

"Talla."

"She asked." Talla didn't look at her. "He asked. Somebody was going to say it."

"Not at my table."

"Then when?" Talla turned her head, slow, and looked down the length of the table at the matriarch. "Next season? When the numbers get worse? When Veth tells us it's six years instead of eight?"

Zara's eyes were flat. The scars on her forearms caught the light from the slit windows, pale against lavender, and her hands stayed flat on the table on either side of her cup.

"At my table," she said, "we eat."

Nobody ate.

Malik sat with his hand closed around Lyra's under the table, and the fire hummed under the floor, and the walls pulsed their slow blue, and the drop of water on the outside of Zara's cup ran down to the wood and stopped.

Talla's hand moved first.

She reached across the table and took the plate by its rim, and this time she didn't just push it. She lifted it — cold bread, the mash going stiff at the edges, the little clay lip that had held it all morning — and she carried it to the end of the bench and set it down on the stone floor, out of reach, out of the way. When she came back she didn't sit the way she'd been sitting. She turned the bench out and straddled it, forearms on the wood, close enough to Malik that he could see the fine pale scars on her knuckles, the ones that hadn't come from the war.

"You want the number," she said. "The real one. Not the one Zara gives you."

"Talla." Zara's voice, from the head of the table, flat as a door closing.

"He's going to live inside it either way." Talla didn't turn. "Let him know the shape of the room."

Sefa had stopped pouring. The jug hung in her hand over the cup, tilted, water trembling at the lip without falling. She looked at Zara. Zara looked at the wall. The pulse behind the far bench went on, slow, blue, indifferent.

Talla put her finger on the table and drew a line in the film of water his cup had left. Then another, a finger's width away. Then a third, closer. Then a fourth, so close it almost touched the third.

"That's the archive," she said. "Every generation, a little thinner. Our mother's line, our grandmother's. Veth has the readings. She's shown me. Each clone comes out a hair further from the source — the strands fray at the ends, like a rope that's been cut and knotted too many times. You can hold it, but you can't pull on it." Her finger moved down the four lines, tapping each. "Eight years is what the machine says before the last viable strand won't hold at all. But the machine's generous. It counts every embryo that could theoretically be coaxed. It doesn't count how many tries it takes to get one, or how many of those come out wrong."

"How many come out wrong," Malik said.

"Now?" Talla's jaw shifted. "Veth won't put a number on it. She puts a face on it instead. She keeps them in a drawer."

Lyra's hand had gone very still in his. Not cold anymore. Not warm either. Just there, holding, the way a person holds a rail.

"Two seasons ago," Talla said, "Veth tried to grow a line from our youngest source — a strand from before the war, one of the last clean ones. It took. It grew. Eleven weeks. Then it stopped, and she pulled it, and it was — " she stopped, chose the word, "— it was a shape. Not a child. A shape that had been trying to be one."

Korena made the sound again by the window. This time she didn't cut it off. It came out low and long and she turned her face to the glass and kept it there, and the light off the slit windows laid a stripe of pale down the side of her throat.

"Zara buried it herself," Talla said. "In the cold room. There's a shelf. There are jars on the shelf. That's what the archive is, Malik. It's not a hope. It's a shelf of jars and a machine that tells us how long they'll last."

Malik looked at the four lines on the table. The last two had already run together, the water spreading, the gaps closing. In a minute they'd be one wet smear on the wood and nobody would be able to tell where the divisions had been.

"So the eight years," he said. "That's if it works."

"That's if it works." Talla nodded once. "Eight years of tries. Eight years of Lyra, and me, and Mira, and Korena, and Sefa, one after the other, every cycle, until somebody's body takes and holds. And if none of us take — " she flattened her hand on the wet wood and pressed, " — then the eight years don't run out slow. They run out fast. Because we stop trying, and the archive just sits, and the strands just fray, and one season Veth comes out of the cold room and tells Zara the last one's gone."

She lifted her hand. The print of it stayed on the wood, four fingers and a palm, drying from the edges in.

"That's the cost," she said. "Not that we die. That we die having been the last ones to try, and having failed, and having known the whole time."

Zara's cup came off the table. She didn't drink. She held it in both hands at chest height, and the steam came up between her and her scars, and her eyes were on Talla now, and there was something in them Malik hadn't seen before — not anger, not quite. The look a woman gives the person who's finally said out loud the thing she's been carrying alone.

"You've made your point," Zara said.

"I haven't finished."

"You've made it."

Talla leaned back on the bench. Her shoulders dropped. For a second she looked younger than she had all morning — the way people look when they've set down something heavy they'd been holding at arm's length.

"Fine," she said. "Then let him ask what he's going to ask."

Malik looked at her. Then at Lyra — her face turned up at him, violet eyes wide, her mouth slightly open like she'd been about to say something and lost it. Then down the table at Zara, who was watching him over the rim of her cup with the flat patience of someone who had already decided what she'd do with whatever he said next.

He took his hand out from under the table and put it flat on the wood, next to the drying print of Talla's.

"The shelf in the cold room," he said. "How many jars."

Talla didn't blink. "Forty-one."

"And how many of them are still good."

"Veth says maybe six. Maybe fewer. She won't say which."

Malik nodded, slow. The fire hummed under the floor. The walls pulsed. Somewhere down the ring, past the common room, a door opened and closed again — soft, the way a door closes when someone is trying not to be heard — and a draft came through and moved the steam off Zara's cup and laid it flat along the table.

"Then I've got a question for you," he said. "Not her." He tipped his chin at Zara without taking his eyes off Talla. "You."

"Ask."

"If I'm the last door," he said, "why am I eating breakfast."

Malik put his hand flat on the cup and slid it down the table. Clay on wood, a low grinding sound, and the cup stopped an inch from Sefa's folded hands.

She looked at it. Then at him.

"More," he said.

Sefa didn't move. Her glasses caught the light from the slit windows and threw it back at him, two small coins of glare where her eyes should have been. She had a way of going still that wasn't patience — it was calculation, the way a person goes still when they're deciding whether a question is worth the answer.

"You want water," she said.

"I want you to pour it."

The room heard it. He felt them hear it — Korena by the window, her shoulders squaring; Lyra beside him, her breath going shallow; Talla on the bench with her forearms on the wood, watching him now with something new in her face, something that wasn't quite the flat precision she'd been wearing all morning.

Sefa reached for the jug. Her hand didn't shake. She lifted it, tilted it, and the water came out in one thin line, steady, and hit the cup and rose, and she stopped at the same line she'd stopped at before, exactly, to the width of a hair.

She set the jug down.

Clay rang against the wood. Soft. Final. The sound of a door shutting somewhere far off in the ring.

Malik wrapped both hands around the cup and didn't drink.

Nobody said anything. The fire hummed under the floor. The walls pulsed their slow blue and the pulse went through the cup into his palms, faint, like holding a wrist. Steam came off the water and curled up past his face and disappeared into the cold air off the windows.

He waited.

Sefa waited with him. She had her hands folded again, and she was looking at him the way she'd been looking at him since he sat down — reading him, filing him, turning him over like a page she'd read before in a language she was still learning. He gave her nothing. He'd learned that on job sites. The man who fills the silence is the man who tells you what he's afraid of.

It was Korena who broke first.

"He asked a question," she said, from the window. "Somebody answer it."

"He asked me," Talla said, without turning.

"Then answer."

"I'm thinking."

Korena made a sound in her throat and turned back to the glass. The light off the slit windows laid itself down the side of her face and she let it, and her jaw worked once and stopped.

Zara hadn't moved. Her cup was still in both hands, still at chest height, the steam still coming up between her and her scars. She was watching Malik over the rim — not the flat patience from before. Something narrower. The look of a woman doing arithmetic she hadn't expected to be doing this early in the morning.

Lyra's thigh pressed harder against his. Her hand was still under the table, still on his knee, and her fingers had gone from holding to gripping, the way you hold a rail on a moving train.

Malik drank. Half the cup. The water was colder than it had been and tasted sharper, minerals biting at the back of his tongue, and he set the cup down and kept both hands on it and looked at Talla.

"You didn't answer me," he said.

"I heard you."

"Then answer."

Talla picked up her bread again. This time she tore a piece off and ate it, chewing slow, watching him the whole time, and it was the most deliberate thing she'd done all morning — a woman buying herself four seconds and spending them in front of everyone.

"You're eating breakfast," she said, "because Zara wants to see if you'll eat it."

Malik didn't move.

"She wants to see what you do with a full table and a warm room and a woman's hand on your leg," Talla said. "She wants to see if you get comfortable. If you start thinking this is a life instead of a job. Because a comfortable man does what he's told, and a man who knows he's on a leash pulls at it, and she'd rather find out which one you are over bread than over a crib."

She tore off another piece of bread and ate it.

"That's the answer," she said. "You're eating breakfast because she's measuring you."

Malik looked down the table at Zara.

Zara looked back. She didn't deny it. She didn't say anything at all. She lifted her cup and drank and set it down and her scarred hands went back to wrapping it, and the steam went on rising, and the whole thing sat there on the table between them like a stone nobody was going to move.

"That's a hell of a thing to say about your own aunt," Malik said.

"She's my matriarch before she's my aunt." Talla's voice didn't change. "She's been that since I was a child. It's not an insult. It's just what she is."

"It's an insult," Korena said, from the window.

"It's a fact."

"It's a fact you say to a human." Korena turned around. Her arms were crossed again, but her face had changed — the curl was gone out of her lip and something rawer was sitting in its place, something she was working to keep off her face and not quite managing. "You don't say that to him. You say that to us. In the ring. Not in front of the man on the contract."

"He's the one who asked."

"He's the one who—" Korena stopped. Her mouth closed. She looked at Malik, and then at Lyra, and then at the floor, and her hands came uncrossed and went into the pockets of her tunic and stayed there.

Talla watched her for a second. Then she looked back at Malik.

"You want the second answer," she said. "The one under the first one."

"There's a second one?"

"There's always a second one." Talla pushed her plate another inch down the table, though it was already out of reach. "The first answer is about Zara. The second answer is about us. You're eating breakfast because we need to look at you in the daylight."

Malik waited.

"We've been scanning men for nineteen years," Talla said. "Veth's machine tells us if a man can give us what we need. It doesn't tell us anything else. It doesn't tell us if he'll be cruel, or stupid, or gentle, or if he'll take one look at the cribs and walk into the wall trying to get out. So we look. We sit across a table from him and we watch how he eats and how he talks and how he holds a cup when he's angry, and we decide." She picked up her own cup, looked into it, set it down. "Last night was the machine. This morning is the table. You're being read."

"By who."

"By all of us." Talla's eyes moved, deliberately, around the room — Korena, Sefa, Lyra, and finally down the table to Zara. "Every one of us gets a vote on what happens next. Even her."

Malik sat with that. The water in his cup had stopped steaming. The fire under the floor hummed and the walls pulsed and somewhere down the ring a door opened and closed, soft, the same door, and a draft came through and lifted the edge of the tablecloth and set it back down.

"And what's the vote so far," he said.

Talla almost smiled. Almost. The corner of her mouth moved a quarter inch and stopped, and she looked at him like she'd just found the first interesting thing she'd seen all morning.

"You don't ask that," she said.

"I'm asking it."

"Nobody's ever asked it."

"Nobody's ever been the last door."

Korena laughed. It came out of her sharp and short and entirely against her will — she clapped a hand over her mouth a half-second too late and the sound was already in the room, and she turned her face back to the window and her ears went a shade darker against her hair.

Sefa's hands came apart on the table. She looked at Malik over her glasses and her mouth did something complicated that wasn't a smile and wasn't not one.

Lyra's grip on his knee loosened. Just a little. Just enough that he could feel the difference — the way a person relaxes when they've been holding their breath and finally remember they don't have to.

Zara set her cup down.

Not a click. Not a knock. She set it down slow and deliberate, both hands, and the clay settled onto the wood without a sound, and she looked at Malik down the length of the table with her flat green eyes and her scarred hands still resting on the cup, and she said, "You want to know your standing."

"I want to know if I'm breeding stock or a man."

"You're both."

"Then which one eats breakfast."

Zara's thumb moved on the rim of the cup. Once. "The one who's going to be here for eight years," she said. "The other one doesn't get to."

The room went quiet again. Not the held-breath quiet from before. A different quiet, lower, the quiet of a thing that had been said out loud and couldn't be put back.

Malik looked at her. She looked back. Neither of them moved.

Then he picked up his cup, and drank, and set it down, and pushed it back down the table toward Sefa.

She caught it before it reached the edge. She looked at the empty cup, and then at him, and her hand went to the jug.

He didn't say anything. He just waited.

The water came out in one thin line, steady, and hit the clay and rose, and Sefa stopped at the line — the same line, to the width of a hair — and set the jug down, and the clay rang soft against the wood.

Malik wrapped both hands around the fresh cup and didn't drink.

The question hung over the table. The fire hummed. The walls pulsed their slow blue, satisfied blue, and Lyra's hand stayed on his knee, and nobody in the room moved to answer him.

Sefa's hand stayed on the jug. She didn't lift it. She looked at the cup, then at him, then at the cup again, and something moved behind the coins of glare on her glasses that wasn't the light.

"You want more," she said.

"I want the answer."

"You already got the answer."

"I got a fact." Malik didn't move his hands off the cup. The clay was warm now, both palms, the heat coming up through the walls and through the water and into his skin. "You told me I'm being read. That's not what I asked."

Sefa's fingers found the handle of the jug. She didn't pour. She held it, the way you hold something you're about to put down, and her mouth thinned a hair and came back.

"You want to know the tally," she said.

"I want to know if there's a tally."

"There's always a tally."

"Then say it."

Down the table, Zara's cup came off the wood with a sound like a knuckle cracking. She didn't drink. She set it back down without looking at it, and her flat green eyes had gone somewhere between Malik and Sefa and stayed there, and the scars on her forearms caught the cold window light when she moved.

"Sefa," she said.

"He asked."

"He's allowed to ask."

"Then let me—"

"He's allowed to ask," Zara said again, and this time the two words at the end of it had no give in them. "He's not entitled to an answer."

Sefa's hand came off the jug. She folded it back into the other one, both hands on the table, and she looked at Malik over her glasses and she looked at Zara and she looked at the water in his cup like she was counting the ripples, and she said nothing at all.

Lyra's hand had gone still on his knee. Not relaxed — still. The kind of still that listens. Her thigh was warm against his under the table and her breath had gone shallow and even, and she hadn't taken her eyes off her aunt since Zara put the cup down the second time.

Korena shifted her weight by the window. The old boards of the ring creaked under her, one long complaining note, and she put her shoulder against the frame and crossed her ankles and watched the room the way you watch a fight you've already bet on.

Talla hadn't moved at all. Her forearms were still flat on the wood and her bread was still half-eaten on her plate and she was looking at Malik with the flat precision she'd been wearing since he walked in, and she said, "You're pushing."

"I'm asking."

"Same thing, at this table."

"Then it's the first honest thing I've done all morning."

Talla's mouth did the quarter-inch thing again. She picked up her cup, drank, set it down, and the clay rang against the wood the same note Sefa's jug had rung, and she said, "The tally is four to one."

The room went very quiet.

Zara's head turned. Slow. Not to Talla — to Malik. She looked at him down the length of the table and her face didn't change, not one line of it, and that was worse than if it had.

"Talla," she said.

"He asked."

"I heard him ask."

"Then you heard me answer."

Zara's thumb moved on the rim of her cup. Once. The same once as before. "You don't speak for this table."

"I don't." Talla tore another piece off her bread and didn't eat it. She held it, and looked at it, and set it down on the plate in a spot where there was no bread to set it on. "I speak for me. Four to one is me, Korena, Sefa, Mira. Against is you."

Mira. The name landed on the table like a dropped spoon. Malik didn't know her face yet. He'd heard her, maybe — a voice somewhere down the ring last night, high and quick, arguing with somebody through a closed door. He filed it and kept his hands on the cup.

Korena pushed off the window frame. "Don't put me in that number."

"You're in it."

"I didn't vote."

"You voted last night." Talla didn't look at her. "You stood at the door."

Korena's ears went dark. She opened her mouth, closed it, and turned back to the window, and the cold light laid itself across her jaw and she let it. Her hands were in her pockets again and her shoulders had come up a half inch and stayed there.

Zara set her cup down a third time. This time there was a click in it — small, sharp, the sound of a woman deciding something — and she folded her scarred hands on the wood and looked at Malik and said, "You've had your answer."

"I've had two."

"Then you've had more than most."

"I want the third."

"There is no third."

"There's always a third." Malik lifted the cup. Not to drink. He held it at chest height, the way Zara had been holding hers all morning, and the steam came up past his face and disappeared into the cold air off the windows. "First answer is what you're measuring. Second answer is who's measuring me. Third answer is what happens if I fail the measurement."

Zara looked at him for a long count. Four. Five. The fire hummed and the walls pulsed and somewhere down the ring the same soft door opened and closed and a draft came through and lifted the tablecloth and set it down.

"If you fail the measurement," she said, "you go back to the deck you came from."

"And the contract?"

"The contract holds."

"So I stay."

"You stay." Zara's hands came apart on the table, one finger at a time, and she let them rest flat on the wood. "You stay and you breed and you sleep in that room and you eat at this table and you watch the walls pulse when one of my girls walks past your door, and you do it for eight years, and you never once get to say no. That's failing the measurement. That's what's under the table."

Nobody moved.

Lyra's hand tightened on his knee. Hard. Her nails went into the denim and he felt them through the fabric, four small points of pressure, and she didn't pull them back and she didn't look at him and she didn't look at her aunt. She looked at the middle of the table, at nothing, and her jaw was set the way a child sets it when they've decided not to cry in front of the room.

Malik set the cup down. He put both hands around it and turned it a quarter turn on the wood, slow, the clay grinding soft, and he looked at Zara and didn't say anything.

Then he pushed it down the table toward Sefa.

Not fast. Not hard. He put his palm flat on the rim and slid it, and it went down the length of the wood with that low grinding sound, and it stopped an inch from her folded hands, and the water inside it sloshed up the clay and settled without spilling.

He kept his hand on the cup.

"More," he said.

Sefa looked at the cup. Then at him. Then at Zara, quick, one flick of the eyes behind the glare, and back.

"You just got told the worst thing that can happen to you," she said. "You want water."

"I want you to pour it."

Sefa's hand came off the table. She took the jug by the throat — not the handle, the throat, thumb wrapped under the lip — and lifted it, and the water inside shifted and caught the window light and went still again.

She didn't tip it. She held it over the cup and looked at him, and her glasses threw their two coins of glare back at him and hid everything behind them.

"You're not thirsty," she said.

"No."

"Then why."

"Because you're the one who reads."

Sefa's thumb moved on the clay. A small movement. She set the jug down — not on the table, on the bench beside her, out of reach of his cup — and folded her hands again and looked at him the way she'd been looking at him since he sat down.

"Where did you get that," she said.

"Talla said you've read everything from before the war."

"Talla talks."

"Talla's the only one at this table who told me the truth twice."

Down the table, Talla's forearms stayed flat on the wood. She didn't look up. But her cup moved an inch — she turned it, slow, a quarter turn, the same quarter turn Malik had put on his own — and she left it there.

Sefa's mouth did the complicated thing again. She looked at the jug, sitting on the bench, then back at him. "What do you want to know."

"I want to know what happens to the ones who fail."

The room didn't move. But the fire under the floor seemed to drop a note — a lower hum, half a step down, and the walls pulsed with it and went on pulsing, slower now.

Zara's hands were still flat on the wood. She hadn't picked up her cup. She was watching Sefa now, not Malik — watching her with the narrow arithmetic from before, and it had sharpened, and it had a name in it somewhere that she wasn't saying out loud.

Sefa reached for the jug. She took it by the throat again, lifted it, and this time she tipped it — and the water came out in one line, and she filled the cup past the line she'd been holding all morning, an inch past, two, until the surface domed up over the rim and held there by its own skin, and she stopped with the jug still tilted and looked at him over the trembling dome of it.

"There's a room under this ring," she said. "It has a chair in it and a light in it and nothing else. The men who fail go there. Not the ones who can't breed — the ones who can't be at this table."

"What happens to them."

"They get sent down to the dock and put on a ship back to whatever colony they came off, and the contract goes into a file, and the file goes into a drawer, and nobody in this ring says the name again." She set the jug down. The clay rang soft. The dome of water over the rim held for a half-second and then broke and ran down the side of the cup and onto the wood and made a dark track toward his hand. "That's failing. That's all failing is."

Malik looked at the water running toward his fingers. He didn't move them.

"And the other thing," he said.

"What other thing."

"The thing Zara said. Eight years, this table, no saying no." He picked up the cup — carefully, both hands, the water still beaded on the outside — and drank it down to the line. "That's not failing. That's succeeding. So what's the other room."

Sefa went still. Not the calculation-still from before. A different still. Her hands came apart on the table and one of them went to the edge of her data slate where it sat beside her plate, and her fingers found the corner of it and stayed there, and she didn't answer.

Zara answered for her.

"There's no other room," she said.

"There's always an other room."

"Not in this ring." Zara's voice had gone flat — flatter than before, flat the way a wall is flat, no handholds in it. "You've had your water. You've had your answer. Eat."

Malik set the cup down. He turned it a quarter turn on the wood, slow, the same quarter turn, and the wet ring it left on the table turned with it, and he looked at Zara and didn't reach for the bread.

"You said eight years," he said. "You said I stay and I breed and I eat at this table and I never once get to say no. That's not a job. That's a sentence. So I want to know what the sentence is for. What's at the end of it."

Zara's thumb moved on the rim of her cup. Once.

"You'll be forty," she said. "You'll be forty and you'll have made children you can't claim and you'll have eaten at a table where nobody says your name unless they want something, and one morning you'll wake up in that room and the walls will be pulsing and you'll know exactly what they're pulsing for and it won't be you anymore. That's the end of it. That's what the eight years buys."

"And the clan."

"The clan lives."

Malik sat with that. The water on the table had stopped spreading. The fire hummed. Somewhere down the ring, a door opened and closed — the same door, soft — and the draft came through and lifted the tablecloth and set it back down, and Lyra's hand on his knee had gone cold.

He looked at her. She was still looking at the middle of the table, at nothing, and her jaw was still set, and she hadn't moved since Zara said eight years.

He put his hand over hers. Under the table, out of sight, his palm flat on the back of her hand, and her fingers came up through his and held on, and neither of them looked at each other, and the room went on not seeing it.

"Then I'll ask the last thing," he said.

Zara's eyes came back to him. "You've had three."

"This one's not for me." He kept his hand on Lyra's. "When does she get to say no."

The room went very still.

Zara's hands didn't move. Her face didn't move. But something behind it did — something small and old and scarred, the same scar tissue as the marks on her forearms, and it shifted, and she looked at Lyra for the first time since the table sat down.

Lyra's fingers tightened in his. Hard. Hard enough to hurt.

Sefa's hand came off her slate. She looked at Zara, then at Lyra, then at Malik, and her mouth opened a half-inch and closed again, and she pulled the jug back across the table toward herself, slowly, both hands, and set it in front of her own plate, and the clay rang soft against the wood.

Nobody answered him.

Zara's cup came off the table and she set it down again an inch to the left, and the small scrape of clay on wood was the only sound in the room for a count of three. Then she turned her head and said, "Sefa."

Just the name. Nothing after it.

Sefa's hands were still folded on top of the jug, both of them, knuckles pale against the clay. She didn't look up. She looked at the table in front of her — at her own plate, at the corner of the data slate her fingers had been resting on all morning, at the wet ring Malik's cup had left when he turned it a quarter turn.

"Yes, matriarch," she said.

Two words. Quiet. Flat. And the room took them the way dry ground takes a first drop of rain — nothing visible, nothing said, but something underneath shifting to receive it. Korena's shoulder came off the window frame. Talla's cup went still in her hand halfway to her mouth. Lyra's fingers, under the table, closed around Malik's so hard he felt the bones of his own hand press together, and she didn't let go, and she didn't make a sound, and she didn't look at him.

Malik kept his eyes on Zara.

The matriarch lifted her cup and drank and set it down, and when she spoke again she still wasn't looking at Sefa. She was looking at Lyra. Straight down the length of the table, past the cold bread and the pale mash and the four lines Talla had drawn in the water, right at her youngest, and her scarred hands stayed wrapped around the clay the whole time she talked.

"You'll go with him after the meal," Zara said. "You'll take the readings first — Veth's instruments, the ones she showed you how to hold. You'll log them before first bell tomorrow. He doesn't leave the ring. He doesn't go down to the dock. He doesn't set foot past the arch without me knowing the hour he left and the hour he came back."

Sefa's glasses caught the window light and threw it back. "Yes, matriarch."

"You'll sleep in the room across from his. Not in it. Across from it." Zara's eyes hadn't moved off Lyra. "You'll keep the door open. You'll write down what the walls say in the morning, the way you always do, and you'll bring the slate to me before anyone else in this ring puts their hands on it."

"Yes, matriarch."

Lyra's grip on his hand had gone past hard now. It was the grip of someone holding onto a rail in water — not affection, not fear, just the animal arithmetic of staying upright. Her face hadn't changed. Her jaw was still set the way it had been since Zara said eight years, and her eyes were still on the middle of the table, and the blue of her hair had gone dull in the flat window light, the way blue goes when there's nothing behind it.

Malik felt the shape of it before he understood the words. Across from his room. Door open. Slate first. Zara wasn't putting Sefa on the schedule. She was putting her on the leash.

"That's not the rotation," Talla said.

She said it without heat. The way she'd said the numbers. She had her cup down on the table and both forearms flat on the wood and she was looking at Zara the way she'd been looking at her all morning — the long, patient look of a woman who'd had this exact fight before and knew how many rounds it ran.

"The rotation is mine to set," Zara said.

"The rotation is mine, Mira's, Korena's, Sefa's, and Lyra's. You said so last season. You said the table votes."

"The table votes on the man." Zara's thumb moved once on the rim of her cup. "The table doesn't vote on the watch."

"Sefa's on the watch now."

"Sefa's on the watch because Sefa reads." Zara finally turned her head and looked at Talla — the flat green eyes, the scars on her forearms catching the cold light off the slit windows. "Which one of you wants to take the slate."

Nobody answered.

Korena had her arms crossed again and her eyes on the floor. Lyra hadn't lifted her head. And Sefa — Sefa had her hands folded on the jug and her glasses throwing their two coins of glare at the middle of the table, and she hadn't moved since she said yes the second time.

"That's what I thought," Zara said. She picked up her cup and drank and set it down and her hands went back to wrapping it, and the steam came up between her and her scars, and she went on looking at Lyra.

Malik took his hand out from under the table. He put it flat on the wood next to the drying print of Talla's palm, and he turned his head and looked at Zara the way he looked at a foreman who'd just moved his crew onto a job nobody had told him about.

"You're putting a babysitter on me," he said.

"I'm putting a reader on you."

"Same thing."

"Not to me." Zara's eyes came off Lyra and landed on him, and there was no heat in them either, no apology, nothing to push against. "You're the last door, and the last door doesn't get to stand in a room alone with the only woman in this clan who's ever asked for something for herself. You think I'm going to sit at this table and let that happen twice."

Lyra's head came up.

She didn't say anything. She looked at her aunt across the cold bread and the wet wood and the four lines Talla had drawn and let dry, and her mouth was open a half-inch and her eyes had gone wide and bright, and the blue in her hair caught the light again — not shimmering, not glowing, just catching it, the way a thing catches light when it's been sitting in the dark and someone finally turns a lamp on it.

"You knew," Lyra said.

"I read the walls."

"You knew before."

"I knew the season Veth ran your scan." Zara's hands didn't move on the cup. "I knew the morning the number came back positive and I sat in the cold room with Veth and she showed me the strand and told me it would hold. I knew the day I called you in here and told you what the contract was and you said yes before I finished the sentence." She let that sit. "You think I didn't know what you'd do the first night."

Lyra's hands were flat on the table now. Both of them. She'd let go of Malik's knee without him feeling it happen, and her palms were pressed to the wood the way a person presses their palms to a wall to keep from going through it.

"Then why did you let me," she said.

"Because I needed to see if you'd ask him to stop."

The room went very quiet.

Sefa's hands came apart on the jug and folded again. Talla's forearms stayed flat on the wood. Korena had turned her face back to the window and the cold light was laying itself down the side of her throat and she wasn't moving. The fire under the floor hummed its low note and the walls pulsed their slow blue and somewhere past the common room the same soft door opened and closed and the draft came through and lifted the edge of the tablecloth and set it back down.

Lyra's mouth worked. Nothing came out of it.

"You didn't," Zara said. "You asked him not to go. That's in the walls too. You put your mouth against his ear and you asked him not to go and he stayed, and I sat in this chair and read it the next morning and I decided what to do about it." She lifted the cup and drank and set it down. "This is what I decided."

Malik sat with his back against the bench and both hands flat on the table and watched the matriarch's scarred thumb trace the rim of her cup, once, and stop.

He'd worked for men like her. Twenty years of job sites and foremen and crew bosses and men who owned the trucks, and every one of them had the same trick — you didn't get told the rule until you'd already broken it, and then the rule came down on you like a dropped beam and you were standing in the dust trying to remember which way you'd been facing. Zara wasn't angry. That was the thing. She wasn't punishing Lyra. She was doing exactly what she'd been doing since the morning she read the scan — moving the pieces on the board, one at a time, out loud, in front of the whole table, and letting them all watch her do it.

"Does Sefa get a turn," Malik said.

Zara's eyes came back to him. Flat. Unreadable. The same eyes that had told him he was doing well.

"Sefa gets a turn when I say she gets a turn," she said.

"That's not what I asked."

"It's the only answer you're getting."

"Then I'll ask it a different way." Malik picked up his cup — the one Sefa had filled past the line, the one with the wet track running down its side — and turned it a quarter turn on the wood and set it back down. "You put Sefa in the room across from mine with the door open and the slate in her hands. That's a watch. Fine. She watches. But she's also one of the five, and the five is the rotation, and the rotation is what's supposed to fill the cribs. So either she's a watcher or she's a turn, and she can't be both, and you know it."

Talla's cup came down on the table. Not a click. A knock. She didn't say anything. She just set it down hard and left her hand on it and looked at Zara down the length of the wood with the flat precision she'd been wearing all morning, and the corner of her mouth did the quarter-inch thing it did, and she didn't smile.

Zara looked at her. Then at Malik. Then at Sefa.

Sefa hadn't moved. Her hands were folded on the jug and her glasses were throwing their two coins of glare at the middle of the table and her mouth was thin and even and she was looking at nothing at all, and Malik understood, watching her, that she'd known the answer before he asked the question. She'd been sitting there with it since Zara said her name. She'd been holding it in both hands the way she held the jug — carefully, without spilling, without letting anybody see how much it weighed.

"She's both," Zara said.

Korena laughed — short and sharp and entirely against her will again, and she clapped her hand over her mouth and turned her face further into the window and her ears went dark against her hair.

Lyra stood up.

The bench scraped back behind her and she was on her feet with her hands still flat on the table and her hair moving with her, and she was looking at Zara and her jaw was set and her voice came out low and steady and nothing like the girl who'd asked Malik not to go in the dark.

"Then I want to say something at this table," she said.

Zara's thumb stopped on the rim of her cup.

"Say it."

"I asked him to stay." Lyra's hands came off the table and went to her sides and stayed there. "I asked him not to go and he stayed and the walls saw it and I'm not going to stand here and let you read it to me like it's a crime. It's the first thing I've ever wanted for myself. You can put Sefa across the hall and you can put the slate in her hands and you can read the walls every morning for the next eight years, and it won't change what happened in that room, and it won't change that I asked for it."

Her voice didn't shake. The room held it.

Zara looked at her for a long count. Four. Five. The fire hummed and the walls pulsed and the cold light off the slit windows laid itself across the table and the four dry lines Talla had drawn in the water.

Then Zara set her cup down and folded her scarred hands on the wood and said, without turning her head, "Sefa."

Sefa's hands came off the jug. She sat up straight on the bench and her glasses caught the light and hid her eyes and she said, "Yes, matriarch."

The words landed on the table like a stone dropped in still water. Nobody moved to touch the jug. Nobody moved to touch the water. Lyra stayed on her feet with her hands at her sides and her jaw set and her hair gone still, and Korena stood at the window with her back to the room, and Talla sat with her palm flat on her cup, and Malik sat with both hands on the wood and his eyes on the matriarch and the whole ring around them holding its slow blue pulse, steady, satisfied, waiting.

Malik stood.

The bench scraped back behind him and he was on his feet with both hands still flat on the wood, and the room turned to look at him the way a room turns when the biggest thing in it finally moves. He didn't say anything yet. He looked down the length of the table at Zara, and she looked back, and neither of them gave an inch.

"You heard her," he said.

"I heard her." Zara's hands stayed wrapped around the cup. "She's on the watch. That's the arrangement."

"Then let's go do the arrangement."

He stepped out from behind the bench. Lyra was still standing, her hands at her sides, and she turned with him — a half-step, her shoulder coming toward his chest — and he stopped her with one hand flat on her upper arm. Light. Just enough.

"Not you," he said.

Her mouth opened. Her violet eyes went from his face to Sefa's and back, and something worked through her — he watched it happen, the way you watch weather cross a window — and then she sat back down. Slow. The bench scraped under her and she put both hands flat on the table and looked at the middle of it, at the four dry lines Talla had drawn in the water, and stayed there.

Malik walked around the end of the table. Sefa hadn't moved. She sat with her hands folded on the jug and her glasses throwing their two coins of glare at the wood, and when he came to her elbow she lifted her head and looked up at him over the rim of them, and her face was doing the complicated thing it had been doing all morning — not a smile, not not one.

"The slate," he said.

Sefa's hand went to the corner of it where it sat beside her plate. She didn't pick it up. She looked past him, down the table, at Zara. Waiting. He watched her wait — the way her thumb found the edge of the slate and stayed there, the way her whole body had gone still the way a person goes still when they're waiting for permission they haven't been given.

Zara didn't give it.

"Show him the readings," the matriarch said. Nothing else.

Sefa's hand came off the slate. She stood — quick, the bench not scraping, she was the kind of person who stood without making noise — and she was shorter than he'd thought, the top of her head coming to the middle of his chest. She reached for the slate and he got there first.

He took it out of her hands.

Not rough. He closed his fingers over the edge of it and lifted it off the table and she let it go, and then he set it back down on the wood between them, flat, face up, and turned it a quarter turn so the screen faced her and not him.

"You carry it," he said.

Sefa looked at the slate. Then at him. The coins of glare slid off her glasses for half a second and he caught her eyes behind them — amber, steady, no give in them either — and then the light came back and they were hidden again.

"Matriarch," she said, without turning.

"Go," Zara said.

Sefa picked up the slate. She tucked it under her arm the way a person carries a book they've carried a thousand times, and she stepped out from behind the bench, and Malik turned and looked at Zara one more time across the cold bread and the pale mash and Talla's four dry lines.

"I'll be back for the rest of the bread," he said.

Zara's thumb moved once on the rim of her cup.

He didn't wait for an answer. He crossed to the arch and Sefa came with him — a half-step behind, her boots soft on the warm stone — and the draft off the slit windows caught his open shirt and moved it against his chest, and then they were through the arch and the common room was behind them and the corridor took them.

The corridor ran down the spine of the ring, curved, the walls doing their slow blue pulse. He walked it the way he walked everything — long stride, eyes forward, counting the doors. Four on the left before the turn. Three on the right. The seams in the stone were tight and even, and the floor was warm through his bare feet, and somewhere behind him the common room had gone back to whatever it went back to when the human left it.

Sefa walked beside him now, not behind. She'd come up level with his elbow and stayed there, and the slate was under her arm and she was looking straight ahead, and the blue light off the walls moved across her face as they walked — across the round lenses, across the small frown that lived between her brows, across the flat line of her mouth.

"You didn't have to do that," she said.

"Do what."

"Take the slate and give it back."

"I didn't take it," he said. "I handed it. There's a difference."

Sefa was quiet for three steps. The corridor curved and the pulse went with them, slow, blue, and the light off her glasses threw small coins onto the wall as she walked.

"There isn't," she said. "Not to Zara."

"Zara wasn't in the corridor."

Sefa's mouth did the complicated thing again. She didn't answer. They walked past the turn and the corridor straightened out, and ahead of them the doors started to space themselves wider, and he understood they were in the residential stretch now — the sleep rooms, the ones he'd walked past last night without knowing which was whose.

His was the third on the left. He knew it by the seam in the wall beside the door, a hairline crack in the stone he'd noticed on the way out this morning and filed away without meaning to. He stopped in front of it. Sefa stopped beside him.

Across the corridor, directly opposite his door, there was another one. Narrower. Set into the wall at the same height, the same seam beside it, the same slow pulse moving through the stone around it.

Sefa looked at it. Then she looked at him.

"It's across from yours," she said, like she was reading it off a page.

"I can see that."

"The door stays open."

"I heard her."

Sefa shifted the slate from one arm to the other. She was looking at the narrow door the way a person looks at a chair they've been told to sit in — not with resentment, not with anything he could name. Just looking. Then she looked at him, and her glasses caught the wall's pulse and threw it back at him, two coins of blue.

"You want to see it," she said.

"I want to see where you're sleeping."

"That's not what I asked."

"It's what I said."

Sefa held his eyes for a count. Two. Three. The pulse moved through the wall between them and neither of them moved with it, and then she turned and stepped across the corridor, and he followed her.

The door was a slab of the same warm stone, no handle, and she put her palm flat on the seam and it swung inward on a hinge he couldn't see. The room behind it was small. Smaller than his. A cot against the far wall, low and narrow, a blanket folded at the foot of it, a shelf cut into the stone above it with a clay cup and a jug on it, and nothing else. No window. No chair. The walls pulsed here too, slow, blue, and the pulse moved across the bare stone and the folded blanket and the empty shelf and made the little room look like the inside of a held breath.

He stood in the doorway and looked at it.

"This is where they put the watchers," he said.

"This is where I sleep."

"Same thing."

Sefa stepped inside and set the slate down on the cot and turned to face him, and she was standing in the middle of the little room with her hands at her sides and her glasses throwing the pulse back at the doorway where he stood, and she said, "You didn't answer my question."

"Which one."

"Why you gave the slate back."

Malik put his hand on the doorframe. The stone was warm under his palm, the same warmth as the floor, the same warmth as the ring, and the pulse moved through it and into his hand and up his wrist like something with a heartbeat.

"Because you're the one who reads," he said. "And a reader who's been handed her own book back is a reader who remembers who gave it to her."

Sefa's hands came up and folded in front of her. She looked at him over the top of them, and the coins of glare slid off the lenses and he caught her eyes again — amber, steady, doing arithmetic behind the glass — and this time she didn't hide them. She let him see them for a count of three.

"That's a foreman's answer," she said.

"It's the only kind I've got."

"You've got more than one kind." She said it without heat. She said it the way she'd said the numbers at the table — flat, precise, like she was reading it off a page she'd already written. "You had four at breakfast. Nobody's ever had four."

"Nobody's ever been the last door."

"That's what Talla said."

"Talla was right."

Sefa looked at him. The pulse moved through the walls and across the folded blanket and across the empty shelf and across the two of them standing in the little stone room, and the light off her glasses moved with it, back and forth, blue to blue.

"You should go to your room," she said. "The door stays open. I'll log the readings before first bell and take the slate to Zara in the morning and nobody in this ring touches it before she does. That's the arrangement."

"I know the arrangement."

"Then go."

Malik didn't move. He stood in the doorway with his hand on the warm stone and looked at her — the small frown between her brows, the messy blue bun coming loose at the side of her neck, the data-stained fingers folded in front of her, the slate lying on the cot behind her with the screen still lit, still showing whatever readings she'd been taking all morning. She was younger than he'd thought at the table. Under the glasses and the flat voice and the folded hands, she was younger than Talla, maybe younger than Korena, and she was standing in a room the size of a closet with the door open and a leash around her neck she'd agreed to wear, and she was looking at him like she was still trying to finish reading him.

"You voted with Talla," he said.

Sefa's hands didn't move. "You don't know that."

"Four to one. Talla said it. Mira, Korena, Sefa, Talla against Zara." He tipped his chin at her. "You're Sefa."

"I'm Sefa."

"Then you voted with Talla."

Sefa's mouth thinned a hair and came back. She looked at the slate on the cot, then at him, and she said, "I voted for the readings. That's not the same as voting for you."

"What's the difference."

"The readings are what keep the clan alive. You're what the readings are about." She unfolded her hands and one of them went to the slate, and her fingers found the edge of it and stayed there, the way they'd found the edge of it at the table. "I've read everything from before the war. Every record, every log, every strand-count Veth ever ran. I know what the numbers do when they go down. I know what it looks like when a line ends. I voted to keep taking the readings because taking the readings is the only thing I know how to do that keeps anybody alive, and if that puts me in Talla's column, then I'm in Talla's column." She looked up at him. "It doesn't mean I voted for you."

Malik stood in the doorway with the pulse moving through his hand and looked at her.

"Good," he said.

Sefa blinked. Behind the glasses, just once, the way a person blinks when they've been handed something they didn't expect and don't know yet whether to put it down.

"Good," she said.

"Yeah." He took his hand off the doorframe. "I don't want a vote. I want a reader. If you're reading me because you want the clan to live, that's a reason I can work with. If you're reading me because you feel sorry for me, that's a reason I can't."

Sefa looked at him for a long count. Four. Five. The pulse went through the walls and the light off her glasses went with it and the slate under her fingers stayed lit, and then she did something he hadn't seen her do all morning. She took her glasses off.

She folded them and tucked them into the collar of her tunic and looked at him with her bare eyes — amber, steady, no glare between them and him — and she said, "I don't feel sorry for you."

"Good."

"I feel sorry for her."

Malik didn't answer. The pulse moved through the room and across the folded blanket and across the empty shelf, and Sefa stood in the middle of the little stone room with her glasses in her collar and her data-stained fingers on the slate and her bare eyes on him, and the door stood open behind him onto the corridor and the corridor stood open onto the ring and the ring stood open onto the whole station turning somewhere past the walls, and none of it was going to answer for him.

Sefa lifted the slate off the cot.

She held it up between them, screen toward him, and the readings were there — little blue lines, little blue numbers, a shape like a wave that rose and fell and rose again, and she said, "This is you." Then she turned the slate toward herself and touched the screen and the wave shifted, and she said, "This is her." Then she turned it toward him again and the two waves were laid one over the other, and where they crossed the light went brighter, a small hard blue knot in the middle of the screen.

"That's the match," she said. "That's the only one Veth has seen in nineteen years."

Malik looked at the knot of light. He reached out and put one finger on it, and the screen was warm, the same warmth as the walls, the same warmth as the floor, and the blue light came up around his fingertip and stayed there.

"What happens if it doesn't take," he said.

Sefa turned the slate away. She set it back down on the cot, screen up, and the blue knot stayed there glowing in the little room, and she looked at him with her bare amber eyes and said, "Then I take the readings again next cycle. And the cycle after that. And the cycle after that, until there isn't a reading left to take."

"That's not what I asked."

"It's what I've got." She stepped past him — close, her shoulder brushing his arm as she went through the doorway — and stopped in the corridor and turned, and she had the slate under her arm again and her glasses back on her face and the coins of glare back in place, and the pulse moved through the wall behind her and across her and across the open door of her little room and across the open door of his.

"The door stays open," she said. "Yours and mine. That's the arrangement."

Malik looked at the two open doors across the corridor from each other — the wide one and the narrow one, the pulse moving through the stone around both of them, the same slow blue, the same steady beat. Then he looked at her.

"You want to come in," he said.

Sefa's hands stilled on the slate. She looked at him, then at his open door, then back at him, and the coins of glare held steady on her lenses and behind them her face didn't move a line.

"That's not the arrangement," she said.

"I didn't ask about the arrangement."

The pulse went through the corridor. Somewhere down the ring a door opened and closed, soft, the same door, and a draft came up the corridor and moved the loose blue hair at the side of Sefa's neck and set it back down.

She didn't answer.

She stood in the corridor between the two open doors with the slate under her arm and her glasses throwing their two coins of glare at him, and she didn't say yes and she didn't say no, and the ring went on pulsing its slow blue around both of them, steady, satisfied, patient.

He waited.

He took one step back. Then another.

The corridor between them got wider by the width of his shoulders, and the pulse went through the stone at his heels and up through the soles of his feet, and Sefa didn't move. She stood where she'd stopped, in the middle of the hall with the slate clamped under her arm, and she watched him give her the room.

He didn't reach for her. He didn't put a hand on the doorframe or the wall or say a word about what he meant by it. He just kept walking backward — slow, measured, the way a man backs away from a dog he doesn't want to spook — until his shoulders cleared his own doorway and the light from inside his room fell across the floor of the corridor and stopped short of her boots.

His room opened behind him. Wider than hers. The low stone bed against the far wall, the same blanket folded at the foot, the same shelf cut into the stone with a clay cup on it that he hadn't touched, and the walls doing their slow blue, and the whole of it empty and lit and waiting.

He stopped inside the threshold and turned sideways, so the doorway stood clear. Nothing in it. No shoulder, no hip, no hand. Just the opening and the light coming out of it and the man standing off to the side of it, looking at her.

Down the corridor, the same soft door opened and closed. The draft came up the hall and moved the loose hair at Sefa's temple and set it back down and went on past her.

She didn't come.

She looked at the open door. Then at him. Then at the open door again, and she shifted her weight from one boot to the other, and the slate under her arm caught the wall's pulse and went bright for a half-second and dimmed back down.

"You're not going to say anything," she said.

"No."

"That's the worst thing you could do."

"I know."

Sefa's mouth did the thing it did — thinned a hair, came back. She looked down the corridor, both ways, the way a person checks a street before crossing it, and there was nobody in it. Just the two open doors and the blue pulse and the two of them standing in the middle of the ring's spine where the walls had eyes and the walls had always had eyes.

"Zara reads the walls in the morning," she said.

"You told me."

"I'm telling you again." Her voice didn't rise. It never rose. "She'll read them and she'll see the doors and she'll see which one you stood in and which one I stood in and how long, and she'll know exactly how many steps I took and in which direction."

"She'll know anyway."

"She'll know differently."

Malik didn't move. The light from his room laid itself across the stone between them, a long bright wedge that stopped a foot short of her boots, and he stayed at the edge of his own threshold with his hands at his sides and let her look at all of it.

"Then take the readings," he said. "You said you'd log them before first bell. Go log them."

Sefa's hands came up and folded in front of her, the slate still trapped under her arm, and she stood there with the glasses throwing their two coins of glare at him and her bare eyes hidden again behind the glass, and she didn't go.

"You want me to come in," she said.

"I want you to do what you want to do."

"That's not the same thing."

"It's the only thing I've got to offer." He tipped his chin at the open doorway beside him. "The door's open. The room's there. I'm not going to stand in the frame and make it a question."

Sefa looked at him for a long count. The pulse went through the wall behind her and across the corridor and across the wedge of light and across the open doors of both rooms, and somewhere far down the ring the fire under the floor hummed its low note, and she said, "You know what happens if I come in."

"I know what happens if you don't."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one you're going to get."

Sefa's weight shifted again, boots soft on the warm stone. She looked past him, into his room — at the low bed, the folded blanket, the untouched cup on the shelf — and her face didn't change, and her hands stayed folded, and she said, "Lyra slept in that bed last night."

"She did."

"The walls are still bright from it."

"I know."

"You don't mind."

"I mind plenty." Malik stepped one more pace sideways, deeper into his own room, and the doorway stood wider now, the whole of it empty, the light coming out of it and lying flat on the corridor floor. "I mind that she asked me not to go and I stayed and now every woman in this ring is going to stand in that hallway and decide something about me because of it. I mind that a matriarch I met yesterday gets to read my night off a wall. I mind that the only reason I'm up here is a machine that lit up when they scanned me. None of that changes the door."

Sefa's chin came up. Behind the glare, something moved — not surprise, exactly. Something closer to recognition, the way a person looks when they hear a sentence they've been carrying around in their own head said out loud by somebody else.

"You're not what I expected," she said.

"What'd you expect."

"A man who came up here for the money."

"I did come up here for the money."

"You know what I mean."

Malik let that sit. The pulse moved through the wall behind him and across the shelf and across the folded blanket, and he didn't fill the silence, and Sefa didn't either, and the two of them stood in the corridor with the light between them and let the ring keep its slow blue time.

Then she took a step.

Not toward his door. Along the corridor — one boot, then the other, soft on the stone — until she was standing at the edge of the wedge of light, close enough that the glow from his room caught the bottom of her tunic and the data-stained fingers folded over her slate. She stopped there. Toe of her boot a half-inch from the light and not in it.

"I've read everything from before the war," she said. "Every log. Every strand-count. Every entry Veth ever wrote into the archive, going back four generations. I know what the numbers do. I know what a line looks like when it ends — not the way Talla knows it, not the way Zara knows it. I know it the way a person knows a word they've read a thousand times and never said out loud."

"And."

"And I've never once read a record of a man standing in a doorway like that." She looked at him. "Every account we've got from before the war is a man who came into a room and took what he wanted. Every one. Our own histories. Our own mothers' histories. There's not a single page where a man steps back."

Malik put his hand on the wall beside the doorway. Just his palm, flat on the warm stone, the pulse moving through it and into his wrist.

"The histories are old," he said.

"They're all we've got."

"Then they're missing something."

Sefa looked at his hand on the wall. Then at his face. Then past him, into the room, at the low bed and the folded blanket and the empty cup, and she stood at the edge of the light with the slate under her arm and the pulse moving across her glasses and she didn't cross.

"If I come in," she said, "Zara knows by morning."

"Yeah."

"She'll put me back on the watch and she'll put Korena on the slate and she'll keep me off the rotation for a season. Maybe more." Her fingers tightened on the edge of the slate. "I've been waiting on the rotation since I was sixteen. I've taken every reading, kept every log, sat at that table every morning for eight years, and I have never once been the one in the room. You understand what that costs."

"I understand what it costs."

"Do you."

"I've been the one in the room," Malik said. "Last night. First time. And I don't know yet whether it cost me anything, because I don't know yet what the ledger says. So no — I don't understand what it costs you. I understand what it costs a man who's never been wanted for anything but his hands. That's the only ledger I've got."

Sefa's mouth opened a half-inch and closed. She looked at the light on the floor, at the line of it lying an inch from her boot, and she stood there with her whole body asking a question her mouth hadn't gotten to yet.

Down the ring, the soft door opened and closed again. The draft came up the corridor and moved the wedge of light on the floor and set it back down, and the pulse went on through the walls, steady, blue, patient.

Malik took his hand off the wall.

He didn't say anything else. He stepped back — one more pace, two — until he was standing at the far edge of his own doorway, off to the side of it, out of the frame entirely. The opening stood clear between them. Nothing in it. No shoulder, no arm, no shadow. Just the light coming out of the room and lying on the corridor floor and stopping a half-inch short of her boot, and the man standing in the dark of his own wall with his hands at his sides, looking at her.

Sefa's glasses caught the pulse. Two coins of blue, steady, thrown back at him across the open doorway.

She didn't move.

She stood in the corridor with the slate under her arm and her boots on the warm stone and the light an inch from her toes, and the ring went on pulsing around both of them, slow, satisfied, and the open door stayed open, and neither of them said a word.

He waited.

The pulse went through the wall behind him and up through the soles of his feet, and Malik stayed where he was — off to the side of his own doorway, in the dark of the wall, with the opening standing clear between them and the light lying flat on the stone like something spilled.

Sefa's boot was still a half-inch from it. He could see the gap from where he stood, a thin dark line of corridor stone between the edge of the glow and the toe of her boot, and he could see her weight sitting on her heels, and he could see the slate pressed against her ribs under her folded arm, its edge digging a line into the fabric of her tunic.

She breathed. He watched her do it — the rise of the tunic, the drop. The glasses held their two coins of blue and gave nothing back.

"You're going to stand there all night," she said.

"Probably not all night."

"Long enough."

"Long enough for what."

Sefa didn't answer that one. She turned her head a few degrees and looked down the corridor the way she'd looked before — both ways, the check, the habit — and the ring ran away from them in both directions, empty, the soft doors closed, the pulse moving along the walls in its slow tide. Nothing came up the hall. No footsteps. No draft from a door. Just the low hum under the floor and the two of them standing in the middle of it.

She looked back at him.

"The readings," she said. "I do have to take them."

"Then take them."

"Here."

"Here's fine."

Sefa shifted the slate out from under her arm and held it flat on both palms, and the screen came up gray-green and threw its own small light onto her chin and the underside of her glasses. She touched it once. The screen shifted. She touched it again and held her thumb down, and a column of numbers rolled up the glass and stopped.

Malik watched her work. Her fingers moved the way a person's fingers move when they've done a thing ten thousand times — no looking, no hunting, the thumb finding the corner of the frame and the screen answering.

"What's it say," he said.

"It says the corridor's warm."

"That's it."

"That's what I'm logging." She didn't look up. "Air temperature, wall temperature, the pulse interval, the count on both doors. That's the reading. That's what I take every night at this hour."

"And the count on my door."

"Open." Her thumb moved. "Since the second bell."

"And yours."

"Open since you stepped into it."

She said it flat, still not looking up, and the numbers rolled another line and stopped, and she stood there with the slate lit in her hands and her boots on the stone and the light of his room an inch from her toes.

"So log it," Malik said.

"I'm logging it."

"You're standing in the hall holding a screen."

"I'm logging it," she said again, and this time her thumb didn't move, and the column of numbers sat there on the glass and didn't change, and she looked at them the way a person looks at a page they've already read.

The wall behind Malik pulsed once, slow, and the light in the room behind him brightened a shade and dimmed back, and the brightness crossed the floor and touched the toe of her boot and went away again.

Neither of them said anything about it.

Somewhere down the ring a latch turned — small, metal, a door settling into its frame — and the sound came up the corridor and passed between them and went on toward the far end of the hall and died. Sefa's head came up at it. She held still a count, listening, and when nothing followed she looked back down at the slate.

"Korena's door," she said.

"You know it by the latch."

"I know every door in this ring by the latch. I've been taking the readings since I was sixteen." She touched the screen and the numbers rolled again. "That one sticks. It's been sticking since before the war. Nobody's fixed it because nobody sleeps in there."

"Somebody's sleeping in there now."

Sefa's thumb stopped. She looked up at him over the rim of the glasses, and the two coins of blue held steady, and something behind them moved and settled and didn't say what it was.

"Yes," she said. "Somebody is."

She held his eyes a beat longer than the reading needed, then looked back down and finished the column and pressed her thumb flat to the frame until the screen went gray-green and then dark, and she slid the slate back under her arm and folded both hands over it again.

The light from his room lay on the floor between them, patient, and the gap between the edge of it and the toe of her boot was still a half-inch of dark stone, and Malik stood in the shadow of his own wall with his hands at his sides and didn't move and didn't fill it.

Sefa looked at the open doorway. Then at him. Then at the doorway again.

"You're not going to ask me," she said.

"No."

"Why not."

"Because you already know the door's open." He tipped his chin at it, slow, once. "Asking would make it something I did to you. It's not. It's just a door."

Sefa's jaw worked. She looked down the corridor one more time — both ways, the check, the habit, the same as before and the same as always — and there was nobody in it, and the pulse went on through the walls, and the ring kept its slow blue time, and she stood at the edge of the light with the slate under her arm and did not cross.

Then she took a breath, and let it out through her nose, and her boots stayed where they were.

"First bell's in four hours," she said.

"I know."

"Zara will read the walls before it rings."

"I know."

"She'll see both doors open."

"She'll see what she sees."

Sefa nodded once, small, the way a person nods at the end of a thing they've already decided. She looked at him for a last long count — the dark of the wall, the hands at his sides, the doorway standing clear between them — and then she turned, boots soft on the warm stone, and walked back down the corridor the way she'd come, past her own open door without stopping, and the light from his room lay on the floor behind her and did not follow.

Malik stayed where he was and watched her go. The slate under her arm caught the pulse twice more before she reached the corner of the ring, and then she was past it and the corridor was empty and the pulse went on without her.

He stood there a while longer. The light came out of his room and lay across the stone and stopped where it always stopped, a foot short of nothing now, and the ring hummed its low note under the floor, and the walls did their slow blue, and the door stayed open.

He looked at the empty hall.

Then he reached out, and put his palm flat against the doorframe, and left it open.