The stone was no longer just cold—foreign. For four days I had counted the cracks in the wall, for four days I had watched how the world slid aside through the bars’ stripes. Between the healer’s nights stretched long, empty days: there was water, barely any food. The bandage on my belly stayed clean, but my body had lost all taste for argument. The wolf in my chest lay flat, head on its paws; it didn’t sleep, it watched, but no longer growled at every sound. What could be learned, we had learned to keep quiet about.
Around noon the same taut order arrived in the corridor: boots in unison, the key in the lock didn’t jangle, only turned. At the bars appeared the scarred one and the young one, behind them the cloaked man, and finally the man at whose halt the air becomes obligation. The kin
