She'd been doing it in the evenings, after Aldis was down, in the small room off the east wing she'd claimed as a workspace — not the administrative kind, she had a perfectly good desk in the main building for that. This room was different. Smaller. The kind of room you didn't go to because you had to.
Sera found out about it from Marcus, who mentioned it the way Marcus mentioned things that were important but that he understood were not his to explain — briefly, with a particular kind of care.
"She's writing something," he said. "Been at it for two months. I don't ask what it is."
Sera didn't ask either, until Neva came to her one evening and asked if she had time.
The room was tidy in the Neva way, which meant everything in it had a reason for being there, including the particular an
