They were given rooms in the Memory College’s guest wing—stone chambers that smelled of dust and old arguments. Irien placed a continuous watch on the foundation stone and another on Lira. Tallen appointed himself unofficial liaison, appearing at their door with food, ink, and an apparently endless supply of questions.
“Could the same double refusal work on a smaller wound? Say, a single sealed archive shelf that has begun to leak only the boring parts of history? Asking for a friend. The friend is me.”
Kael threw a crust of bread at him. “Eat first. Theorize second. Some of us bled for your foundation stone today.”
Tallen caught the crust and ate it cheerfully. Sela already had three pages of notes on the binding phrases Vesh and Tallen had used. Cal had started a new section on the sl
