NEVA POV
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He was shorter than I expected.
I want to note this because seven months of knowing someone had been watching you from inside your walls had produced, in my head, a specific kind of man. Tall, probably. Somehow simultaneously in shadow.
Crel Daven was five foot nine, wore practical clothes, had the kind of face that was immediately forgettable in the most deliberate way possible, and shook Silo's hand at the gate with the composure of a man who understood that Silo Brack was the real threat assessment in this compound and wanted it on record from the first moment that he wasn't here to cause problems.
Silo, for his part, shook back with the grip he used for people he was reserving judgment on. I'd learned to read the gradations. This was the middle one: *not dismissed, no
