Ryke was quiet for a long time.
Then: "The compound's funding. You did it because she would have wanted to know."
"Yes."
"Not to control it. Not to have leverage."
"No." A pause. "Although I understand why you assumed otherwise."
"You've given me considerable reason to assume otherwise."
"Yes," Holt said. "I have."
---
I went to make more tea because it had been a long morning and the kettle was something to do that wasn't staring at two people excavating something I had no right to excavate alongside them.
Ryke came to stand beside me at the counter while the kettle heated. He didn't say anything. Neither did I.
After a while he said, quietly, "My mother would have made tea."
"Was she a tea person or was it the same reflex I have, where it's just the thing your hands do when ev
