The compound on a Wednesday in February.
Roan at the gate at seven, same as every morning, the specific unhurried arrival of a man who had come to work at this gate for years and intended to come for many more. Wren had left for the eastern perimeter twenty minutes earlier — they worked the same territory in different sections, a configuration that had developed without discussion, the two of them distributing their attention across what needed attention without needing to coordinate it explicitly. By now their mornings had a rhythm.
In the archive, Zane and two new researchers he'd trained — younger, from territories that had come into the Ledger's network in the last two years — were working through Asha's sixth book, which had turned out to contain the most complete account of the See
