Seul had been staring at the same patch of sky for ten minutes.
She was sitting on the steps of what used to be the great church at Hwaseong, the one they had half wrecked fighting the Sin Eater months ago. Somebody had cleaned most of the rubble away since then. The statue of the Lady of the Dawn was still gone, but the steps were whole, and the courtyard in front of them had been swept, and people had planted small green shoots along the edges in little rows. Somebody had wanted something to grow here.
Above the city, where the great gate had hung all morning like a wound in the sky, there was nothing now but grey clouds and an ordinary afternoon.
It didn't feel like an afternoon. It felt like she had been gone for weeks.
