Karnathes came back the way he always did, which was to say without coming through anything at all. One moment the war room held only the four of us bent over Vesha's ledger, arguing in low voices about whether to send a party east toward the Third King's border or wait for the relay to raise someone, and the next he was standing at the head of the table as though he'd been there the entire time and we'd simply failed to notice him until now.
Zereth had his sword half-drawn before his mind caught up with his hand and made him stop. Dren, at the door, didn't draw at all — just planted himself a half-step wider, the way he and Othar had taken to doing lately whenever anyone entered a room near me without an announcement, which after three years I'd stopped telling them was unnecessary, because increasingly it wasn't.
