At the bottom, an engineer had written a question.
If his strength should fail while the passage is open, which restraint carries the excess?
There was no answer.
Instead, tucked into the fold of the drawing, Kali found a list of the people who had stayed to close the gate behind the last of the refugees.
It was a short list. The ancestor's name was on it. She rested her elbows on the table.
The man in the golden relief had earned some part of the gratitude expressed there. He had given up much of his strength, carried the burden of what remained, and been among the last to leave the world he had helped destroy.
Centuries later, the people he had saved had dragged him to another gate and killed him to power their return.
Neither fact made the other less ugly. What she still wanted to know was when their souls had become involved. The original formation had no use for them.
She found the first binding recorded in a midwife's ledger.
