The City of Anahit — After the Seal
The lights had come back fully.
Silver and blue together — the original crystal blue of the city's infrastructure and the new silver that the hairpin had introduced, both present simultaneously, both real. The cavern ceiling that had been dark was the night sky again. The rivers moved with their luminescence. The trees held their floating lights.
Anahit was itself again.
Aerion stood in the center of it and held the hairpin.
The crescent was still warm — the specific warmth of something that had recently been used for its intended purpose and was now in the specific state of having done what it was meant to do. Not depleted. Satisfied.
The silver light from it pulsed slowly.
Aerion looked at it.
Then at the old man, who had appeared at the hall's entrance with the expression of someone who had just been outside managing several hundred frightened people and had succeeded and was now returning to find that things were different.
Old Man, looking at the silver light:
Old Man: "The seal held."
Aerion: "Yes."
Old Man: "The dome."
Aerion: "Reinforced." He paused. "Temporarily."
Old Man: "How temporarily."
Aerion: "Months. The sword estimated months to years."
Old Man: "Then we have time."
Aerion: "For now. Yes."
Old Man looked at the city around them. At the silver-and-blue quality of the light. At the specific way Anahit looked different from how it had looked an hour ago — not worse, different. More present. As if something that had been slightly distant had returned to full proximity.
Old Man: "The last person who touched the hairpin was—"
He stopped.
Aerion looked at him.
Old Man, confused:
Old Man: "That's strange."
Aerion: "What."
Old Man: "I was going to say the last person who saw it was — someone." He paused. "A name came to mind and then—"
Aerion: "Lara."
The old man went still.
Old Man: "I didn't say Lara."
Aerion: "No. Neither did I."
They both looked at each other.
Old Man: "Then where did—"
Voice, from behind Aerion:
Voice: "You did."
Aerion turned.
The street was different.
Not the architecture — the quality. The specific quality of a space that has an additional presence in it that wasn't there a moment before.
A girl stood under one of the silver-leaved trees.
The leaves were falling around her — the specific slow fall of the Realm's trees when the air moved through them, each leaf catching the silver light of the hairpin and the blue light of the crystals in different proportions depending on its angle. She was framed in this without appearing to have arranged it. She simply existed in the space and the space had responded.
Aerion looked at her.
She looked at him.
Neither of them moved.
Old Man, very quietly:
Old Man: "...Who is that."
Aerion: "I don't know yet."
She was young — or carried the quality of young while also carrying the specific quality of something underneath that was considerably older. Dark hair, falling past her shoulders. Under the silver light, the hair carried faint violet at the angles — not colored, the specific refraction of hair that had been in proximity to a specific kind of dimensional energy for long enough to retain something of it.
Her eyes: blue-gray. Not the pale blue-gray of something uncertain — the clear blue-gray of something that had decided exactly what it was looking at and was looking at it.
The outfit: dark, fitted, designed for movement. The silver along its edges caught the light in the specific way of something that wasn't decoration. A thin silver ornament around one wrist that she touched without touching — the unconscious awareness of something worn for a long time.
She wasn't surprised.
That was what registered first. In an underground city that had just experienced a seal failure and reinforcement and silver light filling the streets — she was entirely unsurprised. As if she had known this evening was coming for a while and had been waiting for it to arrive.
Aerion's hand moved slightly toward the sword.
She saw it.
She smiled.
Lara: "You don't need to draw that."
Aerion: "That depends."
Lara: "On what."
Aerion: "On whether you're going to attack me."
Lara, looking at the sword:
Lara: "If I wanted to attack you—" A brief pause. "You wouldn't have noticed me until it was already over."
Aerion looked at her.
She looked back.
He moved his hand away from the sword.
Aerion: "Confident."
Lara: "Observant."
Aerion: "You're saying your confidence is based on observation."
Lara: "I'm saying confidence and observation are the same thing if you're paying attention correctly."
Aerion, with the slight expression he reserved for things he found unexpectedly interesting:
Aerion: "All right."
She moved toward him. Not the movement of someone approaching cautiously — the movement of someone who has decided where they're going and is going there without performing the decision.
Her eyes went to the hairpin.
She saw it.
And something in her expression changed — not dramatically, the specific small change of something surfacing that had been held below the surface. A quality that existed at the intersection of recognition and something older and heavier than recognition.
Lara, very quietly:
Lara: "You found it."
Aerion: "Under the flowers. In the northeast courtyard."
Lara: "Under the silver flowers."
Aerion: "Yes."
She was quiet for a moment.
Lara: "I thought it was gone forever."
The specific quality of that sentence. Not I thought it was lost or I didn't know it was there. Gone forever. The specific phrasing of someone who had believed the loss was irreversible and is now receiving information that revises that belief.
Aerion: "Who are you?"
Lara, returning her gaze from the hairpin to him:
Lara: "Lara."
Aerion waited.
She didn't continue.
Aerion: "That all?"
Lara: "You asked who I am. That's who I am."
Aerion: "I usually expect slightly more information than a single name when a person appears in a hidden underground city without any apparent method of arrival."
Lara, with the small smile:
Lara: "Do you normally ask strangers for their entire history?"
Aerion: "I ask for enough to determine whether they're going to be a problem."
Lara: "And what tells you that?"
Aerion: "The specific way people answer questions."
She looked at him.
Lara: "Then ask one."
Aerion: "How did you get into Anahit."
Lara: "The same way you did. Through a passage."
Aerion: "Which one."
Lara: "Not the eastern one." A brief pause. "There's a western passage. Older than the eastern. Less known."
Aerion: "The city has multiple hidden passages."
Lara: "She built multiple ways in and out. She always gave people options." She paused. "It was a character quality."
Aerion: "She."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "The founder. Anahit."
Lara's expression shifted — the small shift that was becoming familiar. The specific quality of something surfacing.
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "You knew her."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "And the hairpin belonged to her."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "You said you thought it was gone forever."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "Which means you knew it existed. And lost track of it."
Lara: "Or it lost track of me." A pause. "The two aren't the same."
Aerion held the hairpin up.
Aerion: "The crescent. The stars. Can you tell me what the constellation is? I couldn't identify it."
Lara looked at the ornament.
Lara: "It's not a real constellation."
Aerion: "A made one."
Lara: "One she invented." She looked at the stars around the crescent with the expression of someone reading something they know. "She said real constellations belonged to astronomers. She wanted one that belonged to her." A pause. "She picked stars she could see from the city when she visited the surface. One from each direction. North, south, east, west, above, and the center." Another pause. "Seven stars."
Aerion: "Seven directions."
Lara: "Seven positions that made the view complete." She looked at him. "She was particular about completeness."
Old Man, who had been listening from a careful distance:
Old Man: "You knew her well."
Lara looked at the old man.
The look was — complicated. Not unfriendly. The look of someone for whom this city carried more than one quality simultaneously.
Lara: "Yes."
Old Man: "Who are you, then? In the records, in the documents she left — she mentions several people by description. But the names are—"
Lara: "She didn't use names in the documents."
Old Man: "No."
Lara: "She was careful about names. She understood that names follow people." A pause. "She didn't want anyone followed."
Old Man: "Then you know the documents."
Lara: "Some of them."
Old Man: "How."
Lara: "Because some of them were written for me specifically. The ones not in the general archive." She paused. "She left things in different places for different people." She looked at Aerion. "The hairpin was left for someone in particular. But not for me."
Aerion: "For whoever the sword chose."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "You knew about the sword."
Lara: "She told me about it. What she was going to do with it." A pause. "She said the sword was the most consistent being she'd ever met. That it would find the right person eventually."
Aerion, to the sword:
Aerion: "She described you as consistent."
The Sword, with a quality that might have been slightly pleased:
The Sword: "She wasn't wrong."
Aerion, to Lara:
Aerion: "The sword agrees with that description."
Lara, looking at the sword:
Lara: "She also said it was particular. And opinionated. And occasionally infuriating."
The Sword: "She was not wrong about those either."
Aerion: "It agrees with those too."
Lara looked at the sword for a moment with the expression of someone seeing something they've been told about and finding it consistent with the telling.
Lara: "You can hear it."
Aerion: "Since I touched it."
Lara: "It spoke to her too. She said it was the first sword she'd ever met that had opinions about things other than swordsmanship."
Aerion: "It has opinions about many things."
Lara: "Yes. She said it would." She paused. "She also said it was better for the sword to have opinions. That an opinionated partner is better than a compliant tool."
Aerion: "She was right."
Lara: "She usually was."
The city moved around them — the people were beginning to settle after the earlier disruption, the specific gradual settling of communities that have learned to manage unusual events and are now completing the management. The silver light continued to pulse from the hairpin.
Lara, looking at the hairpin:
Lara: "Anahit is waking up."
Aerion: "The city—"
Lara: "Not the city." She looked at the ground beneath them. "Something underneath it."
Aerion: "The seal."
Lara: "What's sealed."
Old Man: "We reinforced it tonight. The dome—"
Lara: "I felt it. The reinforcement." She paused. "The hairpin was used."
Aerion: "Yes."
Lara: "You channeled it through yourself."
Aerion: "Yes."
Lara, with an expression that was harder to read:
Lara: "And the signature held. The dome accepted you."
Aerion: "Yes."
She was quiet for a moment.
Lara: "She was right about more things than I gave her credit for."
Aerion: "What thing specifically."
Lara: "She said the signature would persist. That what she was would find its way forward in someone who came after." She looked at him. "I didn't entirely believe her. It seemed—" She paused. "Hopeful in the way of people who want something to be true."
Aerion: "And now."
Lara: "And now someone is standing in Anahit holding her hairpin and the dome accepted them." She held his gaze. "It wasn't hope. It was calculation."
Aerion: "She calculated the signature forward."
Lara: "She calculated everything forward. As far as she could see." A pause. "She told me where the forward stopped. The edge of what she could calculate."
Aerion: "Where did it stop."
Lara: "At the question of what's sealed above the city."
Aerion: "What can't be destroyed."
She looked at him.
Lara: "You already know the question."
Aerion: "Yes."
Lara: "And the answer."
Aerion: "No."
Lara: "That's where the calculation stopped. Yes." She looked upward, at the ceiling, at whatever was above it. "She could calculate the signature forward. She could calculate the city's maintenance. She could calculate where the sword would end up and who would be able to touch it." Another pause. "She couldn't calculate the answer to the question."
Aerion: "Because she didn't know the answer."
Lara: "No. She knew more about what's sealed above this city than anyone alive. She knew its nature, its history, what had been tried before her, what she tried, why everything failed." She looked at Aerion. "She couldn't calculate forward because the answer requires something she didn't have."
Aerion: "What."
Lara, looking at the hairpin:
Lara: "Someone with her signature who isn't her."
Aerion: "The difference."
Lara: "She tried to destroy it from the inside of the problem. She was too close. She knew it too well. Whatever it needed to be addressed required—" She paused. "Distance. Perspective. Someone who understood the signature without being constrained by the history."
Aerion: "I don't know the history."
Lara: "No."
Aerion: "Is that the distance you mean."
Lara: "Part of it." She paused. "I can give you the history. The documents can give you what she knew. But what you do with it—" She held his gaze. "That's where the forward stops."
A distant rumble moved through the cavern.
Not the violent kind — the specific low rumble of something large that has moved slightly in its sleep. The seal, reinforced but not restored. The thing above it, retreated but not gone.
The hairpin in Aerion's hand pulsed.
Lara's eyes went to it immediately.
Lara, quietly:
Lara: "It's responding to the rumble."
Aerion: "Yes."
Lara: "It recognized what made it."
Aerion: "Yes."
She was very still for a moment.
Lara: "Put it away."
Aerion: "You said—"
Lara: "Put it away now. Close your hand around it fully and hold the intention away from what's above."
Aerion looked at her.
The specific look he used when someone was being urgent in a way that deserved either trust or explanation.
Aerion: "Explain."
Lara: "The hairpin is broadcasting. The signature is radiating outward. Whatever's above us can feel it — it's what called the rumble in the first place." She held his gaze. "It won't break through the reinforced seal tonight. But it will spend the night pressing at the thinnest points and those points will be thinner by morning."
Aerion: "And if I close it."
Lara: "The signature goes quiet. Below whatever threshold makes it worth pressing for."
He closed his hand around the hairpin.
The silver light went quiet.
The pulse stopped.
The rumble, which had been building slightly, subsided.
Silence.
Lara exhaled — not dramatically, the specific exhale of someone who had been holding something and has set it down.
Aerion: "You were afraid."
Lara: "I was concerned."
Aerion: "Those are different."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "Which was it."
Lara, after a brief pause:
Lara: "The thing above this city knows my name." She said it with the specific flat quality of something that is simply true and has been true for a long time. "Whatever I feel about it is not something I'd describe as afraid."
Aerion: "What would you describe it as."
Lara: "Old."
He held her gaze.
Aerion: "How long has it known your name."
Lara: "Since the sealing." She paused. "She sealed it in my presence. It identified everyone present. It remembers."
Aerion: "You were there."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "Three hundred years ago."
She looked at him.
Lara: "Yes."
The specific weight of that. Three hundred years. The old man beside them was several generations from the founding. The city had existed for three hundred years. And this woman—
Aerion: "You're from the founding."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "You've been in Anahit since then."
Lara: "In and out." She paused. "I don't stay in one place well."
Aerion: "But you came back."
Lara: "When the seal started weakening a decade ago, yes. I came back to—" She stopped. "To watch. To see if it was going to fail completely or stabilize."
Aerion: "And?"
Lara: "It was going to fail. Eventually." She paused. "And then you arrived."
Old Man, who had been very quiet for a while:
Old Man: "If you're from the founding — if you were there when she sealed it—" He paused. "Then you're—"
Lara looked at him.
Old Man, working through something:
Old Man: "The documents mention someone. Not by name. A companion. Someone she called—" He paused. "Someone she said was more than a partner and less than what she should have been."
Lara, very quietly:
Lara: "That's me."
Old Man: "She described you as—" He stopped.
Lara: "Tell me."
Old Man, gently:
Old Man: "She described you as the person she trusted most. And the person who understood her least."
Lara was still for a moment.
Lara: "Yes." She paused. "She was right about that too."
Nyx, who had been watching all of this from a nearby elevated position, chose this moment to fly down and land on Aerion's shoulder.
Then looked at Lara.
The specific look. The golden eyes.
Nyx made a sound.
Lara looked at Nyx.
Her expression did something complicated.
Lara: "Hello."
Nyx made another sound.
Lara, to Nyx, and the quality of how she spoke to the dragon was different from how she'd spoken to anything else since arriving — less managed, more direct:
Lara: "You grew well."
Aerion: "You know Nyx."
Lara: "Not this one." She looked at the dragon with the complicated expression. "The previous one."
Aerion: "The ancient dragon. The one that left forty years ago."
Lara: "Yes." She paused. "I was the last person to see it before it left."
Aerion: "Where did it go."
Lara, looking at Nyx:
Lara: "To find what comes next." She paused. "That's what old dragons do when they've finished their purpose in one place. They go find where the next thing is happening." She looked at Nyx. "And then apparently they send a young one in their place."
Nyx made a sound.
Lara, to Nyx:
Lara: "I know. You didn't choose to be sent. You just found him."
Nyx made another sound.
Lara: "Yes. Same thing."
Aerion, watching this exchange:
Aerion: "You speak dragon."
Lara: "I understand this particular dragon's register because it matches the ancient one's patterns." She paused. "It's not a language exactly. More like—"
Aerion: "Dimensional signature."
Lara, with the small expression:
Lara: "Yes. Exactly."
Aerion: "The ancient dragon's signature carried forward."
Lara: "Yes." She looked at Nyx one more time with the complicated expression and then looked at Aerion. "We should move."
Aerion: "Where."
Lara: "There's a room below the city. She built it for exactly this situation — for when what's above started pressing seriously against the seal." She started walking. "It's shielded. The thing above can't feel dimensional signatures in it."
Aerion: "How far."
Lara: "Under the central tower. The stairs are behind a door that looks like part of the wall."
Aerion: "A hidden room inside a hidden city."
Lara, with the dry quality:
Lara: "She was thorough."
Aerion followed.
He looked at the old man.
Old Man, who seemed to have made a decision:
Old Man: "I'll stay with the people. They need—" He paused. "Someone to tell them something calm."
Aerion: "Yes."
Old Man: "Mael will be in the hall. If you need us."
Aerion: "Yes."
Old Man, looking at Lara for a moment:
Old Man: "She said you'd come back."
Lara stopped.
Didn't turn.
Lara, quietly:
Lara: "I know."
Old Man: "She said: when things come to a head, Lara will come back. She always does."
Lara was still for a moment.
Lara, barely:
Lara: "She knew me better than I knew myself."
Old Man: "Yes." A pause. "She knew most people better than they knew themselves." Another pause. "It was either her greatest gift or her greatest burden."
Lara: "Both."
She started walking again.
Aerion walked beside her.
Through the streets of Anahit, silver and blue.
Aerion: "The documents."
Lara: "Yes?"
Aerion: "You said she left some specifically for you."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "And some for whoever the sword chose."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "Different documents."
Lara: "Different information for different people." She paused. "What she told me is about who she was and what she tried and why it failed. What she left for whoever carries the sword is about what she couldn't calculate forward."
Aerion: "The answer she couldn't find."
Lara: "Every direction she pointed toward. Every partial understanding she developed. Everything that got close without arriving." She paused. "The equivalent of: here is everything I know, starting from where my knowledge ends."
Aerion: "And you have your document."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "What does yours say."
Lara, long pause:
Lara: "It says: trust the person who comes. Even when trusting is hard. Especially then."
Aerion: "She anticipated that trusting would be hard for you."
Lara: "Yes." Another pause. "She knew me well."
They reached the tower.
The door — as Lara had described, indistinguishable from the wall until the specific place was found. She placed her palm against a section of stone.
The door opened.
Stairs descended into darkness.
Aerion looked down.
Aerion: "You said the thing above the city can't reach this place."
Lara: "The shielding is complete. No signature can be detected from inside." She stepped to the first stair. "She designed it as a consultation room. A place where people could think without the thing above affecting the quality of the thinking."
Aerion: "It affects thinking."
Lara: "It affects the seventh-dimensional terrain. Which affects significance, which affects what seems important, which affects decisions." She paused. "She called it the bleed. The specific effect of being in proximity to something that's sealed but not destroyed — it colors the terrain around it."
Aerion: "Which means everything we've decided in Anahit has been colored by its presence."
Lara: "Slightly. The music was partly to counteract it. Three hundred years of specific resonance as a counterweight." She started down. "In this room, there's no counterweight needed."
He followed.
Nyx made a sound.
Lara, to Nyx:
Lara: "Yes. You can come."
Nyx followed.
The stairs descended.
The door above closed.
BOOM.
The specific sound of something sealed.
Darkness — and then, as they descended, a faint ambient light from the walls themselves. Not crystal, not silver. Something more fundamental, the specific illumination of stone that had been worked with dimensional intent and had retained the quality.
Aerion, to Lara:
Aerion: "You said the last person who trusted you disappeared."
Lara was quiet for a few steps.
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "Anahit."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "She trusted you."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "And was sealed in a mountain."
Lara, with the specific quality of someone carrying something that has been carried for a long time:
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "The sealing wasn't your failure."
Lara: "No."
Aerion: "But you feel it as one."
Lara: "I was supposed to—" She stopped. Started again. "She needed something specific at the moment of the sealing. I had the capacity to provide it. I wasn't there."
Aerion: "Why weren't you."
Lara: "Because she sent me away. To get people out of the area before the sealing destabilized the terrain around it." She paused. "She sent me away so I wouldn't be caught in what followed."
Aerion: "She protected you."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "And the cost was that she did it without what you could have provided."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "She chose to protect you rather than have the optimal outcome."
Lara, quietly:
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "That's not your failure. That's her decision."
Lara: "I know that."
Aerion: "Do you."
Lara, long pause:
Lara: "Three hundred years is enough time to intellectually know something without it changing how the knowing feels."
Aerion: "Yes."
They reached the bottom.
A room.
Circular, with the specific proportions of something designed for a small number of people to think in. Not large — intimate. The walls carrying the ambient light. A table at the center, simple. Several chairs.
Documents.
A stack of them, on the table, tied with the specific care of something that had been waiting for a long time and had been preserved accordingly.
Lara moved to the table.
She touched the documents.
Then looked at Aerion.
Lara: "These are for you."
Aerion: "Her documents."
Lara: "The ones she left for whoever came." She paused. "She said they'd be ready when the time was right." A pause. "She had a way of being right about timing."
Aerion moved to the table.
He looked at the documents.
At three hundred years of her calculations, preserved.
He picked one up.
The writing was old — not illegible, the specific old quality of something written with care and preserved with equal care.
He read.
The Sword, in his mind:
The Sword: "Aerion."
Aerion: "Yes."
The Sword: "Don't let Lara touch the hairpin."
Aerion, not looking up from the document:
Aerion: "Why."
The Sword: "I'm still working out why. But don't." A pause. "It's something in how she looked at it. The first time. When you held it up."
Aerion: "She recognized it."
The Sword: "More than recognized. She reacted to it in a specific way." Another pause. "Like someone who was expecting something from it and was recalibrating when the expectation wasn't met."
Aerion: "She said she thought it was gone forever."
The Sword: "Yes. But her expression when she said it—" The sword paused in the way it paused when it was working through something carefully. "Don't let her touch it. Not yet."
Aerion looked at Lara.
Lara was looking at the documents with the expression of someone who has been in proximity to something for a long time and knows it well.
She hadn't reached for the hairpin.
She wasn't reaching for it.
But he held it more carefully than he had been.
Aerion, casually, returning to the document:
Aerion: "The document says she had a companion through most of the founding work."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "Someone who was faster than her. More direct."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "And who had a specific relationship with the thing above the city. A history that went before the founding."
Lara was very still.
Aerion: "Did you know the thing above the city before Anahit sealed it."
A pause.
Longer than the others.
Lara: "Everyone who existed at the level Anahit and I existed at — everyone knew it." She paused. "It was not a secret."
Aerion: "What was it."
Lara: "Something that was once—" She stopped. "Something that fell from what it had been." Another pause. "She described it as a mistake. I always thought that was incomplete."
Aerion: "What would you call it."
Lara, quietly:
Lara: "A choice that couldn't be reversed."
Aerion put the document down.
He looked at Lara.
At the carefully managed expression.
At the blue-gray eyes that had been calm and observant since she arrived.
At the silver ornament on her wrist that she touched without touching.
Aerion: "You didn't come here because the seal was weakening."
Lara looked at him.
Aerion: "You came here because I arrived. With the sword." He held her gaze. "You knew I was coming before I got here."
Lara: "The signature was detectable. From some distance, to someone who knew what to look for."
Aerion: "And you were close enough to detect it."
Lara: "I was in the area."
Aerion: "For ten years. You said you came back when the seal started weakening."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "And you've been here for ten years, watching."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "Waiting for the seal to fail or for something to come."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "Both happened on the same night."
Lara, very quietly:
Lara: "Yes."
He held the hairpin in his closed hand.
Aerion: "She left the hairpin for whoever the sword chose."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "But she left you a document that says to trust that person."
Lara: "Yes."
Aerion: "Which implies there would be a reason not to. A reason that would make trusting difficult."
Lara looked at him.
Aerion: "What would make trusting difficult."
Lara, after the longest pause yet:
Lara: "If what I need from the situation and what the situation needs from me are different things."
Aerion: "What do you need from the situation."
She looked at the wall.
At the ambient light from the stone.
At the room that had been built to allow thinking without the bleed of the thing above affecting the quality of it.
Lara, very quietly:
Lara: "I need to know if what's sealed above this city can be ended." She paused. "Not sealed better. Not maintained longer. Ended."
Aerion: "And what does the situation need from you."
Lara: "To be honest about why I need to know."
Aerion: "Then be honest."
She looked at him.
At the sword.
At the hairpin.
Lara: "I knew the thing above this city before it became what it is. Before the sealing. Before Anahit." She paused. "When it was still something that could make choices." Another pause. "I've been carrying what I know about that for three hundred years and I've never told anyone because there was never anyone to tell."
Aerion: "And now."
Lara, with the specific quality of someone who has been told to trust and is trying:
Lara: "And now you're here."
The room was very quiet.
The ambient light from the walls.
The documents.
The hairpin, held carefully.
The sword, attentive.
Nyx, who had been sitting on the table with the golden eyes moving between them, made a sound.
Aerion, to Nyx:
Aerion: "What."
Nyx made the sound again.
Aerion, to Lara:
Aerion: "What does that mean in her register."
Lara, looking at Nyx:
Lara: "He said: then tell him."
Nyx looked at Lara with the golden eyes.
Made a third sound.
Lara, translating:
Lara: "He said: she would have wanted you to."
The room was quiet.
Lara looked at the table.
Then at Aerion.
Lara: "You're going to have questions."
Aerion: "Many."
Lara: "Some of them I can answer. Some—" She paused. "Some I've been avoiding for three hundred years because answering them requires me to look at certain things directly."
Aerion: "And now you'll look at them directly."
Lara, with the specific expression of someone making a decision:
Lara: "She said to trust you." A pause. "I'll start there."
Aerion: "All right."
He sat.
She sat.
Nyx settled on the table between them.
The documents waited.
The hairpin was warm in his hand.
The sword was quiet.
And Lara looked at the table for a moment — at the three-hundred-year wait, at the room that had been built to allow honest thinking, at the person across from her who carried the signature of someone she'd trusted once before.
Lara, to the table more than to Aerion:
Lara: "I should tell you what I know about the thing above this city."
Aerion: "Yes."
Lara: "And I should tell you what it was before it became what it is."
Aerion: "Yes."
Lara: "And I should tell you—" A long pause. "Why the answer to the question might be harder for me than for you."
Aerion: "Tell me all of it."
She looked at him.
The blue-gray eyes.
The careful management of something that had been managed for a very long time.
Choosing to stop managing.
Lara: "All right."
She began.