"Ava—"
"I am not going to hide in a room while people make decisions about me," I say. "I have done that for eighteen years and I am done with it. If Kelvin is here — if he is inside this palace or if he has contacts inside it — I need to know who and why." I look at him.
"And I need to know what liberated means in practical terms. What these people want. What they would do to get it."
Jason is quiet.
"Will you help me?" I say.
He looks at me for a long moment. The expression on his face does the thing it always does — the recognition, the weight, the something that is learning slowly what it is. And then underneath it, new, something that looks like the beginning of an answer to a question that has been open for eighteen years.
"Yes," he says.
✦
I tell Varder at noon.
