The morning after Stage 5's construction completed, they sat at the table in the branch archive's reading room and Neral told them what he knew.
All of them. Mira had come from the quarters. The older man had come without being asked. Liora had come because the older man had, which was usually her reason. Neral sat at the table's end with none of his usual theatricality. The self-aware irony was absent. The layered sentences were absent. He spoke the way a person spoke when they had been carrying something for a long time and had found the right moment to set it down.
