Chapter 28: Waiting Dead

They came back across the lake without speaking. Mei poled. Fish sat in the bow with his back to her and the net in his lap, and didn't mend it, and the sun dried the boards round him a plank at a time. The pale shapes had gone from under the hull when the Third Prince stepped off. The water was only brown water again. The thunder had stopped. She'd said she wasn't going to ask. She'd said it to herself, all the way back. She had said it to him too, on the nets: I won't. She had never in her life broken a bargain she'd said aloud, and she was not going to start for a man who wanted to watch her do it. Ask him what he keeps in his sleeve. She knew what he kept in his sleeve. A gray page copied in lake water, with…