Chapter 18: Correlation Only

The yard gate of the records annex was chained. It opened off the Oldest Street behind the Tribunal House, and the keeper's boy held the end of the chain, twelve years old, a crust in his other fist. "One sitting," he said. "Called at the second bell. It's gone the third, and we shut at the fourth." Mira stood at the gate with her palm on the post. There was no colour in her mouth. She had spent the night on the boards of the main room with a basin by her cheek, and put her hair up before light with fingers that would not close on the pins. In the street she had walked a pace ahead of him, and when he shifted to the kerb side she had moved to the wall. Kael stood behind her with the folding stool under one arm and the sack of ration…