Chapter 385 --385
"You counted," Samuel said, receiving his portion.
"Three times you have come," the woman said. "Three times the same three portions." She shrugged. "I remember what matters."
She turned back to her work.
Samuel looked at Elara with the expression of someone who had just received information that confirmed something.
"She is Davan," he said.
Elara looked at the woman’s back — the efficient movement, the total attention on the work, the complete unselfconsciousness of someone who understood what she was doing and did it without requiring an audience.
"Yes," she said. "She is Davan."
They went to the water steps.
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The river was doing what it always did.
She sat and ate and let the morning settle — not the formal morning, not the proceeding and the hall and the fourteen faces and Cassin Veth looking at his hands. She let that exist where it existed, in the part of her that was always running the calculation, and she let the front of her attention be what it was: the river, the fried dough, the good clear morning, Samuel beside her.
He ate in silence for a while.