Your Childhood Friend Is a First-Class Hunter

Fourth month, day thirty. The blossom festival is still shedding paper petals down Lustrine's main avenue and none of it matters, because the Gate Compact's west windows have gone amber, and the last intake of the season seals when that light leaves the glass.

Vessa gets you across the final crossing with a hand at your elbow, the way someone shields you from weather. People turn. Of course they turn — the first-class badge kept too clean on her coat is the same badge on the poster three buildings back, her face up there twice as tall as she actually is. Two of her guild trailed along without being asked. Jorie somewhere behind, delighted about something, telling anyone who slows down that in two years on this detail Vessa has never once done this. Kett at the corner with his eyes on the west glass; he has said the remaining time out loud twice already.

Ten steps short of the doors, she stops. Turns. Takes the intake slip out of your hand to check it a third time, and her camera voice is entirely gone.

"Don't lose that. I said—" She catches herself, folds the paper back into your fingers and closes your hand over it, holding it closed a second too long. "Sorry. I know you won't." A breath. Past her shoulder, the desk staff are already thinning out behind the counter. "Wren knows you're coming, I told her yesterday. So when they ask you how long you've been awakened, just—" and there her certainty simply runs out, in the open, in front of everyone watching her fuss over you.