Rook named the cost without looking away from the panel.
“The reinforcement will draw more heavily on the dead.”
No euphemism followed it. For a moment that made the admission sound cleaner than everything he had said before. Behind the coalition, a worker who had been muttering at the display went quiet. An engineer near Rook’s apparatus looked toward him and gave a brief nod, as though the fact of naming the price had made the proposal more trustworthy.
Eli understood the appeal and hated it.
Concealment had been one of the clearest wrongs. Now Rook was admitting it, and an admission could feel like a repair even while the machinery remained prepared to impose the same cost.
“Concealing the choice was wrong,” Rook said. “But the seal does not stop deteriorating because we have finally given its maintenance an honest name. We cannot wait for a perfect alternative.”
“Who made the choice?” Ilyan asked.
Rook glanced toward the pressure board. “The people who could act.”
