The envoy stopped them before the last turn.
“From here, no recording.”
Kellan put his route notebook away. Tessa checked that the ordinary message device was closed. Eli had remained with the surface work; the settlement had agreed to hear a small request, and adding the person most publicly associated with the conflict would not make that request smaller. Tessa felt his absence as a useful fact. She could ask about a route without turning the room into a verdict on him.
The envoy led them by the winding approach whose protected end the residents did not want fixed on another public map. The narrowest turn smelled of damp stone and old repairs. Kellan looked automatically at the floor width, then forced himself to wait until the people who owned the passage chose to show it.
A settlement leader opened the hidden tunnel entrance.
Beyond it, a cooler draft touched Tessa’s face. She saw enough to understand why a convoy might fit the first section and not enough to say what lay after it. Kellan had already begun framing a question when the leader looked past them.
A human child stood near the last turn.
He had followed from the neighborhood approach, curious about where the adults were going. He held a broken toy by one arm and stared at the open passage as though a secret door were a promise meant for him.
