On Hearth, the call made a tray of clean cups sing.
Halden heard it from the ward passage: a low, sustained trembling, each cup answering at a slightly different pitch. He stopped beside the open door while Arel put one hand flat on the tray.
“That isn’t ours,” she said.
“No.”
The first pressure rise filled the room.
It was followed by another, then a long fall that seemed to carry the sound down through the floor instead of simply ending it. A child in the nearest bed sat up beneath her blanket. At the far window, a visitor put both feet flat on the boards.
Halden went to the outside landing.
The basin lay dark beneath its scattered lights. Mercy’s inhabited ridges made a long broken outline nearer the Sill. Along the receiving works, lines of lamps still marked the open approaches.
