Neri left Iven at the storage bank on day 1089 with his lunch in an ordinary cloth and no instruction to finish a week of work before she returned.
He watched her put the cloth on Tena’s safe shelf.
“I can carry food.”
“I know. You carried it here yesterday and put a reference weight on it.”
“It was wrapped.”
“So is this. Eat it before you measure something with it.”
She kissed him and went down to Uda’s landing.
Pera and Elian were already there. The fisher had agreed to the same outer-basin hire she had used before, with a current weather stop and no medical marking borrowed from the Low Lantern. A message from Korin, brought the previous evening by someone who had actually visited the bank, confirmed where to meet him. Keeps-the-Low-Bank remained in the reed basin seven kilometers downstream. Its position inside that basin had changed.
