For four days after Marl Steps, no one shot at them.
Iven enjoyed this more than he felt obliged to admit.
They walked east along the upper river, bought food at two inhabited shelters and slept once beneath a roof whose keeper had painted the inside blue. The blue had faded where cooking smoke rose. It remained brilliant above the sleeping platform, a private piece of clear weather held against winter and rain.
Neri lay beside him that night and looked up at it.
“We could do the drawing room.”
“Blue?”
“Something that isn’t the color of plaster waiting to become a decision.”
“I thought that was a fashionable color.”
