The shrine’s control room was cold, and the wall speaker hummed.
Mara had come up Hearth’s service stair alone, at the second hour of the afternoon, one step at a time, with her dressed arm in its sling and her good hand on the rail. The doctor had said no. Tavin had said nothing, because he was in the Quiet Forge with Anwen and the frame. Sera had driven her to the service dock in the Tern and waited at the stair’s foot.
The shrine was as she had first seen it. The long low room, the grey alloy panels, the control wall at the far end with its hundreds of small square displays. Most of them dark today. A few lit at the center, where Cant spoke from.
The wall speaker under the displays hummed. A low steady note.
Mara crossed to the wall. Below the displays, at waist height, there was a plate: a square of cold grey alloy set flush into the panels, worn smooth at its center by centuries of hands. The keeper’s plate. Where a keeper had stood, when there had been human keepers, to give Cant an instruction.
She laid her right palm on it.
