“Thoughts. Sharp ones. Bad ones.” Her mouth worked around the words as if they hurt. “Lessons make them soft. Songs too. Light, sleep, sweet air. You stop holding the hard part. It falls away.”

A chill moved through him that had nothing to do with the canal. He remembered the drifting answers, the fading interest, the instant surrender of questions. He remembered Lina noticing the hidden table mechanism only after he made her watch for it. Manufactured, he thought. Not completely, not neatly, but enough. A culture trimmed and soothed until danger itself no longer reached the muscles in time.

Lina tipped her head back against the stone and shut her eyes. “I think I had someone,” she whispered. “Before. Maybe a brother. Maybe only a room-near person. He asked where the old walls went. He asked a lot. Then there was a day with white sound.” Her fingers tightened in his wrap. “After that, when I tried to think of his face, I got tired. Then I stopped.”

Elias could not find a useful sentence. Any theory would have been a kind of theft. He put one hand over hers where it gripped the cloth and sat with her in the heat of the wall while the water kept running past.