Chapter 38 · The Calm Before the Collapse

Nobody move.

Kaelen said it the way you'd ask somebody to pass the salt. That was the part that got me. Not the detonator in his fist. Not the red cord taped up the four columns of the council hall like veins on a sick man's arm.

The voice.

Men who screamed blew things up by accident. Men who whispered did it on purpose.

I counted twice. Four columns, four fat packs of mining explosive wedged in at shoulder height, blasting caps pushed into the gray putty like teeth.

He hadn't come here to bargain. He'd come here to bury us.

Torin didn't move an inch, but I felt him change. The air around him went tight and cold, the way it does right before lightning.

"Kaelen." Flat. No growl. That scared me worse. "You're standing in the same building."

"I know exactly where I'm standing." He smiled. He'd been handsome once, before the frontier winters chewed him hollow. Now he looked like a coat somebody left out in the rain. "Question is, do you?"

His thumb stroked the detonator. Slow.