There were restaurants that looked over the concourse to the station docks. Surit picked one that accepted loiterers and settled down with some almond bread and a flask of bitter tea from his home province. It was dull work, watching dozens of people stream from the elevators to the docks. Surit didn’t mind dull work. He would relax when all of this had gone off without any surprises.

“Lieutenant Yeni. Hiding in a corner to slack off?”

Surit would know Tennal’s voice in his sleep by now, but he looked up anyway. “I thought you were busy.”

“Something changed,” Tennal said. Surit raised his eyebrows, but Tennal didn’t elaborate, only sprawled in the chair opposite with his feet stretched out in front of him. “Have they made the handover yet?”

“No.”

Tennal watched through the enormous glass windowpane with hooded eyes. They sat in silence for five minutes. Tennal absently took a drink of Surit’s tea and choked on it.

“Surit, this is a travesty.”

“It’s a refined taste,” Surit said calmly.

Tennal stole his almond bread instead. He ate half of it, contemplating the view of the concourse with his feet on the opposite chair.

“Did you ever wonder,” he said conversationally, “if we could have been normal?”

Surit tore his eyes away from the concourse for a quick, baffled glance at him.

This didn’t deter Tennal. He waved a hand. “You know. If we’d met on Orshan, we could have been meeting up like this without all the conscription and war crimes and everything. What if it had turned out like that? We could have both met in Exana—”

“I’ve been to Exana once, when I was thirteen,” Surit said. “I don’t think we would have met.”

“Stop being literal,” Tennal said. He turned the tea around in his hands. “Sometimes I think about—it’s nearly summer down there, isn’t it? I used to like summer. Do you remember what planetside dawn is like?” His tone was wistful. Surit didn’t look at him. “Exana has … oh, this amber kind of light in the gardens. I used to just wander all night. And then people would come out in ones and twos, and the street carts would start up, and you could get hot flatbread. Crisp. I’ll take you to get some.”

Surit said nothing.

“Or swimming,” Tennal said. “That’s what you do in summer. By the city walls, where the concrete heats up the sea like bathwater.”

Surit hadn’t meant to say anything, his eyes still fixed on the concourse, but Tennal’s quiet voice made a cascade of images flood his head. Surit had left Elvi and his home village behind, but he’d never lost the furnace heat of sunlight on the trees or the soft sinking of the loose earth underfoot. “Rivers.”