That caught Tennal’s interest. “Distracted how?” He could feel Surit’s attention sharpen as well; a sudden spike of worry that his most reliable deputy wasn’t focused. Tennal could make a guess at the cause. “Worried we’re going to tell everyone you’re a reader? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t care, and Surit only pretends to be law-abiding.”

Basavi moved one of the screens and looked at him in careful bemusement, as if she’d hidden the reader thing for so long, it barely registered. Tennal had never really thought about just how many people must’ve been hiding low-level reader abilities, ignored by the army because they weren’t useful. It wasn’t as if anyone would announce it. “No,” she said. “No, it’s not, um, it’s not that.”

Lights, maybe she had family on Orshan Central and was worried about them. “Do you need help?” Tennal said. “Because there’s probably not a lot we can do, but we can try.” He didn’t think too hard about how we had just slipped out. About how I was growing harder to grasp every hour.

Basavi’s voice was stifled. “I don’t need help.” Her shoulders had hunched up around her ears, as if she would have very much liked to exchange her reader powers for the ability to haul her head into a shell like a turtle. “If you have to know, it’s just me and Istara. And we’re fine. Thank you.”

“You and Istara…” Tennal looked at her properly. To his reader senses, she radiated discomfort, but it wasn’t a bad kind of discomfort. Something had changed. “Wait,” Tennal said, feeling a stab of glee for the first time in days. “Wait, did Istara finally ask you—”

His throat closed. Surit had tried to stop talking at exactly the same time as Tennal had intended to finish the sentence. Tennal choked, sucked in a huge breath and dissolved into coughs.

Basavi whacked him between the shoulder blades until they’d both ascertained Tennal wasn’t choking to death. He didn’t tell her why he’d choked, though he kept forming sentences like, Okay, so what exactly did Istara say—sentences that Surit, in their joined mind, dissolved in horror before they could come out of Tennal’s mouth. “It’s private,” Basavi said. “I told xam—” She looked discomposed.