So Tennal had found a bed to go to. Zin lived in an apartment in Exana, and technically Tennal lived there too, albeit he hadn’t slept in his old bedroom for nearly ten months. The Resolution eye followed him all the way to the apartment, then all the way to the door outside his old bedroom, where Tennal turned around and looked at it. “Yeah, all right,” Tennal said. “I’m going to get undressed in there. Don’t be weird.” He made a shooing motion. His hand went straight through the eye, with no obvious physical effect, but the air folded over it to hide the white swirl like an eyelid, as if he’d embarrassed it. Tennal stared at it for a further moment then decided he was too tired for this. “You can watch the door,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.” He might have felt weird, but instead he fell asleep the moment he was horizontal.

He’d had three hours of sleep and barely a shower when a flyer showed up outside Zin’s apartment to take him to the halls. The eye was hovering behind his shoulder again. A ranker jumped out of the flyer and saluted him.

Tennal smiled, touched his throat briefly, and walked straight past the flyer and out onto the street.

It took him ten minutes to walk to the Codifier Halls under his own steam, the eye floating behind him. The dawn air was cool. The sky had opened into a pure blue above and a muted haze in the distance; it would be hot later. Flowers tumbled down Exana’s old walls, and Tennal lingered to catch a glimpse of someone’s garden through a trellis. Tennal hadn’t been on a planet by himself for weeks.

He didn’t think, Why did I leave here? That wasn’t how he handled things. But he breathed deeply. His brain felt like a hundred glass pieces, all carefully and intricately slotted together, but it was all his brain. He had a new, fragile control. It felt good.

When he reached the Codifier Halls, he somehow wasn’t surprised to see his aunt waiting for him at the arches of the entrance.

“Feeling better, were you?” Tennal said. She must have left chaotic space soon after he had. She leaned on a cane and looked irritated about the need to use it. There was an eye hovering over her shoulder as well.

He was expecting the searching, judgmental look when she saw him but not the amused twitch of her mouth. “I’m not dead. But the sooner I can get rid of the bloody cane, the better. You’re late. I sent a flyer for you.”

“A military flyer,” Tennal said conversationally. “I’m a civilian, Auntie dearest.”

“I thought Archer made you a Lights-lost captain.”