“I’ve never been inside, but I lived in the shadow of the Spectrum all my life.”

“Do you know how it was constructed?”

“No one does. No one knows how to make things like that anymore, not for longer than… I don’t know, but a long, long time.”

“Thousands of years, before even the God Rung here. It’s a craft lost to even Crache’s master and mistress artisans. And that’s the question.”

“How was the Spectrum built?”

“Yes.”

Dyeawan tilts her head back to look up at him. “The planners know?”

Edger nods. “We are the last ones with the knowledge of it.”

She asks the obvious question. “Then why don’t you use it to build things?”

“Because there is a vast difference between knowing how a thing was done and doing it yourself.”

“So I have to figure out how the Spectrum was built?”

“Yes, and present your theory to me and the rest of the planners.”

“What if I can’t?”

“I promise all you’ve gone through will not have been a waste. You’ll still be invited to join any other part of the Cadre. They’re practically frothing to have you. Word has spread.”

“But I won’t be able to become a planner, like you.”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

Dyeawan stares out across the water. She can’t see the shore of the Capitol through the mist obscuring even the horizon.

“You figured it out?” she asks.

“I did.”

“When you said the Cadre hadn’t seen test results like mine in forty-three years, you were talking about yourself, weren’t you?”

“I was, yes. You’re very much like me, I suspect. In many ways.”

“Then I can figure it out too,” Dyeawan says resolutely.

“That’s what I wanted to hear. Shall we head back?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Edger begins maneuvering the tender around to point it in the opposite direction of the bank.

As Dyeawan shifts the paddles to aid him, she leans over the side and looks down at the rocks beneath her wheels. Acting on an impulse she doesn’t fully understand, Dyeawan reaches down and seizes one of the round, flat stones. She allows Edger to push her up the bank as she cradles the stone in her palm while her other hand runs over its unnaturally smooth surface.

Still unsure of why, she slides the stone inside her tunic before returning her arms to the paddles and urging them forward.

KNIVES SPEAK LOUDEST IN THE DARK