And Lexi remains her mother’s daughter.

THE ONES WE KEEP CLOSE

A STORM IS BREWING IN the east.

Dyeawan can see swollen clouds, as large as godheads and gray as cold steel, rolling in over the steadily agitated waters of the bay. It’s the peak of afternoon, yet the sun is a thing poorly remembered by a pale and sickly sky that might have known nothing but gloom since it first spread over the Earth. The wind has teeth and a hunger to match, its appetite seeming to grow and bite more fiercely with every passing moment. Barely rising above the crashing of angry waves, thunder is a whispered warning on the horizon.

Dyeawan paddles her tender up the beach herself, politely declining Edger’s offer to push her. The tender is aided through the wet sand by a new set of hollow wheels around the exterior of which a series of three-inch spikes protrude. A bellows affixed to Dyeawan’s right-hand paddle operates the spikes. Compressing the bellows fills the hollow body of the wheels with air, deploying them, while decompressing the bellows’ lung sucks the spikes back inside the wheels.

Edger walks beside her, silent and pointing his corpse’s face toward the advancing storm clouds.

“You’ve chosen a strange afternoon for a walk along the beach,” Dyeawan observes, mostly speaking because Edger is not.

“The weather seems appropriate for this discussion,” he says, the muscles of his throat straining to pipe the words through Ku’s body with enough volume to be heard above the excited climate.

“What do you mean? What discussion?”

Edger hesitates a moment longer, and then, “I feel as though something has changed between us. There’s a division I didn’t anticipate, and I fear it’s growing.”

“Do you regret elevating me to planner?”

Ku pipes the sputtering hiss of wind that serves as Edger’s laughter.

“I might as well regret the expansion of your vocabulary. No, you are a planner, Dyeawan.”

“Then what is it?”

“I foresaw you upsetting the balance among the rest of the twelve, but I never expected you to begin pulling away from me, as well.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“I may not be quite as observant as you, but I do possess some facilities. I can’t help but feel as though the closer I bring you, the less you seem to trust me.”

“You choose to share your truth with me in slices,” Dyeawan states plainly. “Every time you bring me closer it only raises more questions about the Planning Cadre that you choose not to answer.”

“And there it is, the rancid core of the problem. Thank you for being honest with me. You are absolutely correct, Dyeawan.”