Morning brought the charts.
Eli climbed to the loft early and came down with a battered leather tube and a rolled set of older route maps that still smelled faintly of smoke and road dust. She spread them across the kitchen table without ceremony.
Some of the ink had faded. Some of the roads no longer existed. Others had become wider, busier, or broken by the years of war and the quieter years that followed.
Clara opened a second ledger beside the first and ruled clean columns: distance, estimated cost, risk, return window, supply needs. Her pen waited.
Lara stood at the head of the table, arms folded, gold-flecked eyes moving from the maps to Atlas and back again. She had not softened overnight. She had simply decided that the conversation would be faced at full strength or not at all.
Atlas set the old travel pack on the floor by his chair. The four of them looked at it the way they might look at a fourth person who had just entered the room.
