A low hum moved through the crowd.
The particular sound of thousands of people arriving at the same awareness simultaneously—the collective recognition that the light was going and the day was almost done and whatever came next was the last thing before tomorrow. Not a planned reaction, not a response to anything the announcer had said yet. Just the crowd reading the same sky Jelo was reading and arriving at the same conclusion in the same moment.
Then the announcer's voice came through the speakers.
He had been watching the sky too—or had been told, or had simply felt the shift in the crowd the way he felt all shifts, the way he had been reading the arena all day and responding to what he read. He raised the microphone with the particular manner of someone who had one more thing to do tonight and intended to do it correctly. Not rushing toward it. Not delaying it. Just arriving at it with the same quality he had brought to everything today.
The crowd pulled back into attention.
