The bird was on the wall.
Vane saw it from the garden gate before he saw anything else — brown and round-shouldered on its stone, looking at the garden with the complete indifference it brought to everything. He stood at the gate for a moment with his bag on his shoulder. The bird looked at the garden. Neither of them required anything from the other.
He went inside.
Mara was in the kitchen. She appeared in the doorway the moment the front door opened, running the inventory look with the practiced efficiency of someone who had been running it since before either of them had vocabulary to name it. Injuries, fatigue level, overall condition. She found what she was looking for and what she wasn't.
"The knee," she said.
"Functional," he said.
"You said that in the eastern territory."
"It was functional then too."
