Neral had been awake since before the city.
Kai found him in the common room with a cup of something cold and the expression of a man who had received information he did not want and was working out how to carry it at a weight he found sustainable.
Mira had told him about the deep roads.
"I want it noted," Neral said, when Kai sat down, "that I have spent a significant portion of my adult life navigating situations that reasonable people would have left earlier. Bureaucratic complications, dangerous routes, rooms with the wrong kind of attention in them." He looked at the cup. "I did not, at any point in that history, anticipate that the complication would be ancient pre-civilisation road infrastructure specifically built for one of the people I travel with."
Kai said nothing.
