He immediately took it.He held it for a moment, and whatever the crystal communicated to him in the holding, the specific warmth or the pulse or the resonance of something calibrated to something real, was visible in his expression as a shift in quality, the specific quality of someone receiving confirmation that what they're about to do is the right thing.He put it around his neck."The pursuit," Sera Voidstep said, from her position at the group's edge where she had been managing the formation stone's intelligence feeds throughout the distribution conversation. "We've been stationary for thirty-one minutes. The pursuit's hesitation has been reducing since the Sealed Kings' movement toward us rather than away from us became clear to their intelligence." She immediately paused. "Elder Prime Shen has apparently decided that the Kings' behavior confirms rather than complicates the Elder Council's assessment of the threat, which is to say he has decided that the Kings have been subve

Sera Voidstep looked at him with the direct, dark eyes."That's what I do," she said. "That's what the Unmarked's field operations have always been. Not the front-line action. The connective tissue that makes the front-line action coherent." She paused. "Yes. I can do that.""Bao Lifen," Kaelen Ashwright said, to the woman who had closed her waypoint and come with them and who had said she'd think about the formation work.Bao Lifen looked at him from her position at the supply cache's edge."Have you thought about it?" he said."The secondary facility," she said. "Your mother is going to need support in the formation work that isn't combat support and isn't logistical support.”“She's going to need someone who understands large-scale formation architecture to be her second set of eyes while she does the stabilization work." She paused. "Twelve years of running a waypoint ends today. The formation work begins again." She looked at Sylra."I'm going with her."Sylra looked at Bao Li