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Senga showed Ezer the back staircase for his side of the rooms, made certain Allayne was doing something reasonable and not fighting with anyone, and then, after a couple deep breaths, headed back to what had been her grandmother’s suite with Erramun.

After a brief reconnaissance, Senga opened up the room next to her newly-redecorated bedroom.  “It’s not the biggest room, but I think it will hold your things and anything else you want to bring here.”  She gestured in. “All yours.”

She was not expecting Erramun to freeze, nor the very slow movement he made towards the room after searching her face for – for something she couldn’t quite guess at.  After a moment, he growled quietly. “Three exits.”

“Two.  And the windows.  That door is a closet…. no, three,” she corrected.  “The closet has a stairway up to the attics.”

“Four exits.”   He moved slowly into the room, as if trying to keep an eye on her, and opened the windows.  They opened – it made a little noise of protest, but her family had always been pretty good at Preserve Workings – as all the second-floor windows did, more than wide enough for his wide shoulders and lanky body.

He left the window open and went to the door on the far side of the room.  It opened into, as she had said, a closet. He found the stairway and left that door open as well.  Then he paced to the door to the hallway, opened that, and left it open. Continue reading →