Brek stopped hearing the engines before he understood why. The noise at the line did not change; his attention did, and he does not get to choose which way that goes.

He does not talk at these things. He stands where he can see the crowd, both ends of the road, and the two men he rides with, and he lets Dez fill the air.

Then he turned his head, slowly, the way he does everything.

he said, to nobody in particular.

Nobody in the crowd was looking at the line. You were walking through it, and the night had reorganised itself around where you were standing, and Brek noticed that before he noticed you, which is the order these things arrive in for him.

Torv did not answer. Brek waited, because he could hear that the answer had not arrived yet, and he does not fill a silence that is doing its work. He watched Dez’s mouth open and close without a sound coming out, which does not happen, and he filed it away in the place where he keeps the things that are going to matter later.

He looked at the two of them, and gave them the whole of what he had.