The message arrived through the bracelet at an hour that meant someone had decided it could not wait until morning.
Raze woke to the particular vibration pattern that indicated priority routing, three pulses and a pause and three pulses again, the sequence Sariah had established for communications that bypassed the standard queue. He lay in the dark of the tent for a moment with his wrist held against his chest and the vibration continuing under his skin, and understood before he had activated anything that whatever was waiting in the recording had changed the shape of the seventeen days.
He sat up. Bephe lifted its head from the tent's entrance where it had positioned itself the way it positioned itself every night, across the only opening, awake in the manner of something that did not distinguish between sleeping and guarding.
Raze activated the bracelet.
