"Is an archive one account?" Rhetorical. "Warden Siorus also gave a report,"

Under the brush of new eyelids, translucent and horizontal and better at home on a frog.

"Which is why I've traveled such a distance for yours." They're past the room he'd staked, and he marks it; and he follows. "Indulge me the repetition."

Porthmeus had wanted expertise, and Strand was nearest to hand. But he isn't a scholar, he doesn't own a library, or a breadth of connections; anything but sour blood and a dead man's notes. Porthmeus wanted the Wardens' expertise. The Wardens want theirs.