quoting naddr1qv…g2eh
The guards are three paces away when lightning-man moves.
He doesn't run. He walks toward us with the measured stride of a man approaching a business negotiation, not a crisis. One hand raised—not in surrender, but in the universal gesture of wait. The guards slow. Stop. Exchange a glance.
Lightning-man speaks.
The words mean nothing to me. They tumble out in a strange, clipped rhythm—nothing like Greek's flowing cadences or the Germanic barking of the northern tribes. But I recognize skill when I hear it. This is a man who speaks to officials regularly. The deference is there, carefully measured. The apology built into the tone without groveling.
The guards' postures shift. Their hands move away from their belts. One of them says something. Lightning-man nods, producing that small flat rectangle from his pocket—that same device everyone in this world seems to carry. He gestures at Shao and me. More words. The guards' suspicion hasn't vanished, but it's softening into something more like bureaucratic inconvenience.
I watch his face as he speaks. Tired. So tired that even the muscles around his eyes seem to sag. But underneath the exhaustion, something sharper. This man knows what he's doing.
He touches his rectangle to something on the barrier. Chirp. Does it again. Chirp. A third time. Chirp.
The guards step back. One waves his hand—go, go. Done with us.
Lightning-man looks at me.
Not at Shao. At me.
A single gesture. Fingers curling toward himself. Follow.
I move before I can think. Shao is already at my shoulder. We pass through the barrier—that same chirp of permission for each of us—and then we're through, walking fast, and the guards are already looking elsewhere, already finding new problems to solve.
We follow lightning-man through the crowd, up stone stairs, toward light so bright it hurts.
and part 6 is available behind paywall, and will be publicly available next week!
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