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These people were not merely prisoners available for observation.

They were a population.

A population the empire officially pretended did not exist.

Dreven stopped before a row of rooms built into the inner wall.

He opened one and activated a mineral lamp.

The room was small but clean. A sleeping platform occupied one side. Someone had left folded clothing, a basin, a sealed ceramic jug and two ration packets on a narrow shelf. The heavy door looked capable of surviving an explosion.

“This is yours.”

Kesta remained outside the threshold. “Until when?”

“Until you want somewhere else.”

“That sounded almost reasonable.”

Dreven leaned one shoulder against the stone. “I have moments.”

She stepped inside.

“Who can enter?”

“No one without your permission.”

Kesta turned back toward him. “Including you?”

“Especially me.”

She looked at the door mechanism. An inner bolt crossed the frame, but another metal fitting sat outside.

“What is that?”

“Storm bar.”

“It can lock the door from outside.”

“Yes.”

Kesta stared at him.

Dreven sighed.

It was the first time she had heard him do it, and somehow the ordinary gesture made him seem more approachable than all the careful declarations in the basin.

“The inner rooms become shelters during a perimeter breach,” he explained. “The outer bars keep predators from breaking the doors inward.”

“They also keep the people inside from opening them.”

“Yes.”

“And you don't see a problem with that?”

“I see several.”

That was not the answer she expected.