The Moon's Forgotten Heir
It was identical, a flat, precise repetition that belongs equally to an honest reading and a carefully rehearsed lie.
“Is there a number in it?” I asked.
Another pause stretched between us. This one felt different, the hesitant pause of a man caught off-guard by a strange question, rather than the sharp freeze of a man caught in a trap.
“There is a six,” Osbert said quietly. “Six men. Nothing else.”
I sat alone in the dark, my heart hammering hard against my ribs, and ran the only calculation left to me.