Cora MarisovnaShe waited at the cave mouth, watching the desolate face of Mars below. She waited for him. Cora felt as if she died every time Boris went away. He had been gone for so long.
Barely able to move anymore, Cora Marisovna took her monotonous meals just inside the sheltering passage. Her joints swollen, her muscles creaking, she waited for the inevitable.
Always keeping himself busy, Stroganov went about the unending tasks that only he seemed to care about. The other adins had settled into an angry or apathetic listlessness, but Stroganov continued to find work, to find goals, to leave his mark in a way that Cora secretly suspected would last far longer than any grand gesture Boris made. And Stroganov’s sculptures and text chronicles were far less dangerous than Boris’s attacks
