---
She saw it anyway.
"It cannot be avoided," she said quietly. "If I could remain longer, I would."
That at least sounded true. He accepted it because there was no point striking at what was already decided.
Stephen said, "Then Elena and I will be the judge."
Mihos nodded. "Agreed."
Sekht looked at Elena.
She t his gaze. "I will do it."
That was enough. The structure settled. No one above Chaos Rank Five directly involved.
Stephen and Elena as judges.
Seraphiel absent.
Mihos supports Iron House indirectly.
Sekht faced them with whatever he chose to gather below the line.
Then ca the matter of ti.
"How long do you need for preparation?" Sekht asked.
Mihos looked almost cheerful now that the thing had beco real.
"Three days."
Stephen gave the answer before he could refine it into so more annoying shape.
"Three days is enough to prepare without letting the whole matter rot into rumor."
Elena nodded once. "And short enough that neither side can remake the city before beginning."
Sekht accepted that imdiately. Three days. Enough to train, reposition, feed, sort, and prepare. Not enough for Mihos to build an absurd superstructure around Iron House or for gossip to make the ga public in the wrong circles.
Mihos said, "Then after three days, stage one begins."
The fan-girl maids at Sekht’s side all reacted differently.
The first lowered her eyes, already thinking through weapons, routes, and who among the hidden house staff could carry ssages without being seen.
The second’s pulse visibly changed at her throat. It was not fear. It was anticipation wrapped in loyalty.
The third looked toward the road west as if Iron House itself might already be standing there waiting to be cut open.
Bat Bat, anwhile, was almost vibrating with barely controlled questions.
"Can I ask one question..."
"No," Elena said.
Bat Bat deflated and then recovered enough to whisper to herself, "This is still an excellent night."
Mihos lifted the little box again and looked at Sekht with fresh, lazy confidence.
"Then we understand one another."
"Do we?" Sekht said.
Mihos’s smile thinned. "You have three days to beco entertaining."
Sekht did not answer that line.
Mihos had not earned an answer.
For a mont, the road beca still again. Not empty stillness. But charged stillness. The kind that ca after rules were set and before blood began moving under them.
Then Sekht said, "Kess."
Every eye on the road shifted.
Kess straightened instantly, his heartbeat kicking once hard enough that he felt it in his teeth. His na, spoken by Sekht in that tone, after the road, the running, the fight with his master, the ga, and the judges, could only an so fresh shift in what counted as his life.
Sekht looked at Mihos.
"I want him."
The line landed harder than so threats might have.
Mihos’s expression changed. Not to shock. But to be offended by amusent.
He asked Sekht, "You want my servant?"
Sekht replied, "Yes."
Kess forgot how to breathe for a second.
Bat Bat’s eyes widened in delighted horror. One of the maids nearly looked at Kess with pity before rembering to keep her face under control. Stephen went very still. Elena did not move at all.
Mihos looked at Kess once, then back at Sekht.
"Why?"
Sekht answered as if discussing an ordinary practical request.
"He is useful. He can run. He survives humiliation without collapsing. And he listens to everything even when he is afraid."
Kess felt the words land inside his ribs in a place no noble praise had ever quite reached because this was not praise. This was an evaluation. A Selection perhaps.
Useful one.
That was the language he understood best.
Mihos’s mouth curved. "Interesting."
Then he looked at Kess again, this ti with a colder kind of thought behind his eyes. A servant requested openly between branches. Not stolen. Not bribed. Claid if willing. That had its own insult inside it too.
Finally, Mihos said, "If you can take him by willing choice, then he is yours."
The road went still in a completely different way this ti. Not the stillness of coming violence.
The stillness of everyone realizing sothing absurd had just been placed in the middle of a family eting like a jewel or a bomb and no one yet knew which it would beco.
Kess stood where he was and felt his mind fail to choose a shape for the mont.
Mihos looked pleased. Of course he did.
The heir’s confidence was obvious enough that even the guards around the camp felt safer under it. To Mihos, this was another little cruelty dressed as amusent. Another chance to watch the lower branch reach for sothing and fail publicly.
Kess had served the main Dawn line. Kess knew the hierarchy. He knew what happened to servants who changed masters without permission, especially when the permission ca from an heir speaking carelessly in front of witnesses rather than from true formal transfer. Mihos did not believe for a heartbeat that Kess would step away.
That made the situation sweeter for him.
Bat Bat, who had no understanding of the proper emotional dignity of servant politics and every intention of continuing to prove that, leaned slightly toward the nearest maid and whispered, much too audibly, "Why does Master want him. He is not even that strong."
The maid nearest her kept her face absolutely still. "Do not question him."
"I am not questioning him. I am questioning his taste in servant selection."
The second maid answered under her breath before Elena had to silence them both. "Then question it quietly. He knows what he is doing. That man must have so value to our young master."
Bat Bat narrowed her eyes toward Kess with exaggerated scrutiny, as if by looking harder she might discover so hidden glowing label over his head.
Sekht did not answer her.
He was already thinking past the road and the camp and the imdiate irritation in Mihos’s face. Kess was useful for reasons Bat Bat could not yet understand. Strength in the obvious sense was not the only kind of value a servant could carry.
Kess ca from the Middle Domain. He had served in the main Dawn House. He knew the habits of the territory, the shape of rank in that place, the layout of obedience, the weight of nas, the likely routes of information, the kind of mistakes outsiders made when they stepped into old blood domains without knowing how walls there were really built.
"Information is a weapon too," Sekht thought. "If it is used correctly."
Sooner or later, he would go to the Middle Domain. That truth no longer felt theoretical.
Not after Eyra’s record stone.
And when that day ca, a servant like Kess would be useful in ways that could not be bought cheaply or learned in one night. He can find people from the middle domain. But to find soone from the main Dawn house might be difficult.
So Sekht looked at Kess and said, in the sa calm tone he might have used to discuss weather or a blade being sharpened, "He will agree."
That finally cracked Mihos’s open amusent into sothing narrower.
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