She looked at the working list.
The fourth prince — her brother — was on the throne.
The noble factions were running the revenue structure.
Seven people had died in the incursion whose movents in the preceding two weeks had been cleaned from the official record.
The specific generous expediting of her bank instrunt had been authorized by a man whose appointnt traced to the cleared period and who had been managing the imperial treasury queue for six months in the interest of the factions that controlled the emperor.
She looked at the window.
The rchant district was doing its morning thing — ordinary, continuous, the specific reliable texture of a working city.
She thought about the fourth prince at dinners. Quiet. Appropriate. The careful register of soone who had learned that appropriate was safe.
She thought about what a person who had learned that appropriate was safe did when they were given power.
Did they remain careful?
Or did they beco sothing else in the space that power opened?
She did not know.
She needed to find out.
’’’
This was the part she had been avoiding.
She sat with this honestly, the way the system had told her she was avoiding it and the way she had admitted it and had not yet done anything about the admission.
She could not send herself to the palace.
Elara, forrly regent, was soone the emperor was apparently trying to find — Caius had reported this, the specific efforts, the searches. Changed face or not, the political risk of the regent walking into the palace and requesting an audience with the emperor was significant.
She needed soone else.
She needed, specifically, the soone else she had been for eleven months.
She looked at the working list.
Then she looked across the table at Mira.
"I need Liang ridian’s trade commission contact," she said. "The one who handles new rchant introductions to the imperial court. The formal introduction process."
Mira looked at her.
"The formal introduction process," Mira said slowly. "For new rchants seeking court trading permissions."
"Yes," Elara said.
"Which requires a registered rchant representative to attend a court reception," Mira said.
"Yes," Elara said.
"Lian i," Mira said.
"Lian i," Elara confird.
Mira looked at her for a long mont.
"You’re going into the palace," she said.
"Lian i is going to a court reception," Elara said. "As a registered rchant representative. With a legitimate trading company and a legitimate trade commission contract and a completely legitimate reason to be there."
"And while you’re there," Mira said.
"I’m going to a court reception," Elara said.
Mira looked at her.
"I’ll get the contact," she said.
’’’
The reception was three days later.
Elara spent those three days doing three things simultaneously.
She moved the bank instrunt integration forward — the queue position held at two, Seval’s office apparently satisfied with having it monitored, and she did not move it faster because moving it faster required revealing that she knew about the monitoring.
She t the beast knights.
And she went back to the collar.
’’’
The beast knight eting was Mahir’s arrangent.
Early morning, the rchant district, a tea house two streets from the office that had the quality of a place where people t without the eting being notable. Small tables. Ordinary clientele. The specific unremarkability of a functional neighbourhood establishnt.
Mahir arrived with them.
Two n and a woman. Forr beast knights — the collars still at their throats, the pulse still blue, the collars apparently having gone with them when they were released because nobody had thought to process the decommissioning correctly.
They sat.
They looked at Elara.
She looked at them.
The woman — mid-thirties, the specific physical quality of soone who had been trained for combat and was no longer using the training and whose body was quietly confused about what it was supposed to be doing — looked at Elara with the flat assessnt that beast knights used for everything and said nothing.
The first man was younger. He had the contained quality of soone who was managing a situation he had not chosen and was doing it correctly because doing things correctly was all he had.
The second man did not look at her at all. He looked at his tea. He had been looking at his tea since he sat down and would probably continue to look at it.She did not push him.
"You knew Mahir," she said. To all three. "From the palace."
The woman looked at Mahir briefly.
"Collar rotation overlap," the woman said. "Second year."
"Mira corridor," the younger man said. "I was on the east assignnt. He was on the primary."
The man looking at his tea said nothing.
Elara looked at him.
He was the one Mahir had told her about — the one who had been in the palace longest. Eighteen years. Taken at four. The entire architecture of who he was had been built inside the palace walls and then the walls had been removed and he was sitting in a tea house in the rchant district looking at his tea because the tea was a manageable object and the rest of it wasn’t.
She looked away.
Gave him the space.
"I’m not going to offer you anything today," she said. To all three. "I want to understand what your situation is. What it’s actually like. Not because I’m assessing you for sothing — because I’m building sothing and I need to build it correctly and building it correctly requires understanding what’s actually happening rather than what I assu is happening."
The woman looked at her.
Sothing in the flat assessnt shifted — very slightly, the specific micro-adjustnt she had learned to read.
"You’re the one who filed the collar charter," the woman said.
Elara looked at her.
"Yes," she said.
A pause.
"We know," the woman said. "The ones in the palace know. It circulated." She paused. "The extraction pathway suspension. We know it was filed."
"Do you know by whom," Elara said.
"The regent," the woman said. Flat. The word landing without inflection. "The previous regent." She looked at Elara. "Lian i of Liang ridian."
"Yes," Elara said.
The woman looked at her for a long mont.
Then she looked at Mahir.
Mahir said nothing.
The woman looked back at Elara.
"What do you want to know," she said.
’’’
She was there for two hours.
She did not take notes. She listened. The woman talked — carefully at first, then with less managent, then with the quality of soone who had been holding things for a long ti and had assessed the container as sufficient and was letting so of it go.
The younger man contributed occasionally. Short additions. Specifics.
The man with the tea remained with his tea for an hour. Then he looked up once and said, very quietly, to the table rather than to Elara: "They use the collar."
She looked at him.
"The employers who take us," he said. "They see the collar and they know what it ans. They use it." He paused. "Not like the palace used it. Differently." He stopped.
"Tell ," she said.
He looked at his tea.
"Like we’re still inside it," he said. "Like the collar ans we can’t say no. Like the service structure is still there and they’re just the new version of it." He paused. "So of us believe it too. The ones who were inside it longest." He paused again. "I believe it sotis."
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