He turned around and walked back.
Nadir was waiting at the end of the corridor. Of course he was.
The evening tea ritual occupied the same hour every night — a holdover from his mother's household, maintained by Nadir with the quiet ferocity of preserving something sacred. The sitting room glowed amber. Zenith had positioned herself near the hearth, her gunmetal shell catching the firelight, her optical lens swiveling between the two of them with the attentiveness of an audience that had paid for good seats.
Nadir poured, and steam rose between them. The silence had texture — comfortable on the surface, loaded beneath.
"You've walked past the studio four times today, my lord." Nadir set the teapot down. "The corridor leads only in one direction."
Skarreth accepted his cup without looking up. "The seals on the north windows need inspection before storm season."
"I inspected them last week. They're sound."
"Then I was being thorough."
"You were being something." Nadir settled into his chair with the care of aging joints. His gold eyes held their muted, patient quality. "Four passes in one day is unprecedented. Your previous record was two, and that was the morning after the Thessan extraction when you hadn't slept in forty hours and your judgment was, if you'll forgive me, impaired."
Zenith emitted a specific two-note descending beep that dropped in pitch with a dismissive finality.
"She says dinner is ready," Nadir said.
What Zenith had actually communicated occupied a different register entirely, and the droid's lens fixed on Skarreth with an intensity that suggested she knew how inadequate the translation was. She rolled two inches closer and repeated the beep. Louder.
"Thank you, Zenith."
The droid produced a low, skeptical wobble and glided toward the kitchen at the pace of someone making a point by leaving.
Skarreth drank his tea. It burned his tongue, and he welcomed the small, clarifying pain. "The gathering will be here before we know it. I need to assess how the studio arrangement is progressing. Whether the cover will hold up under scrutiny."
"And this assessment requires four corridor passes and no actual entry into the room?"
"I was observing."
"You were hovering."
Skarreth set down his cup. Nadir met his gaze with the gentle immovability that had weathered seven years of this mission and three decades of service before it. He had earned the right to say difficult things by proving a thousand times over, that he said them out of loyalty rather than presumption.
"She made Niara laugh," Skarreth said. He hadn't meant to say it. The words came through a gap in his defenses he hadn't known existed.
Nadir's expression shifted by fractions. "I heard."
"The girl hasn't laughed since we extracted her from the holding facility. Octavia's been here a few days and she—" He stopped. Rerouted. "It's relevant to Niara's psychological readiness for transit. A stabilized emotional state reduces risk during the handoff."
"Of course, my lord." Nadir's voice carried no inflection whatsoever, which was its own form of commentary. He lifted his cup. Drank. Set it down. "Shall I serve dinner in the formal room or the study?"
"Study."
"Will Mistress Tate be joining you?"
The question was a trap with no moving parts. Either answer revealed something. Skarreth stood, his chair scraping back with more force than necessary. "She may eat wherever she prefers."
He left the room. Behind him, Zenith — returned from the kitchen with timing that suggested she'd been lurking in the corridor — emitted a long, slow, descending beep so laden with editorial weight that even someone who'd never heard her speak could have parsed the meaning.
Nadir sipped his tea and allowed himself the faintest curve at one corner of his mouth.
The intelligence arrivedbefore the portrait session the next day, routed through three encrypted relays and decoded by Nadir in the quiet of the study while Skarreth stood at the window and did not look at the studio door across the courtyard.
Nadir didn’t sit. He stood with the datapad, which meant the news required standing distance.
