“Niara’s window opens tomorrow.” He read from the dispatch without inflection, which was its own kind of inflection. “Route seven through the Kessler Belt. Eleven minutes, if Dynn runs the approach at reduced signature.”
“Dynn.”
“She’s reliable.”
“She lost a cargo drone in the Tessari corridor.”
“She lost a drone.” Nadir set the datapad on the desk between them. “Not a passenger. In eleven years, not one passenger.” A pause. “The alternative window is eight days out. Voss’s patrols aren’t contracting.”
Eight more days. The girl’s bioluminescent markings dimmed a little more every time a shuttle passed overhead, andshe flinched at the engine sound. Eight more days of that with the Crimson Ledger’s net drawing tighter around all of them.
“Tomorrow then,” Skarreth said. “Alert Dynn.”
Nadir didn’t move. His double-jointed thumb stilled against the datapad — the tell that meant something had been held back and was now being offered.
“There’s a secondary consideration. Regarding the protocol.”
Skarreth looked up.
“She’s been here ten days already.” Nadir’s voice dropped half a register — the tone he used when something mattered enough to say plainly. “The window for the protocol closes at ten. After that, the dose required to suppress that depth of memory —” He stopped. Started again, more quietly. “I’ve seen it go wrong. What comes out the other side isn’t always the same person who went in. And in Niara’s case, even a minimal dose could cause injury.”
The study was quiet.
Skarreth had built the protocol himself, years ago, in the cold arithmetic of necessity. It had always been a violation. He had always known it was a violation. He had administered it eight hundred and twenty-three times and filed the knowledge in the drawer where he kept the other unwearable things — the names he didn’t learn, the faces he refused to remember, the small careful cruelties that kept everyone alive.
He had done it because it was the only way.
With Niara, it wasn’t an option he wanted to explore.
“She knows the estate,” he said. Working it through.
“She knows a guest wing, a garden, and a studio. She knows Mistress Tate’s name. Nothing that constitutes operational intelligence.” Nadir’s inner eyelids flickered once. “What she carries —” A pause. “What she carries is the first evidence of healing I have seen in her since she arrived.”
The silence held the weight of a decision already made.
“Then we proceed without the memory wipe.” Skarreth returned to the datapad. “She’ll be briefed on what she can and cannot disclose. Teck handles the debrief protocols at the Free Worlds end.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“And Nadir.” He didn’t look up. “She’ll want to say goodbye.”
“She will.” Nadir’s voice shifted— barely perceptible, the grain of the wood showing through. “The girl has had enough taken from her.”
“A brief farewell. Supervised. Nothing that compromises the cover story.”
Nadir inclined his head. Then paused. “And Mistress Tate.” His voice carried no particular emphasis, which meant he’d been waiting to say it. “She’ll notice Niara is gone.”
Skarreth was quiet for a moment. A few days. That was all it had taken — a few days for Octavia Tate to coax laughter from a girl who’d forgotten how to produce it. A few days for her to learn exactly which blend of tea Nadir preferred and thank him by name for including it. She cataloged everything. She forgot nothing.
“I’ll tell her during our session that I sold her to a household in the outer systems. Lord Skarreth grew bored.” The words tasted like rust. “It’s consistent with the cover.”
Nadir’s inner eyelids slid closed and open. “She won’t believe it.”
“No.” He picked up the datapad. “But she won’t be able to prove otherwise. And she’ll have to decide what to do with that.”
Nadir withdrew.
Skarreth set the datapad down. Eight hundred and twenty-three freed. Niara would be eight hundred and twenty-four. The number was certain in a way that almost nothing else was.
