"What you felt," Sraaak said, "is not evidence."
"With respect — we have been tracking her for some time. That suggests someone believed there was reason to look. That is also not nothing." Prophet Mother Willow interjected into the discussion.
The silence that followed was longer. He used it to breathe, slowly, the way he'd been taught — keep the body calm and the mind follows, or at least has fewer excuses not to.
Dremma spoke for the first time. "I have examined her." Her voice was quiet, the way it always was, which meant everyone in the room heard it perfectly. "Her hands. Her wrists." A pause. "There is something in her that I have not encountered before."
"That tells us nothing," Triama said.
"It tells us to be careful," Dremma replied, with the mild firmness of someone who had been being careful for longer than Triama had been alive. "Which is what I am recommending we be."
“Quickly careful,” Willow added. “For nothing is a coincidence, things come together as they should.”
Sraaak looked at Willow and Dremma for a moment. Then she looked back at Edi-Veen, and he had the familiar experience of being assessed by someone who was very good at it.
"You have been one of the Chancellor's personal guard for four years," she said. "You are aware of what that position represents. The access it affords us. The intelligence it provides."
"I am."
"And you have compromised it."
"Yes."
"Because you felt something."
"Because I felt Fraluma blood in a human woman standing in the Chancellor's loading dock at midnight," he said. "Yes. I understand what I have cost us. I am prepared to answer for it. I am asking you to consider that what I felt may cost us more if we ignore it."
Sraaak was quiet for a long moment. Around her the other Prophet Mothers were still, watching, most of them giving nothing away. He had the impression of a vote being taken in some medium he couldn't observe directly.
"Your position with the Chancellor is ended," Sraaak said. "Another will be assigned in your place."
He expected this. "I understand."
"You will be assigned to the woman instead. You will ensure her safety. You will shadow her movements and you will report anything relevant to this council. You will not tell her about the Collective, about our ways, about the Cremmilek, or about what you believe you felt." She paused. "Is that understood?"
"Understood."
"If this woman is what you believe she is, we will know in time. If she is not —" Sraaak let that sit for a moment, precise as a blade placement. "Then you will have given up a great deal for a feeling." That last word hit him like a stab.
As Sraaak was known for.
"Yes," Edi-Veen said. "I will have."
He kept his face still and his hands quiet and did not look at Dremma or Willow, who were the only ones in the room who seemed to understand that in time was not a luxury any of them actually had.
Kra-May was waiting in the passage outside the chamber, which was not a surprise. His mentor had a talent for being in the right place without appearing to have positioned himself there, a skill Edi-Veen had spent years trying to learn and suspected he would spend years more.
"Well," Kra-May said.
"I'm assigned to the woman."
"And your position with the Chancellor?"
"Gone."
Kra-May absorbed this without visible reaction, which was also not a surprise. He was a large man, older than his role suggested — the Chancellor's primary guard was typically a young warrior's post, but Kra-May had held it through two administrations on the strength of being very good at it and very difficult to argue with. His face, in the low light of the passage, was unreadable in the way that faces became after long practice at making them so.
"You're certain about her," he said. It wasn't a question.
