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"The window has had a draft for months. You only started minding it four weeks ago." Alex forked half a sausage into his mouth, entirely too pleased with his own math. "Interesting timing."

Jade didn't look up from her cup, but the corner of her mouth twitched, the way it did when she thought nobody was watching closely enough to catch it. I was watching closely enough. I'd started keeping a private count, and told myself it didn't mean anything in particular.

Halver came in from the back garden with mud on his boots and a basket of eggs under one arm, setting both down without comment. He'd been checking the fence line since sunrise, a habit that started after the Dreea Swamps job, when a section of guild cart lost a wheel in soft ground and he'd spent an hour up to his knees in mud dragging it free while three merchants stood on dry land shouting advice nobody asked for.

"Any leeches today?" Alex asked.

"I was only in the garden."

"That wasn't a real question."

"I know." Halver washed his hands at the basin. "You're still upset about the swamp."

"I found one behind my knee two days after we got back. Two days, Halver. It had built a whole life for itself back there. I considered charging it rent!"

"You told this story yesterday."

"I'll keep telling it. I was traumatised."

Jade's mouth twitched a second time, wider now, and she hid it in her cup before Alex could notice and chase it.

Two small assignments in a month, and both had left their mark on the house's conversation the way deployments usually managed. The Dreea Swamps caravan job had gotten Alex his leech and Halver his mud. Backing the city Peace Keepers through a loud, ultimately uneventful crowd dispersal near the grain markets had gotten Corian three compliments from the district magistrate and Jade an appreciation of quiet rooms.

Small work. The kind that kept a squad sharp without asking much of it.

Corian came down last, already dressed for the training yard, a folder of paper work under one arm the way there always seemed to be lately. He said good morning to the room in general, poured his tea, and took the seat across from Halver instead of the one beside Jade, the one that had been empty since she'd claimed the corner two months ago and nobody else had touched since.

"Morning," he said.

"Morning," Alex and Halver answered together.

"Commander."

Corian's jaw didn't move. His hand did, just barely, the teapot handle taking more of his grip than pouring tea required before he set it down and reached for the bread instead. I'd watched some version of that happen most mornings since the fence line, though it had eased with time, the sharpest edge of it gone. She wasn't cold to him. Cold would have been simpler, something the rest of us could work around. She was careful instead, formal in a way that had nothing to do with anger anymore, more habit than wound.

Nobody said anything for a moment. Alex's fork stopped halfway to his plate.

The knock at the front door came hard enough to rattle the frame, three strikes that didn't belong to any of our usual visitors. Dax knocked twice if he knocked at all. Argentite came through the back.

Corian was on his feet before the second strike finished and walked towards the front door.

He opened the door, and I heard him go still.

"High General."

That got the rest of us moving. Alex abandoned his plate. Halver dried his hands on his shirt instead of the towel by the basin. Jade set her cup down without a sound.

The High General stood on the step in a plain grey coat, no Battalion black anywhere on him and no escort behind him. He carried a leather case under one arm, worn soft at the corners, the kind that never left a Citadel filing room without someone signing for it twice.

"Commander Favaris." His eyes moved past him into the house, found the rest of us gathered near the kitchen doorway, and something in his shoulders eased, though not all the way.

"Good. All of you are here."

"Sir, we weren't expecting-"

"I know." He stepped inside without waiting for an invitation, and Corian closed the door with more care than the motion needed. "I'd rather not have been seen walking out of Citadel with this under my arm this early. Do you still have that room? The one with the map."

Corian blinked once. "Yes."