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“And Rylos, Dren Vessik died on the Virelle. For the Spire you’re Reth Corvan, Vinduthi freight principal. Horn sheaths change your silhouette, contour mesh shifts the face, the violet line stays under a high trade collar. I’ll want two days of everyone rehearsing their names. Zarek, that includes you. You’re a cargo specialist now. Cargo specialists don’t glare.”

“I’ll glare at the cargo,” Zarek said.

“Carys, checkpoints.” I moved down the table. “You’ve handled Conclave-grade imaging arrays before.”

“Tarsus bought from the same three contractors the Spire uses.” Carys had Flinx draped over her shoulders.

“Lobby checkpoint runs a sweep cycle. Flinx can blind the cameras for short windows, but short means short. Thirty seconds, maybe, before the system flags the gap and self-checks. We’ll need to know exactly when we use it.”

“You’ll know to the second. What does the sweep do when it self-checks?”

“Locks the checkpoint and reruns everyone in the queue.” Flinx’s tail curled around her wrist, chrome on skin.

“Fine if we’re through, fatal if we’re in it. So we don’t use the thirty seconds at the checkpoint at all. We use it in the corridor past it, where the delegation’s equipment cases go through secondary imaging. That’s the scan that would actually catch us.”

Varrick nodded. “Flinx kills the live optics. I preload a clean scan package and inject it during the blind. Survey equipment, sample containers, Orlian glasswork. The system records an ordinary scan instead of a thirty-second hole.”

“Then that’s where it goes. Varrick, Sabine, you’re inside the delegation. Once we’re past the public band, you take the security hub on the mezzanine. Cameras, doors, internal feeds: yours.”

“Carys. Your Regalia checks?”

“Complete. Alloy, etching, cipher. All five are genuine, from one matched series. I’ve mapped the harmonic order.”

“Then you come up to the vault and check the door against the set. I want confirmation that the recesses match and the Sovereign systems respond before we insert the final piece. After that, you and Flinx return to the mezzanine and hold the retreat path.”

“Finally,” Carys said. “A job where touching priceless objects is the safe part.”

“Fine. Give me the hub and eleven uninterrupted minutes, and the Spire’s cameras will see whatever Sabine tells them to see,” Varrick said.

“Nine minutes,” Sabine said. “I re-ran it.”

“Nine uninterrupted minutes.”

“Talon, you and Tamsin hold the air. The Penumbra stages in the Kaddran drift; you bring her in on the extraction call and not one second before, because the moment this ship enters Spire traffic space, our extraction window drops to minutes.”

Talon nodded once. He’d stopped arguing the plan yesterday and moved on to preparing for its failure. That is what I keep him for.

Talon reached under his flight collar and drew out the worn metal disk he had carried since the coup: the Sovereign’s personal seal. He set it in my palm.

“He gave it to the pilot,” I said.

“He gave it to the man most likely to get the first key home. The keys are home. You take it to his door.”

The disk was cold in my palm. I knew exactly what it meant to Talon and to me. I closed my hand around it once, then threaded the cord over my head and tucked the seal beneath my shirt. “I’ll bring it back.”

“Bring everyone back,” Talon said. “The metal can fend for itself.”

“Extraction windows,” Tamsin said. “I can hold a low corridor over the Spire’s landing shelf for ninety seconds at a pass without painting us on their grid. After the third pass they’ll have a track solution. So, when you call us, be where you said you’d be.”

“We will.”

“You won’t,” she said, without heat, from years of experience. “You’ll be two levels off and on fire. I’ll plan for that too.”

“Kallum. You’re ahead of everyone.”

“Always am.” He stood at the far end with Anhara.

“I go in with the delegation, I leave it in the first blind corridor, and I’m a floor ahead of you the rest of the day. I clear anything waiting on the interior route before you reach it.”