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Brevan was already working his slate.

“Freight principal. The trade guilds bought a third of the guest list; one more shipping magnate won’t rate a second look. There’s a Vinduthi combine out of the Serrik lanes that’s courted Conclave tariff exemptions for a decade. I’ll borrow their colors.” He glanced up.

“You’d be Dren Vessik. Minor money, major ambitions, the kind of guest they invite so the directors have someone to condescend to.”

“Then make me condescendable.”

Bronwen grinned. Turnip made a noise under the table that I chose to read as support.

Eight hours later I walked into the closing reception, in a ballroom full of people whose organization I’d been fighting for six years.

The Virelle advertised wealth with four chandeliers, an orchestra, a garden under a clear hull, and two hundred political and trade elites. I gave them Brevan’s borrowed name and the expression he’d rehearsed into me. A few people looked twice at the gray skin and horns.

Then they decided Dren Vessik was a Vinduthi businessman from the Serrik lanes who wanted tariff favors, and their attention moved on.

The cover worked.

Nineteen security on the ballroom level; the packet said nineteen and I counted nineteen. Exits where the deck plan put them. So far, the room was behaving exactly as Brevan had predicted.

I found her almost immediately.

She stood in a loose ring of functionaries near the fountain. Conclave gray, deep brown skin against a pale collar, black hair coiled at her crown around a single gold pin. Dark eyes that never hurried.

A junior director was explaining something to her at length. She encouraged him with a question; he leaned closer, lowering his voice. By the time she moved on, she’d learned more from him than he’d learned from her.

Three moves ahead and careful not to show it. I knew that kind of control.

I’d come to learn whether the sender was real. I hadn’t expected to recognize the way she worked.

She never once looked at me. That was the confirmation. Everyone else in the room had.

At the third change of music she left the ring, unhurried, gold pin catching once under the chandeliers, and passed through the doors to the observation deck. After a count of twenty, I followed.

The deck was empty except for her. She stood at the rail with her back to the stars, facing the door, hands loose. She looked me over once, openly, then met my eyes.

“Dren Vessik,” she said. “The Serrik lanes. Freight.”

“Strategist Darven.”

“You’ve read the guest list.”

“I’ve read everything with your name on it that exists outside the Spire.” I stopped at conversational distance and no closer.

“It’s a short file. Six years of exemplary service, no family, no debts, no lovers, no vices, several commendations, and not one sentence that couldn’t have been written by a committee. Six years and not one accidental detail. Somebody cleaned that file.”

“Or lived carefully.” Nothing moved in her face. “You came yourself. That wasn’t procedure.”

“You wrote to me by name. That wasn’t either. Architect. And the relay. Those are not details you get from a Conclave personnel file.”

“Pinn got me the relay. Your handshake is built to permit replies back through the same blind chain; he’d carried two packets during your earlier operations and recognized how to address the route without knowing where it ended. The title came from a corrupted Conclave intercept three years ago. They recovered one clear routing tag, ARCHITECT, and never learned what it meant. I did.” She held my eyes.

“Pinn still doesn’t know where you live. Neither do I.”

I studied her. She let me.

“Proof, then,” she said. “You didn’t cross neutral space for conversation.”

“Proof.”