“You counted every turn from your room on the way here.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
“That must make your job easier.”
“No.” The word came out amused.
She did not look away. Two seconds. Three. The skin at her throat gave her away, soft and fast. I looked away first. I had not survived this long by walking willingly toward open flame.
“This corridor is restricted after dark,” I said.
“Good to know.”
“You already knew.”
“I suspected.”
“You were testing the boundary.”
She glanced once toward the garden doors, then back to me. “I’m a translator. We’re very precise about definitions.”
“No,” I said. “You are precise about where definitions fail.”
Something behind her eyes caught the joke. The same controlled trace of warmth she had let me see earlier. I was beginning to understand that Cordero did not smile by accident. She deployed warm glances the way some people deployed knives.
We turned back toward the guest wing. At her door, she stopped and faced me. “Do you stand here all night?”
“No.” A lie.
Her eyes narrowed slightly. She knew it was a lie.
I should not have enjoyed that either.
“Good night, Mr. Graves.”
“Good night, Ms. Cordero.”
She opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it between us. I stood outside her door for nineteen more minutes for no reason I was permitted to put in writing. Then I went to find Yuki.
* **
I knocked, then opened the door.
Yuki acknowledged me without looking up. “Report.”
I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. Her desk was covered in trade documents, dinner placements, and three sealed messages from the coastal clans. She had arranged them in precise stacks. Yuki trusted paper more than people. Usually, she was right.
“The translator is not a translator.”
Yuki did not look surprised. Yuki rarely looked surprised. “Confidence?”
“Ninety-five percent.”
She turned a page. The rasp of paper. “Capability?”
“Trained. Six-plus years. Probably more.”
