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Not in person. But I’d spent three years reading the Conclave’s hunting reports, following the same people through jobs that should not have worked. I knew how the Architect made decisions. Pinn didn’t need the rest.

“If he’s a trap, then I misread a man for three years, and that’s my mistake to live or die with.” I turned the glass by its stem. “Send it.”

“Sent the moment you walk away.” He recorked the bottle, and his black eyes came up to mine for the first and last time.

“Twenty years of carrying other people’s secrets, and yours is the first I’d like to see arrive. Don’t die before midday.”

“When I clear the Virelle, burn the route, take the reserve account, and disappear. All of it. You’ve earned the premium.”

“I intend to collect,” he said.

“Good. I hate sentimental couriers.” His whiskers twitched, and I walked away.

I stepped back into the ballroom: warmth, music, two hundred kinds of perfume fighting over recycled air. Ottra was performing his tariff reform for a fresh audience. Dallis was handing over his post, still rolling his shoulder against the rig. Above the orchestra the chandeliers turned.

Beneath them stood men who had ordered my brother’s death and then erased him for the crime of dying loyal.

Less than twelve hours.

A server offered his tray. I lifted a fresh glass I would not drink. Someone laughed near the fountain and I laughed too, at nothing, on time, in tune.

Finish this night of lies. A few hours behind my suite door. One last reception in the morning. Then, if the Architect was everything I’d bet my life he was, I’d never have to tell another lie.

I smiled at the people nearest me. They smiled back. Not one of them saw a thing.

RYLOS

At 0300 Penumbra ship time, a separate burst through the courier net delivered the proof key. Varrick used it to open the sample. By 0340 Varrick had attacked it three ways trying to prove it false, and failed.

“Outer-ring guard rotation for the Spire, current cycle,” he said.

“Post assignments, shift seams, relief timing. I ran it against our own long-lens surveillance from the past month.” He set the two columns side by side above the table.

“It is accurate to the minute.”

“Then the sender holds live access,” Sabine said. “Or held it within the cycle.”

“Or the Conclave supplied a real rotation to pull us in,” Talon said.

“Possible,” I said. “The data is real. That tells us nothing yet about the sender. Send the reply. We take the meeting.”

The meeting packet arrived an hour later through the same courier net: rendezvous logistics, nothing from the bulk archive. A two-day Conclave charter aboard a pleasure cruiser called the Virelle, neutral space. Its closing reception was scheduled to open at 0900 Virelle standard in the ballroom used for the evening gala.

Docking assignments. A deck security rotation. A suite code. A rendezvous protocol: observation deck at the third change of music after the reception opened, sender wearing a single gold hairpin, come alone, follow after a count of twenty.

And a deadline: an archive audit at midday, Virelle standard, after which our correspondent would be a corpse or a prisoner.

Midday Virelle translated to 1520 Penumbra time. Ten hours and change remained when we finished reading.

“No,” Talon said, before I’d said anything. He knows me. “Whoever goes, it isn’t you. You’re the one person this operation can’t risk.”

“I’m the better extractor,” Kallum said from the viewport.

“You are.” I stood. “And every job we’ve run since the coup, one of you went in while I stayed behind and ran the operation. Not this one. The message used my title and our relay. If the source is real, they know more about us than anyone outside this ship should. If it’s a trap, whoever built it knows the same things. I need to see the sender myself.” I looked at Talon until he sat back.

“I’m going. Brevan, I need a cover that gets me through that airlock before the audit.”

“Talon, bring the Penumbra forward while I’m aboard. Hold beyond the cruiser’s patrol range. I want a short run home.”