The dining table stood in a manner that could only be described as obedient.
Breakfast remained where it had been left—cooling, untouched, as though time itself had paused out of respect. Plates still held the shapes of meals recently eaten, impressions like fossils of appetite. The room felt expectant, but not anxious. Whatever urgency had existed had been carried out through the door with Mr. Lucius and the others.
"What happened?" I asked at last.
Zara was already halfway from the table, her chair pushed back with deliberate care. She did not look at her.
"An incident," she replied lightly.
I watched Zara follow her maid.
The servant—an Ezra in a crisp French maid's uniform—moved with a terrifying, frictionless gait. Her long hair was pinned in a coil so perfect it looked molded from clay. I had seen efficient staff in the palaces of Lysoria, but this was different. This was a unity of purpose that bordered on the grotesque.
"Shouldn't we follow her?" Halle asked.
She was still spreading butter across her toast with a precision that mirrored the house around her. She was adapting too quickly.
"Should we?" I echoed.
I turned my gaze to the other Ezra—the male in the charcoal suit.
He was clearing the silver. His short hair was a series of sharp, mathematical lines. He didn't look at me, yet I felt his presence recording my pulse, my temperature, the very frequency of my irritation.
I made a decision. A woman in my position does not wait to be told where the power has moved.
"Could you lead us to Zara?" I asked the suited Ezra.
"Certainly," he replied.
The voice was the most offensive part of the illusion—a perfect, overlapping harmony of a baritone and a soprano. It wasn't a man and a woman speaking together; it was one entity using two registers to mimic a human frequency. It hummed in my teeth.
We took a different corridor than the one I remembered.
The house unfolded with a disturbing restraint—no gold, no ostentation, only porcelain-white walls and space arranged with surgical intent. It was wealth that had no need for display because it had already deleted its competition.
We stopped at a door.
The Ezra knocked once, waited precisely long enough to be polite, then opened it.
Beyond was a garden.
Or rather, a forest compressed into the dimensions of a bedroom. Trees rose where walls should have been, their leaves a deep, impossible silver.
"Are you finished with breakfast?" Zara asked.
She reclined on a black lounger, posture careless. In her hand rested a smooth glass sphere.
Beside her, a large snake—scales the color of old bone—uncoiled with a dry, rhythmic hiss. It didn't look like a pet. It looked like a sensor.
I hesitated, taking in the impossible density of the space. It smelled of ozone and ancient rain.
"Thank you for the meal," Halle said, taking a seat on a moss-covered stone.
She was entirely unbothered.
I felt a flicker of concern—Halle was a creature of commerce, but she was being seduced by the Chairman's Order.
"Just one," Zara said, answering a question I hadn't asked. "He is a gift from Ezra. He doesn't eat; he simply… observes."
I watched the snake's slitted eyes.
It was a mirror of the Ezra legion. A thousand eyes, one mind.
Eventually, we entered a chamber that mimicked the night sky.
Stars scattered across a false firmament, drifting slowly. Not random. Curated. The illusion was flawless enough to be insulting.
"Do you like the stars?" Halle asked as we sat.
At some point—without announcement—drinks appeared at our sides.
A maid-Ezra stood behind me, and a suit-Ezra behind Halle. They moved so silently I could only track them by the soft, multi-jointed click of their fingers as they set the crystal down.
Zara sipped her drink, watching me over the rim of the glass.
She was evaluating my Reach.
"Why don't you want Halle and me to be friends?" she asked suddenly.
The question was a transaction.
I adjusted my silks, leaning back into the artificial starlight.
"I prefer my associates to be less prone to… unscheduled acquisitions," I replied, my voice as cool as the room. "And your father's 'Audit' outside is currently devaluing the local real estate. It makes for a volatile partnership."
"He is the Chairman," Zara said, her voice layering into that unsettling Ezra-harmony. "He does not encounter 'problems'; he encounters discrepancies. And he is very good at balancing accounts."
She leaned forward.
The snake on the floor mimicked the motion.
"If you let us be friends," she continued, the bribe finally hitting the table, "I will grant you access to our private airship port. No questions. No customs. A permanent bypass for your silk and spice trade. You can move your capital through Stonegarden as if the borders didn't exist."
I paused.
My mind immediately began calculating the ROI. Customs bypass in this province was worth more than a dozen warehouses.
It was Reach.
"No kidnapping," I said finally. "No 'remodeling' of daily life without a formal request. And I am to be informed of all 'playdates' forty-eight hours in advance."
Zara nodded. "Understood. The contract is acceptable."
Halle, uninterested in the logistics of power, was happily consuming a plate of biscuits that had materialized near her elbow.
The stars above us drifted.
A cool breeze moved through the room, carrying the scent of sandalwood and something ancient—the smell of the thirtieth silver coin being pressed into the dirt.
I felt a heavy, artificial calm settling over my thoughts. It wasn't fatigue; it was the house restoring my irritation back to a neutral state.
It was a violation of my right to be annoyed.
I leaned back despite myself.
Somewhere beyond the walls, the Chairman was foreclosing on a city's soul—but here, in the cold heart of his pride, I had just secured a shipping lane.
"A fair trade," I whispered, though my heart felt as heavy as lead.
Sleep pressed close.
It was a sterile, dreamless weight.
I let it take me.
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