"Come down," he says.
"I'm watching the grounds."
"Come down and watch them from the path."
I come down. My lower back has been informing me of its opinions since six and he is right, as he is frequently right about physical things, because he is six hundred and eighty-nineyears old and has been through four prior claimings and he has had Aldric send me texts on late pregnancy since March with the specific neutrality of someone who is not going to suggest anything but is going to make sure the information exists within reach.
I noted this. I filed it. The drawer is full.
We walk the lower path,the one along the lake where the mist is lightest. I take his arm—we established this distinction early, on a morning that was harder than this one: he does not take mine, I take his, mine is the choice—and his arm is cold under my hand through his coat and my daughter settles the moment we start moving.
She likes his cold. She has from the beginning.
"The eastern relay traffic," I say.
"The pattern you've been tracking."
"Six weeks. I want the secondary logs from the winter quarter—the Ember Court border records."
He walks. Considering. We have been doing this for seven months: I ask for access, he considers what he can give me, we negotiate the edges. None of it has the magic running underneath. The negotiations are real.
"Some of the winter quarter logs are still active operations," he says.
"Redact the active cases. Give me the network map."
A pause that means yes. "After breakfast."
I note it as yes.
We walk. A pair of moorhens cut across the lake. The mist drifts silver over the water. Spring.
"Rosalind's contact came through the eastern channel again," I say.
"I saw it."
"Her alpha is watching Ember Court." I pause. "So am I."
He looks at me from the side. That look—the one that means he is running the calculation and has already arrived at the same place I have. Seven months of this and I can read it clearly now, the face that was always doing something before he arranged it.
"The sixth bond," he says.
"It's moving. The Ember Court alpha is already in motion—the relay traffic has been telling me for weeks. There's a pattern in the eastern access points that matches the early stages of a claiming preparation. Not random. Someone is tracking a specific omega."
"And you want to know who."
"I want to know everything." I look at the lake. "I told you. My own terms, my own access, my own cases. This is one of mine."
We walk in silence for a moment. The mist thins further over the water.
"My father will want that intelligence," I say.
"Yes."
"He's not going to get it for free."
He says nothing. This is also a thing I can read now—the silence that means he agrees and has already known it and is waiting to see how I arrive at the same conclusion without him arranging my route there.
His expression shifts, that small unguarded thing, there before he arranges it. I collect it and say nothing.