“Personal household seal. Not clan-head. Martin is running bothavenues at once.”
She turned the letter a quarter so the crest caught the light, reading the seal as I had read it in the corridor.
“He hasn’t accepted.”
“No.”
“What did you say to the courier?”
“That further private delivery to this door comes through me.”
Her mouth pulled at one corner. “Popular everywhere you go.” She glanced down at the letter in her lap, then back at me. “How was your morning?”
Catalina listened without interrupting, eyes fixed somewhere past my shoulder. Times. Routes. Uniforms. Who belonged. Who had been sent to be seen.
She nodded. “There were four passes,” she said.
“Yes.”
“What happened at eight a.m.?”
I did not answer at once.
“That was Cael.”
Catalina tilted her head the smallest amount.
I continued. “He is not on the eastern rotation. He stands western galleries at oh-eight-hundred. Yuki did not send him.”
“Could he have been reassigned?”
“No.”
“You checked.”
“I checked before I took the post.”
Her gaze dropped to the letter in her lap. “Cael didn’t stop?”
“No.” She left the silence open. I filled the rest of it. “No slowing. No glance back at the door. No look at me.”
Her mouth tightened. “That’s not casual.” She leaned back, pale under the eyes and too awake inside them.
Catalina closed her eyes for half a second. When she opened them, the exhaustion was still there, but it had gone behind glass. “Cael is the leak.”
“Yes.” I looked at the Solberg letter.
She followed my gaze. “Martin.”
“Or someone acting for him.”
“And Cael saw me in the training yard.”
“He marked you then.”
“As what?”
I held her eyes. “As worth reporting.”