CHAPTER 412: YOU’VE GROWN SINCE THE LAST TIME WE WATCHED YOU WORK

"We do not count grains of wheat with farmers who know their own fields. We came because your neighbor has been sowing salt in the night. He is not a neighbor you invited."

Mariel’s hands folded at her waist. "When one ancient stirs," she said softly, "the others raise their heads to see whether they should leave their burrows. That cannot be allowed."

The director did not pretend he did not know. "Valakar," he said. The name felt like stone in his mouth. Heavy, simple, not to be argued with.

"And the one he smiles at from the corner," Taaros added, a faint narrowing of his eyes the only sign of distaste.

"Drosirael. Blade wrapped in shadow. He will cut for the pleasure of seeing the slice, not because the cut is needed."

"Your building has good fences," Mariel said. "Your city has good lights. Your maps are better than most.

But his roots do not care about lights, and his cults do not climb fences. They grow under them."

The director stepped to the wall-screen, lifted his hand, and the map woke. Lines brightened.

Circles pulsed. A web the color of warning stretched across the continent and then tightened. He touched three points with three fingers.

They swelled: festival cities with smiles too wide. He slid a knuckle along a line. Two hubs lit where spreadsheets never asked for a second decimal place.

He pinned the place where the teleport lattice had developed a habit of breaking and being "repaired" cleanly once a month, as if following a holiday without a calendar mentioned.

Each point threw a smaller web of its own.

"We mapped nodes," he said. "We placed forces at polite distances. We set watchers who do not look like watchers and built a trap that does not call itself a trap.

When the hand reaches, it will find a switch. When the switch flips, it will not be noisy. It will be final."

Taaros chuckled once, and the sound reminded the room of boulders shifting after spring melt. "Efficient," he said. "You’ve grown since the last time we watched you work."

Mariel’s expression hardly changed, yet something in it approved. "Efficiency is needed," she said.

"It will not be enough. This is not a newborn pushing his bowl around for attention. This one was born when hills were sharp.

He slept under bone, but he dreamed. His dreams laid roots while you were building your lights."

The director did not argue. He adjusted the projection, and the lines poured down into lower layers: contact logs, access rolls, shipment reconcile, and favor-ledger guesses that were not official and therefore most useful.

"I know," he said quietly. "That’s why I have not sprung it. He is still setting his table. I prefer to flip tables after the soup is served. Mess makes honest men careless."

Taaros’s gold gaze weighed him. Not to find fault. To measure. "What will you do when they push at the exam?" he asked.

"They will. It is a soft place with hard edges. Children call it safe. Men call it training. Gods call it a bowl placed in the open."

"Be present," the director said. "Without being seen." He met Mariel’s eyes, and the tiredness in his face became focused.

"We have three layers there. The Dean’s leash, which is good enough until it isn’t. Our own quiet line, which they have not found.

And a third we did not build, which I do not trust and will not cut until I know which way it binds."

Mariel inclined her head. "You have felt a quiet behind you," she said. Not a question.

"I have," he said. "It does not press. It watches. It may be a friend. It may be a test. I do not make pacts with shadows because they are courteous."

Taaros lowered his chin, satisfied. "Good." He reached inside his cloak and drew out something small.

At first, it looked like a pebble, dull, round, something a child would skip across a pond. He placed it on the desk, and the desk remembered for a moment what it meant to be a workbench in a barn.

The scent of hay came and went, not sweet, not heavy, just clean.

"A tether," he said. "We do not give these to men who swagger. We give them to men who do not fall forward when the floor tips.

If the exam’s seal asks for help, press this into anything in that realm for longer than a year. The tether will not hold for pride. It will hold for the purpose."

The director did not reach for it yet. He looked at it, let the room accept it, and then set his hand on the desk, two fingers a breath away.

"What does it cost," he asked, "besides gratitude."

Mariel smiled, and the smile did not fade. "Clever," she murmured. "It costs silence. Use it and do not speak of it. Not to friends. Not to enemies. Not to your mirror when you shave."

"I can pay that price," he said. "I have always preferred quiet tools."

"Another thing," Taaros said. He stepped closer to the map. Lines passed over his face like light through leaves.

He extended a thick finger and touched a district that had not been on the director’s first three lists. A quiet place.

A place with little worth on paper. A place with people who repaired gates without asking for credit. "There," he said.

The director did not hide his surprise. He brought up the ledger for that district and the one under it. At first, it was clean.

It was too clean. Then the screen showed an old record, archive-stamped, a repair work order from years ago, signed by a contractor who had never existed and approved by a man who had retired before the date.

He exhaled slowly. "Thank you," he said.

Mariel’s eyes warmed. "We do not tell you what to do," she said. "We tell you where the ground is soft. You already know how to plant."

He nodded. He reached for a pen. He wrote nothing. He tapped the pen twice against the desk in a rhythm only he knew, then set it down.

"There will be pushback when we clean inside the Association," he said.