---
"Debt workers with no surviving loyalties are useful if they are not stupid. Women with business discipline. Women who know storage and loading but not enough to form resistance inside my walls. Women aren't addicted to talking. No one, pretty enough to think beauty is leverage. No one, who asks too quickly about sealed rooms."
Mira almost smiled.
"All right."
"And Mira."
"Yes."
"If you buy, do not buy soft. Pick the strong one."
That answer needed no explanation.
She understood perfectly.
People bought from contract markets came in different shapes of broken. Some bent toward obedience. Some toward resentment. Some toward collapse. Soft ones made noise when pressure came. Better to buy those who had already learned hardness and simply needed direction.
Mira nodded. "I know how to select."
"Yes," he said. "That is why I am telling you to do it."
Trust without softness. Good.
The room settled after that, quieter now that the center had been spoken aloud.
