The hearing wing had never held this many jackets.
Delegation gray in the front rows.
Council pins behind them.
Faculty, press credentials, and a feed camera on a stand that nobody had bothered to hide, because hiding it would have insulted the point of the whole room.
Soren sat with the pack along the respondent bench, Celia's procedural map memorized, Voss's handheld in Dani's bag, and watched the machine assemble itself stage by stage, exactly the shape the margins said it would be.
Vasquez Senior took a seat in the second row, not the first.
A man who sat second row at his own reckoning was a man leaving himself a lane to the exit.
Then the doors opened again, and Lior walked in.
◆◆◆◆
He'd dressed for it.
Pressed jacket, the clean line of blond, the face the illustrators loved, and he crossed the floor to the speaking position with the walk of a man whose floors had always agreed to hold him.
Months out of the academy hadn't marked him anywhere visible.
