She had been running this scenario in the back of her mind since the day they arrived. Not from paranoia — from the accurate assessment that a thorough ruler in a recently contested empire would be examining everything that had happened in the period before he took power. The fourteen missing people from the palace records were a loose thread. Loose threads got pulled.
She had three options and had been running them since the relay arrived.
First: leave. Take the household back to Varen or further east before the picture became complete. Preserve the operational security. Lose the progress on the working list.
Second: stay hidden. Tighten the Liang Meridian cover, reduce activity, wait until the search moved on to other things. Risk was that the search didn't move on — that he was thorough enough to keep pulling the thread.
Third: something else.
She had been sitting with the third option since the fifth bell.
"Mahir," she said.
He looked at her from the door.
