She looked at him.
The system on her shoulder was completely still.
"The collar doesn't mean that," she said. "It never meant that. What it meant was a lie that was built into the framework for purposes that had nothing to do with you." She paused. "The charter I filed — it says that specifically. In the legal record. The collar is a physical object with magical properties that belong to the person wearing it. Not to anyone else."
He looked at his tea.
"I know," he said. Quietly. "I know that's what it says."
She waited.
"It's harder," he said, "to know it the other way."
She sat with this.
"Yes," she said. "It is."
He looked up.
Just briefly. Just for a second.
Then back to the tea.
She stayed for the rest of the two hours.
When she left she did not have a solution. She had what she had come for — the actual shape of the problem, felt rather than theorized, which was the only foundation that solutions she trusted were built on.
She walked back to the office.
