The joint session was Ashe's idea.
She said it the way she said most practical things, which was directly and without ceremony, finding him in the corridor outside Thorne's hall as the afternoon session ended and the students were filing out into the September light. "Villa 4 ring tonight. We should see what the compound produced when there is something real to test it against."
He said yes. That was the entire conversation. She went her way and he went his and neither of them felt the need to add anything to it.
He was in the ring when she arrived, twenty minutes into his own work, running the fifth beat exit sequence that had been inconsistent across the week. Not because he had planned to be early. He had come down after dinner to run the forms and the exit sequence had been there waiting for him the way unfinished things were always waiting, patient and slightly reproachful.
