He found Isole in the residence garden an hour after the afternoon session closed.
She was sitting on the low stone bench at the garden's eastern edge — not running forms, not reading, not doing anything purposeful. Sitting with the bone staff across her knees and the November cold coming off the walls. She didn't look up when he came through the gate. The Dreamscape had him before he reached it.
He sat beside her.
The garden was small — the Sol capital residence built for function, not expanse. The wall close. The light already going by the fourth hour. The city's ambient sound came over the stone in a low continuous register that Varum maintained regardless of what happened inside any of its buildings.
He didn't ask.
She looked at the wall opposite for a while. Then at the bone staff across her knees.
"She had a contract," Isole said. "Drawn up. She had it ready before the assembly opened."
He waited.
