While the festival roared two streets over, Katarina walked into the assessor's office to tidy up her win.
The summons was a reciprocal audit. Drava wanted to put her seal standard on the table and pick at it. Fine. Let her. Katarina's standard was clean. She'd made it statutory, she'd made it conforming, she'd built it to be picked at and survive. Drava would find nothing. The moment she found nothing, Katarina's audit against her Greypass liens would stand, and every piece of Drava paper on that corridor would turn to garbage.
So she walked in holding the weapon and feeling good about it.
Severina Corvani was already seated. There was tea on the table, two cups, poured before Kat arrived. The office was bare, borrowed for the morning.
"Signora Montecardi," Corvani said. "Sit. Your festival is charming. The fish smell carries all the way up here."
