"Then we contest it," I said.
"How," Ryke said. Not a challenge. A genuine question, the kind he asked when he was interested in the answer rather than already knowing it.
I thought about it.
I thought about four months of being the person nobody tracked, the person who made herself useful and forgettable and *manageable.* I thought about the bag I used to keep half-packed. I thought about the girl in Duke's first sketch — sitting at a counter, arms around herself, coffee untouched.
I thought about how the same woman, rendered by the same hand weeks later, had looked standing in a training yard with a staff in her hands and weight forward.
"We don't counter-argue it," I said. "Counter-arguments look defensive. They give the rumor a second life in every response." I set my cup down. "W
