Ravenna
I knocked once on the conference room door and opened it the way protocol required when a meeting was already in session.
Both men looked at me.
Valkor, with the controlled blankness that I had learned, meant he was working harder underneath the surface than his face showed. The other man with something slower. More deliberate. Like a person taking his time because he had decided he could afford to.
"I apologize for the interruption," I said. "I can come back if the timing is wrong."
"Stay." Valkor's voice was flat and certain. He gestured to the chair to his left, the one he always assigned me in formal meetings. "We were just finishing introductions."
I crossed the room and sat down. I opened my notebook to a clean page and looked at the man across the table.
Up close, he
