“Three weeks,” Soren said.
Wren looked at the patrol map spread across the unused records table. “The vote is in sixteen days.”
“I know how calendars work.”
“Then use one.”
The old mapping room sat between the administrative wing and the northern service stairs, a narrow space that had outlived its original purpose. Paper boundary maps still hung from brass rails along one wall. The central table bore knife marks, ink stains, and the faded circles of cups set down by people who had believed the border mattered more than the rooms inside it.
Soren had chosen the room because no regular meeting used it and because the door could be seen from both ends of the corridor.
Caelum stood near the western map, reading the same security rotation Soren had placed before Wren.
She had asked him
