Conrad moved by nine.
I had expected it. I had been tracking the specific quality of the house's morning energy the way I tracked weather, by pressure and temperature and the small atmospheric signals that preceded the thing itself, and by eight thirty the signals were clear. Rowan had been in and out of the study twice. My mother had appeared at the breakfast table with the particular stillness of a woman who had been consulted and had given her answer and was now removing herself from the consequences. The two senior warriors who constituted Conrad's informal inner circle had been summoned and dismissed in the space of twenty minutes.
By nine o'clock Conrad had his position.
He came to the dining room where Damon was finishing breakfast with the specific unhurried deliberateness of a
