(Caius)
I was still at my desk when Pryor knocked.
It was late. The pack house had gone quiet around me the way it did after a certain hour, that particular settling of a large building when most of the people in it had stopped moving. I'd been working through border reports for the past two hours and the fire in the corner of my office had burned down to something low and steady and I hadn't bothered to add to it.
Pryor didn't knock at this hour unless something required it.
"Come in," I said.
He entered with a folder under his arm, thicker than his usual evening updates, and he set it on my desk without preamble and looked at me with an expression that was as close to unsettled as Pryor ever allowed himself to get. He was a man who had worked in council for thirty years and had seen
