The alliance court's outer hall was packed with people the morning they arrived, clerks moving fast between desks, guards posted at every door.
"We can't just walk in and grab a judge," Liu Che said, stopping the group at the edge of the courtyard. "He has rank. Guards. People who trust him."
"We're not grabbing him," Wei Liang said. "We're talking to him."
"And if talking goes wrong," Garrow said, "we're standing in the middle of the one place in this whole region with the most guards per square foot."
Xu's voice came quiet through the pendant. "She's right to be careful. Waking a buried memory wrong could break his mind completely. We do this slow, and we do it somewhere private."
Liu Che sent word ahead, using his old rank to request a private meeting under the excuse of reviewing
