The dance was not her idea, and it was not his idea, and it happened anyway with the particular inevitability of things that were always going to happen regardless of the preferences of the people inside them.
It was a tradition. She had discovered this in logistics research, a note in the venue's event history about the annual Varek gala and the formal dance that opened the second half of the evening, a holdover from Viktor Varek's time that had survived into his son's era because certain traditions had roots deep enough that ending them required more energy than continuing them.
The music shifted at half past nine. The floor cleared in the practiced way of people who knew what came next. Valdris was across the room talking to two senior clients, and she was near the service entrance ma
