The household captain gave the recorder her name before she gave him the governor’s.
“Adra Kett. I was commanding the detachment in the extraction yard.”
The young man wrote it. His pencil point broke on the last letter. He stared at the splinter for a moment, then took a knife from his pocket and sharpened it over his own knee.
Kett waited.
Iven stood beside the covered tool bags. Beyond them, four clinical porters were preparing the two biers. Jora had found a place in the staff movements for both bodies and their attendants. The ordinary crossing callers could be heard through the west passage, naming households that had been waiting since before dawn.
Laris and Hett would not have to wait for an empty freight cradle. Their ground records existed. Their rooms existed. A clerk was finding the people who should hear before the biers arrived.
The recorder finished sharpening.
“Your instruction?” he asked Kett.
