She held his gaze for a moment. Then nodded once, the nod of someone completing a transaction they were satisfied with, and walked back toward the main estate.
Orion stood in the corridor for a moment.
Luna pressed her face against his arm. "She's useful," she said. Not grudgingly. Just factually.
"She's also a variable I didn't know was coming," he said.
"Good variable or bad variable," Luna said.
He thought about Crane's one second of flat recalculation.
"Depends on whether Crane adjusts the mechanism to account for her presence," he said. "An Imperial Evaluator witnessing a formation malfunction is a different situation than family witnesses."
"He'll adjust," Mist said.
First words. Clear, quiet, with the specific quality of something that had been listening to everything and had waited for the moment when speaking added more than silence.
Orion looked at the fox.
