The silence after the wizard's last words held for several breaths.
Outside, the older district kept its quiet daytime traffic. Cart wheels rolled over packed dirt. Someone called a price for dried fish two streets over. Inside the plain room the four of them stood in the familiar shape. Lara had not taken her hand from the vicinity of the short blade.
Clara's pen rested on the closed ledger. Eli's face showed nothing of the frost throne, only the tired readiness of someone who had already calculated the cost of every available road.
Atlas felt the banked fire sit cold and present beside the new knowledge that the lesser city's dead Wizardess was already being used as fuel for a larger mobilization.
Eli spoke first.
"You want a word from a woman who no longer sits a throne. You want that word to delay a war long enough for the emperor's silence to become obvious. And in exchange you offer to keep one more name off the ledgers for a little while longer."
