He had been tracking the gap for eleven years.
The gap was a measurement. A number. The distance in time between the moment Orvessa Coldmantle made a decision and the moment Zephyr's predictive model completed the same decision. The model was not a guess. The model was a calculation, a projection based on 486 years of institutional data, mortal behavioral analysis, administrative precedent, theological context, and the specific cognitive architecture of a woman who had spent twenty-five years governing the largest religious-administrative institution on the continent. The model was precise. The model had been precise since Coldmantle's appointment in Year 465, when Zephyr had first constructed her decision profile from the available institutional data and the Soul domain's preliminary perception of her spiritual architecture.
