The pen was in the groove.
Neth Myrvalis sat at his desk the way he had sat at his desk for ninety-five years. Upright, still, the angular posture of a Kobold who had never learned to slouch because slouching required a kind of physical carelessness that his body had never permitted. His glasses were off. His hands were on the armrests. The intelligence digest from the previous day was in the outgoing tray, annotated in angular Kobold script, the annotations complete and correct.
The light at ninth bell was on. The light had been on at ninth bell every evening for ninety-five years.
