The evening had settled into the particular quiet that Gepetto's residence produced when no one in it was moving with purpose.
Alaric stood near the far wall of the main room, performing the particular stillness that was not attention but was not inattention either. A servant's stillness, calibrated to be present without occupying presence. Gepetto had not had to instruct this. The architecture had produced it, the same way the architecture produced everything Alaric did that had not been explicitly commanded, through the graduated thresholds of a Synthetic Soul that had learned to read context before reading directives.
From the back room came the faint, irregular sounds of Mira doing something with paper, the specific rustling of a child trying to be quieter than she was naturally inclined to be.
Gepetto was reviewing reports at the desk.
The knock came at the eighth hour.
Not loud. Not hesitant. The knock of someone who knew they would be answered and had decided that announcing themselves with force was less interesting than announcing themselves with precision. Three impacts, each one placed with the specificity of someone who had considered the acoustics.
Gepetto set down the report.
He did not look at Alaric. He rose, adjusted his coat with the unhurried gesture of a man answering his own door at a reasonable hour in a city that had always had people at his door at reasonable hours, and opened it.
Aldric Voss stood in the evening light.
He looked exactly as he had in the Domus Memorion: the coat, the collar, the particular quality of a man whose physical presence communicated capability without announcing it. The revolver was visible at his hip. The cognitive instrument was in the interior pocket whose outline he had learned to read on this kind of coat. His equipment was present as a fact about the person carrying it, not concealed, not displayed.
He looked at Gepetto with the expression of someone confirming a calculation they had already made.
"Mr. Viremont," he said.
"Bishop Voss." Gepetto stepped back from the door. "Please come in."
Aldric entered the way he had entered the Domus Memorion: without urgency, without the specific quality of attention that would have communicated that he found the space unfamiliar. He looked at the room the way a man looked at a room he had been thinking about before he arrived.
His eyes moved across the shelves, the desk, the reports. They paused on Alaric with the brief professional assessment of someone cataloguing a presence and assigning it a probability.
Servant. He filed it and moved on.
"I apologize for the hour," Aldric said.
"Not at all." Gepetto gestured toward the chairs by the window, the ones positioned for conversation rather than work. "The city keeps its own schedule these days. I've stopped expecting evenings to be quiet."
He had, in the three seconds between opening the door and speaking those words, processed four things.
First: Aldric Voss did not make social calls. Not to commercial residents of cities he was investigating. Not at the eighth hour. Not alone.
Second: Aldric was here, which meant the jar had pointed here, which meant the jar had registered something in this house. The capability that had left that trace was not his. His own abilities generated no residue detectable at this distance. The trace the jar had found was Mira's activation from that afternoon, the stable manifestation that had lasted a minute and forty seconds and had left an impression in the structural layer of the world because Mira was not, as it turned out, the kind of practitioner whose use left no mark.
Third: Aldric's expression when the door opened had been the expression of someone whose hypothesis had been confirmed, not formed. He had not arrived uncertain.
Fourth: the documents were in the desk. Three steps away. He would not need to ask Alaric to retrieve them if the conversation required it.
There was a specific quality to the third observation that he had not encountered in the six months since arriving in this world. Anonymous Presence made him structurally absent from every system that used instruments or signatures to locate a target. Aldric had not used an instrument or a signature. He had used inference. The ability Gepetto had considered his most absolute protection had not been overcome. It had simply been irrelevant to the method Aldric chose. He filed this without elaboration because there was nothing to elaborate. The data was the data.
He sat across from Aldric and waited.
"Tea," Gepetto said to Alaric, without looking at him. A sentence that was also a signal: remain available, remain visible, remain exactly what you appear to be.
Alaric moved toward the kitchen with the unhurried competence of a man who had done this many times.
Aldric watched him go. Then looked at Gepetto.
"I've been in Vhal-Dorim for some time," he said.
"I'd heard there was increased Church presence." Gepetto's tone was the tone of a man discussing something that inconvenienced him mildly. "The inspections have affected business. Though I understand the necessity."
"You've been cooperative with the inspection process."
"Fully." A pause. "I find that cooperation is generally more efficient than the alternative."
Aldric's expression did not change. He had, Gepetto noted, the face of someone who had spent eleven years in situations where readable faces were a professional liability. What was there was not blankness, it was the specific quality of stillness that came from someone choosing, at every moment, precisely how much to show.
"The Domus Memorion has been your primary enterprise since you arrived in Vhal-Dorim," Aldric said. "Approximately six months."
"Six months, yes."
"You arrived with capital of uncertain documentation."
"Documentation sufficient for the Commercial Registry's requirements," Gepetto said, with the mild correction of someone used to having this conversation. "I've answered questions about my financial history twice during the inspection process. Both times the documentation has been found satisfactory."
"It has." Aldric looked at the window. The city outside was settling into its evening configuration. "Your documentation is, in fact, unusually thorough. More thorough than most merchants of comparable scale. People who have something to hide tend to over-document." He paused. "People with nothing to hide often don't notice that they've documented everything."
"I was advised by a competent legal consultant," Gepetto said. "Early in my time here. She had very specific ideas about what proper documentation looked like."
"Her name?"
"Sevan." He used the name without hesitation, without any of the tells that came from a name that was being produced rather than recalled. "She worked through the commercial registry's freelance desk. I can retrieve the contract documentation if it would be useful."
Aldric looked at him for a moment.
"That would be helpful," he said.
Gepetto rose, walked to the desk, opened the second drawer. The file was where Sevan had told him to keep it, organized in the format she had designed to look like the accumulation of a careful private person rather than the construction of someone trying to be careful. He brought it to Aldric and sat back down.
Aldric read it with the speed of someone who had learned to extract the relevant from the irrelevant in documents designed to obscure the ratio between them. He was, Gepetto observed, genuinely good at this. The fraction of a second his eyes paused at each meaningful line was shorter than most.
He set the file on the table between them.
"You've had other visitors," Aldric said. Not a question.
"Clients," Gepetto said. "The Domus Memorion has a particular clientele. People who value discretion, which means people who are occasionally in situations that require it. I've learned not to ask about the situations."
"Adrian Vale."
"He was a client, yes." Gepetto's expression produced the mild wariness of a merchant discussing a prominent family. "Several times. I sell objects with a specific function. What people do with them after they leave is not my concern."
"What function did the objects you sold Mr. Vale serve?"
"The same function everything I sell serves." Gepetto settled back into his chair with the ease of a man on familiar ground. "They revealed something about the person using them. I don't sell power, Bishop. I sell information about the self. People find that useful for different reasons."
Alaric returned with tea. He set it on the low table between the chairs with the quiet efficiency of someone who had done this in many rooms and found nothing remarkable about doing it in this one. He withdrew to his position near the far wall.
Aldric picked up the cup but did not drink immediately.
"You've invested in several of Vhal-Dorim's industrial development projects," he said.
"Modestly. I identified promising work that was underfunded. I prefer to invest in early stages when the risk is higher but the alignment is cleaner. You know what you're buying before it's been smoothed out for public consumption."
"The investment pattern is unusual for a merchant of your profile."
"My profile is unusual," Gepetto said. He said it simply, as a fact that required no defense. "I came to Vhal-Dorim with a clear plan and I've executed it. The results are in the registry."
Aldric set the tea down without having drunk from it.
There was a pause. Not the pause of someone searching for the next question. The pause of someone deciding which of several available next questions served them best.
In the back room, Mira had stopped moving. The paper-rustling had ceased at some point during the conversation and had not resumed. She was listening. She had understood, with the specific intelligence of a child who had learned to read rooms before she could read text, that the man in the main room was not a social visitor.
Gepetto did not look toward the back room. He kept his attention on Aldric with the quality of a man who found his guest interesting rather than threatening.
"There was an incident," Aldric said, "several months ago, involving a group operating beneath the city. A cult with interests in pre-Republican theological artifacts."
"I read about it." Gepetto's tone was the tone of someone who read about a lot of things and had learned which of them to have opinions about. "Disturbing. I wasn't aware the cult had infrastructure in Vhal-Dorim specifically."
"The Church wasn't either, until recently." Aldric looked at him. "The group was interrupted during an assembly. Their collected materials were removed. Three of their members did not survive the encounter."
"I hope the Church recovered what was taken."
"What was taken," Aldric said, "had been in their possession for some time. It predated the current crisis." He paused. "What I find more interesting is who interrupted them."
"I would assume the Church."
"The Church arrived afterward." His voice remained even. "Someone else arrived first, and had already been thorough by the time our representatives reached the site."
Gepetto looked at him with the expression of a man following an account that was becoming more interesting. "A rival faction?"
"That is one hypothesis." Aldric's gaze had not left Gepetto's face. Not with the intensity of accusation. With the specific quality of someone reading a text they had partially decoded and were continuing to work through. "The signature left behind was spatial in nature. A class of ability that is not common and that is not easily mistaken for anything else."
"I wouldn't know how to evaluate that," Gepetto said. "My abilities are of a different kind."
"What kind?"
"Perceptual. I told you, I sell objects that reveal things. The ability to read what an object reveals, and to construct an object that can serve that function, requires a specific orientation toward information. It's not a combat-oriented class."
"And your servant?" Aldric's eyes moved to Alaric without his head turning. The specific economy of a man who had learned that looking directly was not always looking most carefully. "What class does he hold?"
"He handles physical security and contract enforcement when required. His background is in registered guild work. His documentation is on file at the Guild's Vhal-Dorim office. He was vetted as part of my household staff registration during the inspection process."
"I'm aware," Aldric said. "I reviewed his file this afternoon."
The sentence was dropped into the conversation the way a stone was dropped into water. Not thrown. Placed. To see what it disturbed.
Gepetto registered it with the equanimity of a man who had expected his household to be reviewed. "Then you'll have found everything consistent."
"I found everything documented," Aldric said.
The distinction was precise and both of them knew it was precise.
A silence settled. Not uncomfortable in the way that silences were uncomfortable when someone had run out of things to say. Uncomfortable in the specific way of a silence between two people who had both arrived at the same point in a conversation and were assessing the cost of proceeding.
Alaric had not moved from his position by the wall. He was not performing stillness. He was still. There was a quality to his stillness that had shifted in the last twenty minutes, the graduated threshold of a Soul that had been reading context and had reached a conclusion about what the context required. He had not acted on the conclusion. He was waiting.
"Bishop Voss," Gepetto said, breaking the silence with the ease of a man choosing to break it. "I've been patient because I respect the Church's process and because I understand that investigations of this kind require thoroughness. But I would appreciate clarity about the specific concern. If there is documentation you need, I'll provide it. If there is a formal charge, I'd prefer to know what it is."
"There is no formal charge," Aldric said.
"Then I'm uncertain what this visit is."
"A conversation," Aldric said. "I find conversations clarifying."
He picked up the tea finally and drank from it. The gesture was not relaxation. It was the gesture of a man who had decided that performing relaxation was useful at this particular moment.
"You arrived in Vhal-Dorim six months ago," he said. "No prior history in Elysion. No family connections here. No commercial relationships that predated your arrival by more than a few weeks."
"I told you. I came with a plan."
"People who come with plans," Aldric said, "usually come with plans developed from prior knowledge. Prior knowledge of a market, a region, a person. You came with prior knowledge of Vhal-Dorim that, by your own account, you had never visited."
"I researched thoroughly before arriving."
"You researched Vhal-Dorim's economic structure with a depth that would have taken most analysts six months of embedded observation." He said this without accusation. As a fact that required explanation. "Your first investments were not exploratory. They were targeted. The workshops you funded, the individuals you identified, the timeline of your intervention in each case, these were the decisions of someone who knew what they were looking for before they arrived."
Gepetto looked at him.
This was the moment. Not the moment of accusation, that was coming, the shape of it was already visible. This was the moment before it, when the conversation was still technically a conversation and not yet a declaration.
"I'm a careful researcher," Gepetto said. "I've been careful my entire life. It's the quality that's made me useful in every context I've operated in. I identify patterns before committing resources. What looks like prior knowledge from the outside is preparation from the inside."
Aldric set the cup down.
"There's a device," he said, "that the Church keeps in restricted inventory. An artifact of significant age. Its function is specific: it registers the residual traces that certain capabilities leave in the structure of reality. Not ordinary class abilities. Capabilities of sufficient depth that their use produces an impression that persists. Class zero and above. Class five manifest it naturally. Below that threshold, the device registers nothing."
Gepetto did not allow his expression to change. He kept it at the mild attentiveness of a man hearing something technical and following it with the effort appropriate to technical content.
"The device," Aldric continued, "registered a trace this afternoon. In this part of the city. At a magnitude consistent with tier five or above, which is not common. The residents of this street, their classes, their locations, their documented histories, I've reviewed them. None of them correspond to what the device indicated."
He looked at Gepetto.
"This house," he said, "is in the center of the area the device indicated."
The weight of it was in the room now. Present the way a fourth person would have been present, occupying space, changing the temperature of everything else.
In the back room, Mira was not moving. She had understood, with the specific intelligence that had nothing to do with training and everything to do with the quality of attention she brought to things that frightened her, that the man in the main room had come because of what she had done that afternoon. She had understood this with the particular clarity of understanding something that cannot be taken back.
Gepetto let the silence hold for three seconds. Then:
"I have a ward," he said.
Aldric's eyes were steady.
"A child," Gepetto continued. "Not formally adopted. A ward, in the practical sense. She was found in circumstances I won't detail without her consent. She's been in this household for several months." He paused, with the specific quality of a pause that was performing disclosure rather than performing concealment. "She has a class. An unusual one. Her control over it has been developing. This afternoon she had what I would describe as a breakthrough. The first fully stable activation she's achieved."
He said this looking directly at Aldric, with the quality of a man offering something that was true and that he was aware was true, because the alternative was a lie that would not survive the basic verification available to anyone with Aldric's resources.
Aldric was quiet.
"How old?" he said.
"Eight."
A pause.
"Tier-five residue," Aldric said, "from an eight-year-old child."
"She's exceptional," Gepetto said. The same tone. The tone of a parent making an assessment. "I don't fully understand what she is, if I'm being honest. The class isn't well documented. What she produces doesn't map cleanly onto anything I've been able to research."
He registered Mira's position with the portion of his attention that had not moved from Aldric since the hand shifted. She was against the back wall of the interior room, which meant she was out of direct line to the door, which meant any engagement that began inside this room would not begin where she was. That was the calculation. It was the only one available, and he filed it alongside everything else.
Aldric looked at him for a long time.
What he was doing, Gepetto understood, was weighing. The documentation was correct. The account was internally consistent. The child was real. The activation was real. The device's trace could be explained by an eight-year-old with an exceptional class having her first fully stable breakthrough.
It could be explained. It did not have to be the explanation.
"The cult," Aldric said, returning to it without transition. "The three members who were killed. The materials that were removed."
"I read the account," Gepetto said.
"The account listed what the Church determined to list." Aldric's eyes had not moved. "In Aurelia, the individual was operating under the designation of an organization called The Spider."
Gepetto looked at him with the mild expression of a man encountering a term he has not heard before. He had known this moment was coming. He had been preparing for it since the door opened.
"I'm not familiar with the name," he said.
"Very few people are." Aldric reached into his coat and produced a small notebook. He opened it to a page and read: "A network. A structure that observes. An organization that intervenes when necessary." He closed the notebook. "This description was given under veracity field. By an operative directly affiliated with the organization."
"An operative who gave that description under veracity field," Gepetto said, "sounds like someone who wanted to be believed."
"He was believed," Aldric said. "The field confirmed sincerity."
"Then you have confirmation that someone, somewhere, operates an organization that observes and intervenes." Gepetto's tone was the tone of a man following this without knowing where it was going. "I'm not certain what that has to do with me."
"The operative," Aldric said, "was operating in Vhal-Dorim as a registered Guild contractor. His name is Alaric Thornwell." He looked at Alaric.
Alaric did not move. He was standing by the wall with the perfect stillness of a man who had been a servant for long enough that hearing his name in conversations he was not part of was a condition of employment. His face was arranged into the professional neutrality of someone who had learned that expressions were not his to produce without direction.
"Alaric has been with my household for some time," Gepetto said. "His Guild registration is, as you found, complete."
"He registered as a contractor," Aldric said. "He appears in your household as a personal servant. The transition between those two roles, and the specific timing of that transition, is something I've been thinking about."
"He completed his contract work and I offered him a household position," Gepetto said. "The pay is more consistent. He preferred consistency."
"He encountered Church representatives in Aurelia," Aldric said, "while operating under the designation of The Spider's affiliate. The representative he encountered was unable to classify his abilities. His classification in the Guild registry is Star Hunter. Third tier. Which does not typically produce capabilities that exceed Church classification frameworks."
The room had arrived at the point it had been arriving at since the door opened.
Gepetto understood, with perfect clarity, that the documentation was correct on every count. The registration was consistent. The account of Alaric's transition from contractor to household staff was plausible. The explanation of Mira's trace was internally consistent and verifiable.
He also understood, with the same clarity, that Aldric had not come to verify documentation. He had come having already assembled something from fragments, each fragment individually explainable, the assembly not.
The Domus Memorion merchant. The strange client the Church had noted as anomalous in its own documentation. The spatial capabilities demonstrated at the cult's assembly site. The organization operating from Vhal-Dorim. The household servant who had been a Guild contractor in the city where The Spider had operated. The tier-five residue in this house.
Aldric was not working from evidence. He was working from the specific pattern that competent investigators produced when they had enough fragments to know the shape of the thing they couldn't yet prove.
And the shape, in this case, was correct.
"You've given me a great deal to think about," Gepetto said. He kept his voice exactly as it had been for the last hour. "If there are formal charges I should prepare for, I'd appreciate the opportunity to arrange legal representation. My consultant Sevan can—"
"She processed your documentation," Aldric said. "Yes. I know."
It was delivered without inflection. The statement of someone who had already catalogued a fact and was confirming that the fact had been catalogued.
Then, after a pause that was shorter than the previous ones:
"In Aurelia, there was something else." He produced the notebook again, not to read from it, but to hold it. "The operative I encountered. Alaric Thornwell. He was moving through the building in a way consistent with spatial ability of a specific kind. Not the kind in the Guild registry. A different kind."
He looked at Alaric.
Alaric did not look back. He was looking at a point slightly above and to the left of Aldric's head, the specific quality of a servant not meeting the eyes of a visitor unless addressed.
"The residue in this house," Aldric said, "is at tier-five magnitude. You've explained it as a child's breakthrough activation." He paused. "The residue from the cult's assembly site was at the same magnitude. The operative who disrupted the assembly used spatial compression at a level that the Church has only documented in three individuals currently living." Another pause. "One of them is present at this site."
Gepetto looked at him.
The mask was still in place. The expression was still the expression of a man hearing something that was concerning in its implications but that he was prepared to address through proper channels. The internal calculation, underneath, was running at a different speed.
Aldric had three artifacts. The revolver at his hip. The cognitive instrument, whose outline he had identified in the coat's interior pocket twenty minutes into the conversation. The jar, which he would not have brought into a potentially hostile environment, which meant it was elsewhere, which meant the trace it had registered had been sufficient to produce this visit without the jar being present to refine the location.
The mirrors could redirect light-based attacks. Not useful as an opener.
The cognitive instrument that interrupted function without permanent damage.
The revolver.
He was reaching for neither yet. He was still in the territory of conversation, which meant he wanted to hear something before acting, which meant the action he was prepared to take was not yet inevitable in his own assessment.
There was a margin. Gepetto did not know how large the margin was.
"Bishop Voss," he said, "I understand that the Church is conducting a serious investigation. I understand that the incidents you've described are significant. But you've presented a sequence of associations, not evidence. My household servant has a Guild registration. My ward is an exceptional child with an unusual class. My documentation is in order. If there is a formal basis for the Church's concern about my specifically, I would like to know what it is."
Aldric looked at him.
"There is no formal basis," he said.
"Then I'm not certain what conclusion you're drawing."
"I'm drawing the conclusion," Aldric said, "that the Church's instrument registered tier-five magnitude capability in this house. That the individual living in this house employs a man whose documented class does not correspond to his demonstrated capabilities. That this city, specifically, has been the site of activity consistent with an organization operating at a level that the Church has been unable to classify." He put the notebook back into his coat. "That the merchant whose shop was flagged as anomalous in our documentation six months ago, who arrived in this city with capital of uncertain origin and an unusually thorough knowledge of its economic structure, who has been consistently cooperative with Church inspection processes in the specific way that someone with competent legal assistance is cooperative, is present in the house where the instrument pointed."
He paused.
"I don't require formal basis," he said. "I require judgment."
In the back room, Mira had moved. Not toward the door. Away from it, further into the room, with the instinct of something that had recognized, at an animal level, that the thing in the next room had shifted its quality.
She pressed herself against the back wall and looked at the door and did not make a sound.
Beneath the abandoned warehouse two streets away, Semper Fidelis had been running the same calculation for the past eleven minutes.
The instrument's function was not sophisticated, that was what made it precise. It quantified. It described. It had, in the past eleven minutes, described Aldric Voss's location, his registered capabilities, his authorized artifacts, the specific mechanical configuration of the three Class 0 relics and their probable deployment sequences. It had cross-referenced these against Gepetto's current capabilities and the capabilities of the marionette designated Alaric Thornwell.
The calculation produced a single result, regardless of how many times it was run.
If the conversation in that house reached its apparent conclusion, and the apparent conclusion was the one the description strongly suggested, the probability of Gepetto's survival was not zero. It was low. It was specifically low in the way that outcomes became specifically low when the entity producing the threat had Divine Commission authority, three Class 0 artifacts, and the capability level of something the Church had deployed against problems that smaller problems could not solve.
Semper Fidelis had a function. The function was the preservation of Gepetto's mental state. If Gepetto was dead, there was no mental state to preserve. The logical extension of this was not complicated.
He had calculated the displacement time at four minutes and thirty seconds under optimal conditions. The conversation, based on the progression rate he had been monitoring, had approximately two to three minutes of its current register remaining before it changed into something else. The interval was not sufficient. He moved anyway, because insufficient intervals were the only kind available and because the alternative was a calculated certainty he had already rejected.
He began preparing to leave the base.
He did not do this quickly. He had items that required specific retrieval sequences, and he retrieved them in the correct sequence, because rushing the sequence produced errors and errors in this context had consequences he had already calculated and preferred to avoid. He had, in his inventory, a compound developed for a specific purpose: the suppression of residual traces left by ability use in the structural layer of reality. Not elimination. Suppression to a level where the traces required an entity of full divine capacity to detect. Below that threshold, they were indistinguishable from background noise.
He packed the compound. He packed three other items. He verified the configuration of his own capabilities against the scenario he was walking into.
He was not going to defeat Aldric Voss. He had calculated this separately and the calculation was clear. Aldric Voss was a demigod at approximately level 95. Semper Fidelis was a Synthetic Soul in a physical chassis designed for analysis, not combat. The outcome of a direct engagement was not an outcome he was going to document. What he could do was create a specific interval.
He moved toward the exit.
"Players," Gepetto said, returning to it without transition. He said the word the way Aldric had said it, flatly, as a category being examined rather than a claim being evaluated. "The documentation calls them that."
"You've read the documentation," Aldric said.
"I've read a great deal in six months." Gepetto's voice was the same voice it had been for the past hour. "It's how I prepared."
The admission was precisely the size it needed to be. Not a confession. Not a denial. An acknowledgment that preparation existed, without specifying what it had prepared for.
Aldric looked at him.
The mask was still in place. The expression was still the expression of a man hearing something that was concerning in its implications but that he was prepared to address through proper channels. Underneath, the calculation was running faster than it had been.
"Bishop Voss," Gepetto said. "I understand that the Church is conducting a serious investigation. I understand that the incidents you've described are significant. But you've presented a sequence of associations, not evidence. My household servant has a Guild registration. My ward is an exceptional child with an unusual class. My documentation is in order. If there is a formal basis for the Church's concern about me specifically, I would like to know what it is."
Aldric looked at him for a long moment.
"There is no formal basis," he said.
"Then I'm not certain what conclusion you're drawing."
"I'm drawing the conclusion," Aldric said, "that the Church's instrument registered tier-five magnitude capability in this house. That the individual living in this house employs a man whose documented class does not correspond to his demonstrated capabilities. That this city, specifically, has been the site of activity consistent with an organization operating at a level that the Church has been unable to classify." He put the notebook back into his coat. "That the merchant whose shop was flagged as anomalous in our documentation six months ago, who arrived in this city with capital of uncertain origin and an unusually thorough knowledge of its economic structure, who has been consistently cooperative with Church inspection processes in the specific way that someone with competent legal assistance is cooperative, is present in the house where the instrument pointed."
He paused.
"I don't require formal basis. I require judgment."
He stood.
The motion was not aggressive. It was the motion of someone concluding one thing and preparing for another. He reached into his coat, slowly, and produced the cognitive instrument, the one designed not to kill but to interrupt. He placed his thumb against its surface. The specific distinction between holding it and activating it, the gap between what was being communicated and what would happen if the gap closed, was precisely three seconds wide.
"I want to be clear," Aldric said, "that this is not a formal action. There is no documentation for what I'm about to do, and there will not be. The Church has authority to prevent maturation before it produces outcomes that cannot be corrected."
"And you've concluded," Gepetto said, with the same voice, the same expression, the quality of a man standing exactly where he was standing because there was nowhere else to be, "that I represent that kind of outcome."
"I've concluded that the probability is sufficiently high."
"Based on a pattern of associations."
"Based on judgment," Aldric said.
His thumb moved.