Chapter 237 --237
Mahir reached past her for the copy paper and ink already on the desk — he’d positioned them there when they arrived, without being asked, because he anticipated what she needed in working environments the way she anticipated extraction routes.
She copied. Mahir held the originals steady while she worked, one hand keeping the page flat without touching the text.
They worked in silence for twenty minutes. The archive’s preservation cold sat around them. Somewhere below, the normal business of the records office continued, clerks and officials moving through the floors with their ordinary questions and their ordinary documents, none of it touching the third floor where two people were quietly copying the architecture of a conspiracy.
When she finished, she returned each original precisely, restoring the positions with the attention she gave all things.
Stood.
"We need to talk to Caius," she said. "And I need to know if his records clerk has anything about the seventh prince’s medical files."
Mahir fell into step beside her. "How certain are you."
"About which part."
"Any of it."
Elara thought for a moment. They were moving toward the stairs now, back through the misaligned corridors, past the preservation cold and into the slightly warmer air of the second floor.
"The shipments are documented," she said. "The timing is documented. The amendments are documented." She paused. "The connection between them is inference. Strong inference. But not yet proof."
"And the addition."