"Please do not wave at the peasants; they bite."
"If you bow," she replied, completely straight-faced, "I will dock your rations."
He exhaled, exaggerated. "Rations include coffee. Docking is a war crime."
Then he tilted his head—barely a motion—and addressed the space beside her shoulder. "Transfer plan?"
Numbers slid into his lenses, invisible to her, but she could see the effect in his eyes—how his gaze steadied, how some internal clockwork clicked into place behind his lashes.
< Rigid plan as follows: Stepwise load redistribution.
Stage A: silk web absorbs forty percent from sling.
Stage B: chair struts accept remaining lateral shear.
Stage C: shield back assumes primary vertical load.
Final: release sling in three micro-pulses to avoid whiplash.
Count aloud. Warn before each. No heroics. >
He nodded once, and the sling gave a hum—not quite mechanical, not quite organic. Almost as if it approved of being told what it already knew.
