Soren filed away a handful of phrases, closed the book, and left for the seminar a full five minutes early, another habit drilled into him, another vector for not being observed.
The lecture hall was humid, acoustics damaged by the condensation on the high skylights. Ohn paced the dais with her hands clasped behind her back, the posture of a warden awaiting an incident.
"Doctrine is not law," she said, opening the session to scattered coughs and shuffles. "It is the rehearsal of law, in the soul, until obedience to it requires no conscious effort." Her gaze passed over each bench, pausing on the empty seats, then the cluster of Blades at the back, and finally on Soren, in the front for once, close enough to see which of her silver hairs were banded with black and which were simply polished steel.
She set the topic without preamble: "Yesterday in the underhalls, you saw a fragment of our history. What did it teach you?"
A hand at the far right: "That containment is failure."
