Rama was moving before the sentence finished leaving his daughter's borrowed mouth, snatching his sword from beside the bed while Sekar swept their daughter up against her chest, both of them already half dressed from habit built over too many nights like this one.
"Wirasena's quarters," Rama said. "Now."
They ran through corridors still lit only by scattered night lamps, guards falling in behind them as word spread faster than anyone could properly explain it. Rama reached the scholar's modest rooms within minutes to find the outer door already standing ajar. Its lock was intact, but its latch was somehow undone from the inside, as though whoever entered had simply been let in rather than forced their way through.
Wirasena was on his feet inside, alarmed but unharmed, a lamp gripped in one unsteady hand. "Niken sleeps in the adjoining room," he said, already moving. "She was here an hour ago. I checked on her myself before I went to bed."
