Three weeks after Lord Baek filed the inquiry, the Emperor invited us to dinner.
Not a summons. An invitation. The distinction was one that everyone in the capital noted and no one discussed openly, which was itself the loudest possible signal that everything had shifted.
Kaien read the invitation twice. Then he set it down on the table with the careful precision of a man handling something that might, under different circumstances, have been a weapon.
"He's moving toward negotiation," he said.
"He's moving toward the least costly version of an outcome he can no longer prevent," I said.
"That's what negotiation is."
Ren, from the corner where he had installed himself with a cup of tea and the detached observation of a man watching a game he had wagered on but did not control, said: "The question is what he wants from it."
