They built the plan in the sublevel on the back of Voss’s six pieces of paper, because that was all the paper they had.
"Rules first," said Soren. "Nobody proposes anything that requires a system, a terminal, or a light fixture. Assume all three are hers."
Dani closed her useless terminal and put a pen in her hand for the first time in her adult life.
"Then it’s arithmetic on paper," she said.
"That’s what she’s for," said Maren.
"Don’t say arithmetic," said Soren. "It’s a crutch phrase. Say math."
"You’re the only person alive who’d correct my word choice down here."
◆◆◆◆
Facts, in the order Soren made them say them.
"She goes around ice," said Selah. "Not through. She has a preference and it’s the only one we’ve found."
"My fire doesn’t hurt her." Maren’s ears were flat. "It doesn’t even go out. It just stops existing."
"But it existed inside her for twenty feet," said Soren. "That’s the part nobody’s said out loud. Your fire kept burning after it went in."
Maren looked up.
"It did," she said slowly. "It didn’t die. It got taken."
"Then it went somewhere," said Dani, writing. "Nothing goes nowhere."
◆◆◆◆
"She speaks and I obey," said Yara. "That’s the whole of my contribution and it’s a liability, master. Take me out of the plan."
"No."
"I sat down on concrete because she told my legs what water does. If she says stop while I’m holding something, I’ll stop holding it."
"Then don’t hold anything." Soren tapped the paper. "You know the fragment’s chain-name."
Yara’s ears came up.
"...I do."
"You told me you kept it as a leash for a long time. That means it answers to something."
"It answers to a word."
"Will it answer to the word if your mother’s in the room?"
Yara thought about it.
"It’ll answer," she said. "It’s stupid. It doesn’t have enough of her in it to be told anything else. That’s why she uses it as a scout. It only knows one command and I’m the one who taught it."
"Good," said Soren. "Then you don’t fight her. You call her dog."
◆◆◆◆
"Joan," he said.
Joan looked up from her legal pad.
"You’re the whole plan."
"That’s a strange thing to say to the woman with no bond."
"You’ve got no bond." Soren put his palm flat on the paper. "No index, no tier, no notification, no thread. The system has never once been able to see you. Not in a year."
"I’m aware."
"Yara. Can your mother read a bond?"
"She reads everything that comes off me." Yara sat up straighter. "Every thread in this room is shadow-adjacent because it runs through you and you run through me. She can see every one of them like veins under skin."
"And Joan’s?"
Yara stopped.
She turned and looked at Joan, and her red eyes went wide and then narrow.
"There isn’t one," she said.
◆◆◆◆
"Say it properly," said Soren.
"There’s no thread on her. There’s no signature. There’s nothing coming off her that I made, or that the system made, or that has any of me in it." Yara’s voice picked up speed. "Master, to my mother, Joan Sawyer isn’t a person in this room. She’s furniture. She’s a chair."
"That’s insulting," said Joan.
"It’s the best news of my life."
"It’s still insulting."
"You chose him with a fountain pen and a Bureau form," said Yara. "No fusion, no bond, no god pulling on you. You did it cold, out of nothing. And because it came out of nothing, there’s nothing there for her to see."
Joan set down her pen.
"So I’m the hand she doesn’t watch," she said.
"You’re the only one."
◆◆◆◆
They put it together over the next four hours.
Mona first, because Mona was the only one who could survey the subsoil without a system. She went down into the maintenance drains with Maren’s jacket over her and came back twice, and both times she sat on Dani’s paper and pointed with her whole body, and Dani drew what the mole said. By the second pass they had the shape of the chamber under the east yard, the shaft, and the two collapsed drain lines running west.
Selah had the floors. Not walls. Floors, and one more thing: she was going to line the shaft itself, top to bottom, a throat of ice. Not to hold anything. To make going down the path of least annoyance.
Maren had the herding. Fire she could sustain inside the dark for twenty feet, laid in a moving line, not to hurt but to make one direction less pleasant than another. Shepherd work. The thing she’d been doing at the reception.
Dani had the timing, on paper, by hand, with a stopwatch and a whistle, because a woman who had spent a year making herself the only route for information was about to be the only route for information again, this time with no terminal at all.
Yara had the word. One word, spoken once, at the bottom of the shaft.
Troy had the light, if Dani’s frequency work held.
Joan had the thing nobody was allowed to write down, and Joan wrote it on her own page and folded it and put it in her coat.
◆◆◆◆
"What’s on the folded page?" Maren asked.
"None of your business," said Joan.
"It’s a battle plan."
"It’s the part of the plan that only works if it isn’t in anyone’s head but mine." Joan patted her coat pocket. "Yara says her mother reads everything with a thread on it. Every one of you has a thread. He’s the thread."
Maren’s ears went back.
"So you’re not telling him either."
"Especially not him."
Soren considered that for a second.
"Fine," he said.
"You’re not going to argue?"
"You’re the only person on this field she can’t see. Arguing would put it in my head, and my head is the one place she’s guaranteed to look." He turned back to the paper. "Keep your page."
"And me," said Soren.
Everyone looked at him.
"I’m the conduit," he said. "All of it runs through my wire at once. Ice, fire, shadow, and whatever Dani manages to do to Troy."
"Four channels," said Selah. "You bled from three."
"I know."
"At combat draw, in the dark, on a plan with no margin."
"I know, Selah."
"Then you know what it costs and you’re going to tell me you’ll be fine."
"No," said Soren. "I’m going to tell you it’s the cost."
◆◆◆◆
Nobody argued with that, which was worse than arguing.
Dani finished the last page, stamped it with Voss’s brass seal, and set it on the concrete.
"It’s official," she said.
"It’s a plan drawn by a mole," said Maren.
"It’s an officially notarized plan drawn by a mole."
Soren looked at the six pages laid out on the sublevel floor. A leash-word, a throat of ice, a shepherd’s fire, a stopwatch, a borrowed frequency, and one folded page in an investigator’s coat.
Every single piece of it was somebody’s confession, turned around and pointed at the door.
"Right," he said. "Dawn after next. Everybody sleep."
Nobody moved.
"That was an order?"
"You first," said Joan.