Catch #2
At the second intersection, a junior guard came around the corner too quickly with a stack of service tablets balanced against his chest. He was young. Forty, perhaps. Old enough to know corridor protocol. Young enough to forget it when late.
He entered Cordero’s path.
I moved.
There was no decision in it. One moment he was approaching her. The next I was between them, my hand locked around his forearm, the tablets pressed flat against his chest before one could fall.
The vent overhead was suddenly the loudest thing in the corridor. The young guard’s eyes widened as he looked at my hand.
I looked at him and his pulse jumped. I could hear it. But fear was not the point. Memory was.
“Walk with your eyes up.”
“Yes, sir.”
I released him. He backed away in silence.
Cordero had not moved. Most humans flinched when I moved that fast.
Hell, most shifters did.
She had gone still, but not frightened-still. Measuring-still. She had watched my hand close around the guard’s forearm, watched the angle of my shoulders, watched where I had placed my body between hers and his.
She looked up at me. “Does dinner usually require a defensive formation?”
Her voice was mild. Her pulse was not.
“No.”
She tilted her chin. “Lucky me, then.”
I looked at the empty space where the guard had been. I could have said it was standard corridor protocol. I could have said he had breached guest proximity. I could have said a dozen true things that were not the situation.
“Luck had very little to do with it.” I started walking.
She followed.
The dining room doors came into view at the end of the hall, tall and dark, carved with Ashenmere’s crest. I reached them first and opened the right-hand door.
She stepped through. She did not thank me. She was irritated with me, though I was unsure what, specifically. The correction, the blocking, the escorting, or the fact that I had been correct.
All were reasonable candidates.
The dining room was already half-full. Yuki sat at the head table, pale hair pinned at the nape of her neck, expression mild in the way that unsettled people who did not know better.
Two elders to her right. Three liaisons.
The ambassador’s assistant. A press secretary from State.
Two trade analysts who smelled of ink, nerves, and hotel soap.
No Norwegians yet. They’d arrive in two days, if the schedule held.
I delivered Cordero to her assigned seat. She glanced at the card before sitting. Catalina Cordero. State Department translator. Mandarin/Norwegian.
I took my seat four chairs down and across, the position that gave me the best sightline to the door and to her at once.
Yuki noticed. Yuki noticed everything, though she said nothing.
Dinner began.
I ate the food I was given. I drank the water I was poured. I did not look at Cordero across the table for any longer than needed, which was constantly and not nearly often enough.
She played her role well. Too well.
She translated a question from one of the trade analysts into Mandarin for an aide near Yuki, then softened the response back into English without losing the point or making anyone at the table feel corrected.
She spoke when spoken to and disappeared when the conversation did not require her.
That was harder than most people thought.
Humans had an astonishing need to occupy space with noise.
Cordero did not. She made silence look intentional.
Leland, the ambassador’s assistant, leaned toward her during the second course. “I heard you were in Troms? before this.”
Her fork paused, barely. “Yes,” she said. “Briefly.”
“How did you find it?”
“Cold.”
He laughed. She smiled as if she had meant to be charming.
She had not answered the question.
Leland, having survived one answer without understanding it, attempted another. “I’ve always wanted to go. The light, mostly. I’ve heard it’s beautiful.”
“It is,” Cordero said. “When it decides to show up.”
That answer pleased him. It should not have irritated me. The man had done nothing except ask harmless questions and laugh at the wrong parts. I reminded myself that removing the ambassador’s assistant from the table would complicate dinner.
Mara Voss, a clan elder, turned her attention to Cordero during the third course. Everyone noticed. It would have been difficult not to. Mara did not look at people casually. She selected them.
“Ms. Cordero,” she said. “Do human translators study clan etiquette as part of diplomatic preparation now?”
Every human at the table went still.
Cordero finished setting down her glass before she answered. Not rushed. Not deferential. Perfectly polite. “Yes.”
Mara’s eyes narrowed. “And did your preparation cover why visitors are advised not to run?”
A better-trained human would have laughed nervously. A worse-trained one would have lied. Cordero did neither. “Enough to understand that if I need to run, several things have already gone wrong.”
Silence settled over the table. Three human heartbeats picked up. Not Cordero’s.
Mara leaned back. “And if a shifter runs?”
Cordero met her gaze for exactly long enough to be respectful and not long enough to be a challenge.
Clever woman.
“Then I assume everyone else should make peace with their priorities.”
The candle flames were suddenly the loudest thing at the table. Yuki’s eyes settled on me, briefly. I put my water glass down before I could tighten my hand around it.
Mara laughed. Brief. Rough. Genuine. “Well,” she said. “At least State sent one with a spine.”
Cordero’s expression stayed mild. “I believe the last one without one was eaten.”
The press secretary choked on his wine.
My dragon, which had been making an extensive list of things at the table it disliked, paused. Then, against all sense and discipline, it settled. Pleased.
Unacceptable.
I sat through the rest of dinner with my hands relaxed on either side of my plate and my attention divided between three doors, seven potential threats, one impossible woman, and the ancient thing inside my ribs that had started to preen because she had made an elder laugh.
I barely made it through dessert.
When the meal ended, Cordero stood with the rest of the table. I was at her side before the ambassador’s assistant could offer to walk her back.
That was, strictly speaking, unnecessary. I did it anyway.
“Efficient,” she said.