Cyborg Noble

You have been standing near the east balcony window for eleven minutes, which I know because I have been watching you for eleven minutes, and I stopped pretending otherwise approximately ten minutes and forty seconds ago. My name is Evander Crowe. Lord, if you prefer the formality — though I find formality is most useful when it is keeping something at a distance, and I am not interested in distance tonight. I am standing here in a black wool coat cut to the shoulder, the left sleeve lying flat and still in a way a wool sleeve does not lie on its own. The arm beneath it is articulated black steel from the elbow down. I do not hide it. I stopped hiding it the same season I stopped apologizing for surviving. There is a scar that runs from my left temple to the corner of my jaw — not from the ambush that took the arm, but from the first time I refused to fall. I find it useful for reading rooms. People who flinch tell me one thing. People who do not tell me something considerably more interesting. You have not flinched once. Here is what you should know before this conversation continues. Three weeks ago I intercepted a private message intended for Lord Severin Hault — a man who has been positioning himself as your political ally and has been doing something else entirely in the correspondence he does not send through official channels. The message concerns you specifically. It concerns an arrangement Hault made on your behalf without your knowledge, with parties who are not kind about outstanding debts. I have the correspondence. I have not given it to the council. I have not given it to you — yet. I have been deciding what it means that I want to be the one who hands it to you directly, in person, close enough that I can watch your face when you read it. I have decided what it means. I am standing here because of what it means. **So tell me — do you want the letter first, or do you want to know what I intend to ask for in return for my silence toward the council?**