Page 20 of Orc’s Bones

Thruk pushed off the wall.

He didn’t speak. He crossed to the research table and put both hands flat on it, leaning forward, the ink in his arms lit with the low glow of controlled activation, and the focus coming off him in that moment — six feet of contained violence pointing at the full picture of what had been done inside his Crypts — was a presence as physical as a change in air pressure.

“This man.” He pressed both hands harder on the table. “Three years. Direct access. Two years’ head start on what’s in my Crypts.”

“At minimum.”

“And he’s been inside the Dominion this whole time.”

“He’s been inside the Archive this whole time.” I turned to Lyssa. “The third key. Where is it documented as being held after his removal?”

“Recalled to Archive custody. Logged as inactive and stored,” Lyssa said. She didn’t finish the sentence.

“In the restricted stacks.”

“Yes.”

“Which he had access to.”

“He was removed from the position.” Lyssa’s chin came up — a flash of a thing that wasn’t quite guilt and wasn’t quite anger, more the look of a woman confronting the record she kept and what the record showed. “He should not have had—“ She stopped. Heard herself. “The key log would have been accessible to anyone with archive-level clearance. He would have known where the inactive key was held.”

“And he returned for it.” I looked at the diagram without seeing it, the picture assembling in my mind. “He was exiled with partial results and a framework he’d built alongside mine. He had three years to work the transfer problem before I arrived to give him the solution. He didn’t need to steal my research physically. He had access to it during the documentation period. He read it. He understood it. And then when the Archive’s attention moved on, he came back for the key.” I looked at Thruk. “He didn’t come back through the gateways. He moved through the bone network the same way the constructs moved — not through physical space. That’s how he’s been inside the Dominion for months without the city registering him.”

The room held all of that.

Thruk straightened. A man who had received information and was deciding not what to do about it — that was already decided — but when and in what order.

He’s going to end this man. The conclusion is already made. He’s deciding the sequence.

“He moved through the bone resonance network. The relay sigil in the Archive case wasn’t only feeding data to the Crypt system — it was covering his physical movement. He doesn’t move through the building. He moves through the bones. That’s how he’s been in the Archive and the Crypts without anyone encountering him directly. He’s been inside the resonance system itself.”

“Which you built.”

“My reading system identified the responsive layer. His system moves through it.” I met Thruk’s eyes across the table. “He figured out how to inhabit what I was only trying to read.”

The anger in that was cold and exact and I let it show.

Thruk held the look. He didn’t offer anything softening. He didn’t perform sympathy. He held the look, steady and direct, and there was a quality to it — the willingness to meet the cold anger without flinching — that landed in a place I hadn’t expected it to.

He’s not going to tell me it’s not my fault. He’s not going to tell me it is. He’s going to let it be exactly what it is.

Good. Comfort I didn’t need. That I did.

“Malverek was exiled, which means he left without the resources of the Archive or the Crypt levels. He had his knowledge and his partial research and what he took with him. What he didn’t have was direct access to the Warline lineage structures at the deepest level. The activation sigils in your Crypt alcoves require proximity. He would have needed to return to the Dominion and spend considerable time inside the Crypt levels before anyone noticed the disturbance.”

“He came back when you did.” Thruk’s voice was low. “Or before.”

“Possibly before. The interference in the outer district walls had been building for months. He was here before the summons went out.” I sat with the implication of that without softening it. “He may have triggered the situation that required the summons. Accelerated the disruption deliberately to force the Dominion to call me back.”

“To bring you here.”

“To bring someone here who could read his system. Who would recognize it.” I looked at the flagged shelf. “I’m the only person alive who would understand what he built well enough to map it the way I did tonight. He needed me in the Archive reading his work so the relay could catalogue my analysis. He needed to know how far I’d gotten.”

“He used you to assess his own system.”

“He tried to.” I kept my voice even. “He now knows I found the relay. He knows I know what I know. The advantage he had — working inside a system I was reading from the outside — is gone. He knows I’ve pulled the full picture.”

“Which makes tonight’s construct make more sense.” Thruk straightened to his full height. The room rearranged itself around him. “It wasn’t a warning. It was an attempt to remove me before I acted on what you found.”