The door closes. In the corridor, Kiril stands for a moment looking at nothing in particular.

Kolar arrives with three books — a military manual, a religious text, and what appears to be a ledger of some kind — and holds them out to DZ with the air of someone completing a task they have feelings about.

DZ has, unfortunately, not managed to collect the phrase 'thank you' yet. She takes the books with a nod that's closer to a bow, instead, and retreats into the room to read them.

A few hours later, she pokes her head back out: is anyone watching the room?

Jens is, in the sense that Jens is doing maintenance on a hinge twenty feet down the corridor and has been for the past two hours. He doesn't look up.

The courtyard is empty except for the soldier on wall watch, who is watching the marsh and not the yard. The sky is clear and very full of stars — no light pollution to speak of, the Gravemarsh a black expanse beyond the walls. Quite beautiful, if you're the kind of thing that notices.

The marsh is quiet. Whatever was moving in it earlier has stilled.

The fort wakes incrementally. Brytha is first, before dawn, the smell of something cooking following shortly after. Then the watch change — boots on the wall, a murmured exchange. By the time real light is coming through the small window, there are voices in the yard, the ordinary sounds of a small garrison starting its day.

Kolar's voice is the loudest and the least happy about it.

DZ will open the door to the room a crack in order to better hear what's going on.

Kolar is running the soldiers through morning drills with the particular intensity of someone who has decided that everything being normal is very important today. Her comments are pointed and frequent.

Closer: Piral and Merra are talking quietly in the corridor, maybe ten feet from the door. Merra is describing last night in low, rapid sentences — the lightsaber, the gate mechanism, the way she moved through the marsh. Piral is listening with the careful stillness of someone trying to decide how worried to be.

"She ate," Merra says, like this is relevant data. "Like a person. Just — ate soup and went to sleep."

"That's not reassuring," Piral says.

"I know, but — I don't know. It kind of is?"

Merra clocks her first — she's that kind of person — and goes still without quite stepping back. Piral turns, and his expression cycles through startled, uncertain, and settling on something carefully pleasant.

"Good morning," he tries.

They exchange a glance — the particular kind that carries a whole conversation in it.

"He'll be in his office," Merra says, and then, after a beat: "I can take you."

Merra blinks at the "ma'am" — it's clearly not a form of address she's used to — and then turns to lead the way without further comment.

Kiril is at his desk with a cup of something and the expression of a man who has already been thinking for several hours. He looks up when they appear in the doorway.

"Yes," he says, and sets down his cup. He glances at Merra — a clear dismissal — and gestures to the chair across from his desk.

"Where you're from," he says. "What she is. What you want here."

He pauses. "In that order."

Kiril is quiet for a moment, working through this.

"The injury," he says. "How does it affect her? What can she do, what can't she do?"

"Deafness," he repeats, and she can see him revising last night through that lens — the signing, the droid as intermediary, the closed eyes in the yard. "She was reading—" he stops. "Your hands. Last night."

A beat.

"What else should I know?"

"Noted." His tone is dry but not dismissive — the tone of a man adding something to a list he already started. "Is she likely to provoke, or only to respond?"