“I don’t think it’s illegal if everyone else is breaking the law,” Basavi said, a sentence Surit did not agree with but, under the circumstances, wasn’t going to dispute.

None of them needed to be told to keep silent. Surit held aside the branch of a flowering tree as Tennal ducked under it. Istara muffled their normal careless tread. They took the stone path that wound among the shaded plants up to the back of the low villa; Surit watched Tennal slow down as he drew near to the carved door.

Tennal paused outside it. “Keep watch,” he said very softly to the rest of them. “If anyone comes, yell and run.”

Surit breathed in the soft, earthy evening scent of the garden where Tennal had once lived. He didn’t even need to reach into Tennal’s thoughts to know he was, for some reason, more afraid of this than he had been of infiltrating the Codifier Halls. This felt closer to the bone. “I’m coming in.”

Surit left no room for debate, either in his tone or in their combined thoughts. Tennal hesitated, then his mouth crooked, and he said in Surit’s head, Yes, boss.

It was smaller inside than Surit had expected. He’d always assumed the legislator lived in a palace, not a single-floor villa with narrow corridors. But it was luxurious: it gave off the heavy, hushed air of a museum, with low lighting and ceramic vases and paintings you were obviously not supposed to touch. The carpets swallowed their footsteps. Tennal unthinkingly dodged every side table and statue in a habitual pattern, while Surit followed, holding his breath so as not to knock anything over.

If Oma was in the Convocation room as they suspected, there was no one but the guard outside to worry about, but Surit kept silent anyway. Tennal glanced at a couple of doors but didn’t open them.

One ahead was ajar. The room inside looked empty; no light was turned on. Surit felt a pressure in his head.

Tennal turned his head back to Surit and mouthed, Study. The word landed in Surit’s head. We should try there first.

Tennal laid his hand on the door and froze.

Surit, behind him, saw what had made him stop. The light from the corridor fell on an alcove that should hold a Guidance shrine. Only, it had been dismantled: the icons lay in a facedown stack, the candleholders empty. The gaps yawned like broken teeth.

Oma had moved in recently, but a priest should have dismantled the shrine, discreetly veiled, and treated the contents with respect. Tennal’s reaction to the shell of it—his family shrine—crackled with disproportionate shock in Surit’s head.

But Surit had no attention to spare for that, because he knew Oma was in that room.