If the abrupt tilt of his attention in her direction is any indication, the man sitting in the niche bust's shadow hadn't expected to be addressed—not by the crowding Somerset magicians in their starched uniforms, or the College Fellows, and certainly not by some young woman in the colors of the colony outposts. For a briefly flashing instant, the surprise plays clearly out in his sagging face. He looks almost boyish there: a lad with sloppily combed curls in a rumpled shirt stuffed into a very black coat as if that might pass him off as respectable.

Then she sits. And, like a cracked door closing to erase the slit of a view into the adjacent room, that surprise disappears from off of his face. In it's place, the handle of the cane in the shape of a snarling dog has flicked round. Its muzzle sets between her ribs as a barricade to preserve the inches remaining between her hip and his. Surely she of all people must recognize a ward: Keep your damned distance.

"I hadn't noticed."