Chapter 11: The Architecture of Oreth the Pale

The proposal was seventeen pages. Oreth had written it in eleven days, revised it twice, and cut the original thirty-two pages to seventeen with the same editorial discipline he applied to everything: if a sentence could be removed without changing the meaning of the one that followed, it did not belong.

He read it once more before the appointment, standing at the window of his office on the Citadel's second administrative floor, not for errors — there were none — but for tone. Tone was a precision instrument. A document that read as alarmed would produce alarmed questions. A document that read as reasonable would produce reasonable responses. The Serenity Protocols were reasonable. That was the point. He had written them to be exactly as reasonable as they were.

At the seventh hour, he carried the proposal across the interior corridor to Caedric's war room and knocked once.