Chapter 11: The Syndicate Director-General Has Dinner with a Man He Trusts Completely

Porvan Kesseth had been a man who ate well for as long as he could remember, which was to say that he had been a man of consequence for as long as he could remember, and in his experience the two conditions were so thoroughly entangled as to be, for practical purposes, the same condition. The dining room of his residential suite in Thessavar's Administrative Quarter occupied three floors of a tower whose original architect had possessed the particular genius of making enclosed spaces feel like the interiors of enormous and benevolent ambitions, all high glass and pale stone and light that arrived at the table from four directions simultaneously, none of them the obvious one. He had chosen this residence twenty years ago for that quality of light. Drevoss had suggested it.

He thought of Drevoss now, as he often did when the day's work had been sufficiently satisfying to merit reflection, which was to say that he thought of Drevoss most evenings, which was to say that Drevoss occupied, in Kesseth's interior architecture, that particular room that most men reserve for their finest professional memories and their most sustaining private convictions: the room that, when you opened it, made the rest of the house feel more livable.

"You seem pleased," said Mirenne.