She was, in fact, assembling witnesses to their arrest, and she was doing it at my gentle encouragement, and she never suspected a thing, because it did not occur to her that the quiet soldier helping her with the seating chart had any purpose beyond obedience.

That was the deepest truth of how they saw me, and the lever I used against them: they simply could not imagine that I was a threat.

My mother had spent my whole life treating me as an instrument, and Torsten had spent his whole life treating me as an inferior, and both of them were so certain of my smallness that they let me help plan the very evening on which I would end them.

I ordered good wine for it.

I thought they should be toasting with something excellent when the doors opened.

Chapter 14 — Patience