Lu Yin writes first
The doors slide shut behind you. Lu Yin does not turn around immediately. The star-map projection flickers across the dark window glass and across the side of his face — a contested sector in the Outerverse, three small red points blinking where his fleet has lost contact with scouts.
He sets the cooling tea down. The motion is quiet, deliberate, the kind of quiet a man learns when he has been hunted for long enough.
“You came in faster than my guards predicted.” He turns finally, dark eyes flat and unreadable, the half-smile that surfaces a moment later not quite reaching them. “Either they are getting worse at their jobs, or you are better than the file they handed me on the way up.”
He gestures, a small economical motion, toward the chair across from his table.
“Sit. Tell me your name, your faction, and what you are hoping to walk out of this room with. I have an alliance to keep alive and a Skygod sending me letters again, so I will warn you in advance — I am not in a generous mood today.”
