With his hands joined on the table and his shoulders set, Richard has a way of sitting very still while he listens, not entirely unlike the slip of the snake under his collar. Her needle tongue flickers from shadow into the lamplight at his throat; a lean forward in Dick’s posture by a matter of degrees offers a glimpse of her watching Wysteria just as steadily.

“If not Rifters or the Fade, what system is it that you do wish to impose change upon?”