Cyrus Valdivia-Moon arrived at 9:10 exactly, in the manner of a man who had never in his life been early or late.

Dilly watched him from the mezzanine of the Fairhold lobby with her back against a marble pillar, her arms folded and a visitor's badge clipped to her lapel as if she were somebody's cousin. The revolving door sent him in on a gleam of morning light: fifty, tall, silver at the temples, a navy suit with no tie, an open collar and the unhurried walk of a man who owns the air he moves through. Behind him came two assistants and a woman with a tablet. And at his shoulder, half a pace back, one hand lightly clasped over the other, in a charcoal jacket, Dari.

She had spent two days preparing for this and none of it helped.

He was heavier than she remembered. The face was the same, wide, warm, with the slightly crooked nose he'd broken at college, but he had a new shine on him, the shine of money recently spent on a haircut. He scanned the lobby the way they'd both been taught: doors, glass, hands. His gaze passed across the mezzanine, found her, passed on, and came back.

He smiled.

It was a lovely smile. It had always been a lovely smile. She felt her stomach turn over, slowly, like a fish in a bucket.

"Remember," Sel murmured at her shoulder. He had come up the stairs behind her, very quietly, in a dark suit that fit him again, thanks to Bettina's seamstress and nine hours of pins. "You are not alone, you are engaged to me, and your only job is to be pleasant. If you wish to leave, say 'laundry.' Junie has a car outside."

"I'm not leaving."

"I did not think so. I merely thought you should have the word."

The Fairhold Board Room occupied the top floor, a long glass-walled space with a view over the river and a table made from a single plank of elm. Cyrus took the chair at its head, as a matter of course, before anyone had offered. He sat back. He studied the room, the portrait of Odessa on the wall in her navy suit, the long table, the two people opposite him, and said, "Anselm. I am so sorry about your grandmother. She was the best opponent I ever had. I once spent two years trying to buy a single branch from her, and she sent me a fruit basket every Christmas to remind me I'd failed."

"She would have been delighted to hear you say so."

"She would have said it was beneath me to say so." His smile widened. His eyes moved, finally, to Dilly, and stayed. They were a light, pleasant, intelligent brown, and they did not rest on her so much as measure her, front and back, the way a jeweller measures a stone. "And this is the woman who stopped the internet. Dilnoza. May I?"

He stood and held out his hand. She took it. His grip was warm, dry, and exactly as firm as hers. A man who matched you. She counted the seconds. He held on for four.

"The photographs do you no justice," he said. "I'd expect the opposite. Most people photograph better than they are. You are the reverse. There is a stillness in you that doesn't survive a lens. I've been looking at that clip for fourteen months, and I thought: that is either the worst security officer in the country, or the best."

"It's been a debate," said Dilly.

"I've come to a conclusion." He let go. "May I introduce someone? You'll know him, of course."

"Dil," said Dari.

She turned her head. It cost her something real, and she paid it without letting it show. He was standing a yard away with his hands out, palms up, in the old gesture, the gesture he had used a thousand times in a hotel corridor at three in the morning to say I'm not carrying anything, it's only me.

"Dari."

"God. It's really you. I've been trying to find you for a year. After the, you know, everything. I rang your mum's shop twice, but there was a recording. I didn't know where to start." His voice was warm and ragged, and she listened to it with every nerve she possessed. The breath in it. The small wet click of the tongue before a word. The tiny catch at the end of a sentence that she had known for three years. It was real, all of it, alive and human and frightened.

It sounded nothing like the voice in the earpiece.

"I got your messages," she lied. "I didn't answer anyone."

"I know. I'm so sorry. About all of it. I told them I'd called you three times." His eyes shone suddenly. "I did. I swear. I yelled. You didn't move. I thought you'd had a stroke. I didn't know what else to say to the investigators except what happened."

"That's what happened."

"And I've felt sick about it ever since. I took the Ardent job because they said they'd let me build a proper training programme. For people like us." He looked at Cyrus, an almost boyish look of gratitude. "Mr. Valdivia-Moon's been very good to me."

"Dari's a treasure," said Cyrus. "I'd never have found him if he hadn't been so thoroughly mistreated by the industry."

"Dari," Dilly said, in a perfectly calm voice, "do you remember what you said to me, the second before the man jumped the rail?"

It was a small thing, the smallest thing. A hinge she was testing. She watched his face the way she'd once watched a thousand faces in a thousand crowds, not for the lie but for the twitch that comes before it.

"Before?" Dari frowned. "Nothing. I didn't say anything before. It was quiet. I was watching the room. The next thing I heard was you saying copy to somebody, I thought, I don't know, to the control room, and then the rail, and then I was shouting."

A silence.

"You heard me say copy," said Dilly.

"Yes. I thought the control room had called. Didn't you tell them that?"

Behind him, so quickly that she almost missed it, Cyrus Valdivia-Moon's right eyebrow lifted a sixteenth of an inch, and fell. He did not look at Dari. He did not look at anyone. He tilted his head, as a man might tilt it at a wine that proved unexpectedly interesting.

She understood three things. Dari believed what he said. Dari had heard her answer a voice he had never heard. And Cyrus Valdivia-Moon had just discovered that she knew.

"I think that's enough old business," Cyrus said pleasantly. "We are here to celebrate. Anselm, you must forgive me, I'm stealing your bride for a moment. Dilnoza, a question, if it's not an impertinence. What does Fairhold pay you?"

"I'd rather not say."

"Quite right. Whatever it is, double it. No, listen." He raised a hand. "Ardent is building a new national security division, twelve cities, four hundred officers. We need someone to design the training and lead it. Not Dari, who's excellent but is a tactician. Someone with presence. Someone who understands what it is to be seen. I'd offer you the title of Chief of Protection. A hundred and eighty thousand to start, and a signing bonus that would clear your mother's shop three times over."

"Her mother's shop," said Sel, in a very mild voice, "is already clear."

"Is it?" Cyrus smiled without moving his eyes. "That was quick. How generous of you, Anselm. I'd never have known."

Sel's jaw did not move. Under the table, Dilly's knee touched his, an accident, a heartbeat of warmth. She did not move her knee.

"I'm flattered," she said. "I'm married. In four days."

"So you are." Cyrus rose, buttoning his jacket. "A wonderful thing. May it be everything your grandmother hoped." His hand rested for a moment on the elm table, light, proprietary, a man touching the arm of a chair he expects to own. "I won't keep you. We have a lunch with the mayor. Anselm, my condolences. And do mention to your Vault Clerk that I would have been glad to make Odessa's last conversation, whatever she'd like to call it. Hers was a good bank. It deserved a better ending than a hand-signed ledger and a locked box."

"A locked box," said Sel.

"Box One." Cyrus said it with great gentleness, as if remarking on the weather. "She promised me a look inside it, you know. Years ago. Over a very good bottle. She said it would explain everything about Fairhold, and why it could not be sold. I assumed she was bluffing. Now that she's gone, I wonder." He turned at the door. "Did she mention it to you?"

Sel said nothing for a moment. His face was entirely smooth.

"My grandmother," he said, "mentioned a great many things."

"I'm sure." Cyrus smiled at them both, with great warmth, with real regret, and went out into the corridor with his assistants and his tablet and the man who had stood on Dilly's left. Dari glanced back at her once, over his shoulder. His look was uncertain, a little hurt, the look of a man who had been given a script he couldn't read.

When the lift doors had closed, Sel sat down, rather hard, in the nearest chair.

"Dilly," he said.

"I know."

"There are four people alive who know that Box One exists. My grandmother wrote to the Vault Clerk to say the number in a sealed letter. I did not know the number until Wednesday night, when you photographed it." He lifted his eyes. They were very dark and very steady and, she thought, afraid. "Who told him?"