"There will be a point. You'll get too old, or someone else will just be better, or you'll have spent too long moving against the Venatori to make the right decisions when they're no longer your enemy," says the man who still wears a sword on his hip most days despite retaining only tolerable skill with it. He's too slow now to relearn what he gave away to the Arlathan, but there it sits.

"It would seem to me there are two pressing questions for people like us. How do I make it that long, and who comes next? The answer to the first one is some combination of luck and pretending in the interim. The second one, though. That you may manage to some degree."

The faint tilting of his temple has the narrowest searching quality. If she were to glance in his direction, she would find him expecting to meet her eye.

"Have you considered bringing on an assistant for the office?"