He came down the stairs.
Not slowly. The flat, unhurried descent of someone who had been at a tower's top for three hours and was descending to the next thing with the same pace he brought to everything — not fast, not slow, the specific, measured, no-surplus pace of a man who did not perform arrival.
Behind him on the stairs — the soft, sequential sounds of two guard women helping the Chief down. The specific, careful, two-person support of a woman who had used up her structural reserves and was being walked down the steps by subordinates who were pretending, with the professional courtesy of women who had their assignments, that they were simply escorting their superior and not carrying most of her weight.
The Chief's feet found the ground.
She straightened.
