Vish was not trying to overhear.
She had been looking for the east wing that led back to the guest quarters and had taken the wrong turn — the Silent Realm palace had more corridors than any building reasonably needed, all of them identical chrome and glass — and had ended up outside a half-open door when the voices reached her.
Eryx's voice. Low. Carrying something she had not heard in it before.
She should have kept walking.
She stopped instead.
Through the gap she could see him — seated at his desk, a massive thing of dark metal and embedded screens, his back partially turned to the door. His posture carried something different from the contained dangerous stillness she had seen in the throne room. The man standing across from him was older, silver-haired, with the bearing of someone who had served a long time and intended to keep serving.
One of the surviving officials of the Silent Realm who had been waiting, apparently, through forty years of stasis for exactly this.
