finished polishing

chapters/book2/ch20-final.md

@@ -84,6 +84,8 @@ I wasn't sure the difference mattered to Calla Floundry or Ren Dorren or the stu
 
 "Safehouse, as agreed. Mere's compounds are holding at roughly eighty percent. Dosing schedule is stable, no withdrawal beyond the first thirty-six hours. He's sleeping. Eating. He hasn't asked to leave."
 
+(*Eighty percent. Mere's number, not Ledger's — he's quoting her without saying so. The "hasn't asked to leave" is the part doing the work. A man who could ask hasn't. That's not compliance. That's a boy who finally believes the door isn't the dangerous part of the room.*)
+
 "Custody?"
 
 "Mine." A beat. "Operationally. The guild's on paper."
@@ -210,9 +212,7 @@ The air in the room resettled.
 
 Now the meeting really should have been over.
 
-He didn't stand.
-
-He didn't shuffle papers. He didn't push the first folder toward me with a closing gesture. His hands rested on the desk where they had been resting for the whole of the last half-hour, and he looked at me with the same patient attention he had been using throughout, and I felt — with a precision I couldn't have explained if he'd asked me to — that this second stretch of silence was not the same silence as the first.
+His hands rested on the desk where they had been resting for the whole of the last half-hour. He looked at me with the same patient attention he had been using throughout, and I felt — with a precision I couldn't have explained if he'd asked me to — that this second stretch of silence was not the same silence as the first.
 
 The first pause had been a test. He'd waited to see whether I'd walk into the question he was preparing, and I had walked into it, and he'd let me walk out of it on the terms we had both agreed to.