Sabine Ardent came into the enforcement core through her own seals, which was the one route nobody had thought to watch.
Three military seals had closed that approach against everybody in the country. All three had been written by the marshal, and all three answered to her.
She had not sealed the core to keep herself out of it. Vasa understood the whole arrangement about four seconds after the northern door opened.
The marshal walked into a room she had locked against a nation and did it lawfully.
Nobody in the confederacy had considered that the enclosure had an owner. An enclosure with an owner is a door for exactly one person in the world.
Ardent wore Directorate command armor, which almost nobody alive had ever seen worn.
It is not a suit, and nothing about it resembles a weapon on a rack. Command armor is an accounting instrument that has been given a physical shape.
