Ormond drew a weapon.
In three years of stories about the Emperor's household, Vane had never heard one where that happened. A short blade, plain, the kind of thing a man keeps because it has never once been necessary. He held it low and he did not advance.
For the first time, he waited.
Lancelot walked toward him.
Not fast. The same pace he walked corridors at Zenith, the same pace he'd crossed the Iron Cathedral in first year to stand beside a princess. The binding came off Ormond in a wave — every restraint he had, Sovereign Binding laid over the whole centre of the clearing like a net thrown over water.
It found nothing to hold.
Vane watched it happen through the Usurper and still could not follow it. A binding needed something to grip — intent, a decision forming a hair ahead of the motion it would become. That was what Ormond's whole Authority was built on: the gap between wanting to move and moving, and the leverage that gap gave anyone who could reach into it.
