"There," Yunlan says, "speaks a general."

I'm sorry about all of it but I don't regret any of it, because it worked-- suddenly he has a real idea of what it is that might be holding Garach Jedao back from graduation. Maybe he's wrong, but it's why he'd asked Jedao to come by before he'd done more than skim the file. There were things that he could see in a person that he'd never be able to pick out of a life story. That little revelation is one of them.

He rubs the edge of his thumbnail idly against the ceramic of his cup.

"All right. It's going to take me a day or two to go through your file in the detail it deserves and start coming up with ideas. I'd like to set up a regular meeting time to talk things over... and it's going to be a lot of me asking questions to begin with, most of them about sensitive subjects." He looks over to meet Jedao's eyes, smiling crookedly. "You can tell me to fuck off at any time, but let's be honest with each other, all right? I will do my level best not to be a jackass.

"What do you think? Daily, every couple of days...?"