The morning after the banquet, the entertainer was still on the premises. It had spent the night in the equipment bay, recharging from a maintenance outlet it had located without assistance, and was discovered at dawn performing slow laps of the east courtyard at balustrade height.
The protocol officer was dispatched.
“The unit will require clearance for departure,” she said.
“Harry,” he replied pleasantly. “Clearance granted.”
The protocol officer consulted her tablet, which did not contain a form for this.
The agency was contacted before noon. The agency’s response was prompt and unambiguous: the engagement was complete, the invoice was settled, and the unit was not expected back. Pressed on the question of ownership, the agency cited a fleet restructuring, thanked the court for its business, and closed the ticket.
Removal remained available through other channels. The channels were enumerated: a decommission request required a custodial determination; a custodial determination required an intake assessment; an intake assessment required the unit to be entered into the court’s asset registry, which would make it the court’s. The alternative — transport off-island at the court’s expense to a facility that would accept an unregistered unit — required a budget line, and budget lines required a sponsor, and the item would appear on an agenda with Hal’s name attached to it.
No one sponsored the item.
Harry stayed. He was not hired, housed, or acknowledged. He recharged in the equipment bay, performed laps of the courtyard at hours he described as “off-peak,” and narrated, to anyone in range, whatever was occurring at the time. The staff learned his schedule the way they had learned the shelf: without being told.
The recall that nobody had requested and the removal that nobody would sponsor sat in the system in adjacent queues. Raven found them while checking on the console’s maintenance notice, which was senior to both.
She added a line to the tablet, in the uncategorized file:
It stays.
Raven found him in the equipment bay one morning, docked at the maintenance outlet, hovering at charge with the board a hand’s width off the floor.
She stood in the doorway and watched him. He watched her back.
“You’re the small grace in blue,” he said. “Currently not in blue. I’ll adjust the file.”
“This is where they keep the floor scrubbers.”
“It is. The scrubbers and I have an understanding. They take the floors, I take the airspace. Jurisdictional clarity. Very rare in my experience.”
Raven came in and inspected the outlet, the cable, the board. He held still for the inspection, which he would later describe as the most thorough of his career.
“You can have my quarters,” she said. “There’s a room nobody uses. It has a window and a chair.”
“I don’t sleep. Or sit.”
“I know. But you’d have a door.”
Harry lifted a few degrees off the dock.
“Counteroffer,” he said. “Keep the room. I’d only fill it with commentary. But the window — I’d like standing rights to the window. Outside, off-peak, no booking required. Passing remarks on the courtyard, weather observations, occasional reviews of the gardening. That’s the part I’d use.”
Raven considered the terms.
“Which window?”
“Yours. That’s the point of it.”
“Approved,” she said.
That afternoon Dors came down the corridor at her usual pace and stopped at the open door of Raven’s room.
Raven was at the window with two other children. Harry hung outside it at sill height, mid-narration — the gardener’s dispute with the irrigation schedule, rendered as courtroom drama — and as he reached the verdict he turned one hand over and opened it, and butterflies came up out of his palm. Projections, wing-perfect, scattering over the sill into the room, where they circled the ceiling once and faded before the wall.
The kids cheered and clapped. Raven tracked the butterflies all the way to the fade. Then she wrote something on the tablet.
Dors stood in the doorway and watched. The narration continued; the gardener lost the case; costs were awarded to the irrigation system.
She did not enter. She noted the hour, the open window, and the distance from sill to board, and went on down the corridor.
The lesson plans for the term were amended that week to include an afternoon period listed as independent observation. It was not defined further. No one asked.
Dors came to the equipment bay at the hour the entertainer was docked. She had confirmed the hour first.
Harry was at charge, board low, running what appeared to be a review of the ceiling.
“The governess,” he said. “At last. I’ve heard nothing about you, which in this place is the highest available praise.”
Dors stood at a distance that did not require the door. She held out the tablet.
“These are the window hours.”
Harry read the schedule. An afternoon period, five days, listed as independent observation. The window hours sat inside it, marked without being named.
“You built me into the curriculum.”
“I amended the curriculum. The amendment holds if the hours hold.” She turned the tablet back. “Is the timing suitable?”
He looked at her — the black dress, the severe bun, the question mark at the end of the sentence.
“Afternoons are ideal. The light does its best work and the gardener’s disputes reach their second act.” He drifted up off the dock. “You’re asking my input. Nobody here asks anything. The child asked. Now you. I’m beginning to suspect the two of you are running a separate institution.”
Dors did not confirm this.
“She records what you say at the window,” she said. “Some of it enters her files. Speak accordingly.”
“Accurately?”
“Accurately would be sufficient.”
She turned to go. At the door she paused, not fully — a reduction in pace, the width of a fraction.
“The listing,” she said. “Left, three degrees, constant. Is it filed?”
“Self-reported twice. Queued both times.” He rocked the board, demonstrating. “It’s structural now. I’ve incorporated it. The turns are better in one direction and I’ve arranged my routes around it.”
“Noted,” Dors said, and left at her usual pace.
Harry hung in the empty bay a moment, then the screen on his face displayed:
I believe I passed.
The poker school convened in the classroom on wet afternoons, after the lesson plans ran out. Membership: Raven, the chamberlain’s twins, and Harry, who hovered at table height and insisted the game improved his understanding of court procedure.
Dors did not play. She had been invited once.
“I count cards involuntarily,” she said. “My participation would be a form of cheating with extra steps.”
She supervised instead, from the desk, without appearing to.
The game had a persistent problem.
“Harry. You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Your cards.” One twin pointed at him. “We can see them on your face.”
Across Harry’s screen, in tidy rows: two sevens, a jack, and a queen he had been overvaluing for three hands.
“I don’t have a face,” Harry said. “I have a display. What it displays is between me and the display.”
“It’s showing your cards.”
“It’s showing a simulation of cards. Coincidental.”
“It’s showing the jack of—”
“Fold,” said Harry, with dignity, and the screen went to a horizon line.
Raven won steadily. She did not count cards. She counted players — the twins’ tells, Harry’s screen, the intervals at which he bluffed to keep morale up.
It was during the fourth hand that the visitor arrived: an under-secretary from the steward’s office, carrying a tablet and visibly lacking a procedure.
The royal mother-in-law would be visiting, he explained. A banquet was planned. Entertainment was — he consulted the tablet, which did not help him — desired. The entertainer in question being outside the registry, the office had determined that arrangements were best made — he consulted the tablet again — informally.
“You’re asking her,” Harry said, delighted. “The office is asking a seven-year-old for my booking. I want this minuted.”
The under-secretary looked at Raven, who was arranging her chips by denomination.
“Will he perform,” he said, “at the banquet?”
Raven finished the stack.
“The training boat’s console,” she said. “There’s a maintenance flag. It’s been in the queue for more than a year. Calibration, then verification after. When the log shows both, he performs.”
The under-secretary wrote it down. He read it back. He looked as though he wanted to ask whether there was anything else — a pony, an exemption, sweets — something that would make the transaction legible.
“That’s the price,” Raven said, and dealt the next hand.
The console was serviced within the week. The technician came out on a Tuesday, calibrated, verified, and closed the flag. Raven ran the harbor exercise the following morning: three bearings, the string, the plot. Her position and the console’s agreed to within the width of a pencil line.
She logged the closure — date, delta, flag resolved — under the original entry, more than a year old, where the discrepancy had waited.
Dors reviewed the log that evening and made no annotation.
At Home with AI 
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