The tournament idea fell into the corridor the way good ideas always fell—without ceremony, without warning, landing flat on stone and making everyone around it look at their own feet.
It had come from one of the broader Stonefang women. Not the geological-jaw one. A different one, seated cross-legged against the copper-stone wall with her arms draped over her knees, who had been listening to the whole conversation with the patient expression of a woman cataloguing information before deployment.
She said: "'How about organising a tournament—those who win get a chance to sleep with Lord?'"
Absolute silence.
Then—from the geological-jaw woman across the corridor—a slow blink. A single nod. The kind of nod that follows an idea so obvious in retrospect it's embarrassing to have missed it.
