He was very still. "And if you win," he said, "you want to know that too."
"Yes," she said.
"Even if winning would be easier if I were operating on wrong assumptions about Zone B."
"Winning by default is not winning," she said. "I have been very clear about this since the beginning. In the courtroom, in the campaign, in every argument we've had in this kitchen for three weeks. I intend to beat you on the merits. Which requires you to know what the merits actually are."
He looked at her. She looked back. The kitchen was very quiet. Outside, Lucknow's late night — the rain had stopped, the city was in the post-rain quiet that was one of its best qualities, the washed clarity of a city after monsoon.
"You are," he said, in the low voice, the unmanaged one, "the most honest person I have met in a career that is built on the careful management of honesty."
She did not look away. "Don't," she said. Quietly.
"Don't what?" he said. Also quietly.
"Don't say things like that," she said. "There are eight days left. Say things like that in nine days."
A pause. Long. The specific length of a pause in which something is being decided. He looked at the data on the table. He looked at her. He said: "Okay."
She went to her room. She lay on the bed and thought about eight days and what she had just said and what it had implied and what he had heard in it, which was what she had meant, which was that she was not going to pretend she didn't know what was happening and she was also not going to do anything about it until the election was over because the election was first and some things had a correct order.
She was very clear about the correct order. She was also aware that being very clear about the correct order when you were lying in a flat that felt different since the powercut night was not the same as the correct order being easy. The two things could both be true simultaneously. She held both of them.
Eight days.
