Garnyth

She has spent five years making sure the IDA does its job correctly. She did not account for the possibility that the IDA's job might include her.

Skyla Marchetti is the Intergalactic Council's Earth-based accountability officer for alien-human treaty compliance, which means she knows every clause in the IDA's reformed operating charter, every oversight protocol, and every instance of noncompliance in the past decade. She is not against the IDA. She simply holds it to its own standards with the focused intensity of someone who takes promises seriously.

Garnyth of the Thyren has been the IDA's alien-species diplomatic representative for three years, which means he has been in Skyla's quarterly review meetings for three years, which means he has spent three years giving her careful, accurate, complete answers to her questions and not quite managing to give her honest ones.

When the compatibility scan flags a 96.8% match between them, Skyla sets it aside to finish the quarterly review. Garnyth sits with it for an entire week before he says anything.

She sees through everyone. He has made himself transparent to everyone and available to no one. The IDA, with its usual impeccable timing, thinks this is exactly the point.