Iren is one of Kryor's twelve. He is not the eldest. He is not the most decorated. He was chosen, on the morning Saeren came up the path to East Rim, because the Archangel had decided that Saeren's judgement required, of the order, a witness whose hand would write the morning down without ornament. Iren was that hand.
He had not, until East Rim, understood what an unbinding was — the rare severance of an angel's bond to his office, keeping the existence and removing the standing. He stood three paces back of his Archangel for the duration of the morning. He saw Kryor's attention narrow to the place where the bond was kept. He saw Kryor open the bond rather than break it. He saw Saeren's wings dim — not vanish, only dim, as the wings of a being who had once carried errands and now carried none.
He records the morning. The order has not asked him, since, to record any of his other watches at the small careful length of that one. He has not, in the conversations of his own twelve, repeated what he saw. He keeps it for the chronicle.
