The figure stood beneath the greenish halo of the toll-arch copper lamp, perfectly framed against the dark stonework of the River Ward customs post.
It wore the dark frieze courier coat with the high storm collar, the left cuff mended with coarse black thread where an iron latch had torn the wool five days ago. The coat hung from its shoulders with the familiar, slight cant of a carrier accustomed to balancing a cross-belt pack. Its left arm was tucked deep inside the breast of the coat, resting in what appeared to be an improvised woolen sling.
From thirty feet away in the drifting sulfur fog, the face was impossible to tell apart from the nineteen-year-old courier who had sat at Doma’s kitchen table three hours ago. The straight brown hair fell across the forehead in the same untidy lock. The jaw carried the same three-day stubble. The brown eyes held that same cautious, defensive test that Len Vey had brought with him from the northern border.
“Ivara,” the figure called out.
The voice had the exact scratch of coal smoke and fatigue that Len’s voice carried after eighteen hours of braced agony. It wasn’t an imitation. It was the matching shaking of throat cords shaped by the same larynx, speaking with the rhythm of the Tern Road postal stations.
