The Lessaran post-cart came over the Sallow Ford in the early morning, with the first of the treaty carts behind it and the Ferryman carrying every wheel across without a word, and among its sacks was a single letter in a plain grey wrapper.
Idrin found it at the gatehouse. The post-bag was opened on the bench under the window, as it always was, and the Watch-clerk sorted the letters into the pigeon-holes for the Chamber and the kitchen and the Warden’s box, and then held one up between two fingers, frowning, because the wrapper had no seal and the direction had been written in a hand that did not belong to any Chancery clerk Idrin had ever met.
To the Warden of Ormhold, by the hand of the Crown’s post, unopened.
He knew the hand before he had the wrapper off.
It was a girl’s hand, grown into a woman’s, but it had not changed much. The letters were small and upright and very exact, and the tails of the gs curled back on themselves like the end of a ribbon. He had seen that hand on the flyleaves of his schoolbooks when he was nine, on the lists of Latin verbs that she had corrected for him in the margins, and on the card she had left on his pillow the night before the Chancery had come to fetch her for the first time. He had not seen it in four years. He had not expected to see…
