Chapter 461: The Abbess Answers

The Abbess’s reply came up the Undercroft stair inside a sack of salt, folded small and tied with a grey thread, and it reached the scullery at the back of the Kitchen in the hands of a carrier in a carrier’s coat whom Kessa had never seen before and did not study for longer than was polite. He put the sack on the scullery step and touched the brim of his hat, and then he was gone up the Undercroft stair again, into the dark, with the lamp-light making his shadow long on the wall. Nobody else had seen him. That was the arrangement. It had been the arrangement since the winter, and Kessa had not yet found a way to stop being grateful for it. She had seen his hand on the sack-tie, though. There was a pale ring across the heel of it, the mark a salt-burn leaves when it has been left on too long, and she had seen the same ring on the wrist of the Order’s messengers, years ago, on the south road, when they came to the back door of the house with their hats in their hands and their faces turned politely away from the child at the table.

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