Calen read the date again, slowly, the way he had read the first line of the Board’s letter. The ink was black and sharp, and the Ministry’s neat figures sat in the corner of the page.
The date was three days before the Board’s sitting.
He turned the paper over in his fingers. The Silverspire stamp was square and clean. It had been pressed down hard, so hard that the Ministry seal beneath it had cracked across one arm. Somebody had wanted the stamp to be seen first.
“Hoff,” said Calen, quietly.
The Board read dates the way it read crimes. It would believe the first date it was shown, and it would not go looking for a second one.
Hoff came over from the gate with his thumbs in his belt. He looked at the form, and then at the stamp, and then at Calen’s face, and he did not say anything at all for the space of three breaths.
“That is not a Ministry date,” said Hoff at last.
“No.”
