A pair of mottled gray carrier hawks circled through the midday air above the Seventh Spire’s private terrace on Day 38.
The birds descended with a swift whistle of feathers, landing neatly on the weathered stone balustrade.
Deacon Vane stood on the terrace, unhooking two tiny copper message tubes from their leather leg bands.
He reached into his leather pouch, tossing each bird a strip of dried venom-eel meat. The shadow hawks gulped the reward down greedily, their dark eyes gleaming with unnatural predatory intelligence.
The spymaster’s eyes were shadowed with exhaustion, but his mouth was set in a tight, grim line.
One tube held two dispatches and the other held one. He slid the rolled parchment strips from the tubes, smoothed them against his palm, and walked through the arched glass doors into the Inner Sanctum.
Inside the spacious fifth-floor chamber, Kaelen Vance had moved his resting station.
Instead of lounging on the heavy divan, he had strung a wide, padded hemp hammock between two massive obsidian support pillars near the open terrace windows.
