Brin read Tavin’s letter before opening the dispatch shutters.
The packet had reached Stonewake the previous evening, forty-three days after leaving Riven Gate. Its outer cover carried two forwarding marks, one from Caldrin and one from the river-road junction where a broken axle had delayed the carrier by a day. The letter knew nothing of what had happened at the Gate during those forty-three days. It asked for help from the place Tavin had occupied when he wrote it.
That distinction was the first thing Brin put in his reply book.
Date received. Date written. Age of information.
Then he read the request again.
Public dispatch that did not become an army’s private missing-load list. Civil protection whose authority was defined before somebody handed it a weapon. People who could teach the work locally instead of making the valley dependent on one imported clerk.
Tavin had not ordered him east. He had asked him to consider it and to arrange his responsibilities at home before answering yes.
Brin looked around the dispatch room.
