Brin arrived at Ember Wash on day 1254 with a tired carrier, three sealed message bags and no idea that somebody had stolen the night keepers’ addresses eleven days earlier.
He had left Three Wells on day 1241. His paid dispatch secondment had closed the previous evening, after he trained the receiving clerk and watched her sort a full day’s packets without him correcting the pile. The keeper counted the cash, checked the route book and paid his last balance. Brin had chosen a booked regional freight leg to carry the comparison copies and learn the next receiving circuit. It was his own work, arranged before Nasko’s theft, not a journey summoned by news that had not happened yet.
Thirteen freight days brought him through the western bridge corridor, Harth Bend and the north road. At each stop the carrier fed its animals, rested its drivers and counted the sealed bags against the receipt. Brin slept where the other paid workers slept. He could not make a hundred miles disappear because somebody farther down the road missed him.
Tavin met him at the yard’s receiving gate. For a moment neither spoke. Then Tavin took one end of the heaviest bag and said, “You have learned to bring less.”
