The courier reached Sedge Ladder on day 1276 with mud above both knees and no expectation that a Marcher would leave its young to answer him.
He had left Gate on day 1256. Twenty paid travel days had carried Jora Sen’s packet over the three hundred kilometers to Reedglass, through two ferries, a flooded low path and the long ridge where the freight animals had to rest before descending. His route book showed those stops. The seal on the packet had survived inside its ordinary waxed cover.
Eshra Daal gave him water before asking what he wanted signed.
The request concerned seasonal interval logs. An old comparison room at Ember Wash carried marks naming a Rootwell western return. Its keepers wanted to compare those intervals with the long readings at Reedglass, including changes people had observed near the nursery. They asked for copies the local owners chose to send, with dates, uncertainty and any restriction on their use. They did not ask Eshra to send Reed-of-Glass south.
She read that line aloud to Orret, who had come in from the boats.
“A modest sentence,” she said. “People should write more of them.”
“They should mean them too.”
The nursery lay beyond the working landing, where the mature Reed-of-Glass stood among shallow pools and mineral shelves. Its ridges caught the morning light in pale green and silver. A smaller Marcher moved near its forward legs, nudging a torn mass of reeds with the patient seriousness of a creature doing something only…
