The brass dispatch metal tube sat on the map table between the two giant Horizon profiles. Its red sealing wax shone in the candlelight like a drop of fresh blood.
Kezra Venn drew Davren’s horn-handled work knife from her belt. Working with steady, deliberate fingers, she sliced through the pitch-soaked linen threads that bound the screw-cap and cracked the brittle red wax seal. The wax crumbled into tiny crimson flakes, releasing the faint, clear scent of Kilnstep. Dried lavender, river clay, and woodsmoke from her mother’s kitchen hearth.
She unscrewed the threaded brass cap. Then she slid out a tight roll of fine thick parchment covered in dense, slanted script.
The letter was not in Maud Venn’s hand. It was written in the rapid, skilled cursive of an intelligence watcher from Joric Thane’s southern courier network, dated six days earlier—Day One Hundred and Thirty-Two—at the limestone crossroads three miles outside Kilnstep.
Kezra smoothed the parchment flat against the table. Beside her, Davren leaned heavily on his ash staff, his knuckles white. Meanwhile, Paxa and Yseld leaned in from opposite sides to read over her shoulders.
Kezra read the dispatch aloud, her voice tightening with every sentence:
To Cartographer Kezra Venn, forward at Alderfast. Dispatch via Southern Express Relay.
