The Letter He Had Written

The messenger's horse had been eating the innkeeper's climbing beans. Nobody had noticed because the messenger herself was standing too straight beside it.

Cal stopped at the gate.

“Serit.”

“Lord Arden.”

“Don't call me that here.”

“Then don't make me come looking for you here.”

She was perhaps thirty, with a small white scar crossing one eyebrow. There was mud on her coat as high as the saddle had allowed. She had ridden the ordinary road for at least part of the journey.

Ada glanced at the pouch on her belt. “Another answer?”

Serit looked at Cal before replying.

That was how Ada knew there had been another question.

They went upstairs. Ren was still outside washing ink from the edges of her nails; Pella fetched her. Tomar came up slowly, complaining about a step that moved beneath his good foot. Ysra brought the lamp even though the room was not yet dark. She placed it between herself and the messenger, where everyone could see everyone else's hands.

Serit laid out two documents.

The first answered the letter Ada had read before it was sealed. Marshal Tovan would request a public examination of the disputed schedules. Copies might remain outside official custody. The Chancellor's office reserved the right to examine their authenticity.

The second began with Cal's name.

Ada did not read farther at once. She watched him instead.

“I sent another letter,” he said.

“When?”

“After the first messenger left. Through the stable carrier.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That Ysra was with us. That we had the preparation fragment and the current schedule. That the objections weren't only a provincial complaint.”

Ysra's fingers moved towards her lap.

“You used my name,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Without asking me.”

“Yes.”

The two answers were plain. Ada hated that he had found a way to be honest after the honesty might have been useful.

Serit pushed the second page a little farther across the table. “The Marshal has arranged an escort from Greyford. Lord—Cal is to present himself there tomorrow. The other named parties may join him under her personal protection.”

“May,” Ren said. “Or must?”

“May.”

“And if they don't?”

“His return obligation remains.”

Cal had put his own compliance behind a request for their safety. He had offered to go back into the rooms he had spent most of his life trying to leave, and in making that offer had treated their names as things he could carry with him.

Ada picked up the letter.

There were places where she recognised him painfully. The careful explanation of Tomar's original ferry records. The insistence that Ysra's care could not be provided under detention. A sentence about the need to hear an apprentice who knew the affected ground. He had written well. He had written as though the strength of the appeal could make permission unnecessary.

Near the end came the words that stopped her.

I believe I can secure their attendance.

She put the paper down.

“Did you?”

Cal looked at the line beneath her finger. “No.”

“Did you believe it when you wrote it?”

He did not look away. “I believed I could persuade you.”

“There were names you could have used for that belief. Mine wasn't one of them.”

The innkeeper's daughter began her whistle downstairs. This time she reached the eighth note. The triumph in it was almost unbearable.

Serit waited until the child had finished.

“I haven't come to seize anyone,” she said. “I have two riders at the posting yard, not a company in the trees. You should know that before this becomes an argument about a danger I didn't bring.”

Pella went to the window. “I'll look anyway.”

“Of course.”

She left. Tomar watched the door close behind her, then turned towards Cal.

“When people write about my attendance, I prefer to have something to do with the writing.”

“I know.”

“You appear to know several things you forgot while holding a pen.”

Cal flinched. He did not defend himself.

Ren read both letters twice. Then she asked Serit about the escort's route, the rooms in which the visitors would be lodged, the authority under which the Marshal could protect a person accused of interfering with a Crown measure. Serit answered what she could and said when she did not know. Ada appreciated her more with every incomplete answer.

Seventeen days remained before the Rebinding. The journey to Orison by river and ordinary road would consume at least four of them. Staying at the White Net would not make the capital hear them. Travelling under escort might make the capital the last place some of them saw.

Ysra reached for the second page. Her cuff caught beneath the lamp stand. Cal moved to free it, stopped, and withdrew his hand.

She did it herself, slowly.

“My niece doesn't speak for me,” she told Serit. “Neither does he. Tell your Marshal that I will consider coming if the safe conduct names the records I carry as well as my person. A free woman with her evidence confiscated is a witness you can choose not to hear.”

Serit made a note.

“And tell her,” Tomar said, “that I am old enough to recognise a guesthouse without seeing the curtains.”

A corner of the messenger's mouth moved.

“I'll use your exact words.”

By the time Pella returned, the innkeeper had discovered the beans. Serit went downstairs to pay for them. She took neither letter, leaving the terms where they could be argued over without her.

Cal stood when Ada did.

“Not now,” she said.

“I need to explain.”

“I've read the explanation. I need to go downstairs without you following me.”

He sat.

Outside, dusk had softened the riverbank. A fisherman was untangling a line from the root of a willow. He worked patiently for a while, then lost his temper and pulled. The line broke. Ada understood both actions so completely that she had to sit on the step.

Pella came out carrying two cups.

“I didn't know,” she said.

“I know.”

“He thinks going back himself is the generous part.”

“It may be.” Ada took the cup. “That doesn't make the rest his to give.”

Pella sat beside her. They listened to the fisherman swearing at the willow, which had contributed nothing to his mistake.

After a while Ada drank. The tea had too much honey in it.

“The child made it,” Pella said. “I tried to intervene.”

Ada drank some more. For once she did not want something corrected.