Orin's reply came in on the triangle route before noon, dry, exact, and unimpressed by surface law.
The grass was quiet. The cut stayed shut. Descendants had burned two rumor-slips that tried to call the Seat a shrine. Constructs were walking the dead strip. She had no pilgrims yet. She wanted the next letter to stay as dull as this one. Dull, she wrote, was a kind of mercy.
Caelis's reply came wet and perfumed with offense.
The Salt Court named two captains it had already sunk in sight of a grey market. It demanded the go-between. It denied the tea-house token and then, in the next line, admitted a second face it was "purging." Sable read that twice and snorted.
"She bleeds in public when the blood is already on the quay."
Elizabeth kept the go-between anyway.
"She can have the woman when I have a name that is not 'purging.'"
The third piece of paper that day was worse than both letters.
