The dead drop was empty.
This was wrong. The dead drop — a hollow stone in the wall of an abandoned warehouse in Ashenveil's eastern industrial district — had been serviced every twelve days for the past seven months. Vrenn's watchers had documented the pattern: a tall Human, twenties, dressed in the unremarkable clothing of a forge district laborer, approached the warehouse from the eastern alley, knelt to adjust his boot, reached into the wall's lower course, and extracted or deposited a sealed container approximately the size of a coin purse.
For seven months, the pattern had been perfect. The courier arrived. The drop was serviced. The container — which Vrenn's team had examined during one of the courier's absences, photographed, carefully resealed, and returned — contained coded messages written on paper so thin it was almost transparent, using an encryption system that the Ministry of Whispers had not seen before.
