The Crimson Vipers executed their contract on a Thursday.
I knew it had happened before the formal report arrived because Isolda's secondary network sent word through the merchant routing channel at the fifth hour of the morning, a brief, encrypted notation that translated to: the northern checkpoint at Veldmere has been seized and held. By the time the duchy's garrison commander sent his own report to Darius three hours later, we already had the detail that the garrison commander's report lacked, which was that the seizure had been coordinated across three separate checkpoints simultaneously, using a rotation of personnel that indicated advance knowledge of the garrison's patrol schedule.
The contract had been planned carefully. It was professionally executed. And it had been walking into a trap that had been built for it over the course of five weeks.
