The letter arrived on a Tuesday, which I have come to associate with disruption.
It bore the seal of House Min — a house I recognized immediately and without pleasure. Not because they had ever done anything directly to me. In this life, House Min had been a distant political force, significant in the capital but not particularly present in the day-to-day texture of the city where Kaien and I lived. But I had nine lives of pattern recognition, and the pattern was clear: when House Min entered a story, the story got complicated.
I held the letter for a long moment without opening it.
