Marrick levered the archive floorboard up while Hajin held the lamp above its hidden compartment.
"Easy, if that plank snaps, I'm telling everyone you sat on it," he hissed.
"It is older than both of us, my lord, and far more patient."
A battered lockbox lay beneath the oilcloth, holding two letters Meris Vale carried past the enemy pickets well before sunrise. She crossed the lines gathering herbs, and her delivery note now sat beside the opened box under the warm lamp.
Marrick checked the fastening, then went completely still over the wax.
"High Arbiter Didi's silver seal," he breathed, sliding the old proclamation aside for the new pages.
'Of course she sends the good stuff under a floorboard, like a smuggler with manners.'
Marrick held the seal against their earlier correspondence, "Her reply from the capital, and we've enough quarantine notices to paper this table, but none that explains why Flint gets every road."
