The quarry note sat on the second table long enough for every person in the great hall to understand what it meant and why the room felt different once the words had been read aloud.
If Rowan is no longer recoverable, do not spend men retrieving her. Withdraw outer support at once. Preserve only inward names that still reach the center. If the woman cannot be taken, the child remains the longer value. Burn the rest.
Nobody in Grimridge could hear that and still pretend the road beyond Rowan was merely cruel in the ordinary ways power often was. It was colder than that. It had already decided what Rowan cost, what Sable's body still meant to it, and which parts of the war deserved saving after the woman who had driven so much of it was no longer worth the effort of reclaiming. The reserve books had hinted at that. The one-shot order had sharpened it. The quarry note stripped it bare.
