The communication arrived through Osren.
It wasn't a formal scroll or an Echelon-stamped document that carried the sterile authority of the high courts.
Instead, it was a single page, folded twice, handed to Alistair outside the Sunborne's western checkpoint.
The messenger was a boy who couldn't have been older than fourteen, with white hair and a single stalk of grain tucked behind his ear.
He leaned against the checkpoint post.
Alistair unfolded the paper. The texture was rough, and unfinished. He read it once, then again, his eyes tracking the ink as if looking for the hidden cost between the lines.
"It's reasonable," Alistair said.
Osren tilted his head, a slight shift of weight that suggested curiosity without the effort of feeling it. "Is that a complaint?"
"It's an observation." Alistair folded the page back into its precise creases and looked at the boy directly. "You could have made this impossible. You didn't."
