The Sunborne's notification arrived three days after the dispatches entered the Record's system.
Osren delivered it himself, which told Alistair something before he read a single word.
The Sunborne didn't send their people into disputed territory for routine correspondence. Whatever the notification contained, it was significant enough that the boy with the grain stalk behind his ear had walked two days to bring it in person.
They were camped at the edge of Harren's Post, waiting for the deadline.
Due had spent the days mapping obligation threads in the surrounding settlements, cataloguing the texture of Caldren's network as it appeared in the behavioral patterns of people who didn't know they were part of a system.
Elara had been talking to locals, learning the shape of ordinary life in a place where ordinary life had been restructured without permission.
Silas had been invisible, which was his version of productive.
