The road east of the Oasis stayed empty for two days, and Alistair walked it alone.
He had not done that in many months. The absence of the people he had grown used to walking beside felt strange, not quite loneliness, more like reaching for a weight no longer sitting on his shoulder.
He let himself sit with it for half a day, and then he stopped, because Tobian Marrow did not think about Sun Harvest, or about Due, or about any of them. Tobian Marrow was who he was now, and the sooner Alistair believed that himself, the sooner everyone else would.
The papers sat warm against his ribs, folded into the lining of his coat. Due had placed the seal on them himself, and it had not begun to fade.
By the documents, the third son of the Halversen Marrow line was on his way to Verissan to formalize his Caelmar residency, traveling through a checkpoint that processed minor nobles by the dozen and rarely looked at any of them twice.
The checkpoint came into view at midday.
