Alistair read the dispatch twice.
He read it through once and set it down. Then he poured tea he had no intention of drinking, picked the parchment back up, and went over it more slowly this time, because he did not trust what the first read had told him.
The continental section was short. The Sovereign Record had been brief that morning, and in Alistair's experience, that means one of two things. Either nothing had happened, or something had happened that the Record did not yet know how to phrase.
The first item covered the southern arc. The second was a Sunborne border movement with no cause anyone could name, which was the line Alistair had been watching for two weeks already, and which still refused to make any sense no matter how many ways he turned it over.
The third item was the one that mattered.
