The letter came five days later, and it was not in Due's hand.
Alistair knew it was Sera's before he had it fully open.
Due would never spend good coin on paper this fine.
Sera always did, even now, even smuggled across half a continent. across half a continent.
He broke the seal and sat with it near the one candle he allowed himself.
Sera wrote nothing as she spoke.
In a room, her words carried a dry edge, the kind that could quiet a council table with four of them. On the page, that edge was gone.
What was left read carefully, almost stiff, each line set down as though she expected it read aloud against her one day, before people who wished her ill.
The first page was the dispute, laid out plainly.
Tavin wanted to hold Frument's western settlement. To move would look like fear, he argued, and fear once shown could never afterward be unshown. A faction seen to flinch would only be circled harder by the other six.
