Alistair did not go to the salon that evening to learn anything.
He went because Tobian Marrow always went, and a man who suddenly changed his habits the same week his enemies grew nervous was a man begging for the wrong kind of attention.
So he took his usual chair by the windows, drank half a cup of wine slowly, and let the room talk over him the way it always did.
The room talked about the exiled houses.
He caught it the way a man catches a draft before he finds the crack it comes from.
A woman two chairs down mentioned Velden, lightly, as something she had read in a letter.
A little later, a merchant's wife brought up Marish, and an old man near the fire said the name Veir like it tasted of something he had forgotten he disliked.
None of them were speaking to each other.
