Alistair went to the meeting.
He had turned Hessel's note over in his head the whole day, and every reading of it ended in the same place. The note was bait, and Hessel had no idea he was the one carrying it.
'If they wanted me dead, they would not have warned me first. Someone put those words in his mouth. Do not go, so that I run, and running is the confession. Make him come to you, so that I hide, and hiding is the same confession said in a quieter voice.'
There was one path the note never offered him, so that was the path Alistair took.
He arrived at the hour after sunset in plain Caelmari grey, with the bruise on his forearm hidden under the sleeve and his scraped palms wrapped in a strip of cloth that any clumsy man might wear. He carried no journals, since there were none to carry, and no weapon either, since Tobian Marrow had never owned one.
The building was empty at that hour. The day clerks had gone home, and the night ones had not taken their posts yet.
