The letter arrived on a Tuesday.Not through the official courier channels. Not stamped with any court seal or bearing the formal routing marks of diplomatic correspondence. It arrived in a small leather packet, folded twice and sealed with plain black wax , the kind of wax you bought at any market stall, deliberately untraceable , pressed into the hands of a kitchen delivery boy who had found it, he said, tucked against the east gate post when he came in at dawn. He had thought it was a market receipt. He handed it to Haela. Haela brought it to me.I was in the library when she found me, which was where I usually was in the morning hours, developing what had become a particular daily routine: early light, third floor, northeast corner, Teva on one end of the long table working through whatever she had carried up from the collection, and me on the other with Serin's training texts and the oral tradition transcription we were still not finished with, three months after the ceremony, be
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