Sable’s second packet came up the back side of the field at dawn.

It was thicker than the first, and the boy who carried it had clearly run, breathing hard when he set the bundle on the table. Due walked him back to the kitchen, gave him bread, and sent him out again.

That was a thing Due did, and Alistair did not comment on it.

He took the packet from the table and cut the seal himself.

The pages inside were in Sable’s hand, tight and slanted, the way she had always written. The first was a cover note, two lines, which read: ’I had this prepared for someone. I am sending it to you instead. Do not write back about it.’

She had not signed it, and the five pages after the cover were profiles.

He laid them out in order across the table. Elara came up on one side, Silas on the other, and Due remained standing where he had been.

The first page read across the top:

’HALCYRA VOHN. THE EDICT.’

Below the name were three short paragraphs. Halcyra Vohn had been a Justicar for eleven years, and she did not deliver verdicts; she wrote them, and that writing was binding in twenty-three jurisdictions.

She had not been seen east of Constance in nine years. Her Characteristic, Sable did not name, noting in the margin that no one outside the Upholders themselves was known to have seen it activate.

Alistair’s eyes narrowed as he read it, set the page down, then moved to the second.

’RENVALD CRANE. THE WREATH.’

Renvald Crane was an auditor, though not in the bookkeeping sense. He reviewed every document brought before the Upholders, and his judgments of true or false fell within a margin of error nobody in the Sovereign Record could reproduce.

He had been a Justicar for nine years, was forty-one, and did not eat in public.

Seeing this, Silas leaned in over Alistair’s shoulder without a word, his eyes moving the way a man’s do when committing something to memory rather than reading it.

The third page came next.

’MIRA SOLENNE. THE SCRIVENER OF FINAL JUDGMENT.’

Mira Solenne was the youngest Justicar in three centuries, twenty-six and seated for two years. Her function was the writing of the final disposition of every assessment the Upholders undertook, in a hand that, once written, could not be argued with by any legal body on the continent.

She had been seen smiling once on public record, at her seating ceremony, in a way witnesses agreed afterward was not the smile of a young person.

Elara made a small sound at the bottom of that page, not one of surprise, rather one of recognition.

"What is it?" asked Alistair, turning his head.

"I have heard her name somewhere before," replied Elara, eyes still on the page. "However, I will not remember where for a few hours. Keep going, I will get to it."

He kept going.

’COREN THRACE. THE SWORN HAND.’

Coren Thrace was the only Justicar of the five who was a fighter, serving as enforcement. He had been the Sworn Hand for fifteen years.

His Characteristic was named in the dossier, which Sable did not normally do, meaning she had included it only because she could not confirm it through fewer than three independent sources. The name was ’Binding Compliance,’ and the dossier said no more.

Following that, the fifth page lay waiting.

’IDRIS HALE. THE VOW.’

Idris Hale’s function, in Sable’s hand, was written as ’doctrine and instruction.’ She trained the other Justicars, having trained four of the five currently seated.

She had not delivered a verdict in seventeen years, and had been seen on three separate occasions in the past two years walking the corridor outside the High Justicar’s office at hours when no other Justicar was awake.

Alistair finished reading and set the page down beside the other four. Alistair was honestly unsettled.

Five pages, five names, five functions sat in front of him. None of them, alone, were something he could not have built a counter-strategy against.

However, all five of them in one room around one table, with a sixth chair at the head, and that sixth chair occupied by the man who had taught Alistair every Aspect he knew, was something he could not counter at all.

Due read all five pages slowly, in his own time. He was a careful reader, going through each page twice.

When he was done, he set the last page back into the row without looking up.

"This is not the Upholders Alistair left," said Due, breaking the silence. "This is something else wearing their banner, and we all know it."

Alistair set his hand flat next to the first page, neither picking it up nor moving it.

"I know," he replied.

"Then how long has it been like this, Alistair? You have to give us more than that."

"It was not like this when I left."

"That does not answer the question, and you know it does not."

Alistair clicked his tongue, but did not answer at once. He was looking at the third page, at the name Mira Solenne, at the line about the smile at the seating ceremony.

He was thinking of it for a reason. Two years ago, when Mira Solenne had been seated, he had been arguing with his father at the Thorne estate over an inheritance question that had never been settled.

’I was on the wrong continent of my life that night to notice a young woman being given a title in a city I did not live in. Regardless, I should have noticed.’

"Not long. Two years, three at the outside," replied Alistair.

Due nodded slowly, since he did not need to comment further.

Elara was still looking at the third page, her voice coming soft when she finally spoke.

"I remember now," she said quietly.

Hearing this, Alistair turned his head toward her. "Where, exactly?"

"I met her at a function in Constance. I would have been fifteen, and I do not think I spoke to her, nor she to me. However, I sat at a dinner my father was required to attend, and Mira Solenne was at the same table."

"And?" asked Alistair, when she did not continue. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

"She was not yet a Justicar then. She was being introduced to the building, the corridors, and the table itself."

"By whom?"

Elara looked up at him, her eyes steady and tired in a way he had not seen on her before.

"By my father," she replied.

The room went quiet for a long time after that, and Alistair was speechless.

The morning light through the small window had crept up the wall behind Due, and the wall is pale, the light paler still.

Alistair watched that line of light, refusing to look at the three others in the room for the length of a held breath.

He had been planning a journey to Caelmar.

However, he understood now that he had been planning a journey to a room with six chairs around one table, and Caldren Vance had been sitting in the sixth one far longer than any of them had thought.

’How long has he been waiting for me to walk through that door?’