The midday dispatch came in on the third day after the packet, and the boy who carried it was not Sable’s boy.

He was a regular Record runner, wearing the gray of the continental service. He handed the dispatch to Due at the door, and after that, he did not come inside.

Due took the page back to the table without breaking the seal, and he laid it down in front of Alistair.

"You open it," said Due.

"You always open them."

"I am tired of being the one who opens them this week. Besides, your name is at the top of the page, not mine," replied Due, adjusting his collar.

Alistair clicked his tongue. Following that, he took the page and cut the seal.

The page was thin, thinner than ordinary, which usually meant the day’s news was light. He read the first two-thirds and confirmed it was.

Trade route adjustments, a southern faction renewing its annual filing, and a senior officer of the Caelmari Royal Guard who had retired with full honors.

Alistair read on, and the last paragraph was a single regional item.

A village in the far north of the continent had been found vacated.

He read the line twice.

The village was named, the province was named, the household count given, and the date of the vacancy estimated.

The Record used its standard language for a vacancy of this kind, careful in the way the Record is careful when it does not know what has happened and does not want to be quoted later.

The dispatch said, in its careful Record language, that the village had been left in an organized manner.

That phrasing was the one that mattered.

’Abandoned’ meant emptied in panic, ’evacuated’ meant emptied under official order, and ’left in an organized manner’ meant emptied because the people in it had decided to leave, in concert, without anyone telling them to.

’A village does not pack itself out in a row unless something is calling it,’ Alistair thought. ’And nothing is supposed to be up there to call it.’

Alistair was uneasy in a way he had not been about a dispatch in months. He did not lift his head from the page.

"Due."

"I am reading it from here."

"How far from the last reported position of the Shadow?"

"Two days’ walk, give or take."

Alistair set the page down, but he did not turn it, and he did not move it.

Due came around the table to his side. Elara was at the bench by the window, and she had not come over yet because she had not heard a reason to come over yet. Elara is not one to move toward a page without a reason.

"Read it again," said Alistair.

"I already read it."

"Read it again, slower."

Due read it again. He did not read it aloud, since Alistair could read it for himself. When he finished, he straightened up, and this time he did not adjust his collar.

"He is testing the country," said Due. "Not announcing himself, not coming down out of the north with a banner. He is moving a village and seeing what the country answers with."

"I know."

"And the village answered, by leaving. That is the first answer of many to come."

"It is."

"What answers next is what we should be watching for, and from what direction it comes."

Alistair did not say he knew to that, because he did not entirely know it. He knew the shape of it, but the next answer was not yet visible to him.

Eventually, Elara had come over. She read the page over his shoulder.

"What is in that province besides the village?" she asked.

"A garrison of the Caelmari northern army."

"How big?"

"Three hundred men, last count."

"And the nearest registered faction?"

"There is none within two weeks of that village. The province is what the Record calls thinly held."

Elara nodded once, then she did not speak again immediately.

Silas had not moved from the door. He had heard the conversation, he had heard the line about the village leaving in an organized manner, and he had heard the line about the garrison. Hearing this, he came over to the table only when Elara was done, read the page in his own time, and set it back down at the center of the table without saying a single word about it.

"You have a view," said Due. "Say it."

"He is not going to ask the country for anything," said Silas in a low voice. "He is going to wait for the country to ask him for something, and the country will, by winter at the latest. It will not ask politely either."

Due did not argue with him.

Alistair was unsettled. He looked across the table at the door of the base, still open from when Due had taken the dispatch from the runner, then beyond at the flat ground running east toward the slab with the carving on it.

He thought about what Silas had said, and he thought it was the wrong half of the answer.

"Glory is the first move," said Alistair, his jaw tightening. "He is not the only one moving. The Upholders are coming because Glory is moving. Caldren is going to respond because Glory is moving. The Sunborne already responded because Glory is moving. We are responding because Glory is moving. The shape of the season is being set by one man who has not, as far as we know, taken a single step out of his own house."

Elara, beside him, did not look away from the page.

"Then we should know which way the house faces," she said.

"We should."

"And we do not."

"And we do not."

Due gathered the dispatch off the table, finally, and folded it back along its creases. He did not seal it back up, instead he laid it flat in the box beside the table where the read dispatches went.

"We answer the question we can answer first," said Due. "The Upholders are coming, the verdict is coming, and the Glory question is not one we are going to solve from this room in the next six weeks. The Upholder question, however, we might."

"We will," replied Alistair.

"You sound certain."

"I sound the way I need to sound for the rest of this week."

Due let that pass.

The afternoon light on the table was changing, in the small way the light changes in this house in the middle hours of the day, the wood bright at one end and dim at the other. Alistair watched the line where the bright met the dim.

He was thinking that the village had decided, in concert, the safer ground was somewhere else, and that he did not yet know where, and that he would want to know before the season turned.

’The Record reported a vacancy, but it has not reported a destination,’ Alistair thought quietly. ’That is the part the country has to answer next, and whoever answers first will own the answer.’

At that moment, a second knock came at the door, heavier than the first.

Due’s head turned before Alistair’s did, and Silas was already moving toward the wall where his coat hung.

It was not Sable’s boy, and it was not the gray of the Record service either.

Alistair’s eyes widened slightly because he recognized the cadence of the knock, and he had hoped he would not hear it for at least another week.