The four of them sat at the table that night with the lamps low and the door bolted, since the question they were about to ask was the kind that did not survive an open door.

Due asked it first. He had been quiet for two days, ever since the verdict mark had been found at the eastern edge of their territory.

"What does Sun Harvest do," asked Due, "when an enemy faction announces its approach by leaving a verdict mark on the ground of our own territory?"

Nobody answered him at once.

They had circled the question for forty-eight hours already, however, never together. Alistair had wanted each of them to come at it separately, so each answer would arrive without bleeding into the others. Three answers, then his.

Elara went first, since Elara was always the one to go first when first was the difficult position.

"We respond before the verdict is delivered," said Elara. "We move into Caelmar while they are still setting up in Verissan, and we make ourselves seen in places they did not expect to find us. By the time they walk into the room to write their verdict, it has become a verdict on whether they can issue one at all."

Due did not nod, and he did not shake his head either. For the next three answers, he was not going to render an opinion.

Silas went second.

"We respond from inside," he said quietly. "We do not move on Caelmar as Sun Harvest. We move on, Caelmar, as private persons. One of us is in Verissan with a cover, another inside the staging itself, and a third is placed with the noble houses who have not yet been told what the staging will cost them. We do not stop the verdict, however, we make it useless by knowing every word of it before the man writing it finishes the first line."

Due took that in without comment.

"Due," said Alistair.

Due took a slow breath before answering.

"We respond by being elsewhere," replied Due. "Not in the sense Silas means. In the sense that we are not in this base when they reach our edge. We scatter across the continent, since they cannot deliver a verdict on Sun Harvest if there is no Sun Harvest in a single place to receive it." His jaw tightened. "However, I do not like my answer. It abandons the territory we registered three weeks ago, and it tells them we move when they tell us to move. It buys the most time and the smallest amount of dignity, but it is the answer I have."

Three answers sat in the air, and Alistair listened to all of them.

The Upholders of Law and Justice were his original faction, on the opposite side of Solnar, and they had finally decided to come for him. He had known this was coming. Knowing did not make the room any lighter.

’Three answers,’ Alistair thought. ’Each one correct for a different fight. None of them correct for this one.’

He did not speak for some time, and he let the lamp do part of the speaking instead.

Eventually, Alistair was the one to break the silence.

"Elara."

"Go on."

"Your answer is the answer of a person who has not yet had a verdict delivered on her."

Elara did not flinch. She had heard the line the way he meant it, without cruelty, and she did not need it softened.

"Silas."

"Yes."

"Your answer is the right shape, however, it is not large enough."

Hearing this, Silas inclined his head, very slightly.

"Due."

"I am listening."

"Your answer is the only one of the three I cannot take. I would rather lose this base than lose what registering it cost us."

Due did not protest, since he had not expected his answer to be the one taken. He had brought it because the table needed to hear it, and Due was not the kind of man who could refuse to say an answer he had.

"Then what," asked Elara, her eyes narrowing slightly.

Alistair looked at the lamp for a moment before he answered.

"We respond by being unsurprised," he said.

Nobody moved. He let the line sit, and then he continued.

"The verdict is coming, and we are not going to stop it. We are not going to pretend it isn’t coming either, however, we are not going to be where it expects to find us. We let it arrive in Caelmar, in Verissan, in the staging the Upholders have built for it, and we let it arrive at a Sun Harvest that has already read it. We meet it in the room they have prepared, not on the territory they have marked. And when they open their mouths to deliver it, we already know which way it turns, and we have already decided what we will do with it."

"Then you are going to Caelmar," said Elara.

"I am going to Caelmar."

"As yourself."

"No."

Silas was looking at the lamp now too.

"None of us can go in as ourselves," said Silas. "A man of Thorne with silky yellow hair does not slip into Caelmar unnoticed, and Elara’s face is in every ledger her father ever signed."

Elara’s eyes widened, however, only for a moment. Her hand was flat on the table, and she did not move it when she spoke.

"Then we have a problem," replied Elara. "Because the answer you have just given the table requires three people in three different parts of Caelmar, with three different covers, who have never been any of those people before. And we have six weeks."

Alistair did not answer her, since he did not need to.

He looked across the table at Due, who had not adjusted his collar in the entire conversation, and Due looked back. There was something in Due’s eyes Alistair had not seen there before. It was not fear, and it was not hesitation. It was the look of a man who had just understood that the obligation-threads he had spent his career building toward one purpose were about to be spent on a different one entirely.

Alistair was reluctantly aware of what he was asking of him.

Due closed his eyes for a long moment. Eventually, he opened them again.

"I will need three days," said Due. "I will not be able to do it in two."

"Then we have three," replied Alistair.

The lamp on the table guttered, the way it always did in this house. None of them stood. They sat with the bolted door and the low lamp and the three answers no longer on the table, and the one answer that was.

Following that, Due reached into his cloak and drew out a folded paper. He did not unfold it. He set it between the lamp and the bolted door, and Alistair recognized it before Due said a word.

It was the verdict mark, copied in Due’s hand from the stone at the eastern edge.

Alistair’s grip tightened on the edge of the table.

"There is a second one," said Due quietly. "I found it this morning, at the western edge. They have already begun."