Due had been at the table for three days without sleep, or anything close to it.

Alistair did not watch him work. Due never permitted that, and Alistair had learned a long time ago not to push it.

He came in for meals, went out for the perimeter, and came back.

In between, he sat with Elara and ran the second syllable of Marrow until it stopped requiring thought. Eventually, it came on its own, the way breathing did.

On the morning of the third day, Due stood up from the table.

He stood the way a man stands when he is not sure his legs still belong to him. Slowly, Due walked the four steps to the basin by the door, splashed water on his face and the back of his neck, then sat back down.

"It is done," said Due.

Alistair and Elara came over. They had been waiting for that line for three full days.

Due had laid the finished forms out in three groups. The first was thin, the second was thicker, and the third was a single document, sealed.

"This first stack," said Due, "is the basic identification. Any forger in Verissan could have done it with a fortnight’s notice. It will pass a routine border check, though it will never pass an audit. It cost me one obligation."

"Whose?" asked Elara.

"The forger’s grandson. Eleven years ago, a matter involving a stolen pony. The old man has been waiting for me to call it in ever since."

Alistair clicked his tongue lightly, almost amused.

Due moved on to the second stack.

"This stack is the supporting documentation. Birth registration, household roster, school records from the Caelmari academy, three letters between Marrow’s father and the headmaster, the record of an incident at sixteen, and the bill of carriage that took him out of Verissan at nineteen. These papers let Tobian Marrow be a man who has lived a life."

"And the cost?" asked Alistair.

"The forger’s name is Othan. He is one of two men on the continent who can produce a Caelmari record an audit will not flag. He owed me a private debt from nine years ago, and he had been hoping I would forgive it. I did not."

"Will he ever work with you again?" asked Elara.

"No," replied Due. "Regardless, the papers are good."

Hearing this, Elara crossed her arms but did not push further.

Due’s eyes drifted to the third stack.

He did not turn to it immediately. He let his hand rest on the edge of the table, his fingers close to the wax seal but not touching it.

"And this one," said Due.

Then, he stopped.

Alistair did not push, and Elara, equally, did not.

"This," continued Due, "is the document that will pass a Wreath audit."

Alistair’s jaw tightened. Renvald Crane was the Wreath, and a Wreath audit was not something a man survived on luck.

"You’ve built something Crane won’t be able to fault?" asked Alistair in a low voice.

"I have. The forger is someone I do not name in this room, not now, not later. The work itself is the work of someone who has been preparing for this kind of question, in this kind of staging, for a very long time. The document will hold. Under three audits, if it has to. It cost me one obligation."

Due paused.

He still did not look up from the table.

"It cost me Sable’s thread."

Elara’s hands stilled on the wood.

Alistair did not move either. He had known, going in, that Due was going to spend threads. He had not known which one.

Sable’s thread was the oldest one Due held. It had built Sun Harvest’s entire intelligence reach across Solnar, and without it, half of that reach would close.

"How much of it?" asked Alistair, his voice quiet.

"All of it."

Alistair clicked his tongue, "All of it..."

"Every part. The thread is closed."

Elara stared at Due. Her hands were flat on the table, and her tone, when she finally spoke, was the tone she used for questions she did not intend to soften.

"What does this mean for Sable?" she asked.

Due did not answer for a long moment.

"It means Sable is no longer obligated to us. She will keep sending what she sends until she decides she will not. What remains is the relationship, and the relationship is real. It might be enough."

"And if it is not?"

"Then we lose her, sometime in the next year."

"When?"

"When she decides she is done."

Elara took that in. She did not press, however, Alistair could see the words sitting behind her teeth.

"You did not have to spend it," said Elara.

"I did," replied Due.

"There were other threads, Due."

"There were not other threads that would have produced what Crane is going to read. I spent the thread I had to spend. I am not going to have this conversation with you, Elara."

Elara closed her mouth. For a moment, she looked the way she had on the night she renounced the Vance name, the face of someone who had spent something of her own without being asked, and was only beginning to understand the cost.

Alistair stayed quiet.

He picked up the sealed document and weighed it in his hand. It was lighter than he had expected.

He did not pick up the question Elara had placed on the table. Instead, he picked up a different one.

"Due."

"Yes."

"What does this mean if I do not come back?"

Due looked up at him, the way he looked at a dispatch he was reading for the third time.

"It means we do not get her back. The thread cannot be rebuilt with the man on the other end of the document gone. It was you she was paying out to. If you do not come back, the thread closes, the relationship closes with it, and Sable is gone."

He did not adjust his collar, and he did not soften the line.

Alistair did not ask him to.

"All right," said Alistair.

He folded the document into the inside pocket of his coat, alongside the parchment carrying the name, and closed the coat over both.

"Then I will come back," he declared.

Due did not nod. Regardless, his shoulders, which had been carrying three days of quiet weight, lowered by a fraction. Alistair saw it. Due saw him see it. Neither of them named it, because some things did not survive being named.

Outside the window, the morning had brightened as much as it was going to.

In two days, Alistair would be the one walking out, and the room he left behind would be the one being listened to.

He stood up from the table.

He did not say where he was going. The three of them watched him walk out toward the perimeter, and Alistair walked it anyway, because for the next two days, he was still a man who could.

The wind cut across the field, sharp and dry against his coat.

’Two days,’ Alistair thought, ’and then Crane.’

Whatever waited at the other end of that road, the cost of failing had already been paid.