Chapter 17: Seris Tells the Cartographer What She Sees Coming

The note she left at Sable's bookshop was written on a page torn from the notebook she had purchased at a stationer's on the South Bridge: three lines, no preamble. She had debated the wording for longer than the content required, which she recognized as itself a form of data.

*I believe we share a professional interest in certain patterns currently operating in Edinburgh's Old Town. I would find a conversation useful. I am at The Amber Cup on the Grassmarket most mornings before ten. — S.*

She did not sign her name in full. She did not explain how she knew where to leave the note. She folded it once and slid it beneath the door of a property on the Cowgate that appeared, to ordinary inspection, to be a small accountant's office with irregular hours. She had identified it as the Cartographer's preferred coordination point four days ago through methods she had not fully disclosed to Aeron, partly because the methods were imprecise and she disliked presenting imprecise work, and partly because she had not yet decided what she was going to do with the information.