Chapter 14: Edric's Warning Finds an Audience

The raven arrived at dawn, before Pia had lit the office lamp.

Aldric found it in the message box outside his door — the settlement's version of official correspondence, a salvaged iron bracket Cole had mounted to the doorframe six weeks prior and which mostly received supply requests and noise complaints. The bird itself was gone; whoever had received it at the eastern loft had stripped the message cylinder and sent it down by foot messenger, the way they always did, and the foot messenger had set it in the bracket rather than knock, the way they increasingly did when the message seemed like someone else's problem.

The cylinder was Stark grey. He recognized the color before he recognized what it meant, and then stood in the doorway in the cold, holding it, while the meaning assembled itself slowly the way meanings did at this hour.