Chapter 13: A Resistance Needs Its Symbol

The summons came through Seren, which was how most things came now. A folded note slipped under the flat door while he was at work, unremarkable on its outside — the kind of paper anyone might use, no seal, no watermark, just his name in handwriting he didn't recognize. Inside, an address and a time. Seven o'clock. The Caldwell Wharf safe house, which meant the resistance had stopped treating the Caldwell Wharf location as a variable to be protected and had decided he knew enough to invite him to it directly, which was itself information.

He arrived four minutes early, which he knew would be noted, and did not care.

The warehouse smelled of salt and old timber and something chemical underneath — preservative, or concrete sealer, or possibly the faint mineral bite of magical workings imperfectly masked. He filed that detail without commenting on it. Seren met him at the door. She had changed her jacket and done something different with her hair and still looked, in the particular way of people running a long campaign on insufficient sleep, like someone who had learned to rest efficiently rather than well.