Chapter 14: Elwin Leaves the Capital

The list was written in a clerk's hand, small and unhurried, on paper that had been folded and refolded until the creases were soft as cloth.

Elwin held it close to the lamp because Casven would not let him take it to the window, and in the narrow light the names resolved one by one, each followed by a date and a designation code he recognized from the Serenity Protocol routing orders that crossed his desk in batches of twelve. He had learned to read the codes the way he had learned to read relief lines on a third-generation survey — as information, not as consequence. As topography, not as terrain a man might fall through.

He knew four of the names.