Chapter 16: Amidari and Callis Walk the Tidal Shore and Do Not Discuss What They Are Discussing

From Queen Sera Amidari's personal chronicle, Volume Four, Entry Nineteen. Reproduced here in full, with the compiler's acknowledgment that she has returned to this entry more times than professional necessity requires, and has not yet determined whether her compulsion to do so constitutes scholarship or something less defensible.

The invitation was practical in its stated purpose and otherwise in its actual one, and I was aware of both when I extended it. The Warden Callis had been confined for two days to the archive annex following his meditation—Vael's instruction, I understood, and one I had honored without inquiry, because the elder warden's face in the hours after Callis surfaced had been the face of a man performing composure at a cost he had not fully calculated. I know that face. I have worn it. I did not ask what the meditation had produced because I did not need to, and because some questions, once given voice, cannot be recalled to silence.

On the third morning I asked Doral to convey my invitation to the young warden: a walk along the outer tidal margin, to discuss the blockade's resource projections for the southern island districts. Doral asked no questions either. She has been in my service for nine years and understands, by now, the difference between an agenda and its announced purpose.