Chapter 21: What Aldrath Knew and When He Stopped Knowing It

The letter was not long.

I had been carrying it for three days in the inner pocket of my map case, between the rubbing from Grevath Hollow and my working chart of the Ashpeaks' upper approaches, and I was aware of it at every step with the particular, nagging awareness one has of a stone in one's boot — not disabling, but impossible to entirely ignore. Aldrath had pressed it into my hand with the instruction to read it only when certain, and I had spent three days conducting a careful internal debate about what, precisely, certainty required.

The answer, I concluded on the evening of the third day, as Rook sat across the fire at Grevath Hollow and did not look up, was: everything I now had.