Chapter 20: Aria Steals a Letter

Aria had given herself three arguments against doing this, and had found all three wanting.

The first was that she might be caught, which was true and insufficient, since the alternative was doing nothing, and doing nothing had a demonstrated record of failure in the current season.

The second was that the letter might not exist, which she had spent approximately four minutes considering before recalling the specificity with which Lord Tyrwick had described the Queen's habits of correspondence — the wax sealed in crimson, the lion in relief, the particular formality of instruction that Cerissa Lanneth brought to even her most private directions, as though she had never in her life trusted a verbal command to carry the weight of a written one. A woman of that disposition did not issue an instruction of this magnitude without putting it in ink.