Chapter 8: The Wall Writes Back

The letter arrived on a Wednesday, which was, as it happened, the same Wednesday on which Master Pell had scheduled three committee meetings, a presentation of the harbour revenue assessments, and a formal luncheon with the Lord Treasurer that Edwyn could not in conscience decline, and which the letter therefore spent the better part of the morning sitting on the corner of his desk in the manner of a patient man who has been told to wait and intends to make something of it.

It was Edwyn's custom, established in the first week and maintained with the methodical consistency that governed most of his habits, to read personal correspondence in the half-hour before the official day began — a practice that presupposed personal correspondence arrived before the official day did, which Jon's letter, having ridden south in a post-bag with agricultural reports and two invoices for rope, had failed to accomplish. It sat beside the harbour assessments. It waited. The harbour assessments were, Edwyn later reflected, considerably less urgent.

He found it at half past three, when the luncheon had concluded and the Lord Treasurer had shaken his hand with the particular vigour of a man who has spent two hours calculating whether someone is useful, and Edwyn had returned to his office and sat down and reached for the harbour assessments and found, beneath them, the letter in Jon's hand — recognisable by its economy, the letters formed with the precision of a man who had been taught by a maester and had taken the lesson as seriously as he took everything else, which was to say, entirely.