13 #4

“Three are in the hospital. We’re missing the receipts for the rest.”

“I can order an inspection in Arkhe.”

“It’s already ordered.”

“You’ll need an escort.”

“Chosen by the families.”

“Aelyn, I’m trying to help you.”

“Then hand over the original transfer orders.”

Darian remained beside the desk.

“They bear my seal.”

“I know.”

“Varek used general authorizations. Many went out without my seeing the names.”

“Your signature still opened the doors.”

Darian looked at the drawer where Aelyn kept the copies. She laid a request sheet on top and pushed the pen toward him.

“Find the originals,” she said. “Submit them to the archive with your statement.”

“My father…”

“He can give a statement too.”

He took the pen. Aelyn kept her hand by the edge to stop him from removing the page before adding a date.

Darian nodded once.

“There’s something else. The team following the woman from Nydel lost her trail on the Plains. They found three caravans off the official routes and a post whose documents had been copied.”

Aelyn kept writing.

“That sounds like work for your Guard.”

“The arrows on the roads were changed. They all point toward free wells now.”

“A useful improvement.”

“Varek thinks the woman is heading for Arkhe.”

Ilan Deyr was there. Rheskan had been seen on the coast. Nydel’s stone traveled to the same port.

Aelyn put down the pencil.

“And what do you think?”

“That she follows a pattern.”

“Then perhaps she’ll get there before your inspectors.”

Darian left without answering.

Aelyn opened the second book, the one hidden inside the chair. She added the thirty-three names from C-7, marked the nineteen alive, the six in Arkhe, and the eight missing. Beside Ilan, she wrote: father waiting; carpenter; nineteen on departure.

In the third book, the one she carried inside herself, she repeated the whole count.

A hundred and eighty-nine names became two hundred and twenty-two.

Aelyn put out the lamp and left her office door open. The councilor’s brooch shone on the desk. Behind it, inside the chair, the register no regency had authorized kept growing.

Orla came in when the corridor was empty.

She set three packets on the desk. Each was tied with a different knot.

“You asked the cells to choose whether to accept tasks from the civil affairs office,” she said.

Aelyn opened the first. The boatmen’s network agreed to move the inspection team’s relatives if surveillance increased. In return, it asked for its own escape route and no information about other groups.

The second came from the bakers. They refused to cooperate with a public office while the rations bore Varek’s mark. They would keep feeding people erased from the census, but they would provide no names or accounts.

The third belonged to the healers. They accepted Ardan’s protocol and demanded access to any sick prisoner, including those from C-7.

“The bakers are right,” Aelyn said.

“Will you leave them out?”

“They’ve chosen their task already. They can keep the contacts they need to feed those families. My office will stop sending them requests.”

“That limits what you can know.”

“It also limits what I can give up if I’m arrested.”

Orla picked up the councilor’s brooch and turned it on the desk.

“Miren has sent her son away. She’s staying at the ovens until the two apprentices know the rations. Then she’ll decide whether to leave the city.”

“Can I speak with her?”

“She’s asked you not to. Varek watches everyone who leaves your office.”

Aelyn nodded.

“And you?” she asked.

“I’m stopping the direct messages between your office and the kitchens. I’ll work with the laundry and keep an exit route you won’t know.”

“That exposes you without my being able to find you.”

“That’s the idea.”

Orla took out a small piece of charcoal wrapped in three black threads. The signal had traveled from Nydel. A sentence was tied to the packet: the space remains empty.

Aelyn closed her hand around the charcoal. She smudged the clean page before realizing she was still holding it.

“Has any other word come?”

“That sentence is all.”

She could write something only Isolde would understand. A place, an afternoon, a joke that demanded an answer. She looked at the three packets from the cells and set the charcoal beside them. It hurt to obey rules her friend, if she was alive, was also using to keep her distance.

Aelyn added those conditions to the protocol for protecting civilian sources.

For Arkhe, she prepared Ilan Deyr’s name, the C-7 code, six confirmed transfers, and a partial copy of the blue routes. She left out the request to look for Isolde.

“Who do we give it to?” Orla asked.

“To the route, without a name.”

Orla sewed the packet inside a sail bound for a port merchant.

Aelyn added an entry to the red book: six workers require inspection in Arkhe. In the hidden book, she wrote their names. Inside herself, she repeated the complete count.

Aelyn watched the seam until Orla cut the thread. Six names would leave for Arkhe inside that sail. She rested her hand on the red book and began preparing the inspection that would have to support them when they arrived.