“Should I alert a hunter? Someone to track a missing man?”

“No. His disappearance coincides with Tanasai’s. A hunter would figure that out. She might ask questions.” Zezili stopped pacing and stared at her shuttered window. “He would not leave me,” she murmured. “Get me pen and paper. He may have gone to my sisters, seeking assistance. I’ll have Taodalain and her wife make discreet inquiries at the mardanas. Quickly, go!”

Daolyn moved into the dark courtyard.

Zezili crossed to her window, opened the shutters. The room was cold, but the outside air was colder and spilled onto her face like a slap.

She could send letters to her sisters and go to Lake Morta herself. It was on the way back east to the coast. She owed an explanation to Monshara, though, and perhaps the Empress.

Daolyn returned. Zezili penned the letters to her sisters and Monshara. But as she began the letter to the Empress, she could think of no words to justify her actions. She had deserted her post to run after her absent husband, a man who had committed violence against a woman. If she did not get to him first, he could be killed or sold into slavery. If the Empress never knew, if Monshara kept the confidence… a few days more. Monshara could slaughter that camp without her, and Zezili could join them at the next. It’s what she wrote in her letter to Monshara.

As she handed off the letters to Daolyn to post, she was suddenly drenched in a sheen of cold sweat. If she did not get to Anavha before the local enforcers… if the Empress found out… but those were a fool’s fears. She would sort this out the way she always had.

Zezili went to her desk and opened a handful of correspondence Daolyn had yet to forward to her, many of them addressed from Daorian. Three were letters from her sisters, likely relating gossip or asking for more money, and another was from Syre Kakolyn.

Zezili broke the seal on Syre Kakolyn’s letter. There was a signature at the bottom that was not Kakolyn’s. Kakolyn had her second pen all of her correspondence, as she herself could not pen a word much beyond her own name.

Syre Zezili,

I heard about your campaign to purge the camps, which is not unlike my own enigmatic campaign. I was just dispatched to the S. Sanctuary by the Empress to eliminate the Seekers.

I thought it a strange order. How were we going to kill our own satellite-wielding assassins? But she sent a bunch of foreign magic-users with us. I wanted to relay this to you because when we got to the Sanctuary, the Seekers were gone.

That means we have magic-wielding seers the Empress wants dead running around, led by your old friend Tulana. Keep a watchful eye. Send word if you have it.

I remain,

Syre Kakolyn Kotaria