He absorbed the words as stoically as ever, a resigned sigh rather than a shocked gasp. “Ah! The Heavens challenge us! Not the news I wanted with everything else piled atop this day, and the Halt already shorthanded. When I asked for this posting I had hoped for a safe place to raise my children, away from the capital. Yet here we are.”

He studied the family portraits hung in a row along one wall. They were half-sized copies of the portraits of parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, whose originals hung in Karis Manor’s ancestry hall in the capital city. His portrait was displayed alongside that of his deceased wife, her round, good-natured face wreathed with mourning white. His eldest daughter was likewise wreathed in white, the spirited young woman he had lost in the terrible Wormwood Irruption. Uliana had been painted in her even shyer youth, her hair crowned with a wreath of lilies for obedience. The last forlorn portrait was of the youngest child, a son required to live in the intendant’s ancestral Manor in the capital. It was a form of hostage-taking, to make sure the intendant was at all times obedient to the Manor’s political goals, whatever he may personally have thought of them.

Elen bowed her head in respect. The intendant was a good man, the best she had ever known. Although that wasn’t much of a scale to be weighed on.

He straightened his shoulders. “The sun rises and sets without concern for our lagging steps. Cariol, track down the captain. Have her meet us in Map Hall. Bring refreshments for the deputy courier, if you will, and a cup of hoji juice for me, and tea for the rest of you.”

They walked to Map Hall, where Surveyor Captain Jinyan was already waiting, having heard the news from Ujin. The captain had unrolled the second section of the most detailed of the Lancer’s Ridge maps, which included the bone pile and the abandoned village. Elen indicated the exact spot where she’d found Spore, so it could be permanently marked for the record. After she was sure the captain had fixed its location properly, she went to the intendancy logbook and entered her latest transmission log, a record of all the contacts and deliveries and receipts she had made at each village and hamlet along her most recent circuit.

That accomplished, her part of the work was done for this month. The surveyors were responsible for sending amended copies and official reports onward to the provincial government and the palace administration, and for answering the flood of queries from investigative surveyors that would ensue once the news was sent. While the intendant and the captain talked, she went over to the side table where Cariol had set a tray of stuffed rolls and poultry skewers, hot from the kitchen.