8. Chapter 8 The Letter
Bjorna had the slate out on the trestle table with the chalk in her hand, making notes in the shorthand I still couldn't read.
The blackstone shield leaned against the wall beside her chair, the reinforcement work Larg had done visible along the bottom lip where the new metal caught the light differently.
She'd picked it up on the way back from the smithy and spent ten minutes testing the balance before setting it down with a nod that meant it was right.
Sif sat on the floor with her back against the far wall and her daggers in her lap, running a whetstone along the edges in slow, even strokes.
The sound was quiet and rhythmic, almost pleasant.
Her silver hair was still loose, hanging past her shoulders.
She hadn't replaced the leather cord she'd lost in Cold Hollow.
I was thankful. I liked her hair like this better.
Nott was on the bench under the east window with the two amplification crystals on the sill beside her, amber and the size of her thumbnails.
She had a book open in her lap but the crystals had won her attention.
She held one up to the light, turning it between her thumb and forefinger, studying how the color shifted when the angle changed.
Liv had finally surfaced. She sat cross-legged on the bench across from Bjorna with a bundle of arrows spread in front of her, checking the fletching on each one and sorting them into two piles.
Her long hair was still a mess from sleep and she hadn't bothered to tie it back.
One ear tracked the room. The other pointed at the window, following something outside I couldn't hear. She continued to be cute as a button.
I sat at the end of the table with the pendant in my hands, turning it over, feeling the weight of the chain and the cool surface of the Lesser Spring against my palm. There wasn't much for a Healer to prep. My job was to keep everyone else standing.
"You're fidgeting," Bjorna said without looking up from the slate.
"I'm mentally preparing."
"You're spinning your necklace like a worry stone. That's fidgeting."
"It's a pendant. And I'm not worried. I'm excited. There's a difference."
"There is not a difference," Sif said from the floor.
I looked at her. "Did you just steal my line?"
"Your line? I've been saying that since before you arrived in this world." She ran the whetstone along the blade one more time and held the edge up to check it. "You're nervous about the full moon. That's fine. I'd be concerned if you weren't."
"I'm not nervous. I'm just aware that the last time we went into Cold Hollow, you almost died and I had to sprint across a boss chamber, risking my own ass to save your pretty ass."
"But you did successfully save me and my pretty ass. So what are you worried about?"
"I just said I'm not worried."
"Your pendant disagrees."
I put the pendant down on the table. The chain pooled around it in a small circle. “There, are you happy?”
“A little maybe.” Sif grinned and blew me a kiss.
We heard a knock.
Three sharp raps on the apartment door, evenly spaced. The room went still. Sif's whetstone stopped. Liv's ears both swiveled toward the door. Nott placed her crystal back on the windowsill.
Bjorna was already standing. She crossed the room in two strides and opened the door.
Halman stood in the corridor. Wire-frame glasses, woolen coat buttoned to his throat, the same careful posture I remembered from his last visit.
He looked up at Bjorna, all eight feet of her, and his chin kept rising until it found her face.
His leather satchel hung from one shoulder, the strap pulled tight across his chest.
He didn't look nervous. The last time he'd stood in this doorway, he'd been running on no sleep and the nerve it took to walk into a beastkin apartment uninvited. He quickly found out that the beastkin quarter wasn’t so bad. There were plenty of good people all around.
This time his jaw was set and his shoulders were square and his eyes went straight to me without scanning the room first. He looked like a man who had something to deliver and had spent the walk over deciding exactly how to deliver it.
"Halman," I said. "Come in. It’s been a minute."
"Thank you." He stepped through the door. Bjorna closed it behind him. “Hello, everyone.”
The group of girls said hello in unison.
He stood in the middle of the room and took in the slate, the arrows, the crystals on the windowsill, the daggers in Sif's lap. He'd walked into a room full of people getting ready for a fight. His expression didn't change.
"You're running a dungeon tonight. It looks as if you’re in preparation," he said.
"Full moon. Cold Hollow." I pulled the bench out. "Sit down. You look like you've got something heavy on your heart."
He sat. He put the satchel in front of him and folded his hands on top of it. His fingers were steady. He pushed his glasses up with one knuckle, the gesture I'd seen before, but there was nothing fidgety about it now. He was settling himself.
"I'll be direct," he said. "I have two pieces of news. Neither of them is good."
Sif set her daggers on the floor beside her and stood up. She moved to the end of the table, angled toward Halman, and leaned against the wall with her arms crossed. She didn't say anything. She was ready to listen.
"Well, that’s discouraging. Usually people say, ‘I have good news and bad news.’ But you have nothing good," I said.
Halman opened the satchel and pulled out a folded letter, heavy paper with a wax seal already broken. He set it on the wood in front of him but kept his hand on it.
"The investigation into Rendall," he said.
"The formal report I filed with Aldermere after Joel's confession.
Two independent accounts, both voluntary, both witnessed.
I sent it through proper channels with the expectation that a senior investigator would be dispatched to Halver's Reach to take custody of Joel and pursue charges against Rendall. "
He paused and scanned the room.
"No one came. The report was acknowledged.
A receipt was returned through the courier system, stamped and dated, confirming that Aldermere received the documents.
And then nothing happened. No investigator.
No follow-up correspondence. No request for additional testimony.
Joel is still in the watch's custody here in Halver's Reach because no one from Aldermere has come to collect him.
Rendall has not been confronted, questioned, or detained. "
The room was quiet. Liv's arrows sat in their two sorted piles and her hands had gone still.
"When you say ‘acknowledged,’" Sif said. "What does that mean specifically? A clerk stamped a receipt, or someone with authority reviewed the report and made a decision?"
Halman looked at her. "The receipt bears the seal of the investigations office. Someone with the authority to open a case saw the report. The receipt is the proof that it reached the right desk."
"And the right desk decided to do nothing."
"Correct. It is unfortunate."
Sif nodded slowly. Her blue eyes stayed on Halman. "How long ago?"
"The receipt arrived yesterday.”
"So someone at Aldermere has read your report, confirmed they read it, and then deliberately chosen not to act on a confession of mass murder," Sif said.
"That's not a bureaucratic delay. They are sending a message without actually sending a message.
If that makes sense. I confuse myself once in a while. "
"Yes, they are sending a message," Halman said. "Your assessment matches my own."
I wasn't surprised. I'd known this was coming since Halman had first talked about the investigation being referred to Aldermere.
I'd been around enough institutional machinery to know what a referral to a higher authority looked like when the higher authority didn't want the case.
The report goes up and the receipt comes back and the silence stretches until everyone involved understands what it means.
Nobody says it out loud because saying it out loud would require someone to do something about it.
"Rendall has connections," I said. "Someone above the branch level decided he was worth protecting."
"That's the implication I'm unable to avoid," Halman said.
His voice was flat and controlled and underneath the control he was angry.
He'd trusted the system. He'd put his name on a report and sent it up the chain because that was how the system was supposed to work.
The system had taken his report and buried it.
"Beastkin died in that market, Daniel. Sixteen patients triaged in the mud.
I filed the report because it warranted filing.
I put my name on it because I believed that mattered. "
"It did matter," I said. "It still matters. You did the right thing, Halman. The fact that they buried it doesn't change what you did. Don’t be too hard on yourself."
He held my eyes for a three-count. Then he reached into the satchel and pulled out a second document.
This one was different. Heavier paper, cream-colored, folded with a precision that meant someone had taken care with the presentation. A seal at the bottom, dark red wax pressed with an emblem I didn't recognize. The handwriting on the front was precise and professional.
"This arrived at my office yesterday afternoon," Halman said. "Routed through official Guild channels from the Brackenholt branch. Addressed to you."
He slid it across the table.
I picked it up and unfolded it. The letter was written in a clean, formal hand. I read it through once, then read it again to make sure I'd understood what I was looking at.
It was a job offer.