7. Chapter Seven Seren Veyr #3
“Only that any findings relating to pre-Coalition magical infrastructure are to be secured and transferred to Council custody when feasible.”
Roran swore quietly beside her.
Seren folded the letter slowly. There it was.
Magical infrastructure. Another polished phrase dragged from whatever dark cabinet housed Council language.
Not villages. Not lives. Not the ugly little doll or the cold cup of tea or the abandoned bread.
Infrastructure, apparently, was the problem.
As if the roots beneath the temple were a collapsed bridge to be surveyed and claimed.
“Tell Chancellor Morvek,” Seren said, “that I will secure what I deem necessary to protect the northern settlements. If he wishes to debate jurisdiction, he may do so in person.”
The courier looked miserable. “Yes, General.”
“And tell him to send physicians, evacuation wagons, food stores, and engineers who understand old stone, not archivists with clean boots and empty hands.”
The man nodded quickly. Roran looked pleased despite himself.
Seren was not finished. “Also, tell him there were people in that village.”
The courier’s expression faltered.
“Use those words,” she commanded. “Exactly.”
“Yes, General.”
She dismissed him with a nod, then watched as he turned his horse back toward the south, carrying discomfort toward men who had earned far more of it than one messenger should have to bear alone.
Roran remained beside her. “That will not make Morvek like you more.”
“Tragic.”
“He may retaliate by sending more paperwork.”
“I have survived worse.”
“Have you?”
“No.”
That earned a brief laugh from him, but his expression sobered quickly. “They know something.”
“Yes.”
“How much?” Roran asked.
“Enough to ask the wrong questions.”
Roran looked north, toward the mountains. “And not enough to answer the right ones.”
Seren tucked the letter inside her coat. “That is becoming a familiar problem.”
The road narrowed after the valley, climbing gradually into colder air.
The villages grew smaller by dusk, farther apart, each one more watchful than the last. Rumor had traveled ahead of them.
It always did. People came out to stand beside fences and wells as the company passed, some calling questions, others only watching with the hollow expression of those who wanted reassurance but feared receiving a lie.
Seren gave him neither.
When a farmer asked if the northern disappearances were true, she told him yes.
When his wife asked if their village was safe, Seren told her they were investigating and that they should keep children indoors after dark, report strange dreams, lights, roots, tremors, or voices, and prepare travel bundles quietly in case evacuation became necessary.
The woman’s face went pale. The farmer looked angry. People often did when given truth without comfort. Seren accepted that. Comfort, when false, was only a delayed cruelty.
By evening, they made camp in a sheltered hollow below a line of black pines. The soldiers moved with practiced efficiency, setting pickets, tending horses, arranging bedrolls, coaxing fires from damp wood. The older guards worked without instruction. The younger ones looked often toward the north.
She noticed everything she could, and still it never felt like enough.
Roran took over organizing the watches while Mara, one of the senior scouts, checked the perimeter with two others.
Seren sat beside a lantern with parchment balanced over her knee and composed her official response to the Council.
She began professionally:
Per your request, enclosed are preliminary sketches of the symbols recovered from the temple site and lower chamber.
Root growth appears ongoing and is not limited to disturbed stone.
Additional investigation suggests possible connection between vanished settlements and pre-Coalition structures, though the precise nature of that connection remains unknown.
She lingered, ink drying at the tip of her pen. The letter sounded like them. That irritated her.
She continued:
No evidence supports voluntary evacuation. No bodies have been recovered. No signs of armed struggle. Domestic fires, meals, market goods, livestock, and personal effects were left behind in patterns suggesting abrupt interruption of ordinary activity.
Still too clean. Too bloodless. She thought of the doll. Its ugly painted face. Its glass eyes turned toward the wall as if it had been unable to bear the room either. She wrote the next line before she could decide whether wisdom advised against it.
There were people in that village.
She stared at the sentence for a long while, then added:
I would appreciate future correspondence reflecting that reality.
Roran, passing behind her with a cup of watered wine, glanced over her shoulder and nearly choked. “That is not how one speaks to the Council.”
Seren did not look up. “It appears to be how I speak to the Council.”
“They hate being corrected,” he warned.
“Then this will be an opportunity for growth.”
“You are going to get us both executed by memorandum.”
“Noted.” Seren muttered.
“You will not soften it?”
“No.”
He paused. “Good.” Roran set the cup beside her. “I was hoping you wouldn’t.”
She looked up then. Roran’s face had settled into that careful neutrality he wore when he was angrier than he wanted the younger soldiers to see.
The Council’s letter had disturbed him more than he had joked.
Of course it had. He had walked through the vanished village too.
He had stood over the wagon tracks and the cold hearths. He had seen the doll.
He remembered people before they became evidence. That was one of the reasons Seren trusted him. She sealed the letter.
“Satisfied?” he asked.
“No.”
“Less annoyed?”
“Also no.”
“Then why do you look better?”
Seren handed him the sealed response. “Because now they will be annoyed too.”
Roran smiled. “There she is.” He took the letter to dispatch with a rider heading south at first light.