Chapter 121

On the second morning there were people on the roof of the forecourt arcade, looking in through the high windows, and nobody sent them down.

Brenna came in at nine with the key on its cord, read out number eight and its seal, and turned her ledger round for Quill to sign. Then she stayed by Nana’s table with her arms folded, minding it.

Quill showed the hall his seal, whole, with Rhys’s name and Brenna’s written across the fold. He broke it, and put on his spectacles.

“I was asked,” he said, “to look at the first stroke of the nine dispatches in the satchel. Not the knot. The first stroke of each line, where the pen goes down.”

He laid three things side by side and squared them with his fingertips. The second dispatch, in its red-brown ink. A small cream card out of a tin painted with roses: The Lady Vivienne. And the foot of a parchment in a leather sleeve, where a fine sloping hand had signed itself as bride beneath its father’s name.

“M