The betrayal revealed itself in the smallest possible way, a detail so minor that Elira nearly dismissed it entirely before the particular wrongness of it settled properly into focus.
It began with a discrepancy in the warning network's reporting, three separate villages noting delayed signal fires during a raid attempt on the province's southern edge, delays that had allowed the raiders considerably more time to strike before Veskara's defenders could properly respond. No lives were lost, thanks largely to the network's overall resilience, but the delay itself troubled Elira in a way she couldn't immediately articulate.
"Three separate reporting points, all delayed by roughly the same interval," Rhosnyn observed, studying the incident logs with the particular frown of a man noticing a p
