Bramwell's POV
The records room in the lower fortress had not been properly organized since my father's time.
I'd always found this mildly embarrassing and entirely characteristic of an institution that valued the performance of order over its substance. The appearance of control — the polished armor, the upright posture, the parade-ground precision — without the deeper structural honesty that would make it meaningful.
I had spent two days reading.
Three years of southern border patrol reports. The council's resource assessment records. Marcelline's official correspondence, which she had been required by pack law to copy into the council archive — a requirement she had, I now discovered, been systematically flouting. I had three years of index entries pointing to documents that did not
