The first day passed in controlled motion.
Vael established her secure line using Kael's communication infrastructure with the focused efficiency of someone who had done this kind of work before and didn't need supervision to do it well. She worked in the small stone room with two of Kael's senior operatives present — not watching her, exactly, more occupying the same space in a way that made the boundaries clear — and by evening she had three contacts activated and was waiting on the fourth.
Mara spent the day learning the territory.
Not the maps — she'd looked at those for twenty minutes and set them aside with the particular dismissal of someone who understood that maps were approximations and approximations were only useful until you had something better. What she did instead was wa
