Chapter 28 — The Cheap Story
The first one turned up nailed to the mill door.
By noon there were thirty of them across the valley — pinned to fence posts, slid under doors, folded into the flour sacks at the granary line. Cheap paper. A crude inked likeness of a woman in a crown, drawn well enough to be unmistakable and badly enough to be ugly, with three men's hands on her. Underneath, in a copyist's tidy lettering, four "letters" from four different men, all addressed my silver love, all signed with initials.
R.V. — General.
O. — Captain of her guard.
And one, dated five years back, from a healer's cell beneath a packhouse.
That last one was the piece of work. It was written as though from Dr. Fenn, and it thanked her, warmly, for the arrangement we came to in the dark.
Cole Maddo
