Three days after Gareth's test a name arrived from the north.
Rowan brought it to me himself. That was how I knew it mattered. He did not send Finn or one of the advisors. He came to the east library where I was working through the old book with Elder Moss and he stood in the doorway and said, "When you are finished," and waited.
Elder Moss looked at me and then at Rowan and closed the book.
"We are finished," he said.
We sat in the small room off the great hall, just the two of us, with the fire going and the evening outside the window pressing in close and grey. Rowan had a folded piece of paper in his hand that he set on the table between us but did not open yet.
"The intelligence from the north has been coming in pieces," he said. "You know that. We have had movement reports and b
