The room above the Sealed Step was small, with one window that faced the back wall, which was the reason Alistair had paid for it.
He had crossed the gate into Verissan that afternoon under a name that was not his own.
Tobian Marrow was the third son of the Halversen line, a merchant family from the north of Caelmar with enough money to be ignored and not enough to be watched. Alistair had spent two weeks becoming him. The papers were real, the debts were real, and the cousin who had paid for the room downstairs did not exist.
It had held, so far.
He noticed the note before he noticed anything else in the room.
It sat folded on the inner sill of the window, a pale square against grey stone. No one should have been able to reach that window, since the wall outside dropped four floors into a lane too narrow for a ladder.
'Silas,' Alistair thought. 'Naturally.'
He picked it up and unfolded it. Three sentences, in a cramped hand he had learned to read over the past year.
