Her name was Dessa Vorn, and she was not what Kael had constructed from the word journalist and the word exile, which had assembled in his mind into something fragile and embattled and in need of the information he was carrying.
She was not in need of anything. She was a compact, sharp-eyed woman in her forties who had been in exile for three years and had used the time productively, building from the northern free ports a publication network that reached more readers than the capital newspaper she had been removed from, through channels the consortium had not yet figured out how to close because the channels were mostly people, and people were harder to close than printing presses.
She read the documents in four hours.
She read Auren's testimony in one.
She asked forty-seven questions, which Kael answered with the plain precision he had learned from Ysse, and she listened with the focused reception of someone processing information for immediate application, not storage.
When she was done she put the documents down and looked at Kael for a long moment.
"You walked out of that," she said.
"We walked out."
"Four of you."
"Originally five."
She held his gaze. "I'm sorry."
"Put it in what you write," he said.
She nodded. A single, serious nod — the acknowledgment of a professional obligation taken on, which was more useful than sympathy and she knew it and so did he.
"The other packages," she said. "The historian and the auditor."
"Delivered simultaneously, different routes. We coordinated the timing."
"And General Auren."
"Available. He will present himself to the appropriate authority at the appropriate moment. He asked me to tell you the timing is your judgment."
She looked at the documents again. At the pages of testimony in Orren's careful handwriting. At the record books with their hidden addenda and their list of names not counted.
"This breaks the consortium," she said. Not a question. An assessment. "Not immediately. These things take time and they have money and money buys time. But this breaks them."
"How long," Orren said.
"Two years. Maybe three. If all three packages reach their destinations and the responses coordinate." She looked up. "Did they?"
Kael thought about Bren on the southern road with his hand raised. About Ysse with her precise nod and her organized packages. About ninety days and the eastern square and the board where the recruitment notice had been posted.
"Yes," he said. "They did."