Three months after Obsidian left for the eastern territories, Vael sent a report.

Marina read it at the boundary stones in the early morning before anyone else was awake. The report was thorough and precise, organized into sections the way Vael organized everything, by category rather than chronology.

Obsidian had located and catalogued two hundred and nineteen previously unindexed records in the eastern archive. He had identified six documentation errors that had been compounding across subsequent records for between forty and ninety years. He had proposed a cross-referencing system that Vael's people had implemented and found effective.

He had not attempted to access any sealed documentation.

He had not communicated...