Idony Vance had written to her once before, nine years ago, on council paper, offering her a place on the border commission at a salary that would have bought the tea-house twice. Hesper had answered in four lines and neither of them had put a pen to the other since.
This one was not on council paper. She sat with it at her own counter at eleven at night with the bar across the door and read it three times before she let herself understand that the woman had chosen the paper on purpose and expected her to notice.
Hesper,
They have sent me the file, as they were bound to, and I have read it twice. I am writing at my own table on my own paper, which you will notice, and which is the only honest thing I am able to do about any of this.
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