The knock came at half past five in the morning, while it was still black outside and the forge below him was nothing but a red eye in the dark, and when Aurel opened the door at the top of the outside stair, Tamsin Brook was standing on the second step down with her shawl over her head and a folded paper held out at arm’s length.
“From her,” she said.
He took it. It was a quarter-sheet, folded twice by somebody who folded paper all day for a living: the creases were exact.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t.” Tamsin already had one foot on the step below. “I didn’t read it. I’d have liked to. She asked me to carry it up before I started the grinding and I said yes. That’s the whole of it, and I’d be obliged if you didn’t make it into something.”
“I will not.”
“She’s…
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