The letter arrived on a Wednesday addressed to the Pale Coin party care of the Millhaven Guild and sealed with wax that had a small crown pressed into it.

  I stared at the seal for a long moment in the guild common room.

  Royal correspondence, I thought. That's a royal correspondence seal. That is the king's seal. The king who gave me fifty gold coins and had me escorted out of a palace sent me a letter.

  I turned it over. The handwriting on the outside was neat, educated, with a slight forward lean that suggested whoever had written it did a lot of writing quickly.

  Not the king's hand, I thought. Someone who writes for the king, or near him.

  I opened it.

  The letter was brief. It informed the Pale Coin party that their troll clear had been noted by the Royal Ministry of Monster Control, which was apparently a department that existed, and that they were invited to attend an assessment at the Valorheim guild branch at their earliest convenience to discuss the party's potential elevation to C-rank designation and possible integration into a regional monster suppression initiative.

  Cordially. Signed by someone whose title was Deputy Liaison to the Regional Adventurers' Administration.

  That is the least impressive title I have ever read on royal correspondence, I thought. That is a bureaucrat. They sent me a bureaucrat's letter.

  I read it again.

  C-rank assessment, I thought. That's fast. We just got D-rank four days ago. This is the troll clear doing work I didn't expect this fast.

  And: Valorheim. The capital. Where the palace is. Where the court is. Where the court wizard is and twenty-one of my classmates and possibly people who would recognize me as the person the king threw out with fifty gold coins.

  I folded the letter. Put it in my pocket. Went to find Rena.

  "We should go," Rena said, immediately.

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  "I know."

  "C-rank means better contracts. Better contracts mean better income. Better income means—"

  "I know, Rena."

  "Then what's the hesitation?"

  The hesitation, I thought, is that going to Valorheim means going where the Heroes are, and I am not ready for that to happen in front of other people, and also there's something in this letter that bothers me and I haven't figured out what it is yet.

  "Something's off about the timing," I said. "The troll clear was four days ago. This letter traveled from Valorheim in four days. Valorheim is two days' cart from here. Which means the Ministry sent this within two days of the troll being logged."

  Rena looked at me.

  "Guild reports from branch offices to regional take a week normally," I said. "Two days means someone at a higher level than normal was paying attention to our branch's logs and escalated immediately."

  "Who watches guild branch logs at a high enough level to escalate in two days?"

  That's the question, I thought. A senior administrator. A noble with guild connections. Someone who told someone to watch for something specific.

  "I don't know," I said. "But I want to find out before we walk into the capital."

  I brought the letter to Kelvin. He read it with the expression of someone reading something that required careful management.

  "The Deputy Liaison," I said. "Do you know who that is?"

  "The position changes often," he said, too carefully.

  "Kelvin."

  He put the letter down. "The current Deputy Liaison has held the position for six months. She was appointed directly by the palace." He looked at me in a way that communicated several things without saying them. "She has a reputation for identifying assets before they're obvious."

  She, I noted. She personally watches branch logs for anomalies. She was in position six months ago. Six months before I was exiled.

  That's a coincidence, I thought. I don't believe in coincidences, generally, but I especially don't when my LUK stat is three.

  "We'll go," I said.

  "I assumed you would."

  "We need two days to prep and close out current contracts."

  "I'll send confirmation."

  I walked out of his office with the letter in my pocket and the specific feeling of something large moving toward me from a direction I couldn't quite see yet. It might be fine, I thought. It might be completely fine. It might be an administrative formality and a C-rank assessment and nothing unusual at all.

  Or, I thought, someone in the capital has been watching a Millhaven guild branch since six months before I arrived, which would mean they were watching it before they knew I existed, which means they weren't watching for me specifically, they were watching for the thing I have, and somehow they found it in four days which means either they're very good or they got a specific tip and I want to know which.

  I went to tell the party we were going to Valorheim.

  Torvin was immediately excited. Yua looked up from her notes. Sera started a new page in her notebook. Rena nodded once, already mentally packing.

  Here we go, I thought.