Chapter 7: 7 | Cartography Ain't Cheap

The letter came on the eleventh day, and Wex handed it over without ceremony, which was his hardest-won courtesy, and went back down the lane without waiting to see the seal broken, which was his second. The wax was gray, the circle small and very round. NOTICE OF REVIEW, RECONVENED, said the letter. Matter: the subject's parcel, under review. Required: appearance before the reviewing officer, at the chapter house of the Keepers of the Hours, Low Wether, on Monday next. Appearance: recorded. She read the last line twice, the same as the first time, and it said the same thing the same number of ways, and she put the letter in the oilcloth with the rest of it, and went back to the hay, because the hay was in and wanted stacking and Monday was not the hay's business. Her father saw the gray wax at dinner, where she had set the letter down for him to see, because they did not hide paper from each other in that house, having learned at cost what hidden paper did. He read it through once. He did not reach for the household book. He set the letter back on the boards, square to the table's edge, and said, "Monday," and passed the potatoes, and the word held everything a column would have held and cost him less to keep. The boys found out she was leaving as the boys found out everything, all at once and from each other, and staged their grief as a demand: the pass. She was going back over a mountain, their reasoning ran, therefore the pass, therefore Da, therefore tonight. It was the house's oldest entertainment and it had rules. It came only when asked. It came only entire. So after supper Gennaph Busterson pushed back his…