Chương 39: CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: THE LETTER NORTH

He sent the first formal letter to Hargrove in March.

He had known for months that Hargrove was out there — Jin's network had been building the picture of what the FOB's commanding officer had become in the fifteen months since the transition, and the picture was: a minor baron in a territory three counties to the southwest, consolidating authority with the professional efficiency of a man who had been commanding operations his entire adult life and found the feudal political context a simpler challenge than the environments he had previously operated in.

The letter was careful. It was written in the regional script, in the formal language of one lord to another, and it contained — embedded in the conventional expressions of a border castellan seeking to establish communication with a neighboring authority — the cipher sequence that would tell Hargrove what he was reading. Marcus had thought for two weeks about what he wanted to say, and had arrived at the conclusion that the most important thing to say was not what he had built but what he intended.

The letter said: I am building something here that requires more than I can build alone. I believe you are building something that requires more than you can build alone. I propose we discuss what we are each building, and whether those things are compatible. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

He sealed it with the castellan's seal and gave it to Jin's network for delivery, through the careful intermediary chain that Jin had constructed to ensure that a letter appearing in Hargrove's household did not announce itself as coming from a specific source before Hargrove had read it. The response arrived three weeks later. It was also in careful regional script, also embedded with the cipher. It said: I have been aware of you for six months. I expected you to contact me earlier. What took you so long?

Marcus read it and felt the specific quality of a man who has been in the field long enough that he had forgotten what it felt like to be observed by someone operating at the same level. He wrote back: I needed to know what I was offering before I offered it. Hargrove's response: Fair. Come and see what I'm doing. Then we'll talk. Marcus planned the visit for June.

He had three months to prepare what he was going to say to the man who had been his commanding officer and was now a feudal baron in a territory three counties away, and who had been watching Greyhold with the professional attention of a career officer evaluating a junior unit's performance. He thought about that — about being evaluated — and decided it was not a problem. He had done the work. The work was visible.

If Hargrove had been watching and did not see what had been built here, then the conversation they were going to have was a different and harder one. If he had seen it, then the conversation was about something else: what to build next, and how, and together.