Orders for the Forward Watch

aka the hour-six orders, the sixth-hour promise, the sealed orders

Vesna Coldhand's standing orders at the Foldfast — hold the watch, log the fork, and do a thing at the sixth hour when a certain traveller finally crosses toward the castle — sealed with a mark almost, but not quite, House Vandahl's own.

To the watch-captain at the Foldfast, from a hand that keeps its own name off this page. You are paid to watch, not to understand, and the watching is the whole of it until the sixth hour. Log every crossing. When the one we have described to you crosses the fork east toward the castle — not before, however long the waiting runs — you will do at the sixth hour what was agreed at the sixth hour, and you will not write down that you did it. The coin is honest and it will keep coming while the watch keeps. Do not send up the road to ask who it comes from. The Lances that ask stop being paid, and the Lances that read the seal too closely stop being anything. (The wax seal is pressed clean and deliberate: House Vandahl's tower-and-key, but the key is turned the wrong way and there is a barb worked into the tower that the true House arms have never carried. It is a forgery good enough to open any gate in the Vale — and whoever cut it wanted the watch-captain to know it was a forgery, and to hold the watch anyway.) — by the turned key

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