The Consortium provided him with an endless stream of systems to review. Most of them he resolved within the day. A few took longer—not because they were difficult, but because the documentation was incomplete and he refused to guess where precision was available.
The routine suited him. Mornings were spent on merchant correspondence and whatever his father needed reviewed. Afternoons belonged to the Consortium. Evenings were his own.
It was on one such evening, walking back to the inn, that the courier found him again.
Or rather, Orestis found the courier. He turned a corner near the market district—a different corner than last time—and collided with someone moving at a speed that suggested deadlines were a personal enemy.
Papers scattered. The courier gathered them with practised efficiency, barely looking up.
“If these were classified documents,” the courier said briskly, “you’d be arrested.”
That sounds oddly familiar…
Orestis regarded the one who’d bumped into him. It was a face he’d seen before. “You again.”
The courier looked up, blinked once. Recognition dawned.
“Occupational hazard,” he said, scooping the last sheet into his satchel.
“At least update your lines.” Orestis said. “Say something new.”
The courier slung the satchel over his shoulder. “I don’t have time to workshop material.” Then he was gone, already running, weaving between pedestrians with the reckless fluidity of someone who had long ago decided that other people’s walking speed was a personal insult.
Orestis watched him disappear into the crowd.
What are the chances of colliding with a courier twice? And with the same one, at that.
Either Orthessa was short on couriers, or he was simply very easy to run into.
The man moved differently from everyone else on the street. He didn’t walk with the flow—he cut through it, forced to share space with people who had no reason to move quickly and every reason to meander. The result was predictable: collisions, near-misses, scattered documents, and the occasional arrested expression of someone who had just been clipped by an elbow travelling at unreasonable speed.
A separate stretch of road for couriers would solve most of the problem. Fewer collisions. Faster delivery. Better for everyone.
Roads carried messages. They also carried supplies.
He paused.
In the previous timeline, the war’s opening months had been a common topic around campfires and in taverns. He remembered the merchants especially talking about it—the same complaint, repeated in every variation: Kallistrate had closed the passes. Logrion’s supply roads had vanished overnight.
The country’s trade corridors already operated on a narrow window—late spring through early autumn. Winter travel through those mountains was a gamble even at the best of times. Storms, monsters, unstable terrain. Even during the safer months, the roads were unreliable enough that merchants charged hazard premiums and planned for losses.
If the roads were better—if they could be maintained year-round—Logrion could not be strangled the same way.
A nation that cannot be isolated cannot be defeated quickly. A good project to start with.
It would take a couple of years to implement, of course. Subtle improvements. Suggestions placed in the right discussions. Infrastructure rarely changed quickly. But it would change.
Orestis resumed walking.
I should thank the courier for the idea. The man will never know the extent of his contribution.
Maybe I should have something ready for the next time he collides with me.
Something to add to his list of side-projects.
***
The next afternoon, Orestis visited the archives.
The Owl was at his desk, as expected. He looked up with the territorial alertness of someone whose domain had been entered, assessed the visitor, and relaxed fractionally.
“Back already,” the Owl observed. “Infrastructure again?”
“Road systems this time. Maintenance records, failure reports, seasonal damage assessments. Anything related to the northern trade routes.”
The Owl tilted his head—that disconcertingly avian motion. “Third floor. Fourth aisle. Civic infrastructure, subsection: trade corridors. Seasonal reports are filed chronologically. Structural assessments are filed by region.”
“Thank you.”
“The northern corridor files are thick,” the Owl added, as Orestis turned toward the stairs. “Nobody reads them. Which is a shame, because the failure patterns are quite elegant.”
He has opinions about failure patterns. I like this man more every time I visit.
The files were, as promised, thick. Orestis spent the afternoon reading through decades of reports: road collapses, ward degradation, seasonal damage cycles, monster incursion patterns, drainage failures, and the steady accumulation of patches layered over older patches that characterised infrastructure no one had fundamentally redesigned in living memory.
The picture was familiar. The same problems recurred year after year. Each time, they were fixed. Each time, the fix addressed the symptom rather than the cause. The roads didn’t fail because of bad engineering—they failed because the engineering had never accounted for the specific conditions of mountain terrain over sustained periods.
Frost displacement. Soil stabilisation. Self-healing surfaces. Drainage that resists ice formation. Monster-deterrent wards integrated into the road structure rather than maintained separately.
None of it was revolutionary. All of it was achievable with existing Consortium methodology. The problem had never been capability—it had been priority. No one had considered northern trade routes important enough to warrant the investment.
That is about to change.
He began writing. Not proposals—those would be premature and conspicuous. Instead, he wrote analytical notes. Short observations attached to existing failure reports, citing patterns, suggesting alternatives, referencing solutions that had been applied successfully in other contexts.
Observed repeated degradation of stabilisation wards on northern corridor segments. Frost damage cycle averages 14 months between failures. Coastal drainage arrays use displacement principles that may reduce cycle to 36+ months if adapted for mountain conditions. See archive reference 4-C-117.
Each note was measured, technical, and impersonal. The kind of thing a conscientious Systems Continuity analyst might write if he happened to notice a pattern while reviewing related files. Nothing dramatic. Nothing that demanded action.
But each note, once circulated, would sit in someone’s mind. And when the next seasonal failure occurred—as it inevitably would—someone would remember the suggestion, pull the reference, and think:
perhaps we should try that.
Infrastructure changes slowly. But it changes.
He filed the notes through the standard documentation system, returned the archive materials, and handed the token back to the Owl.
“Productive?” the Owl asked.
“The failure patterns were, as you said, quite elegant.”
Something in the Owl’s expression suggested approval—or at least the absence of disapproval, which from him amounted to the same thing.
***
The weeks that followed settled into a rhythm. The Consortium’s systems continued to arrive on his desk, and he continued to resolve them with an efficiency that drew no attention because he was careful to ensure it didn’t.
His analytical notes on road infrastructure circulated quietly through the system, generating occasional follow-up questions that he answered with the same measured precision.
He also wrote to Eirene. Not frequently—neither of them were inclined to fill letters with pleasantries—but with enough regularity to maintain the connection.
Orthessa maintained a dispatch aviary for long-distance correspondence. Messages were handed to the clerks, sealed into narrow capsules, and attached to trained courier kestrels—magically bred chimera birds developed for courier work.
Each bird was conditioned to return to its home roost, allowing messages to move quickly between cities. Under favourable conditions, a courier kestrel could cross several hundred kilometres in a single day. A letter to Kallistrate therefore usually arrived within a few days.
Orestis found the system efficient.
He would occasionally stop by the dispatch tower on his way back from the Consortium, leave a short note, and pay the fee without further ceremony.
Eirene wrote back in the same compressed style: observations, questions, the occasional dry remark that suggested she found her current circumstances more tedious than challenging.
She’s bored. That is either reassuring or concerning, depending on what she does about it.
***
The call reached him as he stepped into the street one evening. Since the Temple’s announcement, he had taken to keeping the call-node with him—a quiet concession to the possibility that his parents might need him without warning.
His mother didn’t sound distressed. Just tired, in the way that came from carrying information she wasn’t sure how to weigh. She told him she had received a letter that morning from Eirene’s mother, Thaleia.
Eirene had refused the draft.
There had been no confrontation. The refusal was noted, processed, and accepted with minimal discussion. Eirene had left the city shortly afterward, before the matter could become complicated. Thaleia had written it as an update, not a warning.
Smart woman. Both of them, actually.
“She didn’t say where Eirene was going,” his mother added. “Only that she chose not to wait.”
Orestis listened without interrupting. The explanation fit too neatly to trouble him. Eirene had acted early, before decisions hardened into obligations. Before the system could decide what to do with her and lock the door behind the decision.
“That was sensible,” he said.
More than sensible. That was exactly what I would have done. Which either means I taught her well, or she was always going to arrive at the same conclusions. I’m not sure which is more flattering.
His mother asked if he was well, if Orthessa was treating him fairly—questions that had settled into a familiar routine. He answered truthfully enough to satisfy her.
When the call ended, the city’s ambient noise filled the space it left behind.
He didn’t wonder where Eirene had gone. She had always been good at reading situations as they unfolded, and had moved before the system decided what to do with her.
He found that reassuring.
If you’re curious about what happened to Eirene, there’s a side chapter on Patreon that covers it. It’s optional—the main story will continue here without interruption.
As always, I’m 5 chapters ahead on Patreon, with extra lore and author notes.