After Nu staggered from the Inquisitor's barrack, bruised and bleeding, no one questioned her lavish request for a cup of hot water for a soothing tincture, or a few precious moments of privacy to clean herself up. The
faux pas she had committed at the trial, and the resulting punishment would gain her these two precious commodities. Steam and solitude.
Never breach their perception of reality unless she wanted their reaction to be violent and rash. Lut had taught her that. She would have to conceal her actions within the ordinary, to be the most dangerous when she knelt. Nu knelt now in the darkness, holding Knox's envelope over the steaming cup. With aid of the steam and her knife, Nu gently prized the wax seal away, careful not to damage it.
Nu had gathered the black feathers, repaired the pillow seam. Later, she reported to Lut Sar that her search of Knox's barracks yielded no clues to his current whereabouts. As a true citizen of Dorgrad he had nothing.
Within the envelope was a page torn from a book. She had never read a book, but she'd seen them confiscated and burned by the Inquisition. She had never seen the kinds of books this page came from. The parchment was thick and fine, made to remain pure white despite the caress of a thousand fingers. It was not from a book of crudely penned manifesto or gospel. All of the letters were the same size, the same shape, the same pitch black ink. The letters formed a near perfect square on the page.
Nu had never seen letters like these, or one who could write them in such a way. Above the alien scrypt was a symbol in black and white. A strange plant, the bank of an enormous oasis, an avian boy flying towards a single star.
Nu could not read the page in her hands.