The Sovereign Record would never give Alistair the third name before its owner was dead.
That was the whole reason the Scrivener existed. The names she carried stayed buried until they stopped being names and became corpses, and by then knowing them was worth nothing.
So Alistair had no name. What he had was the Auber salon.
The salon was where Verissan's gossip got conducted in lowered voices, over tea and careful little pastries, by the handful of people with access to that room.
Crane would be there on Friday. By Crane's own invitation, and by the second note's instruction, so was Alistair supposed to be.
He spent the next day preparing.
He did not leave the inn. He sent down for meals, asked the keeper for paper and ink, and wrote a letter to a mother who did not exist.
He sealed it with the false Halversen seal and handed it to the keeper for the courier, and the whole performance was for the keeper alone, since she was the cover's steadiest audience.
