Due was not going.

He had said so on the first night of the plan, and he had not said it again, because none of them had needed him to repeat it.

Due was holding the base, managing Frument, running intelligence with Sable, and keeping the territory stitched together while the rest of them walked toward something they might not return from.

That was the arrangement, and Alistair had accepted it days ago.

However, there was still a conversation that had not happened yet.

Alistair found him at the table the night before the departure. Due had not been sleeping, and he had not pretended to be sleeping either.

He had the same posture from the three days he had spent on the document, only now there was no document in front of him, just a single blank piece of paper and the same pen resting beside it.

Alistair sat down across from him without speaking.

After a few moments, Due broke the silence first. "I am not writing anything tonight, in case that is why you came. I have not yet decided what I would even write."

"That is not why I came," Alistair replied in a low voice.

Due set the pen down properly this time, pushing the blank paper aside, however, he did not look up. "Then say what you came to say, Alistair. We have both been awake long enough."

Alistair did not say it at once.

He put his hands flat on the table, looking at the lamp, then at the line where the wood of the table was bright at one end and dim at the other in the lamplight.

’The conversation I came in here to have is not the conversation I am about to have.’

After a long moment, he finally spoke. "Due. If I do not come back inside six weeks."

Due did not move. His eyes stayed fixed on the blank paper; however, his hands folded together slowly on the table, the way a man folds his hands when he is making sure they do not do something else.

"Do not come for me," Alistair continued, his voice steadier than he expected.

The lamp on the table did the small, quiet work of lighting them both. Eventually, Due spoke. "I was not going to come for you, Alistair. You knew that before you sat down at this table."

"I knew it; however, I needed you to be the person who said it aloud. Not me."

"And now I have said it."

"And now you have said it."

Due did not respond for a long moment. Then, in a voice barely louder than the lamp’s flicker, he said something Alistair had not been prepared to hear.

"I was going to send Silas instead."

Alistair was speechless.

The line landed harder than anything Due could have said.

He had been ready for Due to say the loss of him would be too costly to compound, and he had been ready for a small careful sentence about the price of a second journey.

In the dark place in himself he had been managing for two days, he had been ready to hear it without flinching.

Hearing this instead, his eyes widened, then narrowed.

’I did not draw the line for Silas. On the long walk back into the base, when I drew the line, I drew it just before him. I thought he would be on the other side of it.’

But Due had just told him that Silas would not be on the other side of the line.

Alistair frowned, his jaw tightening as memory pulled him back.

He thought about Silas at the window in the small room with the brown lamp, saying you will continue without me, twice, on purpose.

He thought about Silas going into Verissan two days early to look at a building he had been inside nine years ago and did not intend to be inside again without preparing first.

At that moment, Alistair understood that Silas had known the plan already.

"He told you yes, then," said Alistair, his voice colder than he intended.

"He told me yes the night I told him I might ask. Three days ago, Alistair. Before the document, before any of you sat at this table to argue about names."

"You did not tell me," Alistair declared, glaring across the lamp.

Due exhaled, finally looking up to meet his eyes. "I did not tell you because if I had, you would not have allowed me to spend the thread on the document. You would have told me to hold it for the second journey. However, I did not want to hold the thread for a second journey. I wanted to spend it all on the first one, so that there would not be a second one."

Alistair did not respond, however, his grip on the edge of the table tightened.

’He has been working on this for three days. Not on the document, on the plan behind the document. He calculated this before I even understood there was something to calculate.’

Alistair was impressed, and unsettled at the same time. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

"Due."

"Yes, Alistair."

"That is generous of you."

"It is not generous." Due’s tone sharpened slightly. "It is a calculation. I have been a calculator for twenty years, and I have not yet learned how to be a generous man in the same season I am being a calculating one. The two do not fit in the same room. Do not call me generous in the room I am calculating in, because I will not be able to finish the calculation if I have to be generous about it as well."

"Then I will not call you generous," Alistair said quietly, "until you tell me I can."

"I will be generous when you come back. Not before."

Due picked the pen up, set it back down, and did not pick it up again. The lamp on the table guttered, in the small way the lamps in this house had been guttering since the night of the founding.

After a long silence, Due spoke again. "If you come back, and Silas does not."

He stopped there. Alistair waited.

"I will need you to be the person at this table for the conversation that comes after that. You do not yet understand what I am asking you."

"Then tell me what you are asking, Due. Say it plainly, because I will not guess at it."

Alistair looked at the lamp instead of him, and the silence stretched between them as he answered slowly.

"You are asking me to be the person who explains it to Frument. The person who explains it to Sable, if Sable is still on the other end of an explanation when we get back. The person who writes the letter to Silas’s people, if Silas has people somewhere. You are asking me to sit at this table afterward and read the next dispatch as if it is just the next dispatch, not the one that came after Silas did not."

"Yes," said Due quietly. "That is exactly what I am asking. Good. You understand."

Alistair stood from the table. Following that, he walked to the door of the room and stopped with his hand on the frame, not turning around.

"Due. If neither of us comes back."

Due did not answer.

"You will be the one at the table."

"I will be the one at the table, Alistair. I have been the one at the table from the beginning."

Alistair walked out of the room without another word. The lamp behind him did not gutter again, and the room was quiet for the rest of the night.

In the morning, Due would not mention the conversation to either Elara or Silas. Alistair would not mention it either. The only person in the building who knew the conversation had taken place was a man who had been calculating for twenty years, and was not yet, on the morning of the departure, ready to be generous about any of it.

Outside, the horses were already saddled, and the road north waited.