Harper Dispatch: A Source at the Bridge

Harper Dispatch: A Source at the Bridge — a charge from Leosin Erlanthar to Gootcha, received through her Harper book during the downtime at Nuts Deep. It followed, and is separate from, the road-desk report in Harper Dispatch: Boareskr Bridge.

New writing appeared in the notebook on the ninth morning of the downtime, underneath Merrivet's answer to something else entirely, in a hand Gootcha knows. Merrivet copied it in from a letter that had come up from Berdusk and was burned afterward, which she mentioned twice.

Gootcha,

Hesk Amberlane's report will have reached you before this one. I have read it and I have nothing to add that I would swear to. What follows is a separate matter and I would rather you did not treat the two as one errand.

Four things.

One. We have nobody on the Trade Way north of the Chionthar. I want to be exact about that, because I have heard it said otherwise in Berdusk. Hesk has four people and they cover from Scornubel to the ford and they are thin over it. North of the Winding Water we have what drovers tell us months later, and I would put no weight on any of it. The Cult has moved along that road three times in a year that we know of, and we knew each time after it had happened.

Two. You are going to the bridge. I am asking you to leave somebody there.

Three, who. Here is my order of preference and my reasoning, and you should overrule me if the ground says otherwise, because you will be standing on it and I will not.

Ostrand the keeper is best placed. He counts every head that crosses and has done for years, and nobody thinks twice about a man who takes copper. Against that, he takes copper from everyone, and a man who has never once refused a coin is not a man who will refuse the next one. If you take him, take him knowing that.

The caravanserai keeper is the better memory and the worse recruit. She is very old, she has watched that house since before Thent, and I do not believe she has ever told anybody the whole of what she has seen. Frightened people make poor agents, and she has had eighty years to become frightened. If she will talk to you at all she is worth more than the rest of the bridge together.

Marrowick the drover is the easy one, and I have put him third for that reason. He already talks. Men who already talk will talk to the other side as well.

Four. The Archives want the 1450 guest ledger. They do not want the book itself. Have it copied — the pages either side of the entry as well as the entry, the hand it is written in described, and who signed for that party and who did not. Give the copies to Merrivet and she will see them to Berdusk. I am putting this in the same letter rather than a separate one because I have found that a request in its own note is a request that gets done second.

Now the part that is not an instruction.

A source is a person. The last one I recruited on that road kept the toll-house at Trollclaw. She was three years useful and then she was found in the ford, and I was the one who decided she was worth recruiting. I am not telling you to leave it alone. You should do it. I would like you to have thought about her first.

Leosin

P.S. Merrivet says she can have an answer on Ostrand's debts inside four days if you ask for it, and that I should record that she volunteered this rather than being asked. I am passing it on as she dictated it.

What it asks of the company

• Recruit and leave behind a standing Harper source at Boareskyr Bridge. The network has nobody on the Trade Way north of the Chionthar, and learns of Cult movement along it only after the fact.
• Leosin's order of preference: Ostrand the bridge-keeper, best placed but bought by anyone; the caravanserai keeper, the better memory and the harder recruit; Pell Marrowick the drover, the easiest and the least secure.
• Have the 1450 guest ledger copied for the Archives — the entry, the pages either side of it, the hand described, and who signed for Thent's party and who did not. Copies go to Merrivet.
• An open offer: Merrivet can have an answer on Ostrand's debts inside four days if asked.

Outcome

The source: recruited — in Session 54, Gootcha overruled Leosin's list exactly as he invited her to. The ground said otherwise: after the company unmasked the Yuan-ti spies and butchered the anathema in the street, the innkeeper Othavir ("Otho") — one of the crossing's few genuine fixtures, and freshly convinced the Harpers had sent the party to save his town — agreed cheerfully to join "the information-sharing squad." He will track what moves through the bridge and pass it back to the network: its first standing eyes on the Trade Way north of the Chionthar.

Still open: the 1450 guest ledger copy for the Archives — not yet pursued.

See also

• Harper Dispatch: Boareskr Bridge — the road-desk report that sent the company north
• The Nightingales — Gootcha's cell
• Harpers · Leosin Erlanthar · Gootcha · Othavir
• Quests · Renown Tracker