Slade was rather proud of himself.  He was about to finish the first part of a plan he’d done pretty much on his own.  Oh, he’d consulted a lot of people--everyone from the members of his team to the court astrologers--but in the end, it was his idea and his execution.

The first hurdle was determining where the other versers were staying, and particularly which one was their leader and where he was staying.  He worked out his best guess on the leader, as even though his mirror-based scrying gave him only sight, not sound, it was fairly obvious that the white-haired man gave the orders and the others followed (although the red-haired woman seemed to give him a lot of trouble on that count).  He then tried to follow the man around, which was not always so simple as if he lost the view he could return to the place he was, but if the man had been moving when he lost him he would have to search for him.  Eventually, though, he determined that the white-haired man had his own room, and the red-haired woman was usually visiting it but technically had the room across the hall.

He could not imagine him and Shella having separate beds, never mind separate rooms.

Once he had that, he wanted to send a message--but he needed the supplies, and he needed to figure out exactly what he was going to say, and he needed to word it properly.  The big complication was that this was not going to be a conversation.  He was going to send a message, but he wasn’t going to know more than that it reached its destination unless those other versers had a way of sending a reply--and, he thought, if they had a way to contact us, they would have done so by now.  So his message had to be clear and concise, but it had to give very specific instructions:  that they were to meet, exactly when, and exactly where.

He chose the bandit camp because it was closer to the eastern mountains than to the Caliphate, but his team could teleport to it instantly.  It also provided both an open space and surrounding cover.  His one problem with the site was that they had to meet soon, before the wadi flooded.

The time problem was ultimately that there was no way to name a date.  Days in the Caliphate were identified by how long it had been since the current Caliph took the throne; the eastern Amirate was not part of the Caliphate, and no one was certain exactly what kind of calendar they used.  Ultimately he decided that the phase of the moon (and thankfully this world had only one moon) would provide the best connection.

Thus acquiring fine vellum, a bottle of ink, a blotter, and a quill, he slowly and carefully penned his message:

“To the leader of the other versers:  greetings.  We need to meet.  I propose we do so at noon of the day following the night of the first sliver of the new moon, in the wadi known locally as Sunrise Wadi, in the north of the wilderness between the two territories of our hosts, at what remains of the bandit camp which was destroyed there a few months ago.  I will be there then, unless I hear otherwise from you by such means as you have available.  Yours, Sir Robert Elvis Lord Slade of Slade Manor, Friend and Ally of the Djinn and of the Caliph of the West Wind, Royal Advisor to the Caliphate of the Twin Rivers, and twice-honored hero of that realm.”

He cast the spell, and the paper vanished.

“Now, where did I leave that mirror?  I should check whether it got there.  Shella?  Have you seen my mirror?”

There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with ten other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #339:  Verser Tensions.  Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter.  It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.

As to the old stories that have long been here:

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