The Dry Sheet

A gust blew dust into the guard post from the corridor. Lekun moved the inkwell, but part of the register was stained all the same. Reka took a clean sheet and began copying what was still legible. She left the obscured entries blank, noting why they were missing. Varsi arrived with a message to deliver directly to the Commander of the Guards. “Is it urgent?” Lekun asked. “It's sealed,” Varsi replied. “That's what I can tell you.” Gammar accepted the envelope and placed it, still unopened, beneath a stone weight while he finished checking the report on his desk. Talmar kept filling the post with news, some important, some merely noisy. The only way to tell them apart was not to decide which was which before reading them.