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<blockquote data-quote="CPT馬冠宇" data-source="post: 73654" data-attributes="member: 162">&quot;&#039;In addition to this task,&#039;&quot; Hearthmount reads, and now his voice has acquired the slight forward lean of a man approaching a difficult point, &quot;&#039;I ask that you remain in Ravengro for a period of not less than one month from the date of this reading. My daughter is a capable and resilient woman, far more so than she knows. But the circumstances surrounding my death are not, I believe, as simple as they appear, and Ravengro is not, at present, as safe as it appears. I will not ask her to remain here alone. I ask you, in the name of whatever regard we have held for one another, to remain with her until you are satisfied that she is no longer at risk. This is the more personal of my two requests, and I am aware that it asks more than the other.&#039;&quot;Kendra is very still. She is looking at the document in Hearthmount&#039;s hands with an expression I cannot fully parse — something between gratitude and the particular grief of being protected posthumously, of discovering that someone anticipated your vulnerability and planned for it in their last formal act. Her hands have tightened again. This time they do not smooth out.&quot;&#039;For your service in both matters, I have made arrangements with Embreth Daramid of Lepidstadt, a woman of reliable integrity and considerable discretion, who will provide payment upon confirmed delivery of the texts. The sum is one hundred platinum coins for each of you.&#039;&quot;The number settles into the room with a weight that is slightly different from the weight of everything else. Not because it is large — though it is large — but because it converts the abstract into the concrete, the personal appeal into a transaction, and transactions are the language of the world outside grief and obligation. I watch the number register in the room and I watch what it does, and what it does is this: it makes the thing real in a different way, in the way that compensation makes a thing real, in the way that only quantification can confirm to a certain kind of mind that yes, this is actually being asked of you, and yes, it is worth your while.&quot;&#039;I close this document as I have tried to close all my affairs: with honesty and with gratitude, and with the hope that those who have known me will judge me more by what I attempted than by what I failed to complete.&#039;&quot;Hearthmount stops. He draws a breath that sounds almost surprised to have been held. Then he rolls the parchment with both hands, the practiced motion of a man returning to the professional register that the document briefly evacuated him from, and the seal-end of it taps softly against the table as he aligns the edges.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="CPT馬冠宇, post: 73654, member: 162"] "'In addition to this task,'" Hearthmount reads, and now his voice has acquired the slight forward lean of a man approaching a difficult point, "'I ask that you remain in Ravengro for a period of not less than one month from the date of this reading. My daughter is a capable and resilient woman, far more so than she knows. But the circumstances surrounding my death are not, I believe, as simple as they appear, and Ravengro is not, at present, as safe as it appears. I will not ask her to remain here alone. I ask you, in the name of whatever regard we have held for one another, to remain with her until you are satisfied that she is no longer at risk. This is the more personal of my two requests, and I am aware that it asks more than the other.'" Kendra is very still. She is looking at the document in Hearthmount's hands with an expression I cannot fully parse — something between gratitude and the particular grief of being protected posthumously, of discovering that someone anticipated your vulnerability and planned for it in their last formal act. Her hands have tightened again. This time they do not smooth out. "'For your service in both matters, I have made arrangements with Embreth Daramid of Lepidstadt, a woman of reliable integrity and considerable discretion, who will provide payment upon confirmed delivery of the texts. The sum is one hundred platinum coins for each of you.'" The number settles into the room with a weight that is slightly different from the weight of everything else. Not because it is large — though it is large — but because it converts the abstract into the concrete, the personal appeal into a transaction, and transactions are the language of the world outside grief and obligation. I watch the number register in the room and I watch what it does, and what it does is this: it makes the thing real in a different way, in the way that compensation makes a thing real, in the way that only quantification can confirm to a certain kind of mind that yes, this is actually being asked of you, and yes, it is worth your while. "'I close this document as I have tried to close all my affairs: with honesty and with gratitude, and with the hope that those who have known me will judge me more by what I attempted than by what I failed to complete.'" Hearthmount stops. He draws a breath that sounds almost surprised to have been held. Then he rolls the parchment with both hands, the practiced motion of a man returning to the professional register that the document briefly evacuated him from, and the seal-end of it taps softly against the table as he aligns the edges. [/QUOTE]

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