Chapter Text
It arrived on a Tuesday.
Not through a messenger — that would have been traceable, and whoever sent it was clearly too careful for that. It was tucked beneath a dispatches folder that Fatma had left on her table for exactly four minutes while she went to speak with the guard at her door. Four minutes, a keen eye had counted them.
The letter had no seal. No name. The paper was good quality — Byzantine, she would later realize, though she didn't think of that immediately. She unfolded it and read:
To the Commander who rides faster than her scouts and thinks slower than her enemies expect —
The pass at Koyunhisar is being watched. Not by whom you think. The garrison you believe is depleted has been restocked from the eastern supply line, either because your informants missed it or because they are being paid to miss it. I suggest the latter. Check the loyalty of the man who brings your eastern reports. He has new boots.
The ambush you are planning for the fourteenth will walk into a counter-ambush that has been waiting three days. Call it off.
You are welcome.
— Someone who finds it irritating to watch competence go to waste
Fatma read it twice.
Then she held it over the candle flame and watched it burn until nothing remained.
She sat for a long moment in the quiet of her room, the ash of the letter in the small dish before her.
New boots.
She summoned her eastern informant the next morning on a pretext. His boots were, in fact, new. Fine ones, a garrison soldier's salary did not explain those.
She had him removed from his post quietly, his reports verified through a different source.
The ambush on the fourteenth was called off.
Three days later, word came back: there had been a counter-ambush waiting exactly where the letter had said.
Fatma pondered on this information for a long time.
She knew one person who wrote like that — sharp and precise and unable to resist the mocking edge even when being genuinely helpful. One person who would deliver critical intelligence and manage to make it feel like a reprimand. One person who called her competent the way other men called women dangerous.
She thought about it for four days.
Then the second letter arrived.