The first shipment went in April.
Not the bread itself — the bread didn't travel, and the Quickening didn't work at distance, it needed Lena's hands on the dough, the warmth building through contact. What traveled was something else: the starter. A portion of the specific culture she'd been feeding for six months, alive and viable, packaged by Kira with the same precision Kira brought to bloodline work, because a sourdough starter was — Kira had explained, with only mild impatience at Lena's surprise — a living thing, and she knew how to handle living things.
The starter was going to three territories where the Ledger's new training program had just placed its first locally-based practitioners. Not as a symbolic gesture — Lena had been clear with Neva that she didn't want it to be a symb
