He had not told anyone.
That was the thing he kept returning to, in the months before he moved. He had not told his senior scribes, or his household staff, or the garrison commander who nodded to him every morning in the Grand Corridor. He had not told any of the three people in the administration who had survived long enough to be called his confidants, though two were dead now and the third had not spoken anything approaching personal disclosure in eleven years.
Grand Ordinator Valerius Thornwick had simply stopped eating.
