After Exclamation Points. Sword/Lady timeline, so maybe 50-75 years after the apocalypse, probably canon.

When Luke got back to Addergoole with Heraclea, Patronus, and the kids — Mike had shown up after two days with a teleporter and a clairvoyant, looking miffed and clearly trying to hide a worried expression — he sent Cynara a fruit basket full of the most exotic fruits Addergoole’s magical greenhouses could grow, a brief note telling her who he’d found, and what he’d rescued them from, and copies of all of Addergoole’s most recent survey maps of North America.

She sent him back one of the maps — Texas-area, he noted, where the third of her original “trouble spots” had been — with eight color-coded dots listed as “need rescue or help, soon; might be in trouble in the next year; they’re doing something hinkey, keep an eye on; and “you might want to deputize.”

Along with that was a list of three other people who might be interested in helping him rescue or check on alumni — all of them Addergoole grads and two of them people Luke had enjoyed teaching — along with their locations and a note that said if you don’t have a teleporter, I can loan you one.

Luke might have thought she was trying to keep him occupied, distracted even, but by the time he got her package, he had already gone to the second spot on her map.

Ehud had been at Addergoole twenty-five years ago, and prone to getting in trouble even then. Now, he looked as much abashed as relieved as Luke waded into the slave market and bought up his contract.

“Anyone else from Addergoole here?” he snarled. He hated slave markets, but this one was too far from Addergoole — on the edge of the Appalachians — for him to start making a point about taking it over.

“Um.” Ehud shifted. “No. But there’s a fae girl who’s never heard of it, and one from Doomsday. She’s super embarrassed,” he added, “but it makes her angry. And then she fights the slavers…”

“Right.” Luke was glad that Ehud had come cheap. “Show them to me.”

He sent Cya all three fae, once they’d been freed, cleaned up, and fed, a box of chocolates Maureen only made for special occasions, and, after a little shouting, a list of Addergoole students and their children, as comprehensive as they had.

She sent him back the list with several annotations, the Florida-quarter quadrant marked up — this time with names — and some very nice whisky.

She also sent a note: if you can’t kill the bad ones, the really bad ones, I know someone who deals in justice.

When he got back from Texas with his newly-recruited posse, he sent her (at Laurel’s suggestion) some samples of fiber plants they’d been working on, and a student of theirs who appeared very good at Finding with a note They need summer study. Teach them what you do?

He wasn’t at all surprised when her next package included a contract on behalf of the Finder. He didn’t think twice before he signed it — though he did ask Drake to read it over first.

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