Spy's Honor hat-2

by Amy Raby

  They were useless to Janto, since they were a couple of years old and about Riorca. In each case he had only one side of the correspondence, but through careful reading he could piece together much of what Lucien had penned. What he saw confirmed his opinion of the Kjallan heir. The young man was a smarter strategist than his father—more rational, more detail oriented, and more innovative. Some of his ideas seemed to be controversial; at least, his correspondents reacted as if they were so.

  Second drawer, more letters. One packet was from Rhianne, and when he saw her signature at the bottom—a signature he’d never before seen—something twisted inside him. He had nothing to remember her by. All they’d ever given each other were intangibles: conversation, love, and memories. He hadn’t thought it important before, but now all of a sudden it mattered a great deal. He wished he had some sort of memento from her and that she had one from him.

  She’d written the letters when Lucien was in Riorca. Their contents had no strategic value whatsoever, but Janto read out of curiosity, smiling at the flamboyant loops and whorls of Rhianne’s handwriting. Then he stopped and set them aside, feeling as guilty as a kid caught listening behind his parents’ door.

  Third drawer, a treatise on military strategy that was interesting reading but entirely theoretical, with no specifics about Kjall. He set it aside. Below it, a three-day-old readiness report covering the entire Kjallan military. This, he realized as he paged through it, was gold. It named the location and destination of every ship and every battalion of soldiers, as well as status information such as the numbers of sick and wounded, stocks of provisions and ammunition, recent disciplinary problems, and the experience levels of the troops and their commanders. Janto put the other papers back in the desk.

  He hadn’t seen everything in the desk, but now that wasn’t necessary. This was all he needed. He glanced at the bedroom door. How long could he risk staying here before Lucien woke? Maybe an hour or two. Or could he take the report with him?

  No, it would be missed. He’d have to copy it.

  The report confirmed that the Kjallans were sending a fleet to attack Sarpol. Twelve warships were involved, not just the three he’d already known about. The Meritorious was bound for Mosar—at least it had been three days ago, when the report was written—and Mosar itself had a garrison of three battalions and four warships. Janto winced. That was more than he would like to face in an uprising. Well, at least he knew.

  Another six ships were bound for the port city of Rhaylet, which was odd.

  Rhaylet was located on Dori, but Sardos controlled it. An attack on Rhaylet was an attack on Sardos and would certainly pull forth a defensive fleet. But a Sardossian fleet could not sail through the Kjallan-held Neruna Strait. It would have to go the long way around. Such a lengthy sail would leave it unable to render assistance in the defense of Sardos itself.

  In terms of numbers, the feint seemed to give Kjall no material advantage. They could fight the Sardossian ships at Sarpol or they could fight them at Rhaylet; what did it matter? But in practical terms it mattered a great deal. Sarpol had ground-based defenses that gave them an advantage and rendered light ships useless. Anything Kjall could draw off was a win for them.

  Janto shook his head in frustration. If only he could get word to the Sardossians! Then maybe they’d have a fighting chance at Sarpol. If the Sardossians could give Kjall a smashing defeat there, it would help Janto’s cause on Mosar.

  He read the document thoroughly and copied it onto his own paper, writing down even the small things, like the numbers of sick and wounded. Battles could turn on such details.

  When he finished, he returned everything carefully to its place and went back to the bedroom. Lucien was still snoozing. Janto crawled back into the trapdoor. He pulled the rug over the wooden square and gently lowered both of them back into place.

  * * *

  About a mile outside the village of Hodboken, Rhianne’s horse stumbled and went lame, nodding her head with each uneven stride. Rhianne pulled up and swung down from the saddle. The mare had thrown a shoe. Sort of. It was hanging on to her hoof by a couple of nails, clanking as the horse moved.

  Rhianne clucked in sympathy—that had to be frightening and uncomfortable. She circled to the offending foot, the right fore, and picked it up. Lifting the hoof didn’t tell her much that she didn’t already know. The shoe had come loose and was hanging by two nails. It didn’t seem possible to hammer the shoe back in without tools. Instead she pried it off, using the shoe as leverage against its own nails. Surely the mare would be happier with an absent shoe than with one that was half on, half off.

  Tossing the useless shoe into the grass alongside the road, she led the mare forward experimentally, hoping the animal would be sound enough to ride. But the mare still walked unevenly, nodding her head.

  “Well, old girl,” Rhianne told the mare, “at least you didn’t do this five miles back.”

  She led the mare up the road to the nearest farm. Some farms ran a cozy side business dealing in horses for travelers, and this one had a sizable-looking stable. She turned into the yard.

  The farmer, when he came out to meet her, spotted the problem immediately. “Lost a shoe?”

  “Back there on the road,” said Rhianne. “I haven’t been riding her since she threw it, and I don’t think she’s lame.”

  “There’s a farrier in Hodboken could fix her up.”

  “Actually, I’d like to sell her and buy a new horse,” said Rhianne.

  He shook his head. “I’ve got animals for sale, but I can’t evaluate the mare until she’s reshod.”

  Rhianne reached out with her magic and embedded a suggestion in the farmer’s mind: I trust you. I want to help you. She hated having to use her magic to win people’s trust, but she had no time to earn it the proper way. “She’ll be sound when she’s shod. And she’s a quality animal—nice paces, well mannered. So safe your children could ride her,” she added, spotting a couple of youngsters peeping through the cottage window. “You could keep her for yourself or turn around and sell her for a quick profit after you get the shoe repaired.”

  The farmer chewed his lip. He checked the mare’s teeth and felt each of her legs. After his examination, he grunted approval. “Perhaps we could work out a deal. You want to look at what I’ve got for sale?”

  Half an hour later, Rhianne was cantering east, this time on a black gelding. While the travel was exhausting and she was sore all over from so much riding, she was, somewhat to her surprise, enjoying herself. She missed Janto, of course, and Morgan and Marcella and even Lucien, whom she supposed she’d eventually forgive for setting those guards at the hypocaust exit, but so far she didn’t feel too lonely. She was meeting people every day, and they were so different from the people she’d known at the palace, so varied and wonderful. She was seeing tradespeople, innkeepers, farmers, housewives, and children.

  She was more than two hundred miles from the Imperial Palace, and she saw now what Lucien had told her, that Kjall was not a wealthy nation. She understood how she’d been fooled. All her life, she’d been confined to the palace, where she’d been surrounded by the nobility in their fine clothes, with all their fine things. Even the nearby port city of Riat had been wealthy.

  The rest of the country was different. While she encountered pockets of the well-to-do, mostly she traveled past shabby houses, lopsided barns, and grubby inns. Scraggly yards housed the family assets: more often than not, swaybacked horses and skinny pullets. And yet she loved the people she met. Even when she didn’t use her mind magic, they greeted her kindly, gave her directions if she asked, sometimes offered her food or shelter. A few men leered at her, and still others thought of cheating or stealing from her, leading her to plant the suggestion in their heads, I don’t want to have contact with this woman. But they were the exception, not the rule.

  She found herself wondering what Janto would think if he were making this journey with her. As far as she knew, he’d seen only K
jall’s royalty and nobility and their servants. Might he think better of her people if he spent time with the rest of the population, as she was doing now?

  She was going through her hoard of cash faster than anticipated because she could not stop herself from pressing tetrals into the hands of children as she traveled. Twenty years she’d been alive, nearly all of them spent in a single building. How much of the world she’d been missing!

  * * *

  Lucien was crossing the bedroom floor with his crutch under his arm when he stopped short. Was that a white thread on the floor beneath his desk? He leaned down, touched a fingertip to his tongue, and touched the thread to lift it from the parquet square. It was nearly invisible. He had almost walked right by it.

  He opened his desk drawer and pulled out the military’s readiness report, careful not to tip it sideways. He opened it to page seven and chewed his lip. His suspicion was correct. The thread he’d inserted between the pages as an anti-tampering device was missing.

  Who had been looking through his things?

  He sat in his desk chair and went through the drawers, paging through each of his letters and documents. Nothing had been visibly moved, and nothing was missing. He wasn’t dealing with a thief, but with a snoop or a spy. That was disturbing enough. How could a spy get into his rooms? They were warded day and night.

  He frowned at the rug that covered his trapdoor into the hypocaust. Why had he not sealed that secret passageway years ago? He couldn’t make effective use of it, not with his missing leg. But his father frightened him just enough that he liked the idea of having a way out in case of disaster. He could not easily crawl through those subterranean tunnels, but if sufficiently desperate . . .

  What a fool he was. Someone had sneaked into his room, almost certainly through that trapdoor, and rifled his things. That person had looked through a document containing important and very secret military information. With Florian’s idiotic attack on Sardos imminent, the stakes were unusually high.

  There was a spy at large in the Imperial Palace, probably a Sardossian shroud mage. Now Lucien understood the bizarre incident in Florian’s office. Augustan had tripped an enemy ward, yet his interrogation had come up clean. Important papers had gone missing that day. The event should have been followed up on, but then Rhianne had gone missing and all available resources had been allocated toward her recovery. An invisible spy must have entered the room at the same time as Augustan, triggering the ward so that the blame fell on the legatus. Then the spy had grabbed the papers. Clever bastard.

  Lucien rose from his chair and shouldered his crutch. He limped into the sitting room. “Hiberus,” he called to his door guard. “Send me a warder right away. And get me on Florian’s schedule. I need to speak to him.”

  * * *

  The spy ship was late. Three nights in a row, Janto had made the long trek out to the seaside cliff and signaled the ship, only to stare into the darkness and wait for a return signal that never came. He had, unknowingly, sent the ship on its relay mission just as the Kjallan fleet had been returning from Mosar. His ship might have sailed into that fleet and been destroyed. There was no way he could know its fate for certain at this point. But with the intelligence he possessed about the planned attack on Sardos, he could stand around and wait no longer. Somehow he had to get out of Kjall.

  In the harbor, the Meritorious, bound for Mosar, rode at double anchor. One of its boats was at the dock, half loaded with casks labeled BEEF. Janto liked the look of that boat. He could more easily hide himself amidst cargo than among men, since cargo didn’t notice when you bumped it.

  Lots of guards, he commented to Sashi, who rode atop his shoulder.

  Sashi’s hackles rose. Kill them?

  No. Too many. Janto felt the ferret’s disappointment through the link and smiled.

  Increased security at the docks was one of the side effects of Rhianne’s disappearance. Some of the guards weren’t in uniform and milled about in the crowd. With their erect, soldierlike posture, they were laughably easy to spot. The others were in uniform, and they stood before every boat tied to the docks, including the one Janto meant to sneak onto.

  He needed a diversion to get past them. Something simple.

  Shrouded, he trod along the wooden planking, dodging individual sailors and looking for a suitable group of three or more men. He would shove one of them while no one was looking, and masculine pride ought to take care of the rest. He spotted a likely-looking quartet on a spur just across from the Meritorious’s boat.

  Just as he stepped forward to reach them, fireworks crackled in his ear, and he froze in terror. Fingers of orange and green lightning twined their way up from the ground, all around him. Gods! He’d tripped an invisibility ward.

  He broke into a run. Men shouted and ran toward the ward, converging on his position. They couldn’t see him, but they knew where he’d been a moment ago. He wanted to turn and make his path unpredictable, but the dock was straight with only a few spurs angling off it, none of which led anywhere but into the water.

  He shivered in horror. He was pounding toward a dead end! He could go into the water, but he could not swim invisibly. His best chance was to turn around and go back the way he’d come—toward the guards.

  He turned and ran back, ducking his shoulder as he dodged between the first pair of guards. His boots slipped on wooden planks he hadn’t recalled being wet. Up ahead, a guard flung a bucket of seawater across the docks.

  His stomach tightened with dread.

  Something cold and wet struck him. He looked in the direction it had come from and saw an empty bucket in a guard’s hands.

  “There he is!” someone cried.

  He extended his shroud, taking into it the water droplets that covered his body. But the ones that streamed off him could not be hidden. Another bucket of water hit him.

  Someone collided with him from the side. He flew through the air and landed on the hard planks, wincing at a sharp pain in his knee. Sashi screamed as he was thrown clear. Janto tried to get up, but a heavy weight fell atop him, and another.

  Run, Sashi, he commanded.

  The ferret wriggled through a gap in the wooden planks and splashed into the water.

  “We’ve got him! We’ve got him!” his captors were yelling.

  Janto struggled, but the guards held him fast. His hold on the Rift and his shroud slackened, and he grasped at it mentally. Sashi?

  If I go any farther I’ll break the link, the ferret reported.

  Through the link he sensed fear and exhaustion. Are you still in the ocean?

  Yes.

  Break the link, he ordered. Get to dry land.

  Getting Sashi free was the best he could do—Janto was finished. He tucked his chin, scooping his necklace of glass beads into his mouth. He bit hard on one of the beads, cracking it open. Bitter liquid seeped onto his tongue. He gagged at the taste but forced himself to swallow.

  He felt Sashi leave his range. He lost the link and the shroud and popped into visibility. The guards holding him down shouted in surprise.

  “Hey!” A guard tore the beads off his neck and examined the one he’d bitten. “I think he took poison.”

  Another guard stood up and yelled. “We need a Healer here, right away!”

  Janto’s throat tightened. His vision narrowed around the edges and faded. Then he let go.

  25

  Janto woke disoriented. He swallowed with difficulty, finding his tongue thick and his throat swollen. He opened his eyes and for a moment wasn’t sure he had opened them, since he saw only darkness, but as he shifted on his hard pallet, he located a broad rectangle of faint light halfway up the wall. Bars slashed across the rectangle. Prison bars? He tried to rise, but he was too weak. Also, something impeded his movement. Something heavy on his wrist.

  A manacle.

  Memories of the dock flashed through his head. His desperate run, the buckets of water they’d thrown at him, the poison he’d taken. How was it he
still lived?

  They’d called for a Healer.

  He reached for the link to his familiar and, in a rush of relief, found it open and available. Sashi?

  You’re awake! the ferret crowed.

  Where are you? How long have I been out?

  Days, said Sashi. I’m in the hypocaust.

  Janto could sense his ferret’s position relative to him, now that more of his mind was awakening. You’re not below me. You’re beside me. Not in the same room, though. There was some distance.

  You’re in the prison, below ground, said Sashi. The hypocaust doesn’t go beneath the prison but runs alongside it. I’m as close to you as I can get.

  I see. He was in the palace prison. This was extraordinarily bad news. They would have saved his life only in order to interrogate and torture him before staking him. He’d swallowed the poison to avoid such a fate.

  They’re going to kill me, he told Sashi. You should get to a safe place—to the woods. His death would not kill Sashi, but it would extinguish the fragment of his soul embedded within his familiar. Sashi would become an ordinary ferret.

  You are mine and I am yours, su-kali, said Sashi. I am with you until the end.

  * * *

  The next day, Janto heard voices outside his cell door. He was strong enough now to sit up. The door to his cell was solid iron from the ground to about waist height. From there to the ceiling it was iron bars through which he had some visibility, but he was chained into a corner where he couldn’t get much of a view. He stretched to the full length of his chains, trying to see out.

  “Is that the one? The spy we caught at the docks?”

  Gods curse it, he couldn’t see who was speaking. That was a new voice, male, and it sounded vaguely familiar. In the short time he’d been conscious, Janto had learned most of the guards’ voices.

  “Yes, that’s the one.” That was Janto’s guard, the one who’d brought him breakfast.

  “When’s he scheduled for interrogation?”