Casket of Souls

by Lynn Flewelling

  Bidding the duke farewell at the stable gate, they got their horses from the liveried stable boy and set off for home.

  “Well, how did I do?” asked Alec.

  “Very well, talí. But you noticed we weren’t invited inside with the others? Korathan whispered a little warning to me while you and the princess were shooting.”

  “Really? What did he say?”

  “Just that while Elani has taken a liking to you, Phoria will most likely put a stop to it when she comes home. We’re not the sort of company she’ll want her future queen to keep. Then again, maybe Elani will have some say in the matter. We’ll just have to wait and see. Enjoy it while it lasts!”

  “Are you certain you’re all right with this?” asked Seregil as they waited for Reltheus’s coach to arrive that evening.

  “Stop asking!” Alec muttered, less than happy with the night’s plan.

  The duke and his wife soon arrived, and they set out for Gannet Lane.

  Reltheus introduced Palmani, who was out of birthing confinement. She was very young and quite pretty. Alec felt bad for her, knowing what her husband got up to on his nights out. She was also a little shy, but Seregil soon had her laughing and talking about her baby son.

  There was a large crowd gathered in front of the theater, and the playbills hung on each side of the doors promised a comedy tonight called The Wife’s Revenge. It seemed appropriate, although Alec was fairly certain from the way Palmani fawned on her husband that she knew nothing of his philandering ways.

  A few people muttered as Seregil led his guests to the head of the line, but the man taking the money knew them and bowed deeply as he ushered them in.

  “This is quite wonderful!” Palmani exclaimed, looking around excitedly as they settled in the finely appointed patrons’ box. “I’ve been asking my husband for weeks to bring me.”

  Reltheus raised her hand to his lips. “And here we are, my love, courtesy of my good friends.”

  “He speaks of you so often,” she told Alec.

  Young Van soon appeared with chilled wine and a plate of sweets. “Compliments of the house, my lords,” the boy said with a deep bow.

  “Thank you, Van,” said Seregil. “Tell me, do you know if Atre is free after the show tonight? We’re dining with the duke and his lady and they would very much like to meet him.”

  “I’m sure he is, my lord!”

  The play was, as always, excellent, with Atre playing the cuckolding husband and Merina the triumphant wife. Brader played the husband’s roistering companion with more humor than Alec had thought the man capable of.

  It ended with the unfortunate husband locked in a cupboard with a malodorous servant, played by Teibo, and a flatulent hound. The crowd loved it and threw all manner of favors onto the stage when the cast came out to take their bows.

  “Oh, they were wonderful!” Palmani exclaimed, wiping away tears of laughter. “I do look forward to meeting this handsome actor of yours.”

  The footlights were extinguished and the crowd milled out, talking and laughing, while Seregil and the others waited in the box. Atre soon joined them, dressed in an elaborately embroidered blue coat and silk breeches.

  “Your Graces.” Color flashed from the jewels of his earring and the numerous rings he wore as he bowed. These were almost always different, and Seregil very much suspected that he wore whatever jewels his host or hostess for the evening had given him, to please them and curry favor. The one constant, Seregil noted, was the amethyst ring Atre wore on the little finger of his right hand; the one Elani had given him. That had been quite a coup, and it seemed Atre was happy to remind people of it.

  “What an honor to offer my humble services!” Atre was saying, not sounding particularly humble.

  “You can thank your patrons, Master Atre,” Palmani said, offering her hand for him to kiss.

  “They are unfailingly generous, Your Grace.”

  * * *

  There was little overt sign of the war deprivations in the Noble Quarter, or at least not in Reltheus’s huge Silvermoon Street villa, where a sumptuous feast awaited them. They ate in the elaborate garden, enjoying the cool night breeze as they dined on courses of venison and hare from the duke’s hunting estate, and jellied eel and lobsters from the bay. Seafood was still plentiful in Rhíminee, since it didn’t travel well. The bread, it was true, was made from coarser flour than one might expect, and there were candied fruits rather than tarts for dessert, but no one commented on such lacks.

  Atre was in his element, and amused the whole table with stories of his travels and experiences with curious characters. Seregil joined in, and soon they were vying to see who could tell the most outrageous story.

  The wine flowed freely, and Alec drank cup after cup. By the time they got to the dessert course, he was drunker than Seregil had seen him since last Mourning Night, laughing loudly at everything and swaying in his chair. Seregil shot him increasingly annoyed looks through the meal, trying to catch his eye, and by the end of the meal he was pretending embarrassment and poorly concealed his anger at his young lover.

  “Your Grace, I really must apologize,” he said to Palmani, reaching out to steady Alec in his chair.

  “Ah, temperance comes with age,” Reltheus said with a laugh.

  “You serve the mos’ essecellent wine, my dear Reltheus!” Alec slurred, holding out his cup again.

  Seregil snatched it away and put it out of reach. “I’m sorry to end the evening on such a note, but I fear I should take him home before he can’t walk at all.”

  “I most certainly can walk!” Alec exclaimed indignantly. To prove it, he stood up, knocking his chair over in the process. He wavered a moment, then collapsed in a drunken faint.

  Seregil quickly righted the chair, apologizing profusely as he and the actor tried to get Alec onto his feet. “Alec, you fool! Of all the boorish—”

  “Oh, the poor thing!” Palmani cried. “He’s going to be very sorry in the morning.”

  “Perhaps sooner. Really, I fear for the state of your carriage.”

  “A wise concern,” said Reltheus. “Please, stay the night.”

  Seregil sighed. “We’ve abused your hospitality enough already.”

  “Nonsense!” said Palmani. She summoned a servant. “Have one of the bedrooms made up for them at once. And send some men to carry Lord Alec upstairs.”

  “You’re far too kind,” said Seregil.

  “He’s not our first guest to enjoy our wine too much, Lord Seregil. It’s no trouble at all.”

  “Perhaps I should go,” said Atre, watching it all with counterfeit concern.

  “Oh, do stay a little longer!” Palmani pleaded. “This will only take a few minutes.”

  “Want to stay ’n’ watch Atre,” Alec mumbled, leaning unsteadily on Seregil.

  “Some other time,” Seregil told him none too gently.

  They were given a room overlooking the garden, and Palmani accompanied them upstairs. As Seregil followed the servants carrying Alec, he tried to take stock of the other rooms along the corridor, but most of the doors were closed.

  Their bedchamber was large, with tall fretted summer doors that let onto a balcony beyond. The furnishings were richly carved, and the walls were decorated with murals of fantastical undersea scenes.

  The servants placed Alec on the bed and pulled off his boots.

  “If I might trouble you for one last thing, dear Duchess,” Seregil said. “I think a bucket may soon be in order.”

  “I’ll have one sent up at once, and water.” She looked down at Alec, who was snoring softly. “I fear you’re in for a restless night. I can have one of the servants tend to him, if you’d like a room of your own.”

  “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. We’ve been through this before.”

  “Good night, then. I’ll have breakfast sent up in the morning.”

  “I think bread and tea will suffice.”

  When she was gone, Seregil sat down on the edge o
f the bed and stroked Alec’s flushed cheek. “Talí?”

  Alec moaned and looked up at him. Though not quite as drunk as he’d pretended, he was still glassy-eyed. “Did it work?” he mumbled.

  “Perfectly.”

  Alec gazed blearily around. “Is that octopus on the wall really moving?”

  “No,” Seregil chuckled.

  “The bed is moving!”

  “No, it’s not, love.”

  Two maidservants hurried in with the bucket, water, and several small flannels. Seregil folded one into a band, soaked it in water, and laid it across Alec’s forehead. “Does that help?”

  “No,” Alec gasped, looking pale. “Bucket!”

  Seregil supported him over the side of the bed as Alec brought up both wine and dinner. When he was finished, Seregil set the bucket outside, undressed Alec, and settled him more comfortably in bed with a fresh cloth on his brow.

  “Better now?”

  “A little,” Alec said, eyes fluttering shut. “You damn well better find something!”

  Leaving Alec to sleep, Seregil paced the long balcony, peering in through the windows of the other rooms. There was enough moonlight for him to see inside; all bedchambers, one of which was the nursery, where a wet nurse was watching over two of the duke’s younger children, and the new baby. The one next to it appeared to belong to the duchess.

  He went inside again and waited until the house was quiet, then slipped out into the corridor to begin his search.

  The rooms at the front of the house proved to be more bedchambers and a day room. Taking out the tool roll he’d hidden under his shirt, he searched that room but found nothing of interest except the duchess’s correspondence box. He looked through it quickly and found nothing of note. Whatever Reltheus was up to, it was doubtful his young wife knew anything of it.

  As he stepped out into the corridor, a brawny servant with a lantern appeared at the head of the stairway just a few yards away.

  “Who’s that there!” the man demanded, coming closer and raising his lantern. “Oh, it’s you, my lord! Whatever are you doing out here in the dark?”

  “I was looking for the garderobe, actually,” Seregil replied, feigning chagrin. “I didn’t want to disturb anyone with a light.”

  “No chance of that, my lord. You’d be lucky not to break your neck. But you know, there’s chamber pots under all the beds.”

  “I can’t abide the things! Surely there is a proper toilet here?”

  “Oh, yes, downstairs. Here, I’ll take you to it.”

  There was no choice but to follow him down, but as luck would have it, they passed the open door of what looked like a study overlooking the garden.

  The toilet was a rank little closet in a far corner of the house. Garderobes were common in Rhíminee, just a shaft down to the sewers below, with a seat on top. With the watchman waiting outside to light him back to his room, Seregil made use of it and allowed himself to be led back to his room.

  “Thank you,” Seregil said, giving the man a silver half sester.

  “Much obliged, my lord.”

  Alec was fast asleep and not so pale. Seregil washed his hands at the basin and went back to the door. There was no sign of the watchman. In no mood for any more surprises, he felt his way to the staircase and made his way back down to the study. If the watchman found him again, he’d just say he was indisposed.

  The room was lost in shadow, but Seregil could make out the furnishings in the faint light from the window. A search of the desk produced only a few letters from the son detailing life in the Horse Guard and Klia’s actions. From the tone, it seemed he admired his commanding officer. In the one locked drawer—and if you wanted to catch a thief’s attention, one locked drawer was the way to do it—he found an ornate dagger and a leather portfolio containing a report on him and Alec.

  It was written on decent parchment in a rather clumsy hand. It gave in brief detail the tale of how he and Alec had come to be in Rhíminee—the public version, anyway—and a few pertinent details about whom they knew, including Klia, Kylith, Thero, Malthus, most of the names Alec had found on the list in Kyrin’s cupboard, and Duke Laneus. That last was odd, since he’d only met the man once, at the Golden Crane. But that helped him gauge when this report had been written. The main body of the several close-written pages, however, was devoted to their relationship with Klia. Once again, it only contained public knowledge, and nothing about them saving her life that night at Kassarie’s keep, but there was mention of how Seregil had discovered what had poisoned her in Aurënen, and his role in the truce negotiations. This spy had either been there, or talked to someone who had.

  He replaced the report and locked the drawer, then turned his attention to the floor under the desk. As expected, he found a small trapdoor, just like the one Alec had found at the duke’s summer villa. There was another of Elani’s letters, copied out in the same male hand and dated only two days earlier, in which the girl spoke of Duke Reltheus in friendly terms and mentioned receiving a letter from Danos.

  Seregil shook his head as he replaced it. It seemed Reltheus was taking an unreasonable amount of risk just to see if the girl was interested in his son. Or perhaps he was afraid she had other admirers. Then again, having a direct channel to the correspondence of a future queen might be valuable in itself, if Reltheus was taking the long view.

  Next, he saw with a start, was a note from Malthus to Duke Laneus, dated nearly a month ago and written from his summer villa. Or rather, a copy; he knew Malthus’s handwriting as well as his own, and this was someone else’s. Which tended to rule out a forgery. He doubted very much that Reltheus would be so clumsy.

  Korathan insists that all is going well at the front, despite the casualties, it read. However, he keeps the queen’s dispatches under lock and key, impossible to see. I fear that even if victory comes, it will come too late for the people, especially since the last raising of the war tax. Rhíminee is becoming a tinderbox.

  Seregil committed the short message to memory, then examined the remaining documents, which proved to be the most interesting of all. There were three dirty, ragged scraps of parchment with lettering on them that to an untrained eye would appear to be mere gibberish. Seregil, however, recognized the writing at once as some sort of cipher. The messages were too long and complex to chance copying all of them, and it would be a bit too obvious to steal them, especially since the night watchman had caught him wandering the corridors. Laying the three of them out side by side on the floor in front of him, he studied them in the glow of the lightstone, trying one system after another to get them to make sense. It took only a few minutes to recognize it as nothing more than an offset code. With his host’s pen and ink, he copied the shortest, then interpreted the other two and wrote them down. He frowned down at the revealed messages, then tucked them inside his shirt and hurried back up to his room.

  Alec was fast asleep on his side, snoring softly the way he did when he’d had too much to drink. Rather than chance disturbing him, Seregil settled in an armchair and took out the copies he’d made, puzzling over them for some time.

  Alec woke the next morning with a throbbing head and queasy stomach, but managed a humble apology to their hosts. He suffered their well-meant reassurances and managed not to throw up in the carriage on the way home.

  “Next time, you get drunk!” he groaned as the carriage jounced over a rough patch of paving. “You never feel this ill afterward.”

  “I’m sorry, talí, but your sacrifice was not in vain,” Seregil said. “I found a report on us, and these.” He showed Alec the letters he’d copied. “Thero will certainly want to see these.”

  Alec cradled his head in his hands. “Then you can damn well go on your own!”

  “YOU’VE certainly kept yourself busy,” Thero said approvingly as Seregil followed him into the workroom. “Tea?”

  Seregil accepted a cup and pulled out the copied documents. “I found another copy of a letter from Elani to the queen, a
report on Alec and me that mentions you as one of our friends, a letter from Malthus to Laneus, and these.” Seregil handed him the copy of the enciphered document first. “I found three written in this code. I didn’t have time to copy them all, but I did this one as an example.”

  Thero frowned as he scanned it. “I don’t know this system. Can you read it?”

  “Yes. It’s just an offset encryption. Let me show you.”

  He went to Thero’s desk across the room and took out a sheet of scraped parchment and a quill.

  The wizard joined him, looking over his shoulder. The first line on the page read SORITO ALA TIRLYK SMIEXT YWBIMTUH YHSAWWEKRI. The second was longer: BIUB UI KJNA ERTOARXMEN BMOPIU YNERSBQUIUS ESPYTEBV CWATP OSMRYIUP TRADFTVIH OUY.

  “It’s not a hard code, but whoever wrote this knew a trick or two. The beginning of it is pure gibberish, designed to throw off anyone trying to make it out.” He struck out the first two groupings of letters of the first line, except for the last one in the second grouping: A. “Taking every second letter from there, you get AILK.”

  “Klia, backward.”

  “Exactly. But from here, taking every second letter, you get them in proper order left to right: METWITHHAWKI.” He drew a series of slashes between the letters, dividing them into MET WITH HAWKI.

  “Hawki?” asked Thero.

  “It’s probably meant to be ‘hawk.’ And we don’t know who that is. Perhaps someone from the Red Hawk or White Hawk regiments?”

  “But that cipher doesn’t work on the next line,” Thero pointed out.

  “No, because you start with the third grouping and read every third letter. It’s a common system, although whoever wrote this may not have known that. An amateur intriguer, probably. So using that …” Seregil slashed through the letters of the second line, leaving: ATREMINSUSPECTSYMPATHY. “ ‘At Remin suspect sympathy.’ The second word nearly threw me off, but Remin is a small town on the Folcwine, probably the site of a battle.”

  The wizard shook his head. “The first part sounds like something that could be common knowledge. But the ‘sympathy’ suggests some sort of collusion.”