“We’ll see.”
Alec still looked dubious. “I think we should be very careful.”
“Always, talí.” Seregil reached for Alec’s hand and kissed the back of it.
Alec sat down on the arm of Seregil’s chair. “Did you send the Cat’s answer back?”
“I did. Would you like to guess where it alighted?”
“With Reltheus?”
“Close. Duke Kyrin. I had a look at what was behind that cabinet in the library. He has a secret room down a flight of rather unreliable stairs.” He held up a hand before Alec could ask and told him the whole of his night’s adventures, including finding the deadly poison.
Alec shook his head. “I guess we’d better not eat at his house, either. So they’ve been gathering information longer than Elani has known Danos?”
Seregil twisted a dark lock of hair around one finger. “Yes. There may have been more than just Reltheus’s ambition that brought them together at that hunt. Perhaps you could work that into conversation, the next time we see Elani.”
DUTIFUL son, or diligent spy, Danos wrote letters frequently, which were carried back to Rhíminee by the royal courier service, a highly efficient network of expert riders that stretched from the city to the front. Klia and the other higher officers had couriers attached to their camp, but for the rest of them, there was the general courier who showed up irregularly to carry the letters of those of the lower ranks who could write or pay someone to pen a letter for them. When the courier arrived he or she would hang their leather mail bag on a post near the cook’s wagons in a squadron camp and leave it for a day or so, then collect it and ride back.
Beka and Nyal managed to keep an eye on Danos when they were in camp, and saw when Danos’s servant, Caem, went to the post bag with a letter. It was often Nyal who crept through the shadows to pilfer it, then carried it to Beka’s tent to open and inspect. Most were addressed to his father, with a few to friends and the occasional missive to Princess Elani, but not one of them contained anything suspicious, and no sign of the code Thero had told them of.
It wasn’t until after the bloody siege of the captured Mycenian river town of Galltree that Nyal caught sight of Caem, tucking what appeared to be a letter into his tabard and setting off in the opposite direction from the post bag. It was nearing dusk, and the Aurënfaie managed to follow him among the sea of small soldiers’ tents without attracting his notice. As Nyal watched, Caem suddenly stopped at an empty tent and went inside. Nyal gave it a wide berth, then came around the back side and stretched out on his belly to look under the edge of the canvas in time to see Caem carefully lift Danos’s seal, place a folded bit of parchment inside the packet, and then apply something from a small bottle to fix the wax down again. When he was done, he put the packet into his tunic and walked back to the post bag.
Nyal waited until he’d passed out of sight among the tents again, then went to the bag, ostensibly to put in the letter he always carried with him for just such an occasion. Beka used the same ruse.
It was a simple matter to glance at the topmost letters in the bag, find the one addressed to Duke Reltheus, and slip that under his leather coat. Back in the relative safety of his own tent, Nyal lifted the seal and found not one but two letters inside. One was sealed with the same wax and addressed to Princess Elani. The other was sealed with tallow and contained a few lines of code. He scanned this quickly, then shook his head as he went in search of Beka.
She was eating with her riders, so he joined them. Catching her eye, he gave her a meaningful wink, the sort sure to be misinterpreted by anyone else who saw. When they were done with their meal, they made their way to Klia’s tent.
“You have something good, I assume,” Beka whispered in Aurënfaie as they walked along in the darkness between the watch fires.
“Very good, though the commander isn’t going to like it,” he replied softly.
Klia was conferring with General Moraus. They waited outside, and presently the general came out. When he caught sight of them he clapped Beka on the shoulder.
“I hear you and your riders distinguished yourselves again, Captain.”
“Thank you, sir!” Beka made him a smart salute.
“Quite the fight, but you were in the forefront again as I hear it.”
“Yes, sir, we were.”
The general nodded approvingly. “Lose many?”
“Only two, sir.”
“Astellus speed them, eh? And you—Nyal, isn’t it? I hear good things about you. They say you’re one of our best scouts.”
Nyal bowed. “Thank you, General. I’m honored to serve.”
“Well, keep up the good work, both of you. We’re going to drive those damn Plenimarans into the sea before the summer’s out.” With that he strode off into the darkness with his escorts.
One of the sentries announced them, and Nyal heard Klia call for them to come inside.
Klia was alone. “You have something for me?”
“Finally,” Beka said softly as Nyal handed their commander the purloined letters.
“Let’s see what we have.”
They followed her into her private quarters at the back of the tent. Klia sat down at her field desk and spread out the three letters next to the candle. The first was a letter to Duke Reltheus, filled with news of battle and questions about family and life at home. The second, the one for Elani, was a love letter, full of protestations of affection, suggestions for places to hunt on his father’s land, and cautious mention of a possible life together.
“Seems pretty sure of himself,” Klia murmured as she set this one aside. Turning her attention to the third, she handed Beka a wax tablet and stylus. “I’ll count. You write.”
Slowly, letter by letter, Klia puzzled out the hidden message. “Let’s see. Here’s my name spelled backward. And T-O-O-K. Took …”
Her eyes widened with indignation as the message took form. “ ’Klia took east gate of town, led troops. Seen stealing gold from mayor house.”
“By the Flame, that’s an out-and-out lie!” Beka hissed.
“Yes, it is,” Klia said, frowning over the message. “Thero said nothing about Danos spreading lies, just reporting on our progress. This is troublesome.”
“May I see the two letters?”
Klia handed her the two sheets of cheap vellum. “What is it?”
Beka studied them for a moment. “I don’t think these were written by the same person. I know Danos’s hand; he wrote the letters. But the code looks like someone else’s handwriting.”
Klia took them back and scrutinized them. “By the Flame, I think you’re right. Or he was at pains to make it look that way.”
“If Danos did write the second one, then why go to all the trouble of having Caem put it in separately?” said Nyal. “It would have been safer to do it all at once.”
“Perhaps he was being doubly cautious?” Beka suggested. “We should get this to Thero. Shall I call your courier?”
“No,” said Klia. “Come with me.”
They met Myrhini outside and Klia motioned for her to come, as well. The four of them walked in silence through the camp toward the ruined town. Half the regiment was here, and it took some time to wend their way among the lanes between the tents, but at last they reached the shattered gates. The sentries saluted Klia and let them pass.
The streets that weren’t still in flames were largely deserted except for the scattered Plenimaran and Mycenian dead. Klia walked on, looking this way and that, until she settled on what appeared to be a deserted house. After a search to be sure, they gathered in the kitchen at the back of the building, which was lit by the red, shifting glow of distant flames.
Klia took a small, painted wand from her purse and broke it, releasing the message sphere. “Thero, come to me. I need you,” she said softly, and touched the sphere with the tip of one finger. It sped away through the walls, in the direction of Rhíminee.
“How will he find you here?” asked Beka.
“Don’t worry. He will,” Myrhini told her with a smile.
A few moments later Thero himself stepped from the shadows at the back of the room, dressed in a nondescript coat and boots rather than his usual blue robe. Concern showed clear on his face. “Are you hurt? What’s happened?”
Klia laughed softly. “Nothing so dire. We have something for you.”
* * *
It wasn’t the translocation spell that left Thero a bit dizzy. He’d waited months for such a summons. By the time he stepped out into the light, he’d managed to shake off the disappointment of finding the others with Klia, concerned instead at how thin she looked, and how drawn.
“Thank you for coming so quickly,” Klia greeted him.
“Has there been another attempt on your life?”
“No.” She handed him two sheets of creased vellum. “Nyal saw one of Danos’s riders open this letter and put this smaller, coded one inside. He managed to steal it for me.”
Thero took the pages from Klia and snapped his fingers, lighting the candle half melted on the mantelpiece over the hearth. “Hmmm. This isn’t good.”
“It’s not true, Thero. I’ve never looted and my riders are forbidden to do it. Any gold captured goes to the queen.”
“I have no doubt of that, Highness.”
“We think Danos may not have written the coded one,” Beka told him.
“Just going by the handwriting, I’d have to agree, but it’s best to be sure.”
He set the coded message aside on the kitchen table and pressed the one from Danos between his palms. Images swirled across his mind’s eye: the goat that had given its skin, the man who’d scraped and stretched it, a few other people who’d used this particular page before Danos. He could have guessed at that last; the vellum hadn’t been scraped well of the last writing that had been on it, which still showed here and there under Danos’s strong script. And at last, there was the man himself. The letter itself was perfectly innocent, just the details of the siege that had no doubt destroyed this town, and salutations to relatives, friends, and Princess Elani.
Turning to the coded message again, he began the same spell, with much the same results, except that the last person to write on it wasn’t the one they described to him, but a young soldier Beka identified as Corporal Caem.
“It would appear we’ve been suspecting the wrong man,” said Myrhini.
“Perhaps,” Klia replied. “Unless Danos knows what Caem is doing.” She paused and shook her head. “Are people really so sure that I’m a usurper?”
Klia sounded so weary that if they’d been alone, Thero might have been tempted to take her into his arms. As if she’d read his thoughts, she said to the others, “Keep watch outside, please. I’ll just be a moment.”
When they were alone, Klia went to the window. The ruddy light played over her face through the broken glass, giving her solemn features a mask-like appearance. “You haven’t happened to have become a truth knower, have you?”
“I’m afraid not. But I do have a spell that might work just as well. It would be best to do it here. If Danos and this Caem fellow can be brought in without attracting too much attention, so much the better.”
Klia managed a tired smile. “I’m sure clever Myrhini will think of something.”
Klia went out to give the others their orders. Thero remained behind by the window, but soon heard Myrhini’s raised voice.
“I’m not leaving you here without an armed escort. Sakor only knows how many Plenimaran cutthroats are still lurking around!”
“I doubt there are any who’d be a match for Thero,” Klia replied, and the wizard felt a little coil of warmth in his heart.
The conversation fell to murmurs and Thero resisted the urge to use magic to hear what else was said.
When Klia came back, however, she was smiling, if grimly. “Myrhini can be a little overprotective at times.”
Without giving himself time to second-guess, he said, “I’m glad she is. It’s been difficult, knowing you’re so far away and always in danger.”
Klia’s smile softened a little. “Not you, too?”
Thero’s heart was beating just a little too fast. As always, the words gathered in a lump at the base of his throat and refused to budge. “I worry,” he managed. “It’s—difficult. When I was your wizard in Aurënen, you were my responsibility.”
She tilted her head slightly. “Is that all I was to you?”
“No! Never.” And still the words he most wanted to say stayed jammed painfully just beneath the notch of his collarbones.
Klia came to him and raised a hand to his cheek, her face half in shadow. “Won’t you ever say it, Thero?”
That touch and those words made his entire body go hot and cold all at once. “You know?”
She smiled. “I’m not a fool, Thero, or blind.”
“I have no right.”
Klia dropped her hand, but kept her gaze locked with his, not letting him look away. “To love me, or to say that you do?”
“Either one,” he whispered. “You’re royalty. I’m an Orëska wizard.”
Her beautiful lips turned up at the corners. “But not a celibate one, from what I’ve heard.”
Thero could well imagine whom she’d heard that from. How could he tell her that he had been exactly that since their time in Aurënen? “You know wizards are barren. I could never give you children.”
“And yet you’ve never asked me if I want children. Quite honestly, Thero, I don’t care much whether I have any or not, and certainly not now. At this point I’d consider it an advantage, really, not having to worry about it. And I’m not the heir, so it doesn’t matter to anyone else, either.” She stopped, and the teasing smile slowly faded. “Or is it that you don’t want to be tied to a lover who will age and die?”
“Illior willing, I’ll be there to see that, regardless of—anything.” This brought them to the nub of the issue. “Could you bear to see me stay young?”
“I’d certainly be getting the better end of the bargain.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I!” Klia sighed and turned away to the window. “I suppose Beka and Nyal had this very conversation.”
“No doubt.”
“But you see how happy they are, even here in the field.”
“But will that same light be in her eyes after two decades, or three?”
“Don’t you mean in his?” Klia asked bitterly. “When he looks at the frail Tírfaie with her grey hair and wrinkled face? Do you think so little of Nyal? Do you imagine I could ever believe that of you? Or is that how you truly feel?”
“No!” Thero groaned.
“Then prove it.”
She was so close he could smell the sweat and blood of battle on her, but also fresh air and horses, and a hint of sweet balm leaves on her breath. That, and the challenge in those blue eyes looking up at him, were a more potent mix than any Flower Lane perfume. Abandoning duty and responsibility, he took her in his arms and kissed her with a passion born of deprivation. Her lips were chapped but sweet, and met his with equal fervor as she buried one hand in his hair. Standing there, pressed together and overwhelmed by the enormity of the moment, Thero took her face between his hands and kissed her eyelids, her nose, chin, brow.
Laughing, she kissed him deeply, then pressed her face against his neck. “Are you going to make me say it first?”
Thero rested his burning cheek against the cool silk of her hair. Suddenly the words came. “I love you, Klia!” he whispered hoarsely. “I have for ages.”
Her arms tightened around him. “Thank the Light! I love you, too, you silly wizard.”
“If only I could stay with you …”
Klia sighed. “Something a soldier quickly learns is to seize the moment.”
Taking her hand, he pressed it over his pounding heart. “This belongs to you, Klia, and always will. But right now your life is in danger and I’m charged with protecting you.”
“Charged by whom?”
“Your brother. And myself.”
She took his hand in hers and pressed it to her heart, just below her gold-chased gorget. “Then I charge you to protect my heart, as well as my person. Will you do that, my love?”
Standing there, hand to heart, and heart to hand, Thero could only nod. There was no romantic flutter of pulse under his palm, only the roughness of the embroidered tabard she wore over her chain mail. All the same, a tingle passed through him. They’d seldom touched before.
Klia kissed him again and he buried both hands in her disheveled hair, something he’d only done in dreams. He ached to simply whisk her back to the Orëska House where he could protect and make love to her, but even if he could have cast the translocation again so soon, he knew what her answer would be; she’d never leave her soldiers, not even for him.
They both heard the sound of approaching footsteps.
Klia released him and stepped back. “This war won’t last forever,” she whispered. “And when it’s over—”
Before she could finish, Myrhini came in. “We have Danos and Caem outside. Do you want them both, or one at a time?”
“Let’s start with Caem,” Klia replied, all soldier again. As soon as Myrhini was gone, however, she whispered to Thero, “We’ll continue our discussion soon, my love.” One last warm glance promised much more than discussion.
Myrhini returned with Caem and Nyal.
Klia eyed the rider. “So this is our letter carrier.”
Caem, a tall young man with a shock of blond hair, glanced at Thero in surprise, then fell to one knee and pressed his fist to his heart. “I don’t know what you mean, Commander,” he replied calmly, and Thero detected the slight accent of the mainland territories in his voice.
“I saw you slip another letter into the one Captain Danos gave you to post,” Nyal told him.
“Another letter? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A bald-faced liar indeed.
Klia nodded to Thero.
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