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. Rhiminee 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, tali, 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!”
CHAPTER 16. Comlexities
“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.”
“I think you may be right. Here are the two I translated.”
The first read: ailk recalled to queens camp given more riders appears in favor rumor she is to be made general wolves with her. The second read: no general ailk shows no ill will openly but ire among ranks hawk seen three times spent several hours alone in tent unable to get close wolves too loyal forgive slow progress difficult.
“This ‘hawk’ again,” Thero noted. “And Klia’s name spelled backward. But still with no clue as to who the hawk is, or the wolves.”
“ ‘Wolves’?” said Seregil, surprised the wizard hadn’t twigged. “Urghazi is Plenimaran for ‘ghost wolves.’ It’s common knowledge, especially in the cavalry.”
“The message said that the wolves are too loyal. Too loyal to do what? Involve in a coup to convince her to mutiny? Or too loyal to turn against her?”
“Either one could be true, believe me. They’re her personal guard.”
“You don’t need to convince me, Seregil. What else did you make of them?”
“All three were written in the same hand, so one spy,” Seregil replied. “And they were all written on grubby scraps of parchment with rough surfaces and torn edges. Cheap scrap. What does that suggest to you?”
“That’s what the military uses. Even Klia.”
Seregil nodded. “So there may be a spy in the regiment. And I think I know who it might be.”
“Who?”
“Reltheus’s son Danos also serves under Klia.”
“He serves in Klia’s squadron?”
“You didn’t know?”
“He didn’t at the time of the hunt last winter. Perhaps Elani had something to do with it, since she was so taken with him.”
“More likely the father.”
“But it makes sense. The father would trust his own son above anyone else. I do wish he’d been a bit more forthright in his communications, though this is quite a help all the same. But why spy on her at all?”