“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 Rhiminee.
“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 Aurenen, 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 Oreska 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 Aurenen? “You know wizards are barren. I could never give you children.”