“What time is it?” he demanded in a mildly ominous tone.
“It’ll be dawn in another hour,” Merlin replied over the com earplug.
“I’m going to assume there’s a good reason I’m not still blissfully asleep,” Cayleb remarked, climbing out of bed and shrugging into a light robe as he walked across the room and sat on the windowsill, looking out at the peaceful predawn garden. “I don’t think I’m quite as ready to assume there’s a good reason you’re not still blissfully asleep, however. Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t we in the middle of that ‘compulsory down time’ you’re supposed to take every night? Do I have to go ahead and sic Owl on you to report you when you don’t take it?”
“Actually, we’re not halfway through it,” Merlin replied with scrupulous accuracy. “We’re closer to two-thirds of the way through it, if you want to be persnickety about it.”
“Oh, that’s much better.” Cayleb’s lips twitched, but he firmed them back up in a disapproving frown. “There was a reason I promulgated that particular arrogant imperial decree, if you’ll recall, Seijin Merlin. And it just happens we have several other people now who can cover things while you ‘sleep.’”
“That’s true,” Merlin admitted. “In rebuttal, however, I’ll just point out that all of them happen to be in the same time zone at the moment. So I told Owl that if anything urgent comes up in the middle of the night, he’s supposed to give it to me rather than wake up one of you flesh-and-bloods-who need actual sleep, not just the opportunity to rest your diodes. Besides, I’ve gotten quite a bit of rest since I got back to the Cave, you know. In fact, I’m getting too damned much rest at the moment.”
Cayleb folded his arms and glowered at the garden, looking for some logical way to attack Merlin’s reasoning. Unfortunately, none occurred to him.
“All right,” he said finally. “You got me. This time. Now, what’s so damned urgent you decided to wake this flesh-and-blood up at this godforsaken hour? I could’ve gotten at least another solid hour of sleep, you know.”
“Owl’s just spotted what looks an awful lot like it must be Clyntahn’s assassination team.” Any trace of humor had disappeared from Merlin’s tone, and Cayleb sat up straighter, his eyes narrowing. “I’m not absolutely positive, but we’ve planted a couple of parasites on them. If these are the people we’re looking for-and I can’t think of why anyone else would be traveling to Delferahk from the Temple Lands this time of year, especially with snow all over the roads in both Havens-they’re bound to say something to confirm it.”
“What makes Owl think this could be them? Aside from the fact that they’re riding through the snow and ice, that is?”
“There are fifteen of them, all in a single party, and twelve of them have Charisian accents. They’re making it a point to stop at Church hostels along the way, and when they do, they make sure the staff hears those accents of theirs. And they’re dropping the occasional Charisian mark when they pay their tab before they head on down the road. And, just as another little indicator that they’re probably the people we’re looking for, they’re being very careful to let people know-or think, anyway-that they came out of the Republic. Obviously Clyntahn’s decided that suggesting active collusion between Lord Protector Greyghor and Charis may give his operation there an extra boost. Unfortunately, whatever they may be suggesting to the people they meet along the way, Owl has the same crew getting off a Harchong-registry ship-whose immediately previous port of call was in Malansath, not the Republic-in the Duchy of Malikai two five-days ago. Now, I suppose really sneaky Siddarmarkian assassins might have decided to travel a couple of thousand miles west overland to get aboard a ship in the Harchong Empire and then sail back east for fifteen hundred miles before they head south for their real destination, but… I don’t know, Cayleb. It seems a little roundabout to me.”
“Was Nimue Alban as much of a smartass as you are?” Cayleb inquired pleasantly.
“Probably not. She was a lot more junior than I am, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” Cayleb agreed with a nod, and rubbed his chin for a moment, thinking.
“How did you put all of that together?” he asked after a moment. “I’m not complaining, you understand, but…?”
He let his voice trail off and sensed Merlin’s distant shrug.
“It’s not really all that surprising. I’ve had Owl conducting continual reconnaissance of all three continents. I don’t want him wasting processor power trying to actually monitor that much area on any real-time basis, but he’s got a sub-routine set up to store the imagery in Romulus ’ computer core as it comes in. That way it’s available for us to backtrack just about anything we want to if it turns out there’s a reason we should. Things like individual horsemen don’t even show up in the raw imagery, but once he starts enhancing and manipulating it, he can turn up a surprising amount of detail and do a lot about backtracking targets once they’ve been pointed out to him.
“He’s beginning to show more initiative within his assigned parameters, too. Bynzhamyn and I instructed him to cover inns and hostels in Delferahk with parasites and listen for key words that might identify the assassins, and he decided on his own to place parasites in the Temple hostels on the main roads into Delferahk from Sodar and the Desnairian Empire, as well. Then he started moving farther back up the line without mentioning it to us. One of the ostlers in a hostel he’d wired for sound waited until this particular group had left and then described them as ‘Langhorne-damned Charisians, probably heretics the lot of them,’ to one of his coworkers. That popped through Owl’s filters and he started going through the data-including what he had of the group this fellow was describing talking to each other from his other parasites-until he could locate and positively ID them. Once he had them, he simply ran back through the recorded imagery, backtracking them until the first time he picked them up. Which, as I say, was in Malikai. He was able to track the ship back to Malansath, but it looks like they must have gone aboard during one of the blizzards that rolled through there last month.”
“It sounds to me like we got lucky,” Cayleb said.
“We got lucky because Owl’s getting better. Still, you’re right. On the other hand, we’ve got a lot denser fence along the Delferahkan border, and Owl’s keeping a real-time watch over Talkyra itself. If we hadn’t picked them up now, we’d have picked them up then. I think.”
“You hope, you mean,” Cayleb snorted. He thought again for several more seconds. “So what does this imply for your plans?” he asked after a moment.
“My biggest concern is the fact that they’re moving sooner than we thought they would-or faster, anyway,” Merlin pointed out. “By my calculations, they’ll reach Talkyra sometime around the fifteenth, a good two days earlier than we’d allowed for. For that matter, Yairley’s squadron isn’t even supposed to hit Sarm Keep until the thirteenth. I realize he’s a little ahead of schedule, but whether or not the wind will let him stay that way is another question. And then there’s the minor fact that nobody in Talkyra’s heard back from us yet.” Cayleb sensed another of those distant shrugs. “I think I’m going to have to go ahead and move down to the Sunthorns to be a little closer to the scene, just in case. And it’s probably time I went and had that conversation with Earl Coris, too. In a manner of speaking, of course.” .
Royal Palace, City of Talkyra, Kingdom of Delferahk
Phylyp Ahzgood was a light sleeper.
He always had been, and his tendency to sleep less soundly than most had only grown stronger over his years as a spymaster. Hektor Daykyn had teased him about it, once upon a time, pointing out that it was probably the result of an increasingly guilty conscience. The Earl of Coris had responded that it had far less to do with guilty consciences than with a growing familiarity with-and appreciation for-the versatility of assassins.