Spy's Honor

know any.”

“I’m not sure yet what I hope to accomplish with the princess,” said Janto. “I just know that having a link to the imperial family is better than not having one.” Also he just plain liked being around her. He knew Iolo would neither approve nor understand, and that it couldn’t go anywhere. But some things couldn’t be denied, and his desire to be near Rhianne was one of them.

They continued through the forest. The ground rose beneath Janto’s feet, and the soft dirt became solid stone. Surf roared as a breaker rolled in somewhere below him. They’d reached the sea. There were no more trees ahead of them, and the empty sky glittered with stars and the crescent Sage.

“Careful,” said Iolo, gripping his arm firmly. “There’s a drop-off in front of us.”

Janto could see it, or at least imagine it, the total blackness of the empty air below them and then the ocean, which stretched toward the western horizon, dotted with glow beacons. The glow beacons would be navigational aids, identifying hazardous places for ships, or perhaps marking a channel.

“Are we in the right place?” asked Janto. “Where’s Sirali?”

They turned simultaneously, looking for her, and Janto spotted her, pressed against a tree and scanning the forest.

Janto dropped his shroud and approached with Iolo at his heels. “Sirali?” he called.

Her head whipped toward them.

“This is the shroud mage I told you about,” said Iolo gently. “The one who’s looking for Ral-Vaddis.”

“Right, and what do you know of Ral-Vaddis?” she asked.

“I’m the man who sent him here,” said Janto. “And since he hasn’t reported in for a while, I’ve come to look for him.”

“Prove it,” said the woman. “Show me you’re a shroud mage.”

Janto approached her slowly. At first he thought her an older woman, but the more he scrutinized her, the less certain he was of her age. It was more that she looked worldly, that any naivete or innocence she might have possessed had somehow been scrubbed away. Her accent suggested she’d grown up in a Mosari fishing village. He plucked Sashi off his shoulder and cradled him in the crook of his elbow. “Do you see me? Do you see my familiar?”

Sirali nodded.

“Watch closely.” He went invisible and watched with satisfaction as Sirali’s eyes went wide. He became visible again. “Proof enough?”

“Right, and Ral-Vaddis is gone. I don’t know what happened to him.”

Sashi leapt out of Janto’s arms. I’m hungry, he said. Mouse scent here.

Good hunting, said Janto as the creature scampered into the trees. Then to Sirali, “Start at the beginning. How did you know Ral-Vaddis?”

“I work in the palace kitchens,” said Sirali. “Sometimes I serve people in their rooms, or at meetings or parties. Not the big parties, and not the imperials—slaves don’t have access to them people. But I hear things sometimes.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Janto.

“Right, and Ral-Vaddis approached me one day. He said Mosar wanted to know the things the jack-scalders said. He wanted to meet with me once a sagespan—”

“Jack-scalders?” That was a term he hadn’t heard in a while. Near-universal warding spells had rendered pox lesions virtually extinct.

“Kjallans.” She wrinkled her nose. “This is the place we met, right here. I told whatever I heard. And then he stopped coming.”

“Do you have any idea why?” asked Janto.

Sirali shrugged. “Got caught, maybe.”

“And yet he didn’t give you away. Did he?”

“Right, and he didn’t.”

“Don’t you think if they’d caught him, they’d have interrogated him? And if they’d interrogated him, they’d have gotten your name out of him?”

Sirali was silent.

“They would have,” said Janto. “If there’s anything the Kjallans are good at, it’s torture and interrogation.”

“Ral-Vaddis was an important spy,” said Sirali. “I’m a kitchen slave who heard things.”

Janto gave a bitter laugh. “You think you weren’t important enough for them to come after you? If he’d given you up, they would have. Something else happened. Either he didn’t get caught, or he died before he could be interrogated. Did you know anybody else who knew Ral-Vaddis? Perhaps someone who worked for him the way you did, hearing things in the palace and passing them along to him?”

Sirali shook her head. “I met with him alone. I figured he met with other people too, but he didn’t want us to know about each other.”

Janto nodded. That made sense, though it was aggravating now. There could be a dozen or more slaves like Sirali scattered throughout the palace, people who’d worked with Ral-Vaddis, and one or two of them might know something about what had happened to him. But how was he ever to track them all down? “Tell me about the wards in the palace. What types do they lay, where do they lay them, and how often?”

“Across doorways,” said Sirali. “Don’t know what kinds or how often.”

“You’re sure they’re always across doorways? You’ve never seen one laid across a hallway?”

“Right, and I’ve not. Might make it hard for slaves to get around if they had wards over hallways.”

“Sirali, I’ve a task for you. Do you still hear things, in the kitchens and such?”

“Sometimes.”

“I’d like you to continue to report on what you hear, once per week, but to me instead of to Ral- Vaddis.”

“Right, and I’ll do that,” she said. “Whatever stops the jack-scalders from taking Mosar.”

* * *

Rhianne hurried to the Imperial Garden, anxious to get to the appointed meeting spot. She wasn’t late—in fact, she was early. But she wouldn’t risk missing even a moment of her time with Janto. She was beginning to strategize about what she might do after the wedding and the move to Mosar. Could she not convince her uncle to let her bring Janto along? Janto was Mosari, after all, and he was teaching her the language. He could continue in that role, and act as her cultural adviser or something. Janto wouldn’t mind, would he? Mosar was his home. And this was all perfectly innocent.

All right, in her mind and fantasy life, none of this was innocent. But in the real world, with Tamienne keeping a watchful eye over the two of them, they hadn’t so much as touched fingers.

Janto was waiting for her beneath the Poinciana tree. He was early too.

“Cona oleska, na-kali,” she called to him.

Janto’s face broke into his beautiful grin.

Rhianne sighed. “Please tell me I didn’t wish you a good mountain again.”

“No. You said, ‘Good morning, my alligator.’”

“Three gods. I thought I had it right this time!”

“When you add the na- modifier, it changes the vowel sound in kali. It’s confusing, I know. Say it like this. Na-kow-li.”

She repeated the altered pronunciation until she got it right. Then she glanced at him shyly. “It’s not as if you look like an alligator.”

“Perhaps if I were toothier.” He gestured to the bench.

She sat, clutching the book of Mosari mythological tales she’d brought. It would be harder going than the fairy tales, but she was ready for a challenge. In more ways than one. Gods above, she wanted to touch this man. She eyed the necklace of glass beads he wore around his neck. That seemed a reasonable excuse. “Where did you get this? Can I see?” She reached for it.

He drew away, placing a protective hand over the necklace. “Mosar.”