brow.
“Better now?”
“A little,” Alec said, eyes fluttering shut. “You damn well better find something!”
Leaving Alec to sleep, Seregil paced the long balcony, peering in through the windows of the other rooms. There was enough moonlight for him to see inside; all bedchambers, one of which was the nursery, where a wet nurse was watching over two of the duke’s younger children, and the new baby. The one next to it appeared to belong to the duchess.
He went inside again and waited until the house was quiet, then slipped out into the corridor to begin his search.
The rooms at the front of the house proved to be more bedchambers and a day room. Taking out the tool roll he’d hidden under his shirt, he searched that room but found nothing of interest except the duchess’s correspondence box. He
looked through it quickly and found nothing of note. Whatever Reltheus was up to, it was doubtful his young wife knew anything of it.
As he stepped out into the corridor, a brawny servant with a lantern appeared at the head of the stairway just a few yards away.
“Who’s that there!” the man demanded, coming closer and raising his lantern. “Oh, it’s you, my lord! Whatever are you doing out here in the dark?”
“I was looking for the garderobe, actually,” Seregil replied, feigning chagrin. “I didn’t want to disturb anyone with a light.”
“No chance of that, my lord. You’d be lucky not to break your neck. But you know, there’s chamber pots under all the beds.”
“I can’t abide the things! Surely there is a proper toilet here?”
“Oh, yes, downstairs. Here, I’ll take you to it.”
There was no choice but to follow him down, but as luck would have it, they passed the open door of what looked like a study overlooking the garden.
The toilet was a rank little closet in a far corner of the house. Garderobes were common in Rhiminee, just a shaft down to the sewers below, with a seat on top. With the watchman waiting outside to light him back to his room, Seregil made use of it and allowed himself to be led back to his room.
“Thank you,” Seregil said, giving the man a silver half sester.
“Much obliged, my lord.”
Alec was fast asleep and not so pale. Seregil washed his hands at the basin and went back to the door. There was no sign of the watchman. In no mood for any more surprises, he felt his way to the staircase and made his way back down to the study. If the watchman found him again, he’d just say he was indisposed.
The room was lost in shadow, but Seregil could make out the furnishings in the faint light from the window. A search of the desk produced only a few letters from the son detailing
life in the Horse Guard and Klia’s actions. From the tone, it seemed he admired his commanding officer. In the one locked drawer-and if you wanted to catch a thief’s attention, one locked drawer was the way to do it-he found an ornate dagger and a leather portfolio containing a report on him and Alec.
It was written on decent parchment in a rather clumsy hand. It gave in brief detail the tale of how he and Alec had come to be in Rhiminee-the public version, anyway-and a few pertinent details about whom they knew, including Klia, Kylith, Thero, Malthus, most of the names Alec had found on the list in Kyrin’s cupboard, and Duke Laneus. That last was odd, since he’d only met the man once, at the Golden Crane. But that helped him gauge when this report had been written. The main body of the several close-written pages, however, was devoted to their relationship with Klia. Once again, it only contained public knowledge, and nothing about them saving her life that night at Kassarie’s keep, but there was mention of how Seregil had discovered what had poisoned her in Aurenen, and his role in the truce negotiations. This spy had either been there, or talked to someone who had.
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.
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,
“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
