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. Rhíminee 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, talí, 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 - Complexities

“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.”