“—and I said, ‘Of course I can, I’m a clerk! If we stopped to actually read what we’re copying, we’d never get half the work done that we do! Eye to hand to paper, and no stopping at the brain, that’s us—’ And before I can say anything else, he dropped this in front of me.” She indicated the packet. “And some paper—if you can believe it—that’s even lighter than this is. ‘I’m in a hurry,’ says he, ‘and I haven’t time to do this myself. I need that transcribed in the smallest hand you can manage onto that paper, then burn the original. And I need it by the time I’m off the stage tonight.’ I looked at him like I didn’t care so long as the job was for him, and didn’t ask why. He didn’t tell me, he just rushed straight out, and I heard the wardrobe mistress screeching for him, so he must have been late for costuming. The rest is easy enough. I made his copy and tossed the original out the window to Aleirian, who carried it away.”

“Good God,” he breathed. “I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

“I didn’t,” she admitted. “Aleirian did. Anyway, then I kept an ear out to gauge the progress of the play, copied as many pages of the original again in the original size as I could fit in the time left, made them the top sheets in a stack of blanks, and when he got offstage and came for his papers, he saw that packet merrily burning away and assumed I’d burned the original the way I was told. He was damned careful, too; he stayed there until all the papers were burned, then broke up the ash until there wasn’t a fragment the size of the head of a nail. Then he went off. I assume that he must have gotten the originals at that private performance. And I guess that my copies must have gone out that night, because he just flew out the door with them. It wouldn’t have been hard. You could have rolled the lot up and hidden them practically anywhere.”

“I can probably find out who and where when we know what is in these,” he replied absently, unable to believe his good luck. “What did he do when you gave him the copy, besides watch the papers burn?”

“Well, he made an excuse for hanging about while he made sure the papers were gone by pouring charm all over me until I was practically gagging on it,” she replied, a chuckle in her voice. “And I gazed at him adoringly like he expected me to, and hung on his every word, and vowed that if I could ever do something for him again, he had only to ask. He went away never thinking twice about having entrusted me with papers in cipher.”