“My sister is a griffin rider. They recruited her because she’s small, light, and utterly fearless.” Her smile was so bright it altered her face with an unexpectedly sweet affection. Then she frowned down at the body. The rider was a small, slender person dressed in the wool-and-leather uniform of the griffin corps. “Riders carry two pouches. One is their personal pouch for a few necessaries. They have to travel light. The other is their official corps pouch. The official pouch isn’t here. Furthermore, its buckles are here and intact, which means it wasn’t severed or cut loose. It was unbuckled and taken. Which means someone knew this body was here and took the official pouch but left the personal pouch. Look here.”

She held up a gorgeous necklace of tiny gemstones.

Jirvy colored and looked away uncomfortably.

Simo said, “That’s a tryst necklace.”

“Yes. There’s nothing valuable in an imperial pouch except its contents, which are written in cipher. But this necklace would be worth a month’s living up here.”

“More like ten years,” said Elen, “if those are lapis lazuli and serpentine and amethyst.”

“Jade, not serpentine,” said Xilsi. “There’s also this gold ring. A pair of beautiful griffin-leather gloves impossible to obtain on the open market. And a change of clothes, but these undergarments are expensive silk—again, quite valuable.”

“The jewelry and gloves would be difficult to sell,” said Simo. “Especially in the uplands. It would draw attention.”

“Not more difficult or attention-drawing than ciphered palace communications,” Xilsi countered.

The captain frowned. “That’s true enough. It’s baffling. And disturbing.”

The haunt said, “We’d best go back. It’s getting late. We’ll stand a double guard tonight and leave at dawn. Tell no one except Ipis—and Kem—of what we found. Am I understood?”

40 THE CLOUDBERRY BREW

Once they had returned to Fisherman’s Rest, the haunt sent a message to the archon that he would not be able to eat supper at her table. He informed Elen she was to sleep in the suite, not in the annex, and set Ipis and Kem to guard the suite’s entrance. Taking a seat in the parlor, he had Jirvy unwrap the bolt. Fulmo took the shaft in one hand, sniffed it, then pressed the metal to his lips and stood as if lifeless for what felt like forever. His gray-brown complexion shifted color. Waves of blushing and fading flowed beneath his skin.

Finally, the gagast stirred. Luviara brought him pencil and paper, on which he wrote his findings.